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American Phrase Book

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Re: American Phrase Book

#101

Post by aidos »

keiferski wrote: post #88
coldtea wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the great mysteries of the world is how Americans think they are so straightforward and direct and honest... and then they ask a German if their butt looks big in these pants, and burst into tears on hearing the answer. Or how they ask a friend/relative/acquaintance "How have you been" and expect just a fake generic "fine" or similar, not the actual story of how you were, as told in several (at least Europea…

Non-Americans always harp on this yet don't understand that "How are you?" is just functioning as a generic "Hello" and not as a literal question. This happens in every language with various phrases. For example, the phrase for "Hello" in most European languages directly translates to "Good Day." It is not as if people are saying "Good Day" in any literal sense of the words; the meaning implied is "Hello."

These things are complicated though. I’m a kiwi and on moving to the UK it took ages to figure out that “alright?” meant “hello”, not “what’s wrong?”

Re: American Phrase Book

#102

Post by atoav »

keiferski wrote: post #88
coldtea wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the great mysteries of the world is how Americans think they are so straightforward and direct and honest... and then they ask a German if their butt looks big in these pants, and burst into tears on hearing the answer. Or how they ask a friend/relative/acquaintance "How have you been" and expect just a fake generic "fine" or similar, not the actual story of how you were, as told in several (at least Europea…

Non-Americans always harp on this yet don't understand that "How are you?" is just functioning as a generic "Hello" and not as a literal question. This happens in every language with various phrases. For example, the phrase for "Hello" in most European languages directly translates to "Good Day." It is not as if people are saying "Good Day" in any literal sense of the words; the meaning implied is "Hello."

With the difference that “Good Day” is something you wish uppon others while “How are you?” is a question that also exists outside of the smalltalk context.

You can ask “How are you?” with genuine interest and get a genuine answer in the right context.

Re: American Phrase Book

#103

Post by ivanhoe »

sl1ck731 wrote: post #26
9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #13

Yup. One of the great mysteries of the world is how Americans think they are so straightforward and direct and honest... and then they ask a German if their butt looks big in these pants, and burst into tears on hearing the answer. On a mildly more serious note, I remember well my first ever serious business meeting in the US, where we pitched a potential joint venture to another company. 30 minutes of mutual praise…

I've never heard of Americans thinking/saying they were direct. In my case I see our culture as the opposite, as this page seems to demonstrate. Corporate double-speak is a well-known thing here (I presume its similar in many places, but I don't know), and I'm sure most people like me were taught "if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all". A common trope in child programs when I grew up was th…

Well, it all depends who you compare to. I too heard many times of Americans being direct, but usually it's said in comparison to British people, and in that case it's fairly true I guess. On the other hand, compared to say Mediterranean or Balkans, no, you're not direct at all :)

Re: American Phrase Book

#104

Post by coldtea »

keiferski wrote: post #88
coldtea wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the great mysteries of the world is how Americans think they are so straightforward and direct and honest... and then they ask a German if their butt looks big in these pants, and burst into tears on hearing the answer. Or how they ask a friend/relative/acquaintance "How have you been" and expect just a fake generic "fine" or similar, not the actual story of how you were, as told in several (at least Europea…

Non-Americans always harp on this yet don't understand that "How are you?" is just functioning as a generic "Hello" and not as a literal question. This happens in every language with various phrases. For example, the phrase for "Hello" in most European languages directly translates to "Good Day." It is not as if people are saying "Good Day" in any literal sense of the words; the meaning implied is "Hello."

>Non-Americans always harp on this yet don't understand that "How are you?" is just functioning as a generic "Hello" and not as a literal question. This happens in every language with various phrases.

We very much understand that.

Our problem/concern/issue is that you don't seem to expect/appreciate the outpour of how one has been in the first place, whereas elsewhere it's a natural part of meeting the other person...

That is, it's not like:

"'how are you?' just means hello, but we have another phrase to say if you want the other person to really tell you how they've been/feel when you meet them".

It's more like:

"Actually telling the other person how you've been/feel is discouraged, nobody cares that much for you, period".

Re: American Phrase Book

#105

Post by sdrothrock »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #13

Yup. One of the great mysteries of the world is how Americans think they are so straightforward and direct and honest... and then they ask a German if their butt looks big in these pants, and burst into tears on hearing the answer. On a mildly more serious note, I remember well my first ever serious business meeting in the US, where we pitched a potential joint venture to another company. 30 minutes of mutual praise…

> One of the great mysteries of the world is how Americans think they are so straightforward and direct and honest... and then they ask a German if their butt looks big in these pants, and burst into tears on hearing the answer.

The Culture Map by Erin Meyer goes into this a bit; one of the key traits she uses to assess cross-cultural communication is how directly cultures give/take negative feedback.

There are two things to reply to here from that book:

1. The stereotype for a lot of the world is that Americans are direct, much like you said here -- but this isn't the case for ALL types of communication.

2. There's a scale specifically for negative feedback from "direct" to "indirect" for various cultures and the US is shown in the middle of that scale.

The UK is also listed around the middle, but more toward the "indirect" side than the US.

For more extreme examples, Russia, Germany, and France are listed as tending toward more direct negative feedback, whereas Japan and Indonesia are listed as tending toward more indirect negative feedback.

It's a fascinating book that really opened my eyes about ways to perceive cultures and communication, so if this is anything you're at all interested in, I'd really recommend it.

> On a mildly more serious note, I remember well my first ever serious business meeting in the US, where we pitched a potential joint venture to another company. 30 minutes of mutual praise about the awesome potential of the idea and positive affirmations of how we're totally going to do this ensued... and immediately after we left, my (American) business partner dropped the smile, said "welp, that went badly" and stated that there was no way in hell they'd proceed.

This kind of situation is also discussed in the book! ;)

Edit: I bring this book up relatively frequently, but I'm not associated with the publisher or author at all. The book was an absolute revelation for me in that it gave me a way to conceptualize cultural differences rather than the traditional/stereotypical "good/bad" scale, so I like to pay it forward and recommend it to people who seem like they might be interested in it.

Re: American Phrase Book

#106

Post by inglor »

As an Israeli this was a shock for me when I first moved to the US. Here "let's have lunch sometime" is literally "let's have lunch sometime".

The American culture is so indirect and giving direct feedback is so hard. One of the biggest prides in our culture here is that employees can always burst into the CEO's office and tell them they are wrong if that's the case :]

Re: American Phrase Book

#107

Post by benj111 »

scarejunba wrote: post #96
benj111 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hows your Dutch sentence construction?

I mean, if we're going down that road, might as well go one step back and ask how the Dutch fellow's understanding of Indian culture is. In any case, these are things you learn once. After that, the better you are at navigating the differences, the more successful you'll be. After all, it's low probability that you'll reform (in your mind) another culture and high probability that you can improve your ability to win.…

Learning a language is hard.

This whole thread is the differences between nations who speak the same language. If they can't agree what chance has a non native got?

As a native English speaker I appreciate that I don't need to learn another language. But on the other hand, the language has also become the worlds language, so its about as fair criticising the Dutch for sentence construction, as it is for criticising Australians for making everything into a question?

Re: American Phrase Book

#108

Post by bloak »

benj111 wrote: post #57
masonic wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"restroom" Is "loo" any less ambiguous? Speaking of Brits, they did point out the perils of faulty phrase books many years ago: https://youtu.be/bNP7uQQT-oo

Strictly speaking it is less ambiguous. I understood it to be a shortened corruption of lavatory and it's worth noting that the English definition of that gives toilet, and the American definition gives the sink in the toilet, which kind of reinforces my point.

I think we should all just say "toilet". Of course that was a euphemism originally (indirectly from French "toile"), but I think it's the closest we have to a neutral term at the moment. Unless we go for "excrementarium"

Re: American Phrase Book

#109

Post by peteretep »

> US natives will usually phrase everything in a manner that creates the least social friction in any given interaction

This person has clearly never been to Asia, where a whole different level of this exists.

Re: American Phrase Book

#110

Post by roenxi »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #13

Yup. One of the great mysteries of the world is how Americans think they are so straightforward and direct and honest... and then they ask a German if their butt looks big in these pants, and burst into tears on hearing the answer. On a mildly more serious note, I remember well my first ever serious business meeting in the US, where we pitched a potential joint venture to another company. 30 minutes of mutual praise…

And yet the current American president is renowned the world over for using unusually direct and simple language.

'Americans are straightfoward' to me has always meant that when a large group of Americans decide what to do they'll fight it out in public with big, well defined interest groups coalescing around well broadcast opinions. Very transparent. No real nuance at the strategic level; usually simple opinions like 'more money to X' or 'we want a Y' (although often quite a sophisticated execution). Generally clear why people believe what they do. Compare that to the traditional British approach where there is a lot more emphasis on silly pageantry and maintaining dignity in public, like the basic fundamental absurdity of pretending a monarch is somehow more worthy than any other. Americans literally wouldn't stand for pretending that unless they were making money off it somehow.

For all the complicated details of politeness in the small, Americans in large groups are generally crystal clear about what they do and do not like.

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