Estonian here. At Skype (10+ years ago) I observed, that members of large cultures (American, British, Hindu etc.) had real trouble adjusting to the predominantly Estonian-based engineering culture. Probably because they had never had to adjust, commonly people adjust to _their_ culture as it tends to dominate large organizations. But once they did make an honest attempt, that was always most welcomed and gained them a large amount of goodwill. Our US CEO going to a sauna with 20 naked engineers...
I’ve also seen the “how are you” thing described in comments unfold.
A Hindu pm had the habit of sitting next to developers while they worked, sometimes putting a hand on their knee. After being politely explained that the size of an Estonian personal space is measured in astronomical units and that this was the reason devs literally scattered upon his approach, he immediately changed his behavior and became great friends with the team.
A US lady came to hr complaining about an Ukrainian dev approaching them inappropriately during a party. The hr-person, having witnessed the situation, explained that this was just their way of showing friendly interest and no disrespect was intended. A while later, a Japanese guy came to the hr person complaining the original lady from us had hugged them. Again, it was explained that this is just what Americans do.
Cultures are hard and take a lot of mutual respect to work through.
> Cultures are hard and take a lot of mutual respect to work through.
It's always beneficial, not only when dealing with people of other cultures, to adhere Postel's law [0]: "Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept".
I notice if the majority behaves like this, then it could take a long time to build trust and stronger relationships in the team. Having a few not very self-conscious people around, is they are not too way out of bounds, helps to break the ice.
Ah! Never drew the parallel, but being an uber-introvert with no desire to be involved in any social conflict for the rest of my life, I naturally gravitated toward that behavior.
I remember taking a doing-biz-international course - one thing that was stressed was that personal space is different for different cultures, you can back someone into a wall if your normal speaking distance is larger than someone else's.
FYI for Americans a good rule of thumb is that Americans are comfortable at roughly an arm's length - reach out and touch someone's shoulder with your knuckles - after taking that course this became a company greeting ....
Yeah in the Southern US there is a good chance if you reach out and touch someone with your knuckles they will think you are looking for a fight. If it's someone you are very comfortable with it would probably be taken as "playing we might fight" like you would do with a cousin or brother but probably don't do this lol.
I find a lot of comfort in knowing that these kinds of things are becoming more "official". Training seminars being organised, issues being discussed online, people growing up and spending more time being aware of these things before it's too late. It seems to me to be a sure sign of social progress.
I am French and I work in China with a lot of Indians. It's been interesting for everyone to say the least. I swear and speak my mind way too much for a corporate Indian, so much that when I spoke frankly to someone higher than me telling him his process was useless and was going double our wasted time for really only the appearance of regulatory compliance, all he could say was ... thank you. He d never met a younger subaltern resist a stupid idea in India before, in public :D
And of course it's neither our faults: in a French company we spend maybe more time fighting each other than doing the work, while in India they double their wasteful process every 2 weeks to a point they all do their job well but produce nothing at all :D
I've worked in France, US and Finland (all that is super subjective). In France you talk and take informal breaks all the time. In US you occasionally take a long break with a colleague. In Finland the breaks were organized and everybody took them (some food, tea, coffee). TBH I prefer the Finnish way. I'm fine with the US one, but I dread the French way.
What you describe as the "Finnish way" seems like it would translate better to a distributed company. I've been working remotely for over a year now, and I've found that those serendipitous conversations by the coffee-machine "French way" breaks just don't happen remotely.
I would love to work in European international corporation acknowledging and respecting different introvert/extrovert personality levels, countless languages, completely different approaches in handling problems and challenges determined by one's origin and upbringing, different needs in socializing, e.g. Nokia at its peak. I dislike the American corporate environment, their soulless "corporate culture" media materials. There is this one American school of "how to become successful" and that's it. Productivity of a generation of Europeans is getting wasted on following some motivational bollocks by people after dozen of plastic surgeries and living in Florida or California.
> I dislike the American corporate environment, their soulless "corporate culture" media materials. There is this one American school of "how to become successful" and that's it.
Ironically, a lot of people in the European country in which I live feel this way about domestic companies compared to the vibrancy of US corporate culture. Maybe you can elaborate on what you're referring to, preferably with less generalizing of a whole continent of corporate cultures as "European?"
Yeah but european companies dont exist, we re all different.
Im French for instance, and we certainly dont work like the german. For us it s all about the game, the gossips, the fightings. Everyone is the CEO and it s hard to remember we have a job to do end of the day.
In Germany I ve heard things are more...rule following.
I work in China now - it's way more result oriented.
The corporate culture BS we have it everywhere, it s part of the internal marketing we all have to do, and it s not really american: it s a way to try and adapt to a workforce that doesnt only focus on the result but also the way it s achieved. And ofc, it s a shortcut, because beyond the surface there s nothing.
This is so right. There is no European culture. Even neighboring countries with similar values (NL and DE) are wildly different with regard to workplace.
I The Netherlands, work stops on Friday around 16:0-ish. In Germany, I had regular meetings at 18:00 on Friday. I honestly thought they were joking.
In Norway the office is desolate after 13:00 on a Friday. Only the youngest and the ones without children stick around till 16:00, and not many of them either.
Interesting. Is this because of officially shorter working hours per week, because of longer hours on the other weekdays, or just some kind of an unofficial practice? How common is this?
As another Nordic, I've seen people gladly leave the office around 15:00 or 16:00 (or earlier for some people if they like to start early) on a Friday, but it's hard to imagine people who are on the clock regularly leaving at 13:00 unless they are real early birds.
Seemed more an accepted and practical practice of trying to beat the traffic to their weekend mountain/coastal cabins. They are just shaving off an hour or two off their normal leaving time, and is somewhat seasonal and weather dependant as well.
I was just always amazed how quiet the office was on Friday afternoons during the years when I went back to working in Norway. Great for me as I got lots done during those hours. Or perhaps not great as I did not have a cabin to travel to...
Anecdotally having a Friday beer o'clock in the office does not work in Norway. Partly as they frown upon drinking at work... and also there is no-one left in the office.
I can't speak for the parent poster, but I've never worked anywhere in Norway where there are that short Fridays. Sure, you could leave at 15, but then you'd have started at 7.
Really really depends on the company. I've heard the saying from Siemens people (which in Germany are regarded more like public officials, less like employees): "Freitag um eins macht jeder seins". Meaning no serious work is to be done after Fr 1300.
That company is on a different level. They have their own high schools and private education. Many executives are 'bred' in-house so they actually never even experience 'real life', but graduate from a Siemens high school and start climbing the corporate ladder straight after.
Yeah German corporations, especially industrial ones, can be really dark and sect-like from the perspective of an outsider. Education, intership, job, housing, insurances, life partner, retirement - everything. An entire life lived for a brand, brand owning a city and owned by a city. How far would one go to defend it as a part of one's identity?
If we're talking IT, don't you have at least some amount of night owls? In most places I've worked there were people that preferred starting their work around 10h - 12h, so an office would be rarely be completely empty even in the evening.
It's not even really consistent within the US. Offices in (say) San Francisco, New York, and Atlanta will have very often different corporate cultures.
Do you mean Indian instead of Hindu? In context of your post, it would seem Indian is what you meant, given you refer to everyone else by nationality.
I see it as a common conflation where people substitute Hindu (religion) with Hindi (language) with Indian (nationality/heritage).
But yes, as an Indian myself, we often have a different understanding of personal space and contact versus European/American cultures. It's not usually meant to be anything malicious, but it is very jarring in comparison.
If you want to improve your understanding about these sort of differences between cultures, I highly recommend reading "The Culture Map" by Erin Meyer.
> A Hindu pm had the habit of sitting next to developers while they worked
Some of us do this. Many don't. I don't like touching others especially in a work environment. It is definitely not a "hindu" thing, so much as an Indian thing.
I would chalk it up to lack of social awareness and no concept of space and personal boundaries. But, I don't think within our societies it is a bad thing.
However, with enough cultural trainings and awareness learnings, we do better at this when we interact with other cultures. The company I work for has a lot of documentation on this for almost all cultures.
> Expecting everyone to just accept anything because "that's what they do where they're from" is setting things up for people to be actually victimized and to feel like your company is fine with it.
Your point is valid in the abstract, sure. That’s not what was said, though.
A guy was putting his hand on his co-workers' knees! Often enough that people scurried from him! It's clear the implication is made that this is just a "Hindu" thing.
That's wrong. It's not a Hindu thing. It's offensive to say it is. And the idea that my comments saying so are being flagged is also offensive.
Comments like Eh... Can't we just bomb them as usual? ;-) are the ones that violate HN guidelines and should be flagged.
Imagine the horror of seeing two men walking holding hands because they are just friends. Many cultures have it where adult male friends hold hands and it just means that.
You're setting up a straw man. In this situation no one is talking about two close friends walking holding hands.
We are talking about a man inappropriately touching his coworkers. Not coworkers who also happen to be good friends. Coworkers who are actively avoiding him because of it.
The LIE being told, and being upheld by you, is that this is part of "Hindu" culture. Anyone saying that is extremely ignorant about India.
It is very much a cultural thing. What makes you think that it isn't?
In some cultures, men (non-romantically) holding hands is perfectly normal. In some cultures, a woman and a man shaking hands would be scandalous. In some cultures, touching somebody else's head would be considered extremely rude. The rules as to what constitutes acceptable behaviour, what constitutes sexual behaviour, etc. are clearly different in different cultures.
"Touch has a high degree of cultural relativity. Thus, the meaning of touch can only be understood in its cultural context (Guindon et al., 2017; Halbrook & Duplechin, 1994; Phelan, 2009)."
"Sexualization Of Touch: Americans, in general, have difficulty conceptualizing physical contact as nothing more than emotional nurturance and tend to avoid touch for fear of being misunderstood (Hunter & Struve, 1998; Zur, 2007a, 2007b)."
You are talking about things you know nothing about. How familiar are you with various Indian cultures? This thing about putting his hand on coworker's knees, to the point that they avoid him, is very much not a part of Indian culture.
Yes, men holding hands is commonly seen.... when those men are close friends. There would be no people trying to avoid each other.
I am not talking about Indian culture at all, and don’t know whether this specific encounter in this specific environment by this specific person was sexual or appropriate or whatever. I am specifically objecting to "This is not a cultural thing at all" by the GP.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm genuinely not sure how the comment you replied to is implying that? I read it as saying the US woman should have adjusted her behavior.
It's more that the comment is missing the point of the grandparent.
Having worked across a lot of cultures, it's easy to spot how ignorant it is. And ignorance is fine but the poster is trying to decide how people Should Have Acted when they're clearly not in a place to really know that.
I've worked across a lot of cultures too. If you believe it's normal part of "Hindu" culture to put your hand on co-worker's knees, to the point that they are avoiding you, then I'm afraid you don't know as much as you think you do.
Plenty of contribution already,so I'll just add a personal anecdote. Some years ago I happened to have some beers with a Latvian Russian,who lived here, in London. He tells us that he doesn't get the Brits. He just doesn't understand the reasoning in some situations. I ask to elaborate. He says: last year, I had a pretty serious trauma and ended up in a hospital. It's so bad, pain, lots of tests,etc. And I'm pretty fed up with all of it. Then, one day, a surgeon comes in, says hello and asks me 'how are you?'. And I reply: 'really bad!'. And suddenly surgeon's face changes: his eyes start moving faster,he looks at me and then observes the room,then at me again. Then the surgeon,in a slightly panicky voice ask me again: well what's wrong,is it the food? Is it the nurses? Did they do all the tests? What's going on?' Then the Russian looks at the doctor and says: well look, I'm in a hospital, I'm ill as hell, I'm in pain and you have the audacity to ask how am I? Are you crazy? It should be pretty clear that it's definitely not my day! The surgeon goes on to explain the subtleties of the question and etc. At that point I already lived in the UK long enough to understand the doctor's position but I also found the Russians point to be absolutely hilarious.
From personal experience I find the Russians absolutely hilarious even without much smiling (the young ones smile more).They are somehow similar to Italians,who are also hilarious, but as is the case with the Russians, the funniest things tend to be equally tragic too. Kind of a never ending tragicomedy on full blast.
Even though my favourite professors at Waterloo in Canada were Russian, it wasn't until I learned some basic Russian that I finally got over the typical view of them drilled into people by Hollywood.
Your run of the mill Russian is honest about their feelings. Not honest about the facts, no, they can cheat on an insurance filing just fine. But that coldness that so many of them seem to have is often just an outer shell. Once one of them trusts you and gets to know you they're so warm and intense about their love for you. So excited to show you something dear to them. Even devoted enough to learn a new language just to speak to you, even if they're a senior[0]. It doesn't mean the relationship always survives, because that intensity is still there when they're angry, but the highs are so high.
A few years ago Masha Gessen did an episode of Conversations With Tyler, a podcast hosted by Tyler Cowen, and at one point she said this about Russian friendships [1]:
> ... I think that — and this may answer your question — Russian friendships are much more emotional and intense than American friendships [...] When I moved back to [the USA] five and a half years ago, it was like this sense of whiplash because I had a lot of friends here, but I had been absent for 20 years. I would get together with my friends, and then two hours later, our get-together would be over. I’m like, “Well, what was the point of that? Was that just to let each other know that we still exist?” Because you don’t really get into deep conversation until about four hours in and a number of bottles of alcohol [...] I think that maybe that’s what you’re referring to. Maybe you’re just referring to the emotional intensity of Russian friendship, where it’s hard. It’s like lovers, even in this country, don’t really drift apart usually. You have to break up. You can’t just stop calling, and go from talking every day to talking every few weeks, and then forget about each other’s existence.
I usually take claims about what people from a country are like with a big grain of salt, but it's interesting to see this in your comment, too. Maybe I should pursue some Russian friendships.
That is a great quote, though I have a minor quibble about alcohol being necessary as some of the Russians I befriended were former alcoholics and sober for years. Though others drank beer at dawn.
I found I made deep friendships more easily after speaking even a bit of Russian. If you can say "My name is X" and "awesome" and a couple other small phrases it helps. That said, it wasn't until I had put in around 1000 hours of practice until things really opened up. It's such a hard language and I'm below average in my ability to learn human languages. But I did make steady progress with Verbling and I even met up with my tutor when I was in Ukraine.
One of the things that learning Russian clears up is why they sound so angry to English ears. The language doesn't use tone for emphasis as much as English. It uses word order because the grammar is more flexible so they're able to put the important stuff at the end. Plus the sounds are more constant based. So once your ears get used to the language, you don't really hear Russian (or a Russian accented English) the same anymore. It sounds more human. Plus you learn so many words, you end up finding some of the endearing / superior to the English translation.
When learning Russian these are just a few of the words I found myself saying even when speaking English. Which gives a hint that a good direct translation maybe isn’t quite there.
There's a rule in linguistics, that the more often a word is used, the shorter it will be -- almost like Huffman coding.
In that light, comparing the one-syllable English "Why?" to the three-syllable Russian "почему?" says something about the safety of asking questions in different countries.
It is no surprise that the English word is shorter, as - unlike English - Russian has two words for "why".
"почему" asks - how did things come to be this way?
"зачем" asks - what is the purpose of things being this way?
Note the difference in implication if I ask you "why" you were late for work. "почему" allows room for circumstances beyond your control, while "зачем" places the blame squarely on your shoulders.
English speakers may be completely unconscious of the overloaded nature of "why" - such is the value of learning other languages.
> Unlike English, Russian has two words for "why".
English has at least three in the same space, two of which are in modern use.
> "почему" asks - how did things come to be this way?
In English, that's, unambiguously, “How". Which is kind of why your own translation starts with it.
> "зачем" asks - what is the purpose of things being this way?
In English that is, again unambiguously, though somewhat archaic, “wherefore”.
“Why” can mean either and is usually disambiguated by context (but is usually read modernly as “wherefore” if the context isn’t otherwise unambiguous, though the existence of the archaic phrase “whys and wherefores” which seems to mean the same as the modern “whys and hows” suggest to me that the bias has flipped over time.)
Though I know very little Russian, I know enough to say that "how" and "pochemu" do not map 1:1 -- If I asked, in English, "how is this cardboard box flat?", the natural response would be "it's designed to be flattened" rather than "someone folded it down", but the natural response to "pochemu" would be the second. The full translation that was given would be necessary to disambiguate.
I think you are on the right path, it also explains why Russians are so good at Math because сколько is a 2 syllable word vs. "how many" 3 syllables and two words.
To be serious, Russian morphology restrict the number of short words. A verb or a noun will have a suffix that changes by plurality, case, gender, tense etc. and often a prefix. E.g. a pretty common word such as "come" in "Come to dinner with us" will have four syllables in 'заходите' because its root has a vowel, prefix has a vowel and suffix has two.
Question words are grammatically pronouns in Russian so they have all the morphological features of nouns.
I think that “почему/зачем?” is more of an entertainment question in Russia, because the most popular answer would be “it just so happens”. Like, all by itself. You will generally spend much more than three syllables (and maybe some amount of alcohol) to get your answer even from friends. Another fun observation about “почему” is that “normal” russians mostly deal with consequences of the processes out of their direct control. Snow and cold? Ok, find a shelter. Alien invasion? Ok, burn them down and return to a shelter. New “strange” law? Ok, it can’t be properly enforced, or someone will come up with a countermeasure in a week, no need to even leave a shelter. It’s all weather, you don’t question weather.
> There's a rule in linguistics, that the more often a word is used, the shorter it will be
I’m really interested in linguistics, but I’ve never heard of such a rule. Could you give a source please? I’d be curious to know if this is true.
(A striking counterexample I ran into just yesterday: the Urim word for ‘head’ is tukŋunakŋ, and ‘we (incl.)’ is mentepm-. I don’t think this is because Urim people avoid talking about heads or groups of people. That being said, it’s tricky concluding anything from a sample size of n=1.)
>> One of the things that learning Russian clears up is why they sound so angry to English ears.
Funny. To me (I'm Greek) Russians sound like they're always complaining about something. It's Germans that sound angry.
Edit: I wonder what Greek sounds like to foreign ears. The closes I've come to understanding it is hearing Spanish people talk, who sound a lot like Greek -that I don't understand.
Eh. "Friend" in English just isn't a good translation, it should be something like "BFF". You aren't expected to have 50 friends in Slavic countries because it would be too much of an investment and in English people call others friend after they waited together for 20 minutes at a train station.
But the concept exists, it's just a different word.
I once met a russian person online who had learned portuguese, my native language. I was extremely impressed. To this day I've never seen anyone else learn portuguese as a second language.
On my travels, I have met several people who, after living in Brazil for only a few months, learned to speak Portuguese fluently. This always impressed me hugely, because English speakers normally have a really hard time learning a language that has "gendered" nouns and inflected articles/adjectives/pronouns, for example... but many of them seem to do just fine! But I met enough of them to now think Portuguese must be quite easy to learn (or maybe, due to the fact that they MUST learn Portuguese when living in Brazil, given most people only speak Portuguese there).
Being surrounded by talkative people helps a lot, and then you get to learn the actual constructs, not the theoretical grammar. Not being facetious, I think that's the main thing behind "it's harder to lear a new language as an adult". I think it's less due to ability and more to do with the contexts and opportunities to practice.
(Though yes, by how they learn you notice what they get easily and what confuses them)
I also think Americans have more of a passive awareness of Spanish than even Americans themselves realize (a whole generation watched Dora the Explorer, for example). A lot of that will translate well learning Portuguese
Where were the people you met from? In my city there's a lot of japanese people, they helped create a thriving steel industry here many decades ago. Many of them learned some portuguese, they could communicate but not fluently. Gendered words in particular seemed to be particularly difficult. The russian I met on the other hand spoke it fluently, maybe even better than native speakers.
Hard to remember them all :) but two were Australians who spent a few months backpacking in Brazil... one was a German girl who just blew my mind how well she could speak Portuguese. Another was a Swedish man who just casually started helping a group of Brazilians, in Portuguese, to order something in a restaurant... I think there were many other cases over the years but it's not like a keep track of them all, so I can't give more examples that I remember for sure... but enough, as I said, to convince me that it's not very rare.
What I find interesting (I speak not a word of Portuguese) is the multitude of Portuguese-X creole languages, particularly the ones tha flourished and are some time still spoken in Sout Asia:
I think many originated as trade languages, but I find it interesting that languages with such very different roots would mix and create a new language (a Creole, more so; not just a pidjin).
Portugese is a really nice sounding language. I love it. It's on top of my "to learn" list. Spanish on the other hand no, though I like better how it's spoken in the Americas.
>> Your run of the mill Russian is honest about their feelings. Not honest about the facts, no, they can cheat on an insurance filing just fine. But that coldness that so many of them seem to have is often just an outer shell. Once one of them trusts you and gets to know you they're so warm and intense about their love for you. So excited to show you something dear to them. Even devoted enough to learn a new language just to speak to you, even if they're a senior[0]. It doesn't mean the relationship always survives, because that intensity is still there when they're angry, but the highs are so high.
I'm not a great fan of serious literature, but I've read a bit here and there and I think the above should be blindingly obvious to anyone who's read at least as little as I have (basically, Crime and Punishment, three or four pages from The Idiot and Gorsky's The Flaming heart of Danko). Or, anyone who's listened to the music (hello, Chaikovsky? Black Swan? You wanted feelsies?) or watched the movies (Tarkovsky) etc.
I think in the past the literature and the art in general would have been where Western people learned about Russians (and everyone else not in the West, also, but the Russians have a lot of literature). It's a bit of a shame if this has really been replaced by tinny stereotypes promulgated by Hollywood.
When my wife was dying (she has since passed away) and nobody could figure out her illness, she'd be in the most wretched pain, in the ER again, and she'd be retching awfully and almost uncontrollably.
A doctor would walk in, having heard of all this already and ask "How are you?"
Sometimes she gave them the benefit of the doubt, and sometimes she was a bit less charitable.
My point? Americans (as she was), Russians, Ukrainians, Latvians, Japanese, Kurdish, Bolivians, Icelandians, Koreans, Germans, Chinese, Scottish, Irish, Australians, Austrians, Swiss, South Africans, Egyptians, Mixolydians, Bohemians, and even Canadians all agree one one thing:
Being asked "How are you?" is the LAST thing somebody wants to hear when they are suffering.
But in this you can also see the difference between an American and many others. I find the "how are you greeting" very tiring nomatter how I am. When I am being asked the question I internally go through an assessment of, how am I today, how interested is the person, how much do I want to share of this. It takes significant mental effort.
When I was a teenager I did a one year high school exchange to the US and for a long time I really struggled with the daily "what's up?". I was going through the above internal dialogue more than 10 times a day struggling to come up with an answer. Even, when I learned to just answer "yeah what's up" internally the dialogue would often still be triggered.
Thank you. For the most part she was, but it was a pretty awful thing that happened so there was only so much that could be done. But I appreciate it. The last year of her life saw her getting the best care she'd ever had. Unfortunately, it was hospice care. But it was in home, and my adult daughter and I took care of her til the end.
Indeed. People do not realize how destructive it is. The other one that really irks me is "let me know if you need anything!"
1) You are putting it on me to tell you that I need something, right in the middle of my need.
2) If you're my real friend you don't need to say that, I already know I can call you 24/7/365
3) Your willingness to help is nulled by your lack of initiative.
The best thing anyone ever did was call me and say "I'm at Costco. What do you need? And don't say 'nothing'. I'm going to bring you something, and that's that." That whole pizza and frozen burritos were bad for me, but the last thing I needed on my mind at that time was cooking. And that's what true friends are there for.
So don't say "If you need anything let me know!" It's borderline passive aggressive.
Exactly my thoughts. One thing is to expect some understanding from people (and specially friends) but another thing is to expect them to be mind readers. People have their own lives and if you don't express your needs, unless they are very obvious, you shouldn't blame them for not taking them into consideration.
@geocrasher seems to not realize that the people around he/she could be taking a cautious position to avoid getting into his/her business without it being requested.
I independently had the same thoughts as geocrasher during similar experiences (and haven't told my friends the question annoys me), and I would say your reaction is uncharitable. Just because you can't relate doesn't mean "some people can find a reason to get upset over anything".
I have the same reaction as jwilber. If I think you are in a healthy state of mind, then “let me know if you need (or want) anything” is sufficient initiative. Even if you are my kid/SO/parents/siblings.
I would put it this way - in my way of thinking and cultural assumptions, any given relationship, close or not, one has a sense of whether asking favors is possible, and what sort are reasonable. Or else a sense of uncertainty about it.
The statement "let me know if you need anything" has a different meaning depending on what it was reasonable to ask already.
It adds no information, due to the meaning of "anything" being entirely contextual.
If I know that they know that the relationship is fairly close, affirming it is a nice thing to do, especially if I'm feeling badly.
But if the relationship is not so close and/or I'm uncertain whether it's appropriate to ask a favor, I can imagine feeling antagonized by the form of an offer which is not really an offer or clarification of where we stand.
If there is ambiguity, there remains ambiguity, is how I see it.
> The statement "let me know if you need anything" has a different meaning depending on what it was reasonable to ask already.
That’s the purpose of the statement. The person you’re saying it to should have a vague idea of what is a reasonable ask depending on relationship, and if not, they will just get denied. But it is genuine.
If I’m at a store, and my coworker asks me to grab a pack of gum, I’ll do it. If they ask me to go to a store 15 min away for something, I’m going to say no, but they probably would not ask me that anyway. But if a close family member asks, I would go to the different store.
> Your willingness to help is nulled by your lack of initiative.
I understand your point and i know it's a difficult question to deal with sometimes, especially during depression.
But remember that you're not those people's top priority. That sentence means you are allowed to ask them for stuff, but it doesn't mean they're going to drop everything and take you into their care right now without you taking a few steps on your own. They consider that you have enough of your own agency.
Your willingness to be helped is nulled by that same lack of initiative on your part.
A trick is to find something easy to ask for, as a go-to response to that. For example, the next time someone says that to you, you could answer:
"Actually, life has been tough lately, a beer would be nice".
The problem is that a lot of the time it feels like meaningless platitudes. Like they feel they have to say something out of politeness but don't actually want (or able) to help you.
What would have been better? To just say "I'm sorry you're having a hard time". If you don't mean something, don't say it.
While it may seem like I am being oversensive about the subject, it is understandable because I left out a large part of the context. When you have heard of this phrase hundreds of times over multiple years by people who were not in the position to help you in the least bit, it becomes a meaningless platitude.
Are you assuming/implying that the people who say "let me know if you need anything" don't actually mean it? Because I don't believe that's generally the case, especially if they're actually friends and not just random acquaintances.
I don't personally say that sentence outside of a work context; usually I would say "call me if you need to talk", but I won't take proactive action unless I believe my friend either wants me to or need me to.
At the end of the day, someone makes a choice to interpret this as a platitude. How about taking up the person on their offer?
Let me try to explain - I've had cancer at a relatively young age, so heard that a lot. I wasn't visibly sick, i just knew there's a chance I'm gonna die in the foreseeable future from it.
Unless the person saying it had access to some experimental treatment my doctors don't know about, there really was nothing they could have done to help me. I knew it and they knew it.
So while I didn't get angry at them (because I knew they said it because didn't know how to react differently), it did annoy me as it was basically an empty promise.
Right, i was specifically outlining depression. Taking care of a sick person, i would also err on the side of giving more specifics eg. "Tell me if you want me to get you groceries or something".
But there is a difference between empty platitudes such as "thoughts and prayers" and a genuine albeit abbreviated "I'm your friend and I love you, I don't know how I could help you, but if you know, don't hesitate to ask on account of it being too much."
It's not for you they say it, but for them and or others. Or to put it more directly, you don't say it for them, you say it for you.
It's like forgiveness, if you forgive someone, the main benefit is to you. By forgiving someone you take a load off your own shoulders. It's often meaningless to them if those forgiven know they are.
Different strokes. I just told a friend that they should let me know if there's anything I can do to help, which I've never done before (for this friend). His mother is having surgery this week. I've known this person my whole life and he's a lot like me, so I know that taking your advice wouldn't be the right path for this.
I would like to be told by a friend that they care about me and would like to help in some way if they can. What I wouldn't like is if they said "OK, I'm going to choose a thing that I think I would want in your situation and do it for you, and you have no choice because I'm going to do it anyway." Chances are, what you thought was helpful is NOT what I need in a difficult moment and I don't want to be subjected to another person's choices being superimposed on my situation. Lucky for me I know that my friend feels the same way, and we have different ways of approaching these things with each other because of it.
"I'm at Costco. What do you need? And don't say 'nothing'. I'm going to bring you something, and that's that" seems incredibly aggressive to me, and if I had many friends who behaved that way I would be endlessly frustrated.
I suspect in "American", "how are you" is often a request for actionable information. Your Russian friend took the question as an absolute, was confused why the doctor was asking a question with an obvious answer, and proceeded to give a reply which communicated no new information to the doctor. The doctor meanwhile was expecting an answer relative to the information he had, and hence took the negative reply as a sign of a sudden ill turn of health.
Similar when interacting with customer service. They don't want to know how you are, they want to know why you're talking with them, how they need to approach you. If you're calling about your cable bill and tell them you're not doing well because your aunt died, well, that's not actionable by them. They want to know how you're doing in the context of your cable bill. Even if your answer is "good, but I have a billing issue", it usefully sets the tone for the conversation in a way that "bad, Aunt Gerda passed away" does not.
I think this gets exactly to it, but I don’t agree with the rest of your comment.
In both the provided examples, the fact that there's a request for actionable information is already implicitly understood based on the situation. When a doctor comes into your room, you already know they're checking on your condition. The "How are you?" is just general greeting (to which, in casual situations, the proper response is "Fine, and you?").
And this is the crux of the misunderstanding. The Russian takes it as a request for information when it isn't.
I think the doctor was asking, relative to the situation that you're in, how are you? In other words, given that you're in this shitty situation, do you feel worse or better than you expect?
If he's still in a lot of pain then the doctor would expect the patient to say that. "The nurses are treating me well, the food is fine, but I'm still in a lot of pain. Is there anything you can do about that?"
The doctor was asking a question relative to the situation and the Russian interpreted as an absolute question.
A common Russian greeting "Как дела?" is exactly as same as "How are you?" (it literally means "How are (your) affairs?") and people also do not take it literally. Sometimes people reply with some pun playing off even more literal meaning of the question, e.g. "дела" could also mean "criminal cases" so one might respond "Дела у прокурора, а у нас - делишки" (something like "The DA has cases but we just hustle"). I suspect the hero of the GP post might be making a similar joke in English.
>I suspect in "American", "how are you" is often a request for actionable information. Your Russian friend took the question as an absolute, was confused why the doctor was asking a question with an obvious answer, and proceeded to give a reply which communicated no new information to the doctor.
This situation is a very common standup joke here in Russia since like the 70s or 80s when some of our movie or theater stars were in the US (or some other 'capitalistic' country) and were constantly asked 'how are you' in a hallway.
I always answer "still alive" in either language when I am asked by the people I know. When asked by random person like bank teller I would answer something weird. This would usually throw them out of their sleepy mood and suddenly they become more alive and attentive.
Nice!I haven't used that word since the childhood,when using Russian words without property understanding them was a norm.
You are right, definitely a proper situation is needed to use it.
I once had a similar situation with the question "Is everything OK?", which is slightly different from "How are you?".
I am a German living in Germany and i once caused a car crash that made another car spin into the ditch on the side of the road. That car was driven by a family of Russian heritage.
After getting out of the car i spoke to the other parties wife first and I asked "Is everything OK?" with what i ment: "Is there something very wrong beyond the things that are obviously wrong. Like, is your child bleeding to death or is it only the car damage."
But the woman did not understand it this way at all and was a little bit furious because to her obviously nothing was OK.
Of course she had every reason to be upset, but the likelihood of a German interpreting my question in a rude way would have been way lower.
Have been in a doctors office with near suicidal levels of pain a few times.
Past a certain point Humor doesn’t go over well. Particularly if you have been trying and failing to get help.
That said, doctors see a lot of misery, so anything to lighten the mood should be encouraged.
Had to explain to a doc once that when you've been in extreme pain for long enough your mind starts to regress to survival circuits. This was apparently not obvious. Doctors are fallible.
It’s hard to judge pain.
Some people go to the hysterical quickly.
Others walk in with an arrow in the head, calm.
Even with my own kids. It can initially be difficult to judge how serious an injury a fall of bump is. 99% of time I’m right, but the missed stick with you and the kid.
Russian here (to be precise Russian Canadian of Ukrainian descent :-)
There is a saying in Russian: if a stranger, on your question "how are you?" (ru: как дела?), starts explaining in details what is happening with him/her - please know, you've met complete idiot.
So I am classifying that 'how are you?' as never ending test of my life position :)
Ukraine has a lot of Russian speakers, I would think most of the population can actually speak Russian, or a mix of Ukrainian and Russian (given the similarity between the languages)... on TV, it's common for people to switch languages mid-conversation, for example...
With that said: Ukraine is a big country with a very strong culture that differs from Russian culture in (for us, foreigners) subtle ways. Near the border with Russia, however, Russian culture is stronger, hence some regions even associating themselves more strongly with Russia than with Ukraine (Krimea was one of those regions, by the way, which may explain to people who are unaware of this situation why there was no popular revolt - quite the contrary - against the Russian occupation).
Yes, they're quite different and similar at the same time. More than that, Russians are not all the same (Southern Russians are more like Ukranians, Siberian Russians are not very similar to Moscow Russians and so on). With Ukranians, you have at least two different cultures — east (relatively similar to Russians) and west (these guys were more influenced by Poland etc.). So, yeah, Russians and Ukranians are quite similar (they are two Slavic nations with common background), but there are a lot of differences too.
Countries and identities do not have a 1-1 mapping. This has and is causing a lot of issues I’m the world. Or is used to create a lot of friction by people that wants that.
Rus (as statehood) originated in Novgorod (originally as a republic, btw). Then center was moved to Kiev. Then to Moscow.
At those times there were no such entity (and ethnicity) as Ukraine at all.
Significantly later it was Cossacks republic on part of territory of modern Ukraine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporozhian_Sich#/media/File:0...
At that time it was no Ukrainian ethnicity too. Cossacks (armed settlers) were multiethnic by definition - members were ethnically Rus, Poland, Tatar, etc. from all close and far neighbors as this was area and society of refugees. That mix eventually transformed into separate ethnicity.
Ukraine as an ethnicity is relatively new entity. And needless to say that Ukraine as an entity with definitive borders was a communist invention, Lenin and later Stalin have drawn its borders - Russian Empire had no division on ethnical principles.
I am Ukrainian. Came to the US when I was 14. I may never be cool like all the hard looking dudes in movies and whatnot but I smile all the time because either I find something funny in what I’m engaged in or if I don’t that I try to think of it as such. I have always been this way and I can’t imagine not doing it.
Also, I have read a few comments in this discussion about how fake American smiles and “how are you?”s are and I have to disagree somewhat. To a large extent Americans use “how are you” and “what’s up” as generic greetings but at the same time you can often tell when someone is using it instead of “hello” vs having 30-120 seconds to chat pretty easily. If my day is going well I make a point of telling the random person I’m interacting with why that is: “I’m doing great. The weather is so nice and I had a lovely cup of coffee on my back porch today.” Quick interaction, mostly meaningless, but to me it’s a nice way to break up the monotony. On the other hand if I’m having a bad day I don’t feel like hiding it but the trick is to not make it the other person’s problem: “I’m getting by. I blew a tire on the way to work and I just had all four tires replaced. But oh well, that’s just how irony works I guess.” Again, quick and simple and not the typical “fine” response. At worst they go “oh that sucks. Paper or plastic?” but more often it could result in a short conversation and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.
As a young Hungarian, I used to confuse the hell out of my American colleagues when I went to a "lengthy" (more than 10sec) explanation answering to "how are you?"s. It took my a while to realize why that was. Now it just entertains me how oblivious I was.
OTOH I wouldn't call these "fake"; It's common, it's certainly different than how I socialized, possibly it's greatly misunderstood by many. Along the same train of thought, other languages' greetings would also be fake... After all, how could I genuinely wish a random German stranger a "Guten Morgen" or what do I care if "你吃了吗?" (lit. "have you already eaten?")
Let's rather be grateful for these questions not having to be genuine. Chances are high that when you ask someone today how they are (in their health) or if they ate (because there's no food shortage), then they can simply reply with a positive answer.
"After all, how could I genuinely wish a random German stranger a "Guten Morgen"..."
By being a nice person, just like how one would hold open a door for someone else? Though, that aside, when you say "Guten Morgen", you aren't wishing anything. It's just being polite while at the same time, you are saying something about yourself. For example, you could simply say "Morgen" which would mean you are in a hurry, or, depending on how you said it, that the morning isn't good at all. There are a lot of applications for "Guten Morgen". It all depends on how you say it and in which situation you do it. Anyway, it's not comparable to the questions in your posts as "Guten Morgen" can never be fake. Something like "Wie geht's?" (how are you?) would be more fitting, although it's rarely used as a greeting and more often than not, it would be meant seriously.
The accusative case in guteN indeed comes from wishing it for the other (English is grammatically not expressive enough here).
This is the same BTW in Hungarian. Even better, in HU we still have the form of "I wish (you) a good{Acc} morning", however a bit less formal way you can say just "a good{Acc} morning"
This simplification happened to German earlier too. In fact, my German old lady neighbor still to this day says every time: "Ich wünsche Ihnen einen guten Morgen / schönen Tag, Herr kmarc"
Yes and no. It does come from the longform well-wishing but it has been a separate greeting for a decently long time which is reflected by the fact that "guten Morgen" became "Guten Morgen" in the spelling reform 25 years ago. (Though, they did allow both variants a decade later (as is the case with a lot of other words), "Guten Morgen" is still the recommended one.) So that means if you are wishing someone a good morning, you are wishing someone a good morning + greeting. If it is just a good morning, it really is just a good morning (for you) + greeting. I do use both variants but actually wishing someone well is more reserved for people I've been interacting with for a long time (like certain cashiers in a supermarket (if there is time) or employees of a bakery), really friendly strangers or special cases (like someone is being a dick and one is being sarcastic).
The fact that you need 25 years of cultural background to understand what Guten Morgen means is the whole point. You could similarly explain why Americans asking "how are you" is not a real question; the whole point is that the culture differs from the literal phrase, which makes it difficult for non-native speakers.
Not sure why you downvote me for explaining why the language used by an old woman is not indicative of how things are today (or have been for a while even). (Though, in her case, in kmarc's example, the usage of the longform makes sense regardless.) Apart from that, we discussed German terms, not American ones. And, as explained, in German the discussed greetings are actually taken rather literally. At least I believe giving some very small insight into a culture is actually useful but apparently you disagree.
Taken literally? Well, then for "Grüss Gott" I would have to literally believe in god, then die and be lucky enough to go to heaven and greet god there (provided I'd get an audience). I think greetings are a meaningless formality anywhere, just learn them and the expected answers by heart and ignore the meaning.
This is exactly how "How are you?" is meant in American culture. It's not fake; greetings are culturally determined and especially the most common greeting phrases in any culture should not be treated literally but instead as part of a ritual exchange.
The Japanese say something like "nice weather, eh?" (ii otenki desu ne? - to which one replies "sure is! - "so desu ne!") -- which is mostly just a semantically little-analyzed pragmatic sequence functioning as a casual greeting.
It’s also not universally American. One of the adjustments I had to make in Boston is “how you doin’?” being the start of a leisurely conversation instead of a quick pleasantry.
I was told by a Chinese colleague that this is a very informal greeting, strictly between friends - pals, rather.
I didn't ask, at the time, because I was more preoccupied with trying to pronounce it (my colleague was very helpful). But I would like to know the context behind this. I mean, what is it in asking about having eaten that signifies a greeting?
In Greek, for instance, we say "yia sou" ("γειά σου"), for "hello". It means, basically, "have health". To me (well of course it would) it makes sense to wish something good as a greeting, I think "shalom" for example, means "peace", etc. I don't get the "have you eaten" greeting and I'm very very curious. All help in this matter is deeply appreciated :)
> In Greek, for instance, we say "yia sou" ("γειά σου"), for "hello". It means, basically, "have health". (...) I don't get the "have you eaten" greeting and I'm very very curious.
If you eat well, you'll grow healthy, if you eat poorly, you'll grow unhealthy. They stem from the same principles :-)
I wouldn’t go so far as lovely, but I think I found a way to make my chattiness palatable to others.
I did hear at one point that an exchange of at least seven phrases back and forth constitutes a conversation and that lots of service workers can go a day without one which can lead to depression and such. No clue how true that is but I figure this kind of approach can’t hurt.
I agree in general, but I’d say the quick greeting form of “how are you?” is a bit more than just “hello”. It also asks for confirmation that there is no immediate problem that warrants attention.
If you say “how you doing?” to a coworker in passing, yes it’s weird if they launch into a lengthy report about some malaise in their life, or how they are feeling about something sad they read in the news - that’s not what you were asking. But if they say “A bit stressed actually - our servers just went down!” then that’s not weird at all. So a quick “how are you” really means something like “(a) hi, and (b) no major problems?”.
Dude, you should teach seminars. A lot of people struggle with the tension between being genuine, and keeping small talk "small". It sounds like you've nailed it.
> how fake American smiles and “how are you?”s are
Yeah, I wouldn't call it fake, just a different vocabulary, so to speak. You just need to mentally translate it into your cultural equivalent (smile = neutral face, “how are you?” = "hello", etc.)
Quite a lot of US culture can come off as phony to (Eastern) Europeans. Friend of mine went to the US for a business schooling event and said people were completely incapable of honest criticism. They would sugar coat criticism under 10 layers of phony praise. He was the only one who actually said something was bad outright, if someone gave a bad presentation. He attributed it to cultural difference. Guess it is related to what Americans think is friendly / unfriendly behavior.
It's tough to navigate Americans. They're super friendly, but often I feel like it's their version of "being polite" and not more.
> “Can I ask you something? How come the Russians never smile? I’ve never seen them smiling.”
> “They’re at work. They're Russians.”
> "Is it normal for them to eat without talking to one another?”
> “This is their job. They get 20 minutes to eat.”
> “Yeah, but they never smile. Are they happy?”
> Are the Russians happy? Is anyone happy? Can one ever truly be said to be happy?
> I am tempted to go full Slav on Conor, to explain to him how we are all just grains of dust suspended in the howling void, searching for meaning in the fleeting moments before we are yanked back to the oblivion from whence we emerged, naked and screaming. But for all his faults he's just a kid stuck spending his summer microwaving Yorkshire puddings for difficult people. I take pity.
> “Russians are formal. It would be weird of them to act relaxed on duty. They are all smiling on the inside.”
[Americans] would sugar coat criticism under 10 layers of phony praise
It really annoys the hell out of me. What’s wrong with just saying what’s wrong?
The last example here on HN was a web version of flutter, where everyone was like “it’s amazing, so awesome, much controls” and only four comment levels deeper someone noted that it’s an utter crap that stutters at scroll on top hardware, cannot select text, cannot zoom, etc etc, so google reps had to start damage control.
And I wouldn’t even mind this positivity, if it didn’t put landmines in what you choose for daily use. Everything is so amazing and awesome, they love it, and when you try/buy it, it’s just a half-functioning crap that you have to finish yourself or wait until they do. As if these awesome’rs didn’t do anything beyond reading a tutorial. How can you relate positively to something that spent your days of learning and experimenting and in the end turned out to be a joke?
This is also a big annoyance for me. I regularly interact with people of different cultures, and find that interpreting feedback is something I have to context switch for often, always needing to remember whom I am speaking with.
My native culture is quite straightforward in how things are phrased. As such, I find it easy to work with e.g. Germans, who routinely use phrases such as "this is unacceptable" in feedback. Which doesn't mean anything horrible, it just means that the specific thing being discussed is, in its current state, unacceptable for the final product. But Americans would likely phrase the same feedback as "needs some work". If American feedback includes "unacceptable" then you've probably really messed up.
The most difficult part is recognizing when Americans are genuinely impressed by something. Since regular positive feedback is full of "this is amazing" and "we love it" (thing that would just get a "this is good" at home), it's hard for me to recognize when something has really exceeded expectations and they really do love it.
Just to add another perspective, as an American living in Germany, I often find that the German criticism of American optimism/interpersonal warmth is extremely paranoid. I have heard so many Germans describe American "niceness" as "fake", but I don't think the American approach is rooted in dishonesty as it's sometimes assumed by outsiders. For instance, Germans will be shocked if they go to the US, and a stranger starts a conversation with them waiting in line at the convenience store with a lot of warmth and curiosity. As I understand, to them this reads as the approach of someone who wants to con them or trick them, putting on the guise of un-earned closeness. But Americans in my experience just give interpersonal warmth a bit more freely, and are more willing to have friendlier interactions with someone they don't know, with no expectation that the relationship will last longer than the time both of you are standing in line, while that type of warmth and friendliness will be reserved for close friends and family in other cultures. As someone who grew up in American culture, it's not "fake" or forced when I smile to a stranger, or congratulate them on the new grandchild they just told me about in our first meeting. It's just part of the culture, and it's something which I enjoy to give and receive in these random, short interactions throughout the week.
And when it comes to work criticism, I agree that there is some value in what would be considered "blunt feedback" by American standards, and that Americans are sometimes too hesitant to give it. At the same time, I think this also comes from a different cultural approach which is also valid. Americans have deeply rooted ideals for independence and self determination, and a general sense of optimism. I think the default position when someone is showing you a piece of work is often to assume that they have it under control, and that it would be presumptuous to tear down a piece of work someone else owns and that you are seeing for the first time. By focusing on praising the best elements of the work, you are giving your colleague feedback on what they should focus and expand on, and you are leaving it up to them to discover the flaws in their work and resolve them in their own way. So you would reserve direct criticism for times when you think there is a critical misunderstanding in the basic direction of the work which will prevent the correct result from being reached.
And you can cliticise the American approach all you want, and I will be the first to admit that it does lead to a lot of problems and blind-spots. But as someone who has worked in the US and in Germany, my experience is that American companies move and innovate a lot quicker than German ones by focusing on potential rather than flaws, and that trend seems to have been borne out if you look at the major innovations which have come out of each country in the last 30 years.
As a German who's spent a total of about half a year (maybe too little!) in the US, I think you've kind of nailed it with this explanation, but there's a part that's missing to me.
On the one hand, focusing on potential rather than flaws is exactly what feels like one of the things that could be better here. Also, as you say, there's nothing necessarily mendacious about a little bit of friendliness.
On the other hand, the thing that somewhat rubbed me the wrong way in the states wasn't ever the extraversion or friendliness / politeness in itself, but rather those situations where I felt like a particular positive (sometimes highly) emotional reaction was somehow socially expected in a professional context, and then watching people turn into actors to fill the role.
One example of this that I remember vividly was a session at a scientific conference, where a series of larger and smaller prizes were awarded. Some to just grad students, some to senior professors.
The laureates typically had to give a small speech. Everybody tried super hard to act and talk "honored", "humbled", "grateful". Most of them weren't great actors, and looked rather uncomfortable in the process. It was somewhat creepy to watch for me.
The part that was strange to me wasn't the fact that they were saying thanks (obviously), I guess that would be the same anywhere in the world, but rather how they all seemed to think it was necessary to play-act strong displays of emotions.
To me, that was the clearest example of this that I've seen so far, but in general it just seems like Americans have much less of a problem with professional social expectations creeping into the most private realm of your personality.
First of all, thank you for this response. Thought about it a bit. In the end it's a thin line. "Empowering", and "walking around their possible sensibilities". In the end no one way can be said to be completely right. The connection can reasonably be made between optimism, friendliness, positivity (even if questionable), and entrepreneurship, and maybe no wonder the Americans are dominating the Tech industry, while the Germans are stuck building cars (of course grossly simplifying both economies here).
> deeply rooted ideals for independence and self determination, and a general sense of optimism.
But for every entrepreneur that makes it, I feel that hundreds walk around with false sense of optimism, pride in their mediocre work, dream naively outside their intellectual means, while it might be more advisable to be clipped of their wings, and to be grounded more in reality? Sorry I'm taking this discussion one level upwards to a more meta level, it's a tendency of mine.
In the end, who knows. I'm quite harsh dishing out criticism, and being able to take it I consider a virtue. I'd rather tell someone they're overweight than talk about positive body image. Or tell someone they should work on their presentation and speaking skills, rather than encourage them to give a speech they will fail at.
Probably best to take the best of both worlds and try to create something out of that.
It really depends where you are in Germany. There are places, especially in smaller communities, where casually starting a conversation waiting in line at the bakery is rather natural. I have had great conversations on trains, airplanes and such with Germans old and young. Czechia is actually rather similar in that respect. If you really want, you can start a casual conversation with most people in both countries when they aren't in a hurry or morons.
There are companies around the world focusing on stuff that counts and rather less successful companies in that regard. There are businesses that seem to revolve only around corporate BS and not anything real.
There isn't much manufacturing of anything in the west, maybe a bit of assembly from components so I don't know if comparing countries is possible at all in this regard. For physical products, I would rather depend on German or Swiss stuff than made in the USA. Maybe I just haven't seen enough products to be able to compare, but in general I have a feeling there was more thought put into the products designed and made in Germany or Switzerland. The products seem to use materials and energy efficiently while being comfortable to use and robust. They aren't always so easy to repair it seems (the screws are more hidden), where in America more stuff is focused on efficient use of potential technicians time in case of a repair/ change it seems. The German culture has also a different approach to tidiness in every aspect of life. Germans are not comfortable, when there is any trash or leaves on the street. They will often comment or rather complain how the city is dirty and how there should be somebody taking care of it. This also concerns personal hygiene, workplace organization, (not) keeping on shoes at home, expecting drinkable tap water and more. I don't think I can explain it well in this discussion.
There is quite a lot of regional variation in the States. I imagine Germans would prefer New Yorkers to West Coast Americans.
Multiple times, while on a train coming into the city from Portland, OR's airport, I've observed Portlanders strike up a grinning, friendly conversation with a New Yorker, noting their accent and inquiring as to what brings them to Portland -- and invariably the New Yorker has a pained look on their face like "why the fuck are you talking to me?"
In America, you criticise by not mentioning the bad stuff in my experience. To know, what is bad is basically an exercise left to the reader. If there isn't enough praise beyond a certain threshold, you better think hard, where you messed up. Of course, this is rather extreme and people do point out what "needs work" etc. but if you think about it in this extreme way, you will get to useful insight quicker.
In general, being frank online is hard but useful. We don't here the tone in written language, which often leads to tensions. Everybody, who really strives to do something well will struggle with the general incompetence of people to do anything well it seems, tons of half finished work and broken basically everything you think should be long explored fully. Just look at the world wide web and all the half broken and half implemented standards.
I have the feeling, that the Germans I interact with are verbally less expressive/ tend to use less intricate language constructs and subtle variations compared to the Czechs I know. That doesn't mean they are somehow less intelligent (because they definitely are not) or that they are less hearty (because again, they are quite the opposite). I do know some Americans that are genuinely very nice, caring people too and yes, they tend to use more of that positive vocabulary compared to the way we communicate in middle Europe.
> It really annoys the hell out of me. What’s wrong with just saying what’s wrong?
In their minds, they probably are. Why can't the whole world have a singular word to address the second party, as in English, but require multiple levels of deference? I suspect the reasons are related: they're communication patterns that are hard to dispel. And as long as there's no need, people simply keep them up.
Subtleties are also difficult. If an English person say what you did was great, it most likely wasn't. And if they say it was not bad, it may have been great...
Austrian here, we are somewhat in between Russians and Americans, when it comes to smiling.
But what I can tell you is that life is just so much better when people smile at you, even if it might not be a hundred percent genuine. My comparison stems from having worked with both Russians and Americans. Being around grumpy Russians all day long makes live really miserable.
I can't second this. Everytime I'm in the US I'm scared of all the friendly, smiling people, asking "How are you?" in such a friendly tone, it's delightful. Of course it's faked, anyone knows, and dare if you'd reply with "not good, my aunt just died". Awkward situation ensues, everybody tries to get out of the situation ("and what would you like to have for breakfast tomorrow?").
Now replay the same situation in another ("non-friendly") culture. Most of the "not-friendly" cultures would invite you to a free beer, asking what happened etc.
I'm an American and I love smiling at strangers and receiving a genuine smile in return. It's the perfect minimal conversation: no words, just sharing a moment of mutual positivity and kinship. It's like you said the perfect thing, except you didn't have to think of anything clever.
It sounds as though people in some countries interpret it as if the smiling person is on the inside of a joke and you're on the outside, or even the object of ridicule. As if the default is hostile intent. It sounds like a terrible thing to assume about your fellow stranger, to be honest.
Maybe the point is that if you start off assuming maximum hostility, the reality is more likely to be a pleasant surprise?
At any rate, we have common ground when it comes to those meaningless questions. They're hollow and they ruin the perfection of a nice wordless smile or simple "hi" or "hey". The absolute worst is when you pass a stranger and say "hi" and they respond to your back as they walk off into the distance, "hey, how ya doin?"
You are thinking that they’re assuming hostility, when all they assume is you being neutral and tactful by default. The logic is: “we don’t know each other and have no reason to feel happy about something between us, for there is none [yet]”. If you smile at me, I think that you’re either happy about me, i.e. are focusing on me (which is inappropriate unless you’re someone I could in theory adore(smile at genuinely?), e.g. a girl, a puppy, etc), or you find something funny in me. It’s nice that you are open and friendly, but the way you do it isn’t tactful, and is too intimate for a stranger. You’d probably feel the same if you stood on a pier alone watching sunset, and some stranger moved beside, right next to your shoulder, never saying a word. So open, friendly and non-hostile, but something wrong – that’s personal space in action. We just have emotional personal space that no one dares to enter without invitation or at least enough courage.
It’s not a criticism, just explanation of what other people feel. Now for a criticism (well lack of understanding really):
Americans are obsessed with being Happy. They’re always smiling, and when bad things happen, they’re sad, but at the same time they’re okay, it’s fine. But isn’t that a contradiction? They are lying. What’s even wrong with feeling bad (or just neutrally sad, inert, nostalgic) and not finding other’s happiness encouraging? Why are they even copying other’s emotions, when they should have their own? People have a spectrum emotions (more than 50 of them) for serious neurological reasons, and they feel every one of them, not only “good” and “fine”. Why are they denying everything except happiness and love, when it’s normal to feel all of the spectrum sometimes?
I don't know how much of this is me being Finnish, but I personally don't even know how to smile at will; a smile is something that happens naturally and trying to deliberately smile at people when I'm not actually feeling it just makes me feel dishonest and usually results in a grimace instead.
While I might really be enjoying a good walk in the sun for example, I can't really say that it makes me want to smile at every random passer-by.
The curious thing to me is why all of the generalising people are doing in this comment section is any different from “perpetuating stereotypes”, which almost universally has negative connotations.
If you’re Finnish, I might say you don’t often smile but I bet you know how to neatly drift a rally car through a forest at considerable speed.
Stereotypes do have a bit of truth to them, usually, though sometimes the stereotypes are just people misinterpreting others based on their own expectations. I don't know how to drive rally at all, but there are aspects of the "stereotypical Finn" that I recognize in myself.
Finns generally demand a larger personal space and thus may appear as "cold" to someone used to being in closer proximity, but it is what it is.
Believe me, I'd love to be able to act less reserved around new people, but I find it hideously difficult, and if I don't feel outgoing, I can't force myself to act that way because it causes me intense discomfort.
As for smiling, it might just be that for Finns a "neutral" face is perfectly polite and a stranger's smile elicits a stronger reaction (either positive or negative depending on context) while people from the US might expect a smile as the default state and thus react less strongly to it.
I don’t think people are assuming hostility, the article explains that it simply means a different thing e.g. laughter instead of positivity. Imagine if you were to go about your day winking at everyone you saw, people would think you were strange or somewhat crazy, they might think you’re hitting on them or perhaps had some sinister intent.
> It sounds as though people in some countries interpret it as if the smiling person is on the inside of a joke and you're on the outside, or even the object of ridicule.
I would say this is pretty common in the USA. Anyone smiling or laughing, especially in the customer service industry, can easily be interpreted that they are up to something. Makes customers uncomfortable. Obviously a generalized statement, but it seems most food and customer service industries despise their customers.
You're misunderstanding what the phrase "how are you" means in the US. It is not a literal question, but a set phrase with implicit social rules for "correct" responses.
This doesn't mean the person asking is faking kindness - but also understand they're not actually asking for a rundown of how your life is going. Negative responses to the question are ok, just not deeply personal answers.
Tom Scott has an excellent video that addresses this very issue.
It's the same in Russian actually. You're saying "how are you" ("как дела") after "hello" ("привет"), but you're not really expecting any meaningful answer other than "I'm OK" ("нормально") or "I'm fine" ("отлично").
But it might be one way to start a conversation when you want to tell something you don't like. Like "How are you? I'll live. What happened? ...". But it's more of closed friends conversation when you can feel OK sharing your burdens with other person. I guess, similar thing could happen in US?
I did it last night with a cashier and she laughed and was, I think, amused by the novel response. It seemed to brighten her up a small amount. She then continued to make conversation by saying “Well let’s see if we can’t get you to better than normal.” That was slightly offputting and I wish she didn’t feel the need to take it there. I’m perfectly content with feeling “normal”.
I suppose the way I think of it is like dynamic range of expression. Normal is baseline and perfectly suitable. It’s where I like being. Great or bad are for special cases where I feel extraordinary.
My go to answer is, "can't complain". Vague enough to leave it alone if the question is trivial, but also open-ended enough to expound upon if the other person is genuinely interested in my well-being.
I always enjoyed the "how is it going", and then not even waiting for a response before moving forward with the conversation. I'm a native born American, have traveled outside of the country only a handful of times, and yet I still find it jarring to be asked that.
What you write is true from an US point of view, and that's the point of my comment. In Europe you wouldn't ask anyone how she/he feels when you don't want to accept and reply to the response, even if it is deviating from the expected (happy) response.
I don't think so. Try it "not good, my aunt just died" and not every American but many would try to comfort you. Not saying it wouldn't be a bit awkward but that it's not 'just faked' and everyone tries to get out of any real emotion.
I have people tell me their bad news or downers pretty often when I greet them with “how are you?”, and my care or sympathy for the situation they’re in is not at all insincere.
I’m half German, and my grandfather always found it absurd to visit the US and have everyone saying “thank you” and “sorry” and smiling all the time. His opinion was that this behavior devalued the true meaning of a “thank you” or a smile.
Interestingly, Germans have now adopted two words for sorry, one being just “sorry” (spoken with a guttural “r”) and the other being “Entschuldigung“ — literally translates to something like “acceptance of blame.” The German “sorry” is much more common, and “Entschuldigung” is reserved for the true apologies, maybe analogous to “I apologize” in American English. Then it might be “ich entschuldige mich” or “I place the fault on myself.”
I mention this because it seems the “American” way of being more colloquially friendly is becoming more adopted in parts of Europe, especially by younger generations in areas like Germany and the Netherlands. Maybe this is just from exposure to American media.
Whatever the cause, I find this shift pleasant, as it saves me from having to code-switch between American friendliness and German staunchness when I talk with friends or family there (except for the older generations).
The phrase 'Ich entschuldige mich' is an abomination. The literal translation would be 'I excuse myself'.
Instead, you're supposed to say 'Ich bitte um Entschuldigung' (I beg your forgiveness) - thus you're asking the person who was wronged for forgiveness. It should not be the choice of the wrongdoer to decide whether to be forgiven or not. Though to be fair, commonly it's used just as you described.
If I remember correctly, Kraus has at least once written about this specific phrase.
Yes, fair point, the "ent" is literally something like "de-," so you are "de-blaming" yourself or "freeing <subject> from blame."
But in common parlance, I think the phrase "Ich entschuldige mich" is really meant more to say "I apologize" than anything else. I guess this could be a place where descriptivists and prescriptivists differ in their interpretations (and I lean a bit more towards being a descriptivist).
I haven't studied German society closely enough to know what people really mean with this phrase, but this is how I've always interpreted and used it, and other people seem to use it in this manner as well.
I thought it meant mostly "Sorry, I'll have to be absent for a while" -- as in, a euphemism for "I have to go to the loo". Isn't that how it's often used in English too?
My favorite part about the pandemic is that I can smile constantly under my mask, even while picking out soup at the grocery store, without looking like an idiot.
In America, if your aunt just died, I would say "really bad, but thanks for asking". They asked superficially; I answered superficially but honestly. I left an open door for them to ask more if they want to. If they don't, well, it was superficial conversation, and I won't be surprised or disappointed, and I hope I didn't put them on the spot too much.
It's just a different protocol. You don't respond with details right away, you say, "Actually not great" with some emotion. If the person cares, they will ask, what's wrong? Then you unload.
You might as well get mad at HTTP when you send a malformed request.
It's not fake to smile at someone you do not know and ask how they are. It's merely a greeting.
All cultures have context clues. Your surgeon might have just met you, but be legitimately concerned about your condition. Your best friend might be interested in your emotional state. The stranger on the street might merely be "polite", or hoping/wishing you are having a good day, but neither wanting to hear a full dissertation on your emotional state, nor a recitation of your medical history that a doctor might find relevant.
I am American. I have transitioned from saying "How are ya?" as a greeting to "Good [day,morning,evening]" etc. It's every bit as polite and does not feign concern.
I have to tell you as an American and kinda grumpy one at that, if you get a smile and hi on the sidewalk as we pass each other it’s purely out of love for mankind.
IME as a US resident, it's not fake, for most of your audience. It's fake for the natural slice of the audience that are on the selfish/narcissist spectrum - they're forced to parrot it as a broader cultural norm, but for everyone else who's even merely neutral on the empathy spectrum, it's a license to actually be nice and not get hammered with suspicion for it.
That said - it has to be noted that if you're interacting with "service workers" (any clerks at stores, hotels, restaurants, etc), there's a really horrible catch-22 ubiquitous in the corporate world. Those people are forced by corporate rules to be obsequiously friendly ... but are also so overworked that they generally have no time to actually help someone with anything that's not a direct job duty.
It really sucks because, traditionally, in the sense of i.e. a bartender/barista, that's actually supposed to be a large part of the "hospitality" job. They're supposed to be someone you can talk at length to, and traditionally have functioned like an entry-level therapist/counsellor in society. Unfortunately the fast-food mentality has trickled into a lot of institutions like that, and most of them are too busy fulfilling orders to do anything of the sort.
This sounds like a made up distinction. If I asked someone "how are you" and they reply about how they're having a hard time because a family member died I would definitely not "try to get out of the situation", and I can say the same for the people around me, for the most part.
Sorry, I wish we were better at this. I can tell you that there's a difference between our quick "hey, how are you" said in passing and "how are you" where the person is facing you, not moving, and waiting for an answer. In the second situation, Americans would consider anyone who doesn't respond to sad news with concern to be rude. Not many will invite you to drink on the spot, though.
Cannot agree enough. I joined a startup that very clearly initially hired for Russian cultural fit (friends hiring friends) and the mood was like attending a funeral on a daily basis. During interviewing, the hiring manager very cleverly had the minority of native-born Americans speak to me so I never got a feel for the actual culture.
I couldn't imagine working long for a place where every day seemed like solitary misery, especially remote during a pandemic, where rapport and ease of communication matters a lot. Didn't help that the quality of engineering work was absolutely abysmal (see friends hiring friends). Was contacting recruiters within a week.
Weird, the only big “Russian cultural fit” issue I can think of is gendered norms and complete disregard for “political correctness”. People often make jokes at the workplace and make small talk, but yes, we don’t usually have big smiles during normal conversations or greetings.
Smiling and being entertaining are not correlated (personal experience after a few decades of being alive). There are few everyday situations worse than being welcomed by a smile which looks fake one mile out. A genuine smile is not an every-second gesture.
> even if it might not be a hundred percent genuine
I reckon there are a couple of ways we could define a 'genuine' smile. Most strictly, as a basically involuntary expression of emotion. More loosely, we could include voluntary smiles as long as they are a sincere signal of goodwill. I don't really want to be smiled at by people who hate me, but I think there's plenty to be said for cultural norms in favour of 'genuine' smiles under the looser definition.
I had a language exchange with an austrian once. I was joking and chatting with him the whole time but he was always reluctant to smile. By hot damn did I get him to do it.
There's actually a regional difference. Growing up on the east coast in New York people rarely smiled at each other on the street. Someone you didn't know smiling at you could mean a crazy person, or some sort of con artist trying to suck you into interacting with them.
Living on the west coast for the last twenty years, the situation is totally different. On a bike trail, on the sidewalk, people often smile and nod at each other. At first it was very off-putting and I found it hard to reciprocate. Over the years I've forced myself to do it so as not to seem unfriendly, but it's been a bit of a chore. That natural paranoia I feel, suspicion about people's motives, is something I grew up with and I don't think I'll ever be able to put it down completely.
In some parts of the US (particularly small towns and the Midwest) people will not only smile and nod at strangers on the sidewalk, but say hello or ask “how are you?” (not expecting anything other than “fine, thanks”). In New York, that would definitely be cause for concern!
Can confirm. I spent many years in the Midwest and it is very common for strangers there to engage you in conversation randomly just to be nice. In contrast, in most East Coast cities, whenever people start up a conversation without an immediately apparent goal, it is to set up an ask for money.
Yes, indeed! I'm from the "cold non-smiling" country as well and going first time to Atlanta was very weird experience with random people on the street "how are you?"ing you.
On the east coast its way less 'appropriate' to interact with strangers so friends are a more limited set, necessarily brought together by more than mere chance. The cultural differences are so fascinating.
Yes I can go on about that too. Friendships are harder to form but last longer and seem deeper on the East Coast. Here on the West Coast, you frequently have relationships and appear to be deep friendships and then you just drift apart and never connect again.
It's sort of like the smiling thing at a mega scale.
I have a few Scottish friends who experienced the same thing moving to London. People on the tube thought they were nuts for smiling and occasionally starting a conversation.
> Living on the west coast for the last twenty years, the situation is totally different. On a bike trail, on the sidewalk, people often smile and nod at each other.
No need to go to West Coast for that. In the more affluent areas in Central NJ, people greet you on jogging trails, and sometimes even when passing you on ShopRite and Walmart ailes (these are grocery store chains).
This is such a great article imo that really captures fundamental societal and cultural differences. I would say that Sweden has a similar 'grave' approach to life and that smiling is reserved for funny situations.
Much as I love the US 'etiquette smile' when passing people in the street and meeting, social pressure to conform can mask stress, anxiety and solemnity. The English used to feel pretty uncomfortable about yanks grinning away at everything but they seem to have partially become Americanized in this regard. (I'm English originally but have lived in the US for decades).
Re: British/American cultural differences, I was reminded of this 1942 handbook for American servicemen in the UK.
> British Reserved, Not Unfriendly. You defeat enemy propaganda not by denying that these differences exist, but by admitting them openly and then trying to understand them. For instance : The British are often more reserved in conduct than we. On a small crowded island where forty-five million people live, each man learns to guard his privacy carefully-and is equally careful not to invade another man’s privacy.
> So if Britons sit in trains or busses without striking up conversation with you, it doesn’t mean they are being haughty and unfriendly. Probably they are paying more attention to you than you think. But they don’t speak to you because they don’t want to appear intrusive or rude.
That's a brilliant book. A friend of mine once bought an original copy in auction and let me read the whole thing.
I do agree with the GP that the American style has rubbed off on the British. Then again I'm Scottish and we've always been closer to the Irish in that regard.
I've never gotten used to the 'etiquette smile' (I have different internal terms for it) and try to watch out for it as much as possible; I also appear to be physically incapable of expressing an emotion that I do not actually feel so there is no danger of me ever doing this to others. There is a certain shallowness that often accompanies it that often puts me on guard: the larger the smile, the tighter I grab my wallet and the quicker I wish to terminate the interaction.
I can understand why you might presume it's shallowness but it's really a type of etiquette. Similar to offering a handshake. I'm Scottish rather than American but here babies are often encouraged to smile at family and friends. It's exactly the same as teaching please and thank you
What? No, Swedes smile a lot and have a lot of polite set phrases. Although it's more rare to hear people say "good" to an "how are you", it's usually some variation of "jovars", "can't complain".
Another thing I've noticed uniquely with some Russian colleagues, and I've never quite known the meaning of, but I assume is Russian cultural attribute, is silence. A few times I've e.g. been explaining something to a Russian colleague, I'll go on and on, and when I'm done ... nothing. This always gets me anxious. What does it mean? Does the person think it's the dumbest thing he's ever heard? Did the person not understand what I said? Does the person need more time to think about it? Does the person not realize I'm finished? What is expected of the speaker in this scenario? Do I just wait? Do I prod? Do I explain it again? Do I leave? Is there some microexpression I should be looking for to differentiate? Or is this not actually a Russian thing and just an anomaly?
Silence is neutral complicity in russian, like “copy”. No answer means we either do not care too much or it’s all clear. Sometimes things need time to sink in, but you will not receive any signal about it, unless they have an immediate objection. When explaining something to russian, you don’t ask them if they agree, cause our language culture is mostly statement-y rather than negotiating. If you explained good enough, there is nothing to say. If you expect an answer, make it a question.
Does the person think it's the dumbest thing he's ever heard? Did the person not understand what I said? Does the person need more time to think about it? Does the person not realize I'm finished? What is expected of the speaker in this scenario? Do I just wait? Do I prod? Do I explain it again? Do I leave?
You are expected to either not care more than you did already, or ask any questions you have explicitly. If you feel anxious or confused, tell it. Nobody’s going to comfort you, unless you’re showing clear signs of breakdown, especially if you’re a guy.
All of this is true in negotiation, official situations, talking to strangers, etc. When you talk to a friend, they’ll be more chatty and supporting/feedbacky, but not as much as you probably expect.
That said, we have types whose nature is “silent partisan”, that will be hard for you to detect.
Edit: reading this thread, I really wonder why binutils do not reply kindly to your actions:
$ ls -1
Oh here’s your one column list please:
$ mv foo bar
Glad you asked, consider it done!
$ rm -rf /root
You know I see your point, but Permission denied.
$ vi
Hope you’ll enjoy exiting that!
Americans (assuming you are an American) are used to people confirming that they are paying attention throughout the conversation (“Mhm”, “yes”, “I see”, etc.). Russians don’t do that. If they don’t have anything to add, they won’t, unless prompted.
You can just ask if they understood you, agree or disagree. It’s not super common to act like you described, but common enough to be a cultural thing.
I do this sometimes (the silence). I'm not Russian. When people do it to me and I'm really expecting interaction, I explicitly ask "What do you think?"
I know russian and I can confirm this. I started to notice this after living for a few years in a different culture environment. And now after many many years I have feelings similar to yours . I experience a froustration when I get this 'silence' response or no response to be exact.
>Or is this not actually a Russian thing and just an anomaly?
I think it is a "Russian thing". One of them. They would not admit it though because they simply do not notice it or because they do not want to admit.
By the way another "Russian thing" is: Never admit the obvious truth even if it is clearly prestented to them with evidence or even when it does them no harm. It is hard
sometimes to understand why they do that because you see no obvious reasons but if you dig deep enough you can find some fear or embarrasment behind it. Unfortunately they would not admit it too.
As gp is not speaking to themself, it's an interaction.
So maybe gp is expecting them to inter-act, ie make some reciprocal action of some kind back. Silence is an action, that in my culture usually means 'dont want to tell you my real response'.
I wonder if any Russians can weigh in if this still feels accurate. I'm familiar with Polish Culture, which is less fun, frivolous, and happy than American culture, but a smile is certainly not an attack, just reserved for genuine occasions. Service people are in no way expected to smile unless there is some honest reason to.
>In Russian culture the smile is identified with laughter. Russians do not smile unless something funny happens and provides a reason for laughter. This fundamental difference in perception produces many unfortunate misunderstandings.
I think I've read this a few times before and I can hardly agree.
While smile to laughter to fun association is strong and rather obvious I think the main reason you see russian smile less often is that genuine smile is the clear sign of good mood and relative well being and we tend to keep those things for our close friends, family and simply a good company we feel click with.
And we are too straightforward for a forced\fake smile. If a russian thinks 'go f*ck yourself' about you - it will be on their face. But most likely you will hear it out loud.
UPD:
I also believe we are less emotional in general. At least when it comes to things like movies, shows etc. I was amazed when I witnessed americans reacting to Game of Thrones...
This is a risky hypothesis, but could it have something to do with access to guns?
In a society when every stranger can potentially be armed, it might be prudent to somehow display the 'I intend no harm' sign upfront, and smile might be a good proxy for that? The 'the armed society is a polite society' thing?
Living in Europe, where owning guns is not common (and carrying personally very very rare), I don't feel compelled to display or require upfront any bigger signs of 'friendliness' to/from strangers, other than 'Hello/Guten Abend/Adieu'. If the situation becomes unpleasant, I can always leave w/o physical consequences (excl. assault situations).
In a gun-loving culture, I'd probably put more effort to lower risk of misunderstandings.
I don't think that's the case at all, based on variations in the US. The upper-class parts of LA are known for superficial friendliness, while New York is not, but in neither region is known for its gun culture.
Meanwhile parts of the Midwest that had a lot of Germanic immigrants are perceived as being "cold" compared to the southern states, and both tend to have high rates of gun ownership.
When I first moved to Southern California, I found the smiles quite off-putting. Living here for over a decade, I'm sure I do the same now.
Gun ownership is quite common in many parts of Europe. Finland in particular is nearly the same as the US in terms of percentage of households with firearms.
But [0] they are licenced for specific usages, and carry is not allowed outside of that context, and 'personal protection' hasn't been one (barring extant holders) since 1998.
But in practice it’s still extremely rare to encounter them day-to-day. For example Switzerland is very high but almost all guns are given by the state during military service and are kept locked away in case of invasion. Bullets are illegal.
The totals looks similar but in practice the situation with weapons is extremely different. You have basically no chance to encounter an armed person in the street.
Canadians have a similar smile-culture as Americans, but not a gun culture. I mean, a lot of people have guns for hunting or target practice, but you're not allowed to walk around with a pistol like you can in the US.
I am Polish and I can not confirm that. I felt a sharp decline in "smiles" after my move to Germany where your description fits much more. I see much more people smiling for no obvious reasons when I visit Poland from time to time. Something which is not perceived as something else but friendliness by my German SO though while I've witnessed Germans being perceived as very cold by US Americans for the way they are.
I've been also smilingly welcomed by Russian friends even though they may smile less on the average. I haven't been to Russia yes so I can't tell. Maybe they are just well assimilated here.
Maybe it only is all those fake smiles you get from the US service culture which is so over the top that everything else becomes nuanced.
That makes sense. My main context for comparison is US vs PL, and there's a largish difference between strangers and in public or service people and a much smaller difference with friends and family. If you start talking to a stranger in the grocery store in the US because you were both reaching for the same milk you might get a very big smile. I would never expect such an exaggerated reaction in PL, just a small nod or pardon me.
Also, service people are not supposed to be fake smiling, we are actually expecting their emotional labor on top of the labor of their job. They are supposed to be cheering us up with their genuinely good attitude and "changing someone's day for the better" with their smile. It's all pretty exhausting.
I've spend a decade working for an F500 US company here in Germany. The amount of bad news delivered with a fake smile was staggering. I lead to pure disgust within the German employee bubble making it actually stronger and the news worse. In the end I've been fired with one of those and some phrase along the "let's stay friends and meet again" line ;)
I was always quite surprised that there seems to never have been any online course teaching people who came over those basic things as they we online courses for everything else.
I mean, you don't expect us to just hand over all our dark secrets like that in an e-learning module, do ya? The service people are supposed to mean it (if they're big enough suckers), but you can be more two-faced as you climb the ladder. I'd describe American business culture as "exploitative backstabbing bloodlust with a smile and an optimistic mission statement".
Anecdotally, the only unprovoked bad interaction I've had with a drunk guy was also in Riga. He'd come and take my beer out of my hand, and taunt me with it, refusing to give it back.
I spent a couple weeks in Krakow and one thing I noticed was how intensely people maintained eye contact when speaking to you. It seemed to be uniquely Polish, as I didn't notice it in Ukraine, Hungary, Germany, etc. Wondering if anyone else has noticed that or if it was just an anomaly.
Not Russian but my wife is - grew up there until college age. She was saying this exact thing a couple weeks ago (which is why I took interest in this article): that smiling at a stranger will cause them to dismiss you as stupid. So I'd say Yes.
It's as accurate as can be accurate any statement about a culture that spans thousands kilometres from East to West and from South to North and contain multitude of subcultures within itself. I.e. it depends, but "yes" is generally closer to the truth than "no"
It's quite accurate in terms of approach, but there are a lot of situations where smiling is more or less appropriate and wouldn't be considered as a rude move. For example, it's completely okay (almost) for service people to be smiling and approachable although it's not obligatory in any way (especially at small stores). At the same time if you are just smiling at strangers without saying any word, it could be perceived as a rudeness. If you smile and give a light nod, most people will think that you somehow know them. So, it's not that Russians are all grumpy and angry all the time, but they (we) need to have an explanation for your smile, you just can't smile without a reason, if that makes sense.
I think it has changed a bit since then. There was not a lot to smile about in Russia in 2002. Not that now we smile at each other every time, but we do this more often and even if we don't faces are a lot less grumpy :)
The latitude of Warsaw is 52.2° N, which is about the same latitude as northern Canada (Edmonton).
Moscow is 55.7, which is the same as southern Alaska.
Days are shorter, darker, and colder. It has an impact on your mood.
Plus, the average income for a Pole is $18,000/year, whereas for the average White American worker its $40,000/year. Cost of living is often lower in America than in Poland (excepting Seattle, NY etc.). So materially the average American is a lot better off.
See, now, I happen to have grown up in Edmonton, and people there have the same grinning smiling North American culture as anywhere else on the continent. So, meh, no.
And almost half the population there is Ukrainian or Polish descent, too, lots of people only a couple generations or less away from the old country. But people there are pretty mainline North American culture.
Now, my father is German... and I grew up with that rather curt and blunt and critical influence, so.
Nationally the US is near the OECD middle, and ahead of both Britain and New Zealand on education. Poland certainly scores well, not "miles ahead" well.
About 1/3 of Americans are getting a four year degree these days. The university systems in the US are vastly superior to anything Poland has. A third tier university in the US is as good as a first tier university in Poland. Forget about the second or first tier universities, Poland has nothing like a University of Virginia, Michigan or UCLA (all second tier), much less the elite schools. Which is why Poland isn't producing very much in the way of innovation or economic output. Poland's economy hasn't net expanded since 2008 (even before the pandemic), if their education system was so great it would show up in their economy.
Poland is also not miles ahead on healthcare at the median. The median American has full healthcare coverage and has faster access to healthcare than most socialized medicine nations, including Canada (where you'll wait months or years for procedures that Americans can get in weeks). We're talking about the median here, which is: an American earning $40,000 to $60,000 per year, with health insurance and richer than the median in either Germany or Sweden. The median American also has routine access to the latest medical technology, which the median Polish person has zero access to.
Miles ahead? Nope.
And if we're comparing fairly on demographics, the median white American demolishes the median white Pole, dramatically and across the board. The median white American is among the wealthiest medians on the planet (three times richer than the median Swede or German) and has an extreme income only comparable to nations like Switzerland and Norway. The US has taken on a dramatic amount of third-world immigration over the past ~45 years, which has persistently pushed against its median scoring as poor third world immigrants flood into the US (which debases the median as it happens). It takes a long time to lift the education and income levels for tens of millions of people coming from the third world with absolutely nothing and having to learn a new culture and language. That said, pretty soon the median Hispanic person in the US will be richer than the median German or Swede as well, so progress is occurring rapidly.
Why on earth would you exclude non-white Americans from your demographic comparisons? That's the very definition of cherry picking. Your argument about non-white Americans being all recent immigrants is just plain wrong. 13% of people living in the US are immigrants and 40% of Americans are Non-white or Hispanic. Many Black, Hispanic and Asian American families have been in the country for centuries. And of course Native Americans have been here for thousands of years.
Poland has more average years in education, a higher high-school graduation rate, higher PSIA scores. More Poles get tertiary degrees, 44%, a full 10% higher than the USA. 7/10 of those degrees are masters level. And by the way, no one needs to go into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for their degrees.
I have no idea where you got that talking point about no net economic expansion since 2008. Poland's inflation adjusted GDP is one of the fastest growing in Europe, all while its population is dropping due to low birthrates and net migration to the rest of Europe. Its life expectancy is one year lower than the USA, which is already one year lower than the OECD average, but at least you can't be bankrupted by your medical bills.
Rich Americans have it great. The best schools in the world, enormous houses, new cars, the best cutting edge medicine, and extremely high paying jobs that build products the whole world uses, and a government and social system that always works to maintain and magnify that advantage.
Things are nowhere near as rosy when you look at how the other half lives and they can't be just excluded from the comparison as "non-white".
>A third tier university in the US is as good as a first tier university in Poland.
Only according to international rankings which measure scientific output which has a ton of confounding factors like how well funded the university is, how well regarded is in the research community or how many guest researchers can it attract.
I wonder if people in the US who are involved in hiring, and hire from Eastern Europe use other metrics that allow for more direct, meritocratic comparison of individuals (Leetcode etc.)? If so, do they found that, for example first-tier Polish uni grads perform at the same level as third tier US ones?
I think that the bell curve works the same everywhere, and even most US schools (excepting the very top ones), don't have the opportunity to fill more than 20-30% of their student body with brilliant kids from abroad.
This the perfect opportunity to suggest a relevant book: "The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia" by Michael Booth. He's a Brit who married a Dane, relocated to Denmark, and was struck by the cultural differences between Scandinavian cultures and his own. So he wrote a book.
In it, he observes that smiles and jokes and easy conversation are more common among Brits and Americans than many Europeans, and suggests that, as you proceed northward and eastward through the continent, facial expressions tend to grow more sober and the tendency toward small talk fades. Not that these peoples are more unhappy, but there is generally less inclination to idly chat or joke around.
The author offers numerous observations, interpretations, and interviews regarding local perspectives on 'happiness' during his travels. An insightful read that doesn't take itself too seriously.
I wonder why. Because the Nordic folks grew up around less people and those around really didn't chat much? They were passed and passing along the not-chatty culture? The weather sucks? Too much white affecting the mind in some manner? Atleast you have world-class social security?! :)
I've noticed most Russians I work with also speak slowly. I'm curious whether it is difficulty with English pronunciation or whether speaking slowly is part of Russian culture. I'm guessing more the latter, as the the things they say are also frequently quite concise and to the point, no filler words, few adverbs, so no need to speak quickly. Do Russians speak more quickly when speaking Russian?
I lived in Russia for a year and yes, they speak much faster in Russian than English. In particular if they are between just Russians and know they don't need to speak slowly to be understood. But I think it's the same for every language, people speak faster in their mother tong.
This reminds me of some research[0] that found speakers of less information-dense languages speak faster, and vice versa, with the effect that all of the studied languages had roughly the same information transmission rate.
I'm an American, but I don't smile by showing my teeth, though I will sometimes do a closed lip smile. For me I don't think it is cultural, but rather that smiling always feels to me like baring my teeth, i.e. aggressive and threatening. I don't honestly know why I feel that way, I don't have any history or experiences that would seem to cause that, but it just feels wrong to do. I've always wondered if there are other people have the same reaction?
Note: I don't see other people's smiles as threatening, it just feels that way when I do it.
Not American (British), and it's never felt aggressive/threatening, but smiling in a way that shows my teeth has always felt exceptionally forced. It doesn't stand out as strange when other people do it, but it just doesn't feel like a natural reaction for me.
When you think about anything it becomes weird and deserves smile. Having said that I think since everything is weird then you can say that almost nothing is weird. And the key is not to think about it too seriously.
In this mini-ethnography I present the main differences in perception of the smile in Russia and in the United States.
There are regional variations in the United States. In New England, NY and other parts of the Northeast, we are often quite serious/stone-faced in public, something that I have heard outsiders from the west coast and South observe. I also was struck by the demeanor of some friends from Brazil who always have a smile on their face, and seem to be more happy and upbeat even when things are not going well.
There was related discussion on HN about smiling and laughter that's worth reading:
Observation from a Scottish perspective: We are somewhere in between the two modes. We smile more than Russians (not difficult) and less than Americans (also not difficult), and we notice both quite clearly. I would say we used to be more like the Russians (hence why Scottish people used to often be considered "dour" or depressed), but are now being Americanised through media consumption (like many countries). That is noticeable in that younger generations smile more than older ones.
My personal take on smiles is that they're welcome if genuine, but can have adverse effects when forced. Many people think that displaying a fake smile for example at the workplace would help with interactions, especially professional ones, but rest assured that when I see someone faking a smile, particularly those working hard to look warm and sincere, I immediately feel I could be manipulated and get on the defensive.
...But I speak from personal experience of being shown daily the widest warm smile at the workplace from the same person that a few months later would dig my professional grave, so your mileage will probably vary.
I live in a culture where being nice and smiling to people is the norm. It's really nice interacting with strangers because they'll always nice and smiles at you (even road rage is particularly rare), but this also makes backstabbing office politics particularly painful, especially when you're still expected to display nice and smiling behaviour even after such backstabbing.
I guess you can't have the best of both world for this stuff.
IME, there's basically no correlation between your facial expression and whether you respect and work well with others. Someone who just smiles at you all the time is going to either seem nutty, or at best look like he's being really nervous and trying to find humor in the interaction somehow. It's a sign of weakness and might make others take you less seriously. On the flip side a firm expression and stiff upper lip can also connote respect for others.
Although the author attributes the lack of smiling to Russians, I would suggest this generalization should extend to continental Europe. For instance, there is a related saying describing differences between Brits and Germans - "Too polite to be honest and too honest to be polite". It captures the idea that in Anglo Saxonian culture, it is more important to be polite.
I'm living in Ireland, and this bit around non-honest smiling just drives me nuts sometimes. Otherwise, it is excellent when you're going for a walk because it creates a positive and inviting atmosphere. But adapting to a constantly cheerful and smiling surrounding was not without a challenge. Do I smile and say hi all the time to every person, or are there exceptions? There is a bit of a learning curve as after 50 smiles and hi's every day, I feel exhausted, LOL.
> Someone told me if someone is smiling to you in Russia, they are probably scamming you.
Russia also has dash cams aplenty because apparently pedestrians will willingly jump in front of cars for insurance money. Maybe they're smiling while they do it, but it seems like you can be scammed either way.
Lith here. One of the most embarrassing things that I've done in my life was first day of induction in my UK university. The lecture was about cultural differences. We were assigned into groups and asked to list couple of stereotypes that we know. I didn't realised we were supposed to say something like "Americans are hard working and Brits are punctual". Instead I've bombasted to 200-something students that Asian people smell.
Your nutrition changes your smell. You usually do not consciously notice except for very strong smells like from garlic or asparagus consumption. But a lot of food has this effect, and in sum the effect of the things one typically eats lead to a typical smell. Since nutrition is often culturally determined, different cultures smell differently. You just don't smell your own, because you get used to it.
Just to fit in the missing piece of the puzzle: In the UK (and unlike the US), the term “Asian” is frequently associated with Indian and Pakistani and not just East Asians.
I've worked with several Russians and I noticed that they type the smile emoticon without the colon... So instead of :) it's just ). For laughing it's )))))))
My pet theory is that it takes more effort with a Russian keyboards to type the smiley face.
With English, you do "SHIFT + ;" for the colon and then "SHIFT+0" for the bracket. When I type it, I hold down SHIFT with my right pinkie, and hit ";" with my middle finger. I then outstretch my pointer to hit 0. It's mostly a single fluid motion.
With Russian, you have to engage two hands instead of one. We have more letters in our alphabet so the ";" key is occupied by "ж" (a "zh" sound as G in Gerome), and the colon gets moved to "SHIFT+5". So now, to make the colon you have to first find "5" on the keyboard with your left hand, while holding down SHIFT with your right. Then you have to disengage your left hand, and reach for the 0 with your right to make the bracket. Rather than do all that, you can just place ")" and the context is enough to understand it's a smile.
It could also just be tradition. My earliest memories of the Russian internet are from the late 1990s, and the convention of "))))" was already in place.
Interesting observation: many people in the russian segment of the Internet use `)` instead of a period at the end of a sentence.
If you write a conventional sentence with a period, sometimes people might think you're not alright or even annoyed. Appending `:)` afterwards might be considered a sad smile. We have expressive parentheses and emojis here, but you put that sad smile, what's happened? It's all fine, I just follow the punctuations.
I find it curious that even using emotions in the Internet can be different within a single culture, not to mention others.
It's a long standing tradition from older forms of chat software (IRC, ICQ and so on) and yes, it seems endemic to Russian speakers for some reason. I always explained it to myself that it saves time and also by the fact that to type ":)" in Russian kb layout you have to press Shift+6, Shift+0 compared to Shift+;, Shift+0 in US layout which seems a bit more cumbersome.
Anyway, this is going away as most of the younger generation just uses emoji instead.
Very common in post-Soviet countries. The US is often referred to as the "West" and so is Western Europe. This refers to both the freedom and a certain mentality ("mentalitet" in Russian). Never heard this framing in the US, though.
It was more common in the past. In 2002 the cold war had ended only 11 years prior. Now we are 30 years out.
Same as how back then you could say “in the war” and people knew you meant WWII, but nowaways youth may give you a confused look.
But yes at least in Canada we used to use the east/west framing, and in respect of russia. In 2002 they were the more prominent power compared to China. That situation has heavily reversed.
I know a professor who taught at a community college in Brooklyn. He had a section on 9/11 and would warn his students if they had a personal connection to the events that they may want to skip those classes. Some students who were native life long New Yorkers didn't even know what 9/11 was.
The only way I can fathom this being the case in Brooklyn is a combination of kids living under a rock and a total failure of the local public education system.
Yes. Once while touring a space museum in Switzerland I was reading the placards about the Russian and US space programs. Yuri Gagarin was consistently referred to as "the communist" which seemed perfectly normal to me as an American. Then I saw one that referred to John Glenn as "the capitalist" which was a novel concept to my brain. It wasn't until that moment that I realized just how ridiculous it was for us to refer to random Russians as communists, these were both seasoned military men who had nothing to do with either ideology other than the fact that their governments were pushing these things.
Also, the "winning side" is allowed the freedom to move forwards and forget the past quicker. As a Yankee we don't think much about the US civil war. The deeper a northerner goes into the south the more you are reminded that their side did not win the civil war, they remember that shit, and you better be careful what you say about it less you get run out of town.
[edit spelling; I had double checked myself but still fucked it up]
With regard to people of a third country seeing one astronaut as the capitalist and the other as the communist, that goes way back. Consider these lines from Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (shot in summer 1965). As a man and woman look up at the moon, the man says about the Man in the Moon:
"He's fed up. He was glad to see Leonov land. Someone to talk to after an eternity alone! But Leonov tried to stuff
his head full of Lenin. So when the American landed,
the guy fled to his camp. But the American right away
crammed a Coke down his throat, after making him say thank you first."
The USA was and is a warmongering socialist state. Capitalism certainly doesn't prescribe huge spendings and nationalisation.
Russia was and is a warmongering socialist state.
The redeeming factor, and likely what makes "the communist" sounds reasonable, is that the Soviets defined themselves communist
I have a SO in Singapore. Once we were at a (sort of chic actually) cafe and the cashier made eye contact without a smile and said, "ah what you want" and I was instinctively taken aback. It's amusing because I have since figured out that people in sg just act differently, I mean by that point me and her had been dating for years and I've learned that in general Asian cultures tend to be more reserved (in certain respects, they are less reserved in ways Americans aren't, my father in-law tells me straight up when he sees me that I've gotten fatter). That said, it felt odd to be in a situation here where in the US I usually have to shake off the constant pan-american smiles and chiming in to see how the food is etc, etc. I usually rather people back off a little or chill out at least and yet because it's so ingrained in my head that a situation where I actually got customer service that is brutally efficient, my first instinct is to think they didn't like me.
Look at old photos - people never smiled, because you were considered to be stupid. Smiling all the time is pretty boring and I'd rather see real emotions than faked smiles. The hypothesis of positivity is crashing left and right anyway. Positive people live shorter lifespans, too - quite the opposite of what they tell you.
I'm curious, how do Russians determine someone is in a bad mood from body/face language? In the US I can tell when my colleagues aren't happy the moment they walk in the room by their face. In Russia, do they have to speak in order for you to determine this or is there some other cue? Maybe if they smile?
Changed a little bit since that time. Mostly in cities, now we are smiling when meet with people we know well. This allows me to trick the system sometimes, every time I need something from government structure Im smiling there like an idiot, that cause unknown people to think that they know me and then help.
The other part of this is that smiling when you don’t really want to, at people you don’t really like, as part of your job, is really exhausting. In the United States labor and especially service sector labor is very disempowered so they don’t really have the option to refuse to smile. In places where labor has a bit more leverage they might be able to. There’s also a special voice you put on, the customer service voice. Culture is often downstream from material conditions.
The fact is that russian life is really miserable (just imagine living for 100 years in hardcore totalitarian communism, still in progress with different labels).
There’s really not that many reasons to smile while you grow up & live in Russia.
And you don’t even have a strong quality spiritual platform (like some asian countries) or good climate (like some aftican countries) to compensate.
You don’t waste your attention span on smiling etc - you’re busy surviving and fighting for the best spot in pyramid.
If you smile too much — it could even cause jealousy and you win more enemies or people might consider your positive attitude a sign of softness and take advantage of you.
It’s also suspicious to see someone smiling a lot - its harder to read his underlying subtle motivations & values.
And russians don’t have much time to make friends - the sooner and better you identify like minded people the easier for you as a group to survive.
That’s why russian tend to smile only in a close group of friends or when something really funny is going on.
I had the same impression traveling to Bolivia. I am Brazilian and we generally smile when speaking with someone. But in La Paz people usually had this serious look on their faces and a kind of difficult to approach semblance. I imagined poverty could explain that, but Brazil is a bit poorer than Russia. Maybe instead of poverty, we could think about hardship in a more general sense? I find very hard to believe that considering someone smiling insulting is a healthy outcome of a culture.
Russian who travelled extensively through South America here. I'm not sure what's wrong with altiplano bolivians, but my impression was that they are not just grumpy, but genuinely unfriendly (and Russian cultural background kinda helps with differentiating the two). I used to speak quite decent Spanish back then, so I tried communication - and anywhere else on the continent my attempts were enough to break the ice and become friends, but not in La Paz.
So far La Paz and bolivian altiplano in general is the only place in South America where I don't want to come back.
Russians can be the sincerest friends you know, smiling to you. They also can be your fiercest enemies, still smiling to you. Sometimes I think this is the source of the hollywood/McCarthy myth of bad russians. TL;DR: If all russians would play poker, the world would be broke.
[snip]The English used to feel pretty uncomfortable about yanks grinning away at everything[/snip]
That surprised me, since our cultural norms largely stemmed from there.
So what would account for the difference? It must've come about after we split as a country.
I wonder if it's our Declaration of Independence including "the pursuit of Happiness". See:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Nowhere else in the world (up until then, anyway) gave as its founding commandment that being happy was an indicator of a life well-lived.
Thus, perhaps, while other places reserve the effort of smiling for the emotion of irrepressible joy, Americans -- to prove they're living a good life -- present a smile.
> That surprised me, since our cultural norms largely stemmed from [England].
I don't think that assumption really holds up, it's very pop-history. From the Scots of the Appalachians, the religious fanatics of New England, the garguntuan influence of African-American syncretic culture, the Nordic yeoman of the mid-north-east, the southern European urban influx of the 1900s and the new, exciting Latin American syncretism: America really is a cultural melting pot. Only, really, the Virginia gentry (Jefferson, Washington, et al) can be plainly said to have imported English norms - and still, they were ideological radicals interested in forming a new nation.
The French like to call us (English, Scots, and all the varieties of American) "Anglo-Saxons," but they're hardly right. Don't give them ammo, they're already merciless!
There's a paper floating around somewhere that finds a positive correlation between polite smiling and diversity. It posits that it's a way to help establish trust in societies where you're constantly interacting w/ people from groups outside your personal sphere. Indeed, I suspect Americans probably smile even more when abroad precisely because they're interacting w/ social strangers.
Because other Americans smile back, and it imbues a philadelphic feeling. That's valuable when your society is not an ethnostate, but a mix of immigrants.
People sometimes have good time (better than avg), sometimes bad time, and sometime neutral time (say.. thinking about some problem to solve, or repeating Swedish vocabulary to learn a new language, or trying to recall the name of a person you just met and you're supposed to remember).
If you're compelled to smile with every interaction, in order to show that you have good time, then it'd mean that you'd be mostly lying according to the aforementioned definition :).
Unless we re-define the 'good time', so it means 'not significantly bad', which seems to be the case here. It's just, that it requires a bit of effort to remember and to switch to when visiting US.
The real reason is that American smile is relatively new phenomenon that appeared about 100 years ago with the emergence of Hollywood, everyone wanted to act like famous actors and it became a part of the culture. Also the smile in US is a sign of hope, dream, prosperity and individualism. In socialist countries the collective well-being is above the needs of individual so there is no reason to smile all the time.
Basically the article still applies. People who always have a smile on their face are praised as having reached a level of contentment and joy that the rest of us aspire to. That and you'll eventually get fired from your job if you never smile.
There's also a fake it till you make it aspect. If you're having a crummy day, forcing yourself to smile anyway can help you out of it. Wagging the dog's tail to make it happy so to speak.
One historical explanation is that it was due to the popularization of sales culture in the 20th century which began around the 1920s, and greatly accelerated after WWII.
Another historical explanation, as has been mentioned by other commenters, is that it was due to the popularization of African American culture.
But of course, they are just two of the many plausible historical explanations.
I've seen this topic a few times. As an American, the only time I've had a jarring experience with fake smiles is when I visited the Japan section of Disney's Epcot. It was a really bizarre experience watching the cashiers be overly cheerful. I've never been to Japan so I don't know if it's normal behavior or more of a performance for tourists.
There is a selection bias there: Disney chooses naturally smiley people to put there as a public face. You're not seeing a random or representative sample, you're seeing outliers. The specific people you see in this role behave that way normally and not as a performance. That doesn't indicate anything about any broader population or culture.
I've only been to Japan once but aggressively cheerful is definitely a mode of business there. It feels even more forced and paper thin than what you would get in the US and I can't help but feel it boxes you into playing a certain character as customer too.
Yeah, I get a vibe of too nice , too formal from certain scenarios with employees from Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Colleagues in Singapore and Japan come to mind for me and also my interactions with Air Emirates employees. It stresses me out, and I wonder how much pressure they must be under to put on such a cloyingly polite affectation.
I have just browsed much of Adventures in the Atomic Age: From Watts to Washington by Glenn Seaborg, a Nobelist in Chemistry. He quoted in passing Tom Landry's dictum that "You can't think and smile at the same time.", but in the context of saying that some can: Enrico Fermi was always smiling, and always thinking.
I'm really late to the party, but here goes anyway.
Some context is due. The article is almost twenty years old. The experiences described there are from a time period when Latvia had gained independence from the Soviet Union only some ten years prior. So, pretty much all the people working in the hospitality industry would be someone whose formative years and/or young adulthood was spent during the nineties.
That was a pretty brutal decade. Rearranging from planned to market economy is hard. Economic crises abound, rampant organized crime, generally high levels of aggression. I come from a small town and I was a kid then, but even then I know of four murders that happened then in my home town. A guy was beaten to death in a nightclub, another guy was thrown from a bridge, my favorite sales clerk at a local store got incarcerated for axe-murdering his wife and her lover, and a body was found in the bushes behind my music school. Ah right, there was also the case of a neighbor massacring a family on a potato field. A friend who lived in Riga during that time told me how his dad always had a peace of metal pipe behind the door. Just in case. In a later interview the guy who was chief of police then revealed how he slept with body armor on at all times.
So, people who were teenagers or young adults then learned to not smile for the same reasons the prison population is not really a cheerful bunch. It's outright dangerous. There's a book and a recently made movie about coming of age as a metalhead in a mid-sized Latvian town during the nineties called Jelgava 94 (Doom 94). It really conveys the look and feel of those times quite well.
It's very different now. Sure, people don't smile as much as Americans (no one except Thais does), and are not as chatty as the Brits. But a lot of people have worked or traveled abroad, have seen and gotten accustomed to different cultures. According to my experience pretty much everyone below the age of 25 speak fluent English. And hug. They hug a lot. And yeah, the crime levels are nowhere near to how it was in the nineties.
It's a lot easier, Russian popular culture is formed by gulags, because a good third of adult men had gulag experience at some point and it was their main life-shaping experience (usually resulting in their rise in social hierarchy too). And in gulag, a smile is a sign of submission.
It’s funny, I never noticed this. I grew up in Germany and had lived in the US for a year a while back. A few years after I met an American friend here who had been on a euro trip. She went to Prague (not exactly Russia, but culturally close enough I guess) and she said something like: "why are all people there so damn depressed?"
I myself had great times in that same city, I never got that feeling. But I realized that there is a big cultural difference.
I told her: "That’s how they are. They are still happy and loving people, they just show it differently".
I would never perceive them as being depressed. Interesting how your surrounding culture can change your perception of things.
Czech people are often brisk in attitude, Berliners on the other hand - that's something else entirely, I wouldn't describe people as unfriendly but everyone acts coldly and mechanically. Could it be that the fractured state of the city made everyone to be like that?
I live in Berlin, raised German. The city is a wild mix and what you are describing I would argue is only applicable to a subset of people. Yes, many people here might seem cold and mechanical. That’s what I and this article have been trying to describe, people with an eastern heritage appear to outsiders this way. To me they do not appear this way, I’ve grown accustomed to this attitude.
We perceive Americans often as overly talkative and artificially happy. They’re not, it’s just the way they express themselves.
They might not smile as much in public but they do know how to love, be generous and laugh their asses off, just as westerners do. You’d see that once you get to really know these people.
But on the other hand I have barely ever seen a place that is also inhabited with very hedonistic people who laugh and feel openly. It’s quite a weird place to be honest.
Besides my German roots I’m also half Egyptian. Often when western people observe Arabs, they’re gonna think that they are constantly angry. I thought so myself when I was little. But it isn’t true. They have different means of communication and are some of the most welcoming, caring people I’ve ever met.
All comes down to acceptance. Once you accept the cultural differences you got with that other person and adapt to them, you will not feel them as cold or mechanical.
> She went to Prague (not exactly Russia, but culturally close enough I guess
FYI those are fighting words in Prague. My people generally hate everything having to do with Russia, after being controlled by the Soviets since 1948 and outright occupied between 1968 to 1989.
That's correct. But even if one to forget about this, it's still true - Czech culture is very much different from Russian. May be it's even more distinct from American, or even British, but still...
A while back I flew to Moscow as a consultant to do a 1 day workshop. All went fine. The only thing that irritated the hell out of me was that no one laughed at any of my jokes. Not even smiled. I thought it was the translator.
With masks being socially acceptable in most if not all the world now, I wonder if the lack of visible smile that causes will change the perception of a smile in places where people usually smile by default.
I wouldn't assume that masks will remain socially acceptable. I’m traveling at the moment in a touristic region of my country, and in spite of masks still being legally required in shops and (before your food is served) restaurants, almost no one is actually wearing them any more. I did wear a mask as I walked into a hotel reception tonight, but the proprietor outright said I was silly to do so, and she pointed to everyone else around. It was very clear that I had committed a faux pas.
My expectation is that by years end, in Europe and North America at least, mask-wearers will be gently mocked everywhere outside of some large metropolitan areas (which have their own epidemiological concerns), and there won’t be any kind of long-term impact on facial expressions.
At first while reading the comment I thought of figurative mask, the one that wears of the fake smile. It was making sense. Only at the end of the comment I realized it was about blue masks.
A friend of mine who had lived in the USA long enough to pick up some local traits had to go back to Russia to renew his expiring documents.
One required a fresh photo to be taken. The guy who was readily available next door for the occasion felt a bit uneasy about doing his job.
After several discarded takes he finally figured it out: "Stop stretching your lips!".
What we call "culture" is often collective trauma, it is history. To be left behind. We are all humans, dysfunctional in different ways we call "culture".... until one can hope, someday the fish sees the water.
There is strictly no sane reason why a human being should withdraw a smile or any kind of positive emotion or spontaneous expression so long as they are emotionally healthy.
At same time the need for boundaries in our relationships (professional , intimate etc.) is universal, not cultural.
> It is even worse if the person smiles showing his/her teeth. In the animal world bare teeth are considered to be a threat. Hence I think there is some instinctive fear of bare teeth built into our social perception system.
I would love to hear from an evolutionary psychologist if this really is a thing in people. I remember being pretty astounded to learn that smiling monkeys are dangerous; there's no part of my consciousness that thinks of a toothy smile as dangerous.
I really liked book by Erin Meyer "The Culture Map" it gives a lot more insight into those kind of things. She is American that moved to France and was working with multicultural teams.
"Americans precede anything negative with three nice comments; French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans get straight to the point; Latin Americans and Asians are steeped in hierarchy; Scandinavians think the best boss is just one of the crowd."
In the US smiling wasn't as prevalent, at least in photographs. Look at any Civil War era picture and nobody is smiling in their portraits. I'm not sure when that started. I read somewhere that back then people thought people who smiled all the time were "simple minded." Now I can't help thinking that every time I see some marketing copy with some model smiling while playing with soap or something.
The reason for the severe facial expressions and the lack of smiles in 19th-century photographs was the extremely long exposure times that the technology required back then. It was hard to hold a smile still enough that the film could capture it without blur. You can't assume from those portraits that people rarely smiled compared to now.
>The reason for the severe facial expressions and the lack of smiles in 19th-century photographs was the extremely long exposure times that the technology required back then.
That's one theory, another one I've seen is people had bad teeth, but everyone had bad teeth so I don't see how that would be an issue. I like the theory that they thought constant smiling was for simpletons.
"In the animal world bare teeth are considered to be a threat. Hence I think there is some instinctive fear of bare teeth built into our social perception system."
Except a human smile is more akin to a canine's greeting/appeasement grin. And much more so like a Chimp's play grin. There are toothy displays in mammals that are not threatening.
So Russians are exactly like Norwegians in this regard, must be why we get along so well. That and our dark if not often black taste in humour.
I know many Norwegians considers a laughing, smiling idiot just that, an idiot. Unintelligent. Either that or the person smiling and laughing all the time for no apparent reason must be very insecure, or just weird.
Wow, what an interesting and insightful article! I've worked with many Russians and enjoyed working with them immensely, but I did notice they seemed very stern or serious as well. The difference in culture of smiling is very interesting, this is definitely something to understand going forward when I work with other Russians.
If Russians smile more (I do not know really), then the most likely explanation is a mixing of the USA culture into ours.
I being Russian just do not keep smile on my face when everything is just fine. I'll keep smiling when things go especially good. I'd laugh evilly^W when they go in unexpectedly good way. But small variations from a statistical average is not enough of an emotional reason to change my facial expression.
Statostical average is the key. If things made a habit of being extremely good, I'd stop smiling when they are extremely good. I'd wait for more exciting occasion.
Many years ago I lived in a sort of dormitory in Tokyo. The Americans and Japanese residents understood each other's personal space preferences just fine, but it was amusing to note the look on some of the Japanese people's faces when the Italians greeted them with hugs and kisses.
technically speaking smiling increases airflow and thus improves work of the brain and the body. So one of first things i do in tough/stressful situations is i make myself smile. It has immediate effect of de-anxiety and improves attention (like kind of making yourself an impartial side observer of situation which is especially important when you are outnumbered), and back in Russia i would for example smile when find myself in a bind and before starting delivering punches if/when it would come to it, and in US i smile if something gets me frustrated as the Russian style of response to frustration isn't acceptable here and before i start delivering politely shaped microaggressions (the thing which seems to replace punches here :)
Russians do smile, a lot. The thing is, Russians are not fake nor pretentious neither they like ppl that are like that. They're lovely simple down to earth ppl and they don't take any kind of BS. If you "act", they will not smile back. I love that!!
When Americans smile, they think they are being friendly, but in some cultures it is perceived as a predatory grin. Cold War propaganda posters often show Americans smiling, and it's not to show the are friendly, easy-going people.
Common telesales advice is to smile before you pick up the phone, because people can hear your smile and are generally more receptive to whatever you're going to say if you sound friendly. I wonder if this trick works in Russia?
> It was really different from Europe, where people are mostly polite, but quite reserved in their non-verbal expressions.
but it also says:
> Very often Western people criticize Russians for being too gloomy and unfriendly because we never smile.
It seems to be somewhat undecided on whether the smiling culture is a U.S.A. idiosyncrasy, or a “western" one, and it very much is the former, I believe, the U.S.A. cultural emphasis on smiles is wel known throughout most of the world, including most of “the west”.
Interacting with strangers, Russians are coconuts whilst Americans are peaches. I've found Erin Meyer's Culture Map[1] a good guide to navigating different cultures.
Melting pot cultures, like Brazil and America's, do not have common ethno-linguistic substrate on which to build civic society. Overt, ostentatious displays of goodwill and trust are a selected-for meme in successful, modern melting-pot cultures.
I predict that smile incidence will vary in correlation to the ethnic homogeneity of a polity.
Bunch of nonsense, which ignores the fact of crippled trust and hostility in a psychologically crippled post-communist society. What does “cultural difference” mean? If you dig a bit of history in the last 110 years in Russia and have a basic understanding of psychology - you can easily answer why people don’t smile in Russia.
Mona Lisa was special in part because it was uncommon for people to smile. In Middle Ages, someone smiling a lot would be perceived as stupid. That's why facial expressions in medieval imagery are so serious. Today, being surprised a lot is often taken as a sign of stupidity, whereas in ancient Greece an owl was the bird of Athena, the goddess of wisdom. Because, obviously, an owl is always surprised, and surprise is the first step to understanding.
Smiling prominently for portraits seemed to become more popular only after modern dentistry became common.
I imagine most people in the Middle Ages (and much later) had chipped, missing, buckled, crooked and stained teeth.
Now pristine teeth are a signal of wealth (even though they're usually 100% fake veneers, at least among actors and models) so people want to signal their wealth by smiling prominently.
Teeth in skeletons from the Middle Ages seem fine. It is later ones, after bringing sugar back from the Americas, that have lots of cavities and missing teeth.
Check out the thesis of the recent bestseller Breath by James Nestor. Native American and other traditional cultures put serious emphasis on nose breathing, strictly avoiding mouth breathing. Apparently, consistent nose-breathing can affect nasal and upper-palate development, favoring a spacious mouth and straighter teeth. It can also help avoid dry mouth at night, apparently favoring resistance to dental caries. There is a book by a 19th century ethnographer who discovered some of this, titled Shut Your Mouth and Save Your Life.[1]
A couple of years ago I forced myself to sleep with my mouth shut. It helped undry me mouth. But, through my own pressure I started to be a heavy teeth grinder in the night. That’s definitely worse for me.
I listened to the podcast, which as it says focuses in particular on John Mew and son, John apparently being on the cruel and crank end by experimenting on his children including on his daughter with expected negative results, and his son now reportedly showing a flair for bringing pseudosciency selective evidence to promotion on social media, and more recently perhaps helping "incels" fix "weak chins." (AKA, perhaps a focus for unstated outrage to help motivate a slightly-weak podcast)
I was offered a tongue depressor by my childhood dentist to help fix a crooked tooth without orthodontia, so when Nestor's book mentioned one orthodontist suggesting that positioning one's tongue to touch the roof of the mouth would matter, I dismissed that part as probably the weakest in the book. That said, the science overall seems to be evolving, research in breathing and the nose apparently increasing, and Nestor is meticulous in maintaining references, including online. Many might be comfortable with some uncertainty and not dismissing this all as pseudoscience. I commend Nestor's reporting.
I also hope that, if industrial civilization eventually passes, and for now where severe poverty without dentistry exists, people will find again whatever practices better prevented dental caries.
I was born with a deviated septum and for the first 15 years of my life I just assumed breathing through one’s mouth was normal and the nose was just for smelling things. After surgery I started breathing through my nose without conscious thought for the first time.
Same but my septum was deviated by a punch to the face when I was 12. I had the surgery when I was 28 and the pleasantness of my breath, jaw tension, sleep quality, and resting heart rate all improved significantly
Yes, certainly for heavy congestion. However, for marginal cases, there might be some body adaptation made to help with efforts at nose breathing. .. Nestor avoids giving specific recommendations, given individual variations and needs. But the research seems to point to: there is a lot going on. For example, apparently the nose contains erectile tissue, perhaps helping explain how one can cycle between now one nostril being easier to breathe through, later the other. .. My very limited experience, living where I would usually call myself "always congested," is that given a little effort/intent at nose breathing, I now sense that my congestion is consistently less than before. (But N<1 as evidence, since there could be some seasonal change as well.)
Both beets and sugar cane are old world plants, and maize-based corn syrup wasn't used as a sweetener until the 20th century. It's true that refined sugar is terrible for dental health, but it didn't come from the americas.
It wasn’t known that beets could be exploited for sugar until the 16th century. Sugar cane was not known in Europe (outside Muslim-ruled areas of Spain) until post-Colombian times. In antiquity, the sole common means of sweetening food in Europe was honey, and later dulce de leche.
Getting kind of off-topic here, but my recollection is that teeth in the pre-industrial age were often destroyed over time by grit from flour milling that would wear down teeth.
There was a Han Dynasty (200 BC - 200 AD) ritual involving feeding mush to 70-year-olds. (Why mush? Because at that age you've probably lost your teeth.)
However, I have the impression that this is basically as true today as it was then.
It was also an issue of the speed of capture. Paintings and old Cameras had long exposure times so you needed a pose that you could hold for a long time.
Well, it's complicated. Glaukopis could also be translated as "blue eyed", or "grey eyed", not just "owl eyed".
Being the goddess of wisdom and handicraft (among other things), perception was a crucial attribute. Having big eyes (like the owl) could be interpreted as having good visual perception.
But it's not just about the size. She's also described as having "bright eyes", or "flashing eyes", or "darting eyes". It's more about the acuity of perception, than about some emotional aspect.
I mean, life was objectively a lot worse in the Middle Ages. Give a person from that era a McMansion and tell them to expect clean water, a hamburger, and a soft modern bed every night, they’ll smile too.
Regardless that I look Russian but not, I guess this is one of many cultural reasons why I get along with them so well. Being socially forced to smile and be positive all of the time (toxic positivity) seems fake and mentally-unhealthy to me. I understand wanting to brighten other people's day but to sustain manic/positive/energetic appearance all of the time and towards everyone sounds exhausting.
The other thing I like about Russian culture is, like a cardiologist or a brain surgeon, finding humor in everything (brain surgeons may find less than they were expecting but they're an optimistic bunch).
A CIA agent is sent on a mission in Moscow.
He goes to a grocery store and writes down in his diary "There is no food".
He then goes to a clothes shop and puts down in the diary "There are no shoes".
He leaves the shop, and a KGB agent waiting for him outside says: "You know, 10 years ago we would have shot you for that."
The CIA agent writes in his diary "There are no bullets".
I like how everyone in the west have a fake smile in pictures. I hated seeing myself like that so I stopped smiling for pictures at an early age (to great irritation of my relatives).
Unrelated but I recently discovered an admiration toward Russian pharmacology, they have discovered some of the most interesting drugs out there, especially on the topic of anxiolytics and extending lifespan.
> Very often Western people criticize Russians for being too gloomy and unfriendly because we never smile
WTF? I'm very often around Russian and other Slav people and many of them smile plenty.
> In Western culture, and especially in the United States, the smile is an indication of well-being ... In Russian culture the smile is identified with laughter. Russians do not smile unless something funny happens and provides a reason for laughter.
Massive over-generalization. Local culture, personality and personal life background induce much more variability in tendency to smile than whether you're Russian/Slav or not.
Also, the author seems to lump the US and Europe together, something I also frown upon.
> WTF? I'm very often around Russian and other Slav people and many of them smile plenty.
Yes, but this is about smiling at strangers. Random people on the street, or in the subway. What to many slavs is a type of stupid grin is to many Americans a sign of "being nice". We are not talking about actually smiling, say when you feel genuine warmth towards a friend.
I’ve also seen the “how are you” thing described in comments unfold.
A Hindu pm had the habit of sitting next to developers while they worked, sometimes putting a hand on their knee. After being politely explained that the size of an Estonian personal space is measured in astronomical units and that this was the reason devs literally scattered upon his approach, he immediately changed his behavior and became great friends with the team.
A US lady came to hr complaining about an Ukrainian dev approaching them inappropriately during a party. The hr-person, having witnessed the situation, explained that this was just their way of showing friendly interest and no disrespect was intended. A while later, a Japanese guy came to the hr person complaining the original lady from us had hugged them. Again, it was explained that this is just what Americans do.
Cultures are hard and take a lot of mutual respect to work through.