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Why Russians do not smile (2002)

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Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#471

Post by cacarr »

skohan wrote: post #410
ACS_Solver wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

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 s…

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?"

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#472

Post by solipsism »

scrollaway wrote: post #376
vinay427 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#473

Post by mkoubaa »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #204
alisonkisk wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems natural and obvious? But unless you have a secret mucus prevention technique, you'll mouth breathe.

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

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#474

Post by FabHK »

solipsism wrote: post #468
FabHK wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#475

Post by gryz »

pretext wrote: post #373
andreskytt wrote: post #256

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…

> 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". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle

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.

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#476

Post by pandaman »

cperciva wrote: post #229
davidgh wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Молодец, нельзя, фу, тоска, почемучка. 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.

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.

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#477

Post by kaliszad »

wruza wrote: post #359
Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL wrote: post #223

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 rela…

[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 zo…

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.

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#478

Post by pandaman »

colanderman wrote: post #212
cosmodisk wrote: post #116

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 f…

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 sig…

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.

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#479

Post by Jetrel »

firebaze wrote: post #74
zeroc8 wrote: post #60

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 ano…

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.

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#480

Post by kaliszad »

skohan wrote: post #410
ACS_Solver wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

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 s…

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.

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