# Does common-sense courtesy differ between cultures? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 8, 2010, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417 "2010-06-08T12:58:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2010, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/41 "2010-06-09T17:52:21Z")
No, there’s no direct verbal equivalent of “thank you.” You might smile and nod in a particular way. A person of higher status would never do this though. It’s possible to say something like “Okay, good,” but it doesn’t really mean “thank you.” ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2010, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/42 "2010-06-09T18:00:06Z")
There _are_ words for ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ in Hindi, for the record - _kripaya_ and _shukriya/dunyavaad_. That said, I’ve literally never heard anyone say kripaya, or even one of the idiomatic phrases which mean the same thing (there are like a dozen). Shukriya is actually Urdu, and as far as I know is largely used by people in the North. It’s probable that she does not consider Hindi her native language even if she’s Indian, however. It’s the _lingua franca_ of India, but few people speak it at home. She probably prefers to converse in the local tongue- Marathi, Punjabi or Gujarati, most likely (75% of Indian emigrants are from those states). ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2010, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/43 "2010-06-09T18:05:52Z")
Yes, I should have said that the words do exist, but people would think you very strange for using them. They sound very highfalutin’ and poetic. In fact, it would be more common to switch to English and actually say “please” and “thank you.” People only use the Bengali version of “please” if they’re being sarcastic. For thank you, you could say “dhonnobad” or “shukriya,” but they’re not considered Bengali words and people would wonder if you were pulling their legs if you said it. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/44 "2010-06-10T01:28:07Z")
> [@Mr.Excellent](#): > > **Even Sven** , why don’t people go outside in the rain in Cameroon? Is it a health thing - a concern about poorly-built sewers or latrines flowing into the street, or something like that? Or does it just really, really bum people out to get wet? I think mostly that people don’t own umbrellas. The muddy streets don’t help, either. Luckily in my area it didn’t rain nine months of the year, and even during rainy season you’d probably just get an hour or two of downpour in the evening. The extremism is pretty funny, though. If it rains and you are out and about, it’s perfectly acceptable and even expected to duck into the closest shop or house and hang out until the rain stops. I spent many hours sitting in strangers’ living rooms waiting for the rains to stop! Any work comes to a halt, classes are cancelled, meetings don’t happen, etc. In Cameroon I think people walked slow because it’s hot and nobody really had to be anywhere in a hurry. Here in Sichuan, I guess it’s related to the famously relaxed lifestyle. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/45 "2010-06-10T03:17:16Z")
I’m now thinking about one time when the wife and I went to buy a bus ticket in Kathmandu for upcountry Nepal. We got to the ticket office, an outdoor affair, and there was this huge mass of humanity pushing and shoving. I must have looked despondent gazing on the scene, because a couple of kind Nepali men suddenly grabbed me by the hand and squeezed em up to the front! That was the day the wife decided for sure that what she’d had drummed into her while growing up, that South Asians were evil people, was not necessarily true. I recall getting on and off the subway in Mexico City was an adventure. The mass inside the cars and the mass on the platform just rammed each other head on in an attempt to pass. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/46 "2010-06-10T03:22:50Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > My students think it’s crazy that I’d volunteer working to make strangers’ lives better when my mother clearly misses me and I could be earning money to raise my family’s status. Many see my becoming a Peace Corps volunteer as a bizarre and slightly immoral decision. Meanwhile, they think my hesitance to push someone out of the way at a bus stop is inexplicable. I’ve known some PCVs in Thailand, and not only is the concept of volunteerism among the locals a bit hazy, the PCVs’ meagre stipend they get to live on is actually about the same pay as the civil servants they work with get and considered good money. Thus, many Thais don’t regard them as volunteers at all, because obviously they’re making good money, what with their “high” civil-servant pay. (A couple hundred bucks US long ago; I’m sure it’s gone up some since but probably not much.) It’s difficult to explain they could be making even more back home. ---
**Author:** ![Pyper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Pyper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pyper)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/47 "2010-06-10T03:44:17Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > T > I’ve always understood it here as a different sense of social obligation. In China, I get the impression you have near infinite social obligations to your in-group. You’d go to just about any length to help out your friends, family, classmates and coworkers. But this means you have little social obligations towards strangers. In America, I think we feel a sort of baseline social obligation to everyone and don’t give our social in-group a ton of special consideration. If our friend asks us to do something we don’t feel like doing, we’re likely to tell him no. But we feel a strong need to say “thank you” and “please” to strangers we interact with on a regular basis. Wow, this is exactly how I would describe Spain. In Spain, people have absolutely no obligation to be polite towards strangers. Store clerks throw your purchases at you. Old ladies shove you off the sidewalk so they can walk past. There are no queues and people think nothing of pushing aside others to get served first. Total strangers shout and swear at each other in the streets over minor disagreements. However, the generosity and closeness felt toward friends and family far surpasses American culture. (P.S. Españoles del Dope, please don’t be offended. Just keep in mind that I lived in Granada, land of the infamous malafollá.) ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/48 "2010-06-10T09:16:15Z")
Actually, something I’ve noticed after this year abroad is that either my memory is already going to shit (could be), or people have decided to remember their manners. It isn’t a regional thing, either, I’ve noticed it both in Navarre and in Seville. What I don’t know is whether it’s been a positive consequence of the influx of Latin Americans, or that enough people got sick of never receiving a “thank you” and figured out they’d be more likely to get them if they ever did give them. But I like it! ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/49 "2010-06-10T09:58:08Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > I’ve known some PCVs in Thailand, and not only is the concept of volunteerism among the locals a bit hazy, the PCVs’ meagre stipend they get to live on is actually about the same pay as the civil servants they work with get and considered good money. The idea in Peace Corps is to live on the level of your community. In Cameroon we got good money and it was fine. We got paid like high school teachers, but high school teachers were considered well-off and in any case there was nothing to buy and nobody cared how much money you have. In China we really don’t get anywhere near enough money and it’s such a status oriented culture. I know shoe-shine ladies who make more money than me, but I have the social obligations of a college professor. Deng Xiaoping is attributed with “to be rich is to be glorious” and people have taken that pretty literally- making money is almost a moral imperative. So it’s kind of seen as an objectively bad thing that I’m pulling out my $10.00 fake Nokia while even my students are dropping a few hundred bucks on iPhones. A lot of people think we’ve done something wrong, and have been sent to China as some kind of punishment. Others think we are guaranteed civil service jobs after doing a “hardship post.” Of course lots of people think we are spies. I don’t think anyone understands why we stick around when we could easily, within a week, find a job paying four to ten times more that would make us part of the city’s elite. Honestly, a lot of use don’t have an answer to this either. Anyway, Peace Corps is kind of a different thing out here. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/50 "2010-06-10T17:33:30Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > This drives me nuts! People tell me “oh, the concept of a line is different here.” Bullshit! When I go to the train station I see all kinds of people in line. But maybe one out of ten people will stand in the line for a few minutes, and then think “Naw, why should this line apply to me?” and walk right up to the front like nobody’s business. They saw the line, they knew they are supposed to wait in it, but then they decided they would rather cut instead. That’s rude in any culture, and it’s only because people are raised to avoid conflict that they get away with it. > > Anyway, there are some customs you can get used to, and some you can’t. I don’t blink an eye when someone hawks up a golf-ball sized loogie right onto a restaurant floor. But when the people sharing my seat on the miserable twenty hour overnight hard seat train decide three AM is the perfect time to play the “two people simultaneously yell random numbers at the top of their freaking lungs loud enough that they can be heard several blocks away” drinking game while everyone in the car is clearly trying to sleep, I’m going to end up in a seething rage. I could be here a thousand years and I’d never be okay with that situation. > > I’ve always understood it here as a different sense of social obligation. In China, I get the impression you have near infinite social obligations to your in-group. You’d go to just about any length to help out your friends, family, classmates and coworkers. But this means you have little social obligations towards strangers. In America, I think we feel a sort of baseline social obligation to everyone and don’t give our social in-group a ton of special consideration. If our friend asks us to do something we don’t feel like doing, we’re likely to tell him no. But we feel a strong need to say “thank you” and “please” to strangers we interact with on a regular basis. > > My students think it’s crazy that I’d volunteer working to make strangers’ lives better when my mother clearly misses me and I could be earning money to raise my family’s status. Many see my becoming a Peace Corps volunteer as a bizarre and slightly immoral decision. Meanwhile, they think my hesitance to push someone out of the way at a bus stop is inexplicable. > > I see things that make me want to cry- people living in places they hate, marrying people they hate, etc. to please their parents. I get confused when people will spend a week’s wages just taking a friend out to dinner. Meanwhile, I think that people’s willingness to elbow an old lady out of the way at a bus stop is bizarre. What a great post. You must be an awesome Peace Corps representative. I learned more about Chinese culture from your post than I did in several visits to China. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/51 "2010-06-10T17:44:06Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > I’m now thinking about one time when the wife and I went to buy a bus ticket in Kathmandu for upcountry Nepal. We got to the ticket office, an outdoor affair, and there was this huge mass of humanity pushing and shoving. I must have looked despondent gazing on the scene, because a couple of kind Nepali men suddenly grabbed me by the hand and squeezed em up to the front! That was the day the wife decided for sure that what she’d had drummed into her while growing up, that South Asians were evil people, was not necessarily true. This reminds me of an experience in Jamaica. I was in Kingston trying to find the “country bus” up into the Blue Mountains. I finally got to the right stop, but it was late afternoon and the next bus would be the last. I bought some peanuts and shared them with an elderly Jamaican guy, He looked at me and said “you are your brother’s keeper”. I think “it’s just peanuts dude”. A while later the bus arrives and any semblance of a queue disappears as people rush the door. The guy next to me runs to the side of the bus, puts his foot on the top of a tire, and hoists himself through a window. Then he waves frantically to me to do the same. I pass my heavy backpack through the window then he hauls me in after. Much amusement, and admiration, all around by the locals. As we went up the mountains and it got darker all I heard was “blah, blah, blah white mon, blah, blah, white mon”. When it got to my stop the man had arranged with a woman to help me find the hostel. Pretty cool experience. ---
**Author:** ![Dervorin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/52 "2010-06-10T18:03:32Z")
> [@The\_Devil\_s\_Grandmother](#): > > It’s a stereotype, but in my experience an accurate one: Americans and Brits will form a neat, single-file line and wait their turn at (for example) the ticket office. Italians, however, will form a small scrum in front of the ticket office. If, in America or Britain, Italians will walk unselfconsciously to the front of the line and cut in. > > I’ve heard Germans use the English method, and some other countries follow the Italian method, but I have not been to Germany to verify. There’s this terrific animation, called simply “Europe and Italy” that should explain all, and provide much amusement besides. [http://www.opendb.net/element/16934.php](http://www.opendb.net/element/16934.php) ---
**Author:** ![Dervorin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/53 "2010-06-10T18:13:05Z")
> [@Dervorin](#): > > There’s this terrific animation, called simply “Europe and Italy” that should explain all, and provide much amusement besides. > > [http://www.opendb.net/element/16934.php](http://www.opendb.net/element/16934.php) Now this, of course, raises the question of whether it’s common-sense courtesy to read all of a thread before replying to it, or whether getting carried away by excitement is a valid excuse for re-posting something that someone else already mentioned upthread. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2010, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/54 "2010-06-10T18:54:29Z")
> [@Dervorin](#): > > Now this, of course, raises the question of whether it’s common-sense courtesy to read all of a thread before replying to it, > > _snip_ Bah commen sense courtesy is for weak-willed no-backbone losers. Anyway I found this cool flash video that might illustrate the differences between Italians and other Europeans. > **[Italy's trendiest flash mobs: the dancing Franciscans - Life in Italy](https://lifeinitaly.com/flash-mobs-dancing-franciscans/)** > > The last, documented one took place about two weeks ago in Florence and the video, published as usual on social networks, went viral in a matter of hours: I am not talking of VIPs interviews or dumb acts glorified by the net, as it... ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2010, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/55 "2010-06-11T03:30:21Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Of course lots of people think we are spies. Well, aren’t you? 😉 I remember when they first started trying to arrange Peace Corps in China. Late 1980s or early 1990s that was, although I don’t know when they finally settled on terms or the first PCVs actually arrived, But back then it was in the news that there was a hang-up on the word “Corps,” which apparently has a decidedly military connotation in Chinese. What did they end up calling you? ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2010, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/56 "2010-06-11T04:17:36Z")
We ended up being the US-China Friendship Volunteers. Then a few years later, rather inexplicably, China started it’s own program that they called…Peace Corps. It’s kind of an odd trend. For whatever reason, China decided to call it’s version of the Center for Disease Control…the Center for Disease Control. So now whenever one talks about health stuff in China you are constantly saying stuff like “Then the CDC advised the CDC to…” ---
**Author:** ![lshaw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e36b37/32.png) [@lshaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lshaw)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2010, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/57 "2010-06-11T04:34:28Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > This drives me nuts! People tell me “oh, the concept of a line is different here.” I laughed when I read this. It brings back memories. During my first trip to China, I tagged along with my grandpa. This grandpa was born and raised in Beijing before moving to Taiwan. I’d never seen him act anything but poised and well mannered, so what happened during our trip came to me as a shock. I was in line for a ticket at a train station, and I stood there forever because everyone else basically pushed ahead of me and bought their tickets. I wasn’t doing anything to stop them and was getting knocked around all the time. My grandpa got peeved and pushed straight through the crowd, shoved everyone aside, and bitched them out (“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Get in line, woman!!!”) before telling the ticket lady, “one ticket, please”. Nobody protested because they were all used to it. My grandpa told me that you have to be aggressive in China or else you won’t get what you want. There are too few things for too many people, and if you don’t fight for it, you just get stepped on and pushed aside. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2010, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417/58 "2010-06-11T05:51:55Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > We ended up being the US-China Friendship Volunteers. Then a few years later, rather inexplicably, China started it’s own program that they called…Peace Corps. They wouldn’t mind a military connotation as long as it’s them. Probably good public relations for the army even if they weren’t involved. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-common-sense-courtesy-differ-between-cultures/542417.md?page=2)