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In a nutshell, 'taarof' is the social code whereby people fight for the lowest rank, as to show respect for the other person. It affects everything from the seat you take when entering a friends house, to how much you pay (you fight to pay the full bill, while your friend insists on him paying). As a Persian aspie I feel this wastes time, and I prefer the blunt and direct communication style of the Dutch.
The article mentions this a little.. "in a hierarchical society such as Iran, where favours and services can be interpreted according to the stratum of the provider, this behaviour “produces social stability, because when both persons are doing this, they achieve equality”."
This is sort of similar to how strict dress codes (black tie etc.), despite being associated with the more pretentious elements of society, are actually deeply egalitarian. By telegraphing exactly what is and is not allowed, variation is diminished and stratification by social class is harder.
It obviously has its negative elements (and definitely adds friction to each interaction), but in an increasingly atomized world I find these tiny holdovers of tradition refreshing.
The comments about our hospitality and generosity being fake is unfair and unfounded. It's also very self centered of someone to have such claims based solely on their experience and perception. Iran is a big county with different cultures and very different behavior between generations. Do American boomers and GenX behave the same?
The comments about our language not being understandable because of taarof is also laughable. I have never done taarof. My friends and family don't do taarof. My driver and food delivery guy get paid over a mobile app. My barber outright asks for tips. People who have chain migrated out of Iran ages ago and higher middle class people are not representative of all Iranians. We are just like you and everybody else.
Tarof is so infuriating that, if you are a foreigner who wants to learn Persian, going to Tajikistan instead might be recommended: I don't know if the practice never quite existed there in such an extreme form, or the Soviets stamped it out, but communicating with Tajiks is always so much more straightforward than with Iranians. What always apalls me is foreigners traveling in Iran who rave about how hospitable the l…
Wow, I very strongly disagree. First of all, as for learning the language, I have no idea why taarof would be an impediment. I mean, I guess if your plan is to exchange a handful of words with a ton of different people, taarof might make up a noticeable portion of your communication, but in language learning it's far better to speak with fewer people and try to have longer conversations. Otherwise you'll never move p…
> Furthermore, taarof is part of the Iranian culture. These little cultural differences are what makes this world beautiful...
Even Iranians themselves often don't find tarof beautiful. One might claim that tarof is a "part of Iranian culture" in the same way that chewing paan is "part of Indian culture", i.e. it's ubiquitous, but even many local people would find the world a better place without it.
Tarof in an intersection: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XAvzW1WZsN4
Isn't this the very definition of politeness, anywhere in the world?
I read the beginning of the Wikipedia article on Taarof:
> In the rules of hospitality, taarof requires a host to offer anything a guest might want, and a guest is equally obliged to refuse it. This ritual may repeat itself several times (usually three times) before the host and guest finally determine whether the host's offer and the guest's refusal are genuine, or simply a show of politeness. If one is invited to any house for food, then one will be expected to eat seconds and thirds. However, taarof demands that one can't go ahead and help themselves to more food after finishing their first helping. Good manners dictate that one must first pretend to be full, and tell the host how excellent the food was, and that it would be impossible to eat any more. The host is then expected to say one should not do taarof ("taa'rof nakon" - similar to "don't be polite!"), for which the appropriate response would be to say "no" two or three times, then pretend to cave in to the host's insistence and pile on the food
To be honest, in this particular situation, I don't see much of a difference (if any) to the area I am coming from (rural southern Germany). In my home area, it would certainly seem very strange to accept an offer to eat at someones house right away, without the usual "no, that's very nice of you, but I don't want to cause you any trouble", etc. dance. Eating for example at a relative's home, you would never ask for a second, and if a second was offered to you, the polite response would be to decline first. The host would then say something like "but really, there is so much left, don't be polite", and this would go on for 1-3 rounds, during which you are more or less expected to offer your second to other guests.
Regarding the taxi episode from the article: a few years ago, we were stranded in a snowy village in Austria. It would've been 3 hours by foot to our hotel. A friendly local drove us there. During the last minutes of the drive, I tried to offer this person some money out of gratitude, and it was a very long conversation that circled around my wife giving me discrete hints to offer him some money (but in such a way that he would be able to see that she was giving me hints), him politely hiding that he had noted her hints, me offering him some money, him refusing, me asking if he really didn't want to take any money, we are so grateful, etc. In the end, he didn't take any money, and it was clear he didn't want to. But it took nearly 5 minutes to clear that out.
Tarof is so infuriating that, if you are a foreigner who wants to learn Persian, going to Tajikistan instead might be recommended: I don't know if the practice never quite existed there in such an extreme form, or the Soviets stamped it out, but communicating with Tajiks is always so much more straightforward than with Iranians. What always apalls me is foreigners traveling in Iran who rave about how hospitable the l…
Having visited Iran by myself and having had the pleasure of being invited to join strangers in several cities to meet their friends and join them for meals at their homes, I found this a bit depressing to read. Would Iranians expect foreigners to understand and play along? Surely not. I definitely didn't perceive that the invitations were anything but sincere at the time, but now I'll never know for sure.
Tarof is so infuriating that, if you are a foreigner who wants to learn Persian, going to Tajikistan instead might be recommended: I don't know if the practice never quite existed there in such an extreme form, or the Soviets stamped it out, but communicating with Tajiks is always so much more straightforward than with Iranians. What always apalls me is foreigners traveling in Iran who rave about how hospitable the l…
Tajikistan is a very different vibe to Iran, though. There's not much cosmopolitan about Dushambe. Also, if you learn to speak like a Tajik, Iranians will probably think you're dim, or at least sound like it. But yeah, I remember eating out alone in one of my first nights in Iran, so already marked as a weirdo, of course, and the waiter says "Qabel nadare!" when I ask for the bill, and I'm very confused, and I get ou…
I actually like Khujand more, it is definitely more multiethnic than Dushanbe.
> Also, if you learn to speak like a Tajik, Iranians will probably think you're dim, or at least sound like it.
It depends on what you are learning Persian for. Quite a lot of Westerners who have studied Persian have done it out of Middle Eastern/Central Asian areal studies needs, or because they wanted to learn to read the wealth of Persian literature. In those cases, going to a Persian-speaking country can be helpful because direct immersion can boost one’s vocabulary learning, but in the long term one doesn't intend to actively speak the language so much, and so it doesn't matter much if one initially learns a variety of Persian that some Iranians find distasteful. Note that even if one learns Persian within Iran, inevitably one would be picking up regionalisms that people from other parts of Iran nitpick – Iranians can be such snobs about dialects and accents from within their own country.
It's funny because my Persian friends describe that their relatives expect taarof to be a thing elsewhere. Here's an example: my friend was not in the mood for breakfast. The host took it as a sign that he was taarofing. He insisted that he wasn't. His persistence was seen as a sign that he really wants breakfast. The only way to make it stop while being polite was to take a bite. He was furious!
It sounds from your story that the answer is no, but I wonder if it's different between close friends or family members where there's less pressure to be impeccably polite.
In a nutshell, 'taarof' is the social code whereby people fight for the lowest rank, as to show respect for the other person. It affects everything from the seat you take when entering a friends house, to how much you pay (you fight to pay the full bill, while your friend insists on him paying). As a Persian aspie I feel this wastes time, and I prefer the blunt and direct communication style of the Dutch.
This is also a thing in Indian culture. It is absolutely frustrating.