{"id":332876,"date":"2026-03-07T00:00:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T00:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/332876\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T00:00:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T00:00:17","slug":"give-me-abrasive-honesty-over-irish-plamasing-any-time-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/332876\/","title":{"rendered":"Give me abrasive honesty over Irish pl\u00e1m\u00e1sing any time \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite speaking only one language I do a lot of translating. My vocabulary has been stained and varnished from years in Ireland. A gift. But it often leaves me interpreting Hiberno-English phrases into the equally colourful Antipodean-English. Which is incredibly difficult because sometimes there are no direct translations. <\/p>\n

The other day I spent the best part of 20 minutes explaining what kind of person warranted being called a \u201cmelt\u201d to my friend. \u201cLike a wreck-the-head?\u201d I ventured further, only to realise this was also very Irish. \u201cOh like a flog?\u201d he questioned. No, not exactly. A flog has a bigger ego than a melt. A flog is doing it on purpose. They\u2019re going out of their way to be annoying, whereas a melt is unintentionally irritating. They\u2019re adjacent to the worst insult in Irish slang which is \u201charmless\u201d. <\/p>\n

They\u2019re someone you almost feel bad for being irritated by because it\u2019s not their fault they\u2019re like that. They\u2019re the wet flannel on a hen\u2019s party who has trapped you into a long conversation about why women need to take folic acid tablets even if they\u2019re not trying to have a baby \u2013 just in case. They\u2019re the Instagram mutual friends who start posting like geopolitical experts every time a new world conflict starts. They\u2019re the people who post \u201ccan we still go on our holiday next week?\u201d under articles about airports and schools in the Middle East being bombed<\/a>. They don\u2019t mean to make you clench your jaw in rage so hard that you crush a tooth crown, but it happens anyway. <\/p>\n

\u201cCan you give me an example of someone being a melt?\u201d This was a tough one. I had to really rack my brain, scrolling through centuries of important historical events and figures. Maybe it was when Brian McFadden tweeted \u201cwouldn\u2019t it be great if Isis had the balls to stand face-to-face with us and fight… Man to man\u201d? Or when Gal Gadot<\/a> decided to remedy the Covid-19 pandemic with a bunch of celebrities singing Imagine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I get it,\u201d he said. \u201cSo like a FIGJAM?\u201d Which is an Australian<\/a> abbreviation for \u201cF**k I\u2019m Good, Just Ask Me.\u201d Which is close but no cigar because colloquialisms are shaped by culture. It\u2019s much more socially accepted and expected to be self-confident in Australia, while in Ireland we have the sense to beat that kind of thing out of each other. So a melt would be far less self-promoting than a FIGJAM. Australians would not have as much use for one of my favourite sayings \u201che\u2019d ride himself if he could turn around fast enough\u201d because self-love or self-promotion doesn\u2019t warrant criticism.<\/p>\n

Cultural differences mean there\u2019s not really a direct translation for pl\u00e1m\u00e1s because the act is deployed much less in Australia, if at all. Especially in the workplace. This is not a culture that responds well to excessive flattery and flowery language. That kind of thing actually arouses suspicion, which it should do sometimes. If there\u2019s one difference I\u2019ve noticed in Ireland it\u2019s that decision-makers will heap praise on me when they\u2019re trying to pay me less than I would like.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m great. I\u2019m respected. I\u2019m a treasured asset. I\u2019m the second coming of sliced bread. But that won\u2019t translate into more money. Whereas in Australia, compliments are few and far between. As Don Draper in Mad Men says \u201cthat\u2019s what the money is for\u201d. <\/p>\n

It feels like in Ireland \u2013 public and private life- there\u2019s a sense that people and situations just need to be \u201chandled\u201d. If you just say the right combination of words in the right tone, you can get the outcome you want. I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s the right or wrong way to go about things \u2013 it just doesn\u2019t wash with Australian directness. Like the time my colleague told me I need to \u201csweeten up\u201d a person for them to essentially do their basic job description. I was annoyed I had to perform flattery to get them function but this was Ireland where it was considered manners so I did. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Is it any wonder young women fantasise about becoming stay-at-home girlfriends?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

What Irish culture might consider harmless pl\u00e1m\u00e1sing, Australians might see as an attempt to \u201cpiss down their back and tell them it\u2019s raining\u201d. What one country sees as being a cute hoor the other might view as downright sneaky. It can be hard to make the micro adjustments that let you operate between the two systems. One that relies on subtleties, dead ends and circling about the topic. And the other with a communication style that goes for the throat. Personally, I prefer abrasive honesty while still yearning for the mandatory 10-minute friendly chit chat at the start of Irish meetings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite speaking only one language I do a lot of translating. My vocabulary has been stained and varnished…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[986,24401,93,61,60,709],"class_list":["post-332876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-australia","tag-brianna-parkins","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}