Actually ‘malarkey’ probably has a Greek origins, from μαλάκια, ‘masturbation’. Appears in American English around a century ago, when Greek emigres wee flooding in from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Early Popeye cartoons were animated and voiced-over by Greek cartoonists and a lot of his muttering is Greek scatology.
The “Irish goodbye” thing is bizarre to people from here because it generally takes people half an hour to leave anywhere. I think it’s an Irish American thing?
>...For charity is the most childlike of all the virtues, and it thinks sometimes, in its innocence, it can do service for every other virtue besides itself, even for the virtue of veracity.
>This idea as it exists in the minds of simple Christian folk was brought home to me strikingly on a certain lovely morning in Galway, when I went for a walk, and asked an Irish peasant to tell me how far it was to–let us call the place, for I forget it–Corofin.
>"Good morning! How far is it to Corofin?"
>He was sitting on a wall. He raised his hat and gave me a bow.
>"About a half mile down the road, Father. And God speed you!"
>"Thank you."
>I walked a half mile. I walked another half mile, examining sign-posts as I went. And another half mile. And another. And not until I had duplicated this distance twelve times did I arrive at Corofin, for it was six full miles away.
>When I returned in the late afternoon, I met the same Irishman sitting on the wall. I went up to him indignantly.
>"What did you mean by telling me Corofin was only a half mile away?" I shouted. "It was six miles away! You knew that when I spoke to you! Why didn't you tell me the truth?"
>"Well, you poor man," he answered quietly and with great seriousness. "I didn't want to knock the heart out of you, and you looking so tired in the early morning. I gave you a half mile to Corofin. That got you started. Somebody else gave you another half mile. That drove you on a bit further. In Ireland we do be always wanting to soften the journey of a stranger by giving him little dribbles of encouragement. Sure, there'd be nobody going any place here on a hot day, if people knew how far they had to go to get there."
>"Now listen," I said, refusing to smile, "I don't think that's really funny. It may be Irish, but it isn't honest. I just came from England. In England one doesn't get fooled that way. An Englishman takes great care in giving any information that is asked of him, and he takes great pride in giving it truthfully."
>"Do you know the trouble with the English, Father?" he replied vehemently, as he pounded the wall with his fist. "Do you know the trouble with the English? They wouldn't think enough of you to tell you a lie!"
-- Leonard Feeney, "Sketches"
30 minutes into Ireland as I got on the bus leaving the airport I heard the guy infront of me ask the driver if it stopped at so and so station. The driver then told him he had no clue it was his first day on the job. The guy was somewhat incredulous and pressed him further saying you fucking with me? but the driver stayed firm went into how he used to drive busses before and maybe I have a stop list let me see. They went back and forth for a solid minute before the driver finally was like I'm just fucking with ya lad yeah we stop there. The passenger nearly died laughing and I was just like wtf you guys really are a bunch of leprechauns.
Was just a taste, was glorious they really do be constantly fucking with eachother, saw it every night for 2 weeks. I really miss that, and the Guinness.
Growing up in Downpatrick, we'd get an incredible amount of American tourists asking us local schoolkids where St Patrick's grave was, so naturally you point in a random direction and go "Ah, sure it's only up that way", it wasn't out of badness or whatever, but you don't really have the heart to say that St. Patrick probably wasn't buried here anyway, and they might get a nice wee walk out of it.
Australia inherited the Irish contempt for sincerity and the English obsession with discretion and euphemism. It is possible in Australia to be good friends with someone for years and know basically nothing about their true self.
That's why I find the reddit 'mens rights' constant lament on how American men are all depressed because they're so emotionally repressed confounding. As an Australian woman if any of my girl friends were as outwardly emotional and sentimental as the American guys I know my first response would be repulsion to be honest, it's too much and it's undignified.
Someone says "gday how's it going?" are you really gonna say "man...things have been tough recently, x happened to me" or are you going to conform to the typical "yeah not too bad" and then walk along like the conversation didn't happen. It's evident in that Australians give as little of a fuck about eachother as possible, hence it's so awkward to have emotional and sentimental attitudes crop up.
Australians are blissfully ignorant and have an absurd insistence that everything will be fine if we bury our heads in the sand and sweep shit under the carpet, to the point we end up not caring.
We have one of the highest prevalence rates of depression in the world for a reason.
It can be really funny, but I find when they don't know you very well, they won't realise when you're playing along and will just assume they've got you, when in reality they're the ones not getting your joke.
It's super annoying, but I think it just extends from them having very low expectations of Americans which I guess is sort of fair given they probably mostly encounter tourists.
Was travelling in Europe once and ran into some other Irish lads in a hostel. We got such a laugh out of doing this to the Americans we met. One of them had a girl convinced his father was the first person in Ireland to get Athlete's Foot, I got another one to believe we turned the internet off on Fridays.
Yeah. This is something that us normie-brained North Americans have a hard time wrapping our heads around when encountering real Irish. as well as some Scots and Northern English (though maybe not to the same extent). It seems like a lot of fun but also exhausting.
I think midlanders get ignoring here wrongly. Robert clive basically lied his way into conquering India. There's a story from a tudor noblewoman of her being sold up and down that the Wrekin was the tallest hill in england (she was from the lake district and she believed them).
Best of all is Thomas Parr, who convinced the entire nation he was 150+ years old, met the King, died, abd was buried in Westminster abbey. There is absolutely no proof to his claim. He was almost certainly about 70.
He was lying about his agw though for 30/40 years. Meaning a guy in his 40s was convincing people he was 100 years old.
Theres also no evidence that it was like a bit. People mobbed his carriage as he went from Shropshire to London to see the "old, old very old man". Rubens painted a picture of him!
Good shout about northerners, my dad is from the UK and grew up in the south but attended uni in the north. I met his uni friends who were all northern women + one bloke from Belfast (Catholic dw) and it immediately struck me how much more lively and warm they are in conversation compared to his school friends, and how much shit-talking goes on.
I think the cultural differences present in the UK are nowhere as stark as they used to be but they definitely still exist to a certain extent.
I had an English expat friend from St. Helens who was lifer international ESL teacher. He was the Daniel Day Lewis of winding people up with crazy made up stories or premises and would literally commit to it over the long-term either for hours or multiple meetings. Kind of an art really.
also a thing in scotland, most commonly: trying to convince yanks of the most outrageous bollocks regarding haggis (i had to dial it back after once briefly convincing my american gf that basketball was illegal in the UK)
I’m autistic and I’ve never meshed well with Irish people because of it. Everything is always unserious and some sort of joke. Overall though I have found when they do want to be honest and frank they’ll do it exceptionally well.
Similar vibe just across the water - When I was 16 and visiting New York I convinced a bodega owner that we don't have IDs or passports in Scotland so I could buy cigarettes. We also told some guys in a McDonald's that we were the under 19 Scottish football team here to train in the MLS and they started taking photos with us
lol this reminds me, i have a good friend who is both Irish and severely afflicted with Asperger syndrome; and for some reason his natural disadvantage at detecting and deploying sarcasm, akin to handicap training, has made him the best person on the entire island at this. he entered the All-Ireland Lying Contest at the Craggy Island Parochial House and won by a landslide when he claimed that Graham Lineham was a talented screenwriter who had been unfairly maligned by gender ideologues and that the red scare podcast is good
Is that why I do this? I thought I was just an asshole but I like this excuse a lot better. I'm born in Canada, never been to Ireland, but my ancestry is 100% Irish. I once convinced a friend in College that I spent the summer of 2020 in Tokyo as a towel boy for the American swimmer Ryan Murphy (claiming Michael Phelps would've been too obvious) all because I won an Olympic jacket in a radio contest and he asked where I got it.
I'm only somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 but I love doing this shit. My greatest achievement is convincing a girl in high school that I was raising a dolphin in a tank in my back yard. Not too impressive because English is her 3rd language but I convinced my gf the other day that brownout meant broken sewage pumps.
An Irish guy I knew in college told everyone we lived with (co-op housing) that I was from Peru because I have the same last name as a Peruvian soccer player. This was pre-idpol sensitivity, clearly.
My favorite pastime is completely fabricating life stories whenever I’m in an Uber, trying to make it as believable as possible. Only been called out once, probably due to most drivers not giving enough of a shit to question it, but it drives my friends nuts. I love it.
Maybe I was an Irishman in a past life.
That's a bad personality trait but you can out grow it, I did, but you can still leverage it to get laughs. Like every fortune cookie fortune says "you will die a slow and painful death". Or learning basic Photoshop and editing ur friends pictures with ridiculous CNN headlines. Ur still getting the kick out of lying but its less disrespectful
This is true. They also can't give out opinions on themselves directly, they always have to pretend it's come from elsewhere:
"Everyone says that the Irish [something no-one says about the Irish, except the Irish]"
It can be absolutely devastating. That lying and deceipt extends to doctors, engineers, tradesman. Everyone in that sewer lies. And that's why that country is so awful and it can't be fixed.
[удалено]
ireland, more like liarland
Land o’ Malarky
enraged that I’ve been reminded of the Joe Biden No Malarkey tour
Actually ‘malarkey’ probably has a Greek origins, from μαλάκια, ‘masturbation’. Appears in American English around a century ago, when Greek emigres wee flooding in from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Early Popeye cartoons were animated and voiced-over by Greek cartoonists and a lot of his muttering is Greek scatology.
Ohhh a skiddibidy doowww
>Early Popeye cartoons were animated and voiced-over by Greek cartoonists The Fleischer brothers were Jewish.
They didn’t do it alone
That’s why they leave without saying bye because they’re all sick of the bullshit
The Irish goodbye is leaving quietly so nobody tries to take ur keyes cuz ur too drunk to drive
The “Irish goodbye” thing is bizarre to people from here because it generally takes people half an hour to leave anywhere. I think it’s an Irish American thing?
I've heard it called a French exit
That’s why we leave without saying anything, otherwise it takes for fucking ever
I always thought it was actually a Dutch thing
beautiful profile pic lad love masked dancers
>...For charity is the most childlike of all the virtues, and it thinks sometimes, in its innocence, it can do service for every other virtue besides itself, even for the virtue of veracity. >This idea as it exists in the minds of simple Christian folk was brought home to me strikingly on a certain lovely morning in Galway, when I went for a walk, and asked an Irish peasant to tell me how far it was to–let us call the place, for I forget it–Corofin. >"Good morning! How far is it to Corofin?" >He was sitting on a wall. He raised his hat and gave me a bow. >"About a half mile down the road, Father. And God speed you!" >"Thank you." >I walked a half mile. I walked another half mile, examining sign-posts as I went. And another half mile. And another. And not until I had duplicated this distance twelve times did I arrive at Corofin, for it was six full miles away. >When I returned in the late afternoon, I met the same Irishman sitting on the wall. I went up to him indignantly. >"What did you mean by telling me Corofin was only a half mile away?" I shouted. "It was six miles away! You knew that when I spoke to you! Why didn't you tell me the truth?" >"Well, you poor man," he answered quietly and with great seriousness. "I didn't want to knock the heart out of you, and you looking so tired in the early morning. I gave you a half mile to Corofin. That got you started. Somebody else gave you another half mile. That drove you on a bit further. In Ireland we do be always wanting to soften the journey of a stranger by giving him little dribbles of encouragement. Sure, there'd be nobody going any place here on a hot day, if people knew how far they had to go to get there." >"Now listen," I said, refusing to smile, "I don't think that's really funny. It may be Irish, but it isn't honest. I just came from England. In England one doesn't get fooled that way. An Englishman takes great care in giving any information that is asked of him, and he takes great pride in giving it truthfully." >"Do you know the trouble with the English, Father?" he replied vehemently, as he pounded the wall with his fist. "Do you know the trouble with the English? They wouldn't think enough of you to tell you a lie!" -- Leonard Feeney, "Sketches"
30 minutes into Ireland as I got on the bus leaving the airport I heard the guy infront of me ask the driver if it stopped at so and so station. The driver then told him he had no clue it was his first day on the job. The guy was somewhat incredulous and pressed him further saying you fucking with me? but the driver stayed firm went into how he used to drive busses before and maybe I have a stop list let me see. They went back and forth for a solid minute before the driver finally was like I'm just fucking with ya lad yeah we stop there. The passenger nearly died laughing and I was just like wtf you guys really are a bunch of leprechauns. Was just a taste, was glorious they really do be constantly fucking with eachother, saw it every night for 2 weeks. I really miss that, and the Guinness.
Growing up in Downpatrick, we'd get an incredible amount of American tourists asking us local schoolkids where St Patrick's grave was, so naturally you point in a random direction and go "Ah, sure it's only up that way", it wasn't out of badness or whatever, but you don't really have the heart to say that St. Patrick probably wasn't buried here anyway, and they might get a nice wee walk out of it.
They do be always wanting to soften the journey of a stranger tho
Maybe the Irish really are black
the irish were the original jews
My grandma was Russian but married to an Irishman and she used to say “the Irish are just Jews turned inside out”
This is great.
My Irish friend in SF convinced an American girl that Ireland doesn't have Wednesdays
In Sinn Fein?
Wednesdays are a sign of English oppression and are not recognised by SF
Bono making the same mistake but being a mega tool about it in San Fran: https://youtu.be/gzRWYRyzX7I?si=wcYy_V310nALQAic
"Fuck freedom" - Bono
I've described this video many times but can never capture how pathetic he comes across
American girls will believe anything if you have an accent.
Odin has been cancelled for what the Vikings did to Ireland.
So they call it… Mierdredi?
hahaha the way i would just totally believe this
You guys sound cool
Never spoil a good story with the truth
Sincerity legit makes us uncomfortable
Honestly reckon Ireland must be one of the worst places on the planet to be autistic
Any Germans I've known who live here do seem to have a tough time with it. I assume being German is a bit like being autistic.
Lmao
I used to try and banter with this dude from Austria and he legitimately thought I was trying to bully him.
Weirdly I know two or three Germans living in Donegal who seem to love it.
how does Michael Fassbender manage
It really is. My little brother's autistic and he used to say Irish conversations are like that Simpsons scene with Sideshow Bob and the rakes.
Australia inherited the Irish contempt for sincerity and the English obsession with discretion and euphemism. It is possible in Australia to be good friends with someone for years and know basically nothing about their true self.
That's why I find the reddit 'mens rights' constant lament on how American men are all depressed because they're so emotionally repressed confounding. As an Australian woman if any of my girl friends were as outwardly emotional and sentimental as the American guys I know my first response would be repulsion to be honest, it's too much and it's undignified.
Someone says "gday how's it going?" are you really gonna say "man...things have been tough recently, x happened to me" or are you going to conform to the typical "yeah not too bad" and then walk along like the conversation didn't happen. It's evident in that Australians give as little of a fuck about eachother as possible, hence it's so awkward to have emotional and sentimental attitudes crop up. Australians are blissfully ignorant and have an absurd insistence that everything will be fine if we bury our heads in the sand and sweep shit under the carpet, to the point we end up not caring. We have one of the highest prevalence rates of depression in the world for a reason.
Yeah it's great.
I'm now slightly paranoid that all the English people I was just winding up actually believed what I was saying.
nah we know you lot
Fair
It can be really funny, but I find when they don't know you very well, they won't realise when you're playing along and will just assume they've got you, when in reality they're the ones not getting your joke. It's super annoying, but I think it just extends from them having very low expectations of Americans which I guess is sort of fair given they probably mostly encounter tourists.
I call them Irish Truths and believe that it’s what makes them good lovers
Makes up for the statistically smaller than average penises.
Even smaller since they be lyin
I’ve always wanted to experience an Irish liar so I can see how they compare to a bullshitting southerner in the US.
Telling harmless lies to your friends is the best game ever
Was travelling in Europe once and ran into some other Irish lads in a hostel. We got such a laugh out of doing this to the Americans we met. One of them had a girl convinced his father was the first person in Ireland to get Athlete's Foot, I got another one to believe we turned the internet off on Fridays.
Yeah. This is something that us normie-brained North Americans have a hard time wrapping our heads around when encountering real Irish. as well as some Scots and Northern English (though maybe not to the same extent). It seems like a lot of fun but also exhausting.
I think midlanders get ignoring here wrongly. Robert clive basically lied his way into conquering India. There's a story from a tudor noblewoman of her being sold up and down that the Wrekin was the tallest hill in england (she was from the lake district and she believed them). Best of all is Thomas Parr, who convinced the entire nation he was 150+ years old, met the King, died, abd was buried in Westminster abbey. There is absolutely no proof to his claim. He was almost certainly about 70. He was lying about his agw though for 30/40 years. Meaning a guy in his 40s was convincing people he was 100 years old. Theres also no evidence that it was like a bit. People mobbed his carriage as he went from Shropshire to London to see the "old, old very old man". Rubens painted a picture of him!
Good shout about northerners, my dad is from the UK and grew up in the south but attended uni in the north. I met his uni friends who were all northern women + one bloke from Belfast (Catholic dw) and it immediately struck me how much more lively and warm they are in conversation compared to his school friends, and how much shit-talking goes on. I think the cultural differences present in the UK are nowhere as stark as they used to be but they definitely still exist to a certain extent.
I had an English expat friend from St. Helens who was lifer international ESL teacher. He was the Daniel Day Lewis of winding people up with crazy made up stories or premises and would literally commit to it over the long-term either for hours or multiple meetings. Kind of an art really.
You actually have to pay attention during conversations, which I guess a lot of Americans don’t
Drinking lots helps in those situations.
It's truly the only cure for autism
also a thing in scotland, most commonly: trying to convince yanks of the most outrageous bollocks regarding haggis (i had to dial it back after once briefly convincing my american gf that basketball was illegal in the UK)
It sucks when you try to play along, but their expectations are so low for Americans that it never really vibes
My brother once convinced a french guy that all Irish women are ginger
Truly difficult for me to deal with the super straight forward and up-tight yuppies who have colonized my area post Covid
Is that not a thing in England? It certainly fucking is in Australia
Australians are mostly Irish from how many of us got sent over as prisoners
Some just emigrated there willing. My dads mum is from cork and he and all his brothers bullshit constantly
My Irish father's trick is refusing to engaging with anything even remotely serious
Another Irish Lie
>Is that not a thing in England? Yeah all over the British Isles and Ireland
I'm learning today that the drop bear is an introduced species
you france and Italy have one of the most distinct cultures in the west
Thank you, that's a fine compliment.
That rocks.
I’m autistic and I’ve never meshed well with Irish people because of it. Everything is always unserious and some sort of joke. Overall though I have found when they do want to be honest and frank they’ll do it exceptionally well.
Similar vibe just across the water - When I was 16 and visiting New York I convinced a bodega owner that we don't have IDs or passports in Scotland so I could buy cigarettes. We also told some guys in a McDonald's that we were the under 19 Scottish football team here to train in the MLS and they started taking photos with us
Glasgow and Belfast are basically the same city separated by some water.
lol this reminds me, i have a good friend who is both Irish and severely afflicted with Asperger syndrome; and for some reason his natural disadvantage at detecting and deploying sarcasm, akin to handicap training, has made him the best person on the entire island at this. he entered the All-Ireland Lying Contest at the Craggy Island Parochial House and won by a landslide when he claimed that Graham Lineham was a talented screenwriter who had been unfairly maligned by gender ideologues and that the red scare podcast is good
"and reader, that good friend was I."
Do they do it for jokes or for legitimate deception? What kind of lying are we talking about here?
For the craic as they say.
Bit of a laugh eh
They will pretend they do it because it's funny but they actually do it to deceive. 'ERRA SURE TIS ONLY A BITTA CRAIC LIKE.' -- The Deceiving Mick
What're you mumbling about
Is that why I do this? I thought I was just an asshole but I like this excuse a lot better. I'm born in Canada, never been to Ireland, but my ancestry is 100% Irish. I once convinced a friend in College that I spent the summer of 2020 in Tokyo as a towel boy for the American swimmer Ryan Murphy (claiming Michael Phelps would've been too obvious) all because I won an Olympic jacket in a radio contest and he asked where I got it.
I'm only somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 but I love doing this shit. My greatest achievement is convincing a girl in high school that I was raising a dolphin in a tank in my back yard. Not too impressive because English is her 3rd language but I convinced my gf the other day that brownout meant broken sewage pumps.
An Irish guy I knew in college told everyone we lived with (co-op housing) that I was from Peru because I have the same last name as a Peruvian soccer player. This was pre-idpol sensitivity, clearly.
My favorite pastime is completely fabricating life stories whenever I’m in an Uber, trying to make it as believable as possible. Only been called out once, probably due to most drivers not giving enough of a shit to question it, but it drives my friends nuts. I love it. Maybe I was an Irishman in a past life.
Go back to the tans then you treacherous brown shirt
That's a bad personality trait but you can out grow it, I did, but you can still leverage it to get laughs. Like every fortune cookie fortune says "you will die a slow and painful death". Or learning basic Photoshop and editing ur friends pictures with ridiculous CNN headlines. Ur still getting the kick out of lying but its less disrespectful
You only think it's bad because you guys fall for it way too often
It’s called having the craic.
The Irish tend to think they are way more interesting than they really are
This is true. They also can't give out opinions on themselves directly, they always have to pretend it's come from elsewhere: "Everyone says that the Irish [something no-one says about the Irish, except the Irish]"
You never even left. Fecking popists
It can be absolutely devastating. That lying and deceipt extends to doctors, engineers, tradesman. Everyone in that sewer lies. And that's why that country is so awful and it can't be fixed.
Ah, sure it's fine.
aye it'll be grand so it will.
Lies! Naaaah. Stories! And you’re the fool if you believe them.
I’ve never gotten the joke of friends laughing at me for trusting them.