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Musing on German and American Differences
Feb. 2nd, 2024 05:43 pmYesterday I said farewell to my friend and colleague Jules who is a faculty member at Goethe University Frankfurt (Germany) and who spent the past semester at my university on a Fulbright. Jules is a huge geek (their words) who is currently specializing in language learning and teaching among neurodiverse populations. They are also the only trans/nonbinary member of my academic community that I know. They are also, as you might guess, German and I find all these things delightful.
We had a final chat over coffee today and in addition to thanking me for making this life-changing experience for them possible, they shared several observations that had me thinking about cultural differences and how small but powerful they are.
They joked that during their time in the US, they had learned how to do small-talk. Small-talk is not a German thing - it is also not a Swedish thing. But they had also observed that small talk, like a lot of talk among US Americans, there is no complaining. I was surprised to hear this, but they explained further. It seems that it is a common thing among Germans to complain/or build co-membership around some sort of common adversity or hardship. For instance "Yet more horrible weather for another week." or "Remember that awful conference with the worst coffee." or "The vegetarian dishes here are half the size of the meat dishes. They prepared the same thing but just removed the meat and didn't replace it with anything else. How cheap."
These are not big hardships, but Jules observed an absence of this among Americans relative to what they were accustomed to among Germans. They acknowledge that it was possible that people might choose not to say these things around them, so perhaps their perspective was skewed. But I also agreed that I don't think most Americans immediately start of negative or complaining for fear of being thought of as a negative person.
Jules objected to me calling i complaining but rather commenting on a shared bit of adversity as a bid for friendliness and closeness, comembership.
I think Jules is right and now I am eager to talk to other German friends to ask them if they notice this too.
But I also asked Jules if they had ever heard he comment to watch out about saying negative things about other people/being too critical because people will associate that negativity and criticism to their memory of you. They said they had never heard such a thing.
But this is something I think about a lot. Constantly. So does my husband. I'm not sure if this is an American thing. Maybe it's just us. Maybe we're just weird.
We had a final chat over coffee today and in addition to thanking me for making this life-changing experience for them possible, they shared several observations that had me thinking about cultural differences and how small but powerful they are.
They joked that during their time in the US, they had learned how to do small-talk. Small-talk is not a German thing - it is also not a Swedish thing. But they had also observed that small talk, like a lot of talk among US Americans, there is no complaining. I was surprised to hear this, but they explained further. It seems that it is a common thing among Germans to complain/or build co-membership around some sort of common adversity or hardship. For instance "Yet more horrible weather for another week." or "Remember that awful conference with the worst coffee." or "The vegetarian dishes here are half the size of the meat dishes. They prepared the same thing but just removed the meat and didn't replace it with anything else. How cheap."
These are not big hardships, but Jules observed an absence of this among Americans relative to what they were accustomed to among Germans. They acknowledge that it was possible that people might choose not to say these things around them, so perhaps their perspective was skewed. But I also agreed that I don't think most Americans immediately start of negative or complaining for fear of being thought of as a negative person.
Jules objected to me calling i complaining but rather commenting on a shared bit of adversity as a bid for friendliness and closeness, comembership.
I think Jules is right and now I am eager to talk to other German friends to ask them if they notice this too.
But I also asked Jules if they had ever heard he comment to watch out about saying negative things about other people/being too critical because people will associate that negativity and criticism to their memory of you. They said they had never heard such a thing.
But this is something I think about a lot. Constantly. So does my husband. I'm not sure if this is an American thing. Maybe it's just us. Maybe we're just weird.
