Persian

Me and my father sat with his persian friend and his wife. My father asks his friend if he wants some whiskey and then this word came up.

TAROF.

I didn't understand what it meant, so I asked the wife and she explained that it is a persian culture phenomenon. When I got back in, I googled it and found this:

"A persian word for a custom that is ONLY applied in the Iranian culture. It is a way of denying your will to please your counterpart, however the will is only denied because of the custom and not to please the counterpart. But there are situations where tarof persist upon a request to make the counterpart genuinely satisfied. Tarof often causes misunderstandings between both parties and is a source for awkward situations in a social setting. The closest one can come to tarof in the western culture is the question about who´s paying the restaurant bill? This is an awkward situation where everybody in the company is reaching for their wallets and it´s usually resolved by social status, the one with the highest income, biggest reason or most power pays. But, still everyone insists on paying."

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Tarof

I recognized it sooo well! Haha. It's a very interesting thing, isn't it? As a Scandinavian person, I think it's quite...ridiculous?