I’ve come to learn that the American habit of discussing what you do for a living is considered a bit rude in many other places. If that’s the case, then what does make for polite conversation when meeting someone new? Say the new person is a neighbor who just moved in next door, or your mate’s brother who’s passing through town and decided to get a pint with the lads, or what have you?
Les grandes personnes aiment les chiffres. Quand vous leur parlez d’un nouvel ami, elles ne vous questionnent jamais sur l’essentiel. Elles ne vous disent jamais: “Quel est le son de sa voix ? Quels sont les jeux qu’il préfère ? Est-ce qu’il collectionne les papillons ?” Elles vous demandent: “Quel âge a-t-il ? Combien a-t-il de frères ? Combien pèse-t-il ? Combien gagne son père ?” Alors seulement elles croient le connaître. Si vous dites aux grandes personnes: “J’ai vu une belle maison en briques roses, avec des géraniums aux fenêtres et des colombes sur le toit…” elles ne parviennent pas à s’imaginer cette maison. Il faut leur dire: “J’ai vu une maison de cent mille francs.” Alors elles s’écrient: "Comme c’est joli !
The games they like, if they collect butterflies…
I don’t really have an answer for you, but your question made me remember that part of Le Petit Prince. Culturally, small talk where I live does often circle around the weather and work, but getting to know someone should mean getting to know more about what they enjoy and value.
I’m terrible at small talk though!
In Germany, what works almost anytime is talking about football (soccer), the latest game, the national team, the latest hijinks of FC Hollywood (FC Bayern), you name it. They say we’re a people of 80 million national coaches.
ETA: what’s almost taboo, at least frowned upon, is asking for someone’s religious affiliation, so asking which church someone goes to is out of the picture. Religion is considered a private matter here.
I wish that were the case in the US. I remember when I opened up my bank account on my first day in my new town, the banker (who knew my landlady) invited me to her church!! Even by American standards, that’s pretty unprofessional.
In the UK (I’ve not lived there in 20 years but visit often enough to know it still holds) it’s the weather obviously, and obscure very specific roads. “The traffic on the B4009 outside Reading, nightmare I tell you, and they have those speed cameras now”
But your quote states the precise opposite! People will never ask the right questions, like what is the sound of his voice, which games does he like, does he collect butterflies? They will ask you instead: What is his age? How many siblings does he have? How much does he weigh? How much does his father earn?
Weather, yes. Work? It depends on your work, I guess. Garbage collector? I guess there is not much to tell that will interest people for long. Soccer, or sport in general? More of a male thing, usually.
So am I, I must admit. I have been told that listening is more important than talking when doing small talk. Which is hard to do when the other person is wrong, but I keep trying.
This is true where I am. You get to it eventually, but it’s never the conversational opener the way it is in the States.
Here in Luxembourg, the most usual common point of interest is “where in the country do you live?” Being a very small nation with lots of cross-border visitors, you can get a lot of information about someone based on whether they live In The City or in an outlying village, or choose to live just across the line in Belgium or France or Germany and commute in. And this naturally transitions into discussions of road construction, infrastructure improvements, politics, etc.
Canada here. Anything to do with religion is right out. Same with politics, when you’re meeting someone new.
Other than that, the weather is always a good topic. But it all depends on context: if I’m greeting my new next-door neighbour, I might tell him about the neighbourhood. Somebody at the sports bar, and we’ll be talking sports. On the golf course, we’ll be talking golf. Those sorts of things, where context commands the conversation. Later on, we’ll move on to what we do for a living, but not to start.
But never religion or politics, in any circumstance.
Weather, of course, in the UK but gardening can be suitably neutral.
Weather is certainly the conversation opener in the UK, this can then transition into plans for the weekend, then wider conversations around holiday plans (where have you been, where are you going), where you live/have lived, commentary around what you know of that place or who you know there.
Never religion, you’d be looked upon as a weirdo. Certainly not politics, far too confrontational. You might get around to what you do for a living eventually depending on the occasion, but only once you’ve ticked off everything in the paragraph above. For example, my hair dresser, who I’ve been seeing for at least 8 years, knows where I’m going on holiday, that I’ve just moved house, my plans for the weekend and that I work in an office near the salon, but she doesn’t know what I do for a living.
It’s interesting, but politics isn’t really a controversial subject where I am, at least in my experience. Everyone agrees that every political party is imperfect and has its own myopic viewpoint, and the only real question is how to construct parliament to balance the various narrow perspectives and create a functioning body.
And if that threatens to become an argument, we just pivot to complaining about American politics, because everyone here agrees that Trump is a psychopath and the US is rapidly tumbling down a slope of corruption into becoming a totally broken state. That’s a reliably safe topic for chit-chat. (And I have the advantage of an inside track on the subject, so everyone is interested in my insights.)
I wish our politics was as civilised, but while the likes of Nigel Farage and Liz Truss still stir the debate, it’s not likely in the near future.
In Ireland, it’s who your common acquaintances are. It’s taken for granted when you meet someone new that you will have common acquaintances; it’s just a matter of identifying them. This often involves an enquiry into what part of the country someone is from, and then you work from there.
Religion is a no-no, unless it comes up incidentally in connection with common acquaintances. (“If you’re from such-and-such a place, you might know X?” “Yes, I remember her; she used to sing in my church choir.”) But someone’s religious background is often discerned without asking about it.
Asking about occupation can be sensitive; depending on the circumstances, it might be (mis)understood as an attempt to rank someone socially according to how prestigious their occupation is.
Honestly, I wish I knew. I am hopeless at small talk in any culture, including my own.
“Hi, I’m Vbob. Would you like a kitten? No? How about TWO kittens?”
Most of the time I meet someone new, it will be in some given context—work, at a party of a mutual acquaintance, whatever. Then, either you could work within that context (‘What’s your workday like? How do you know X?’), or deliberately outside of it (‘What do you do when you’re not at work?’).
If there’s no context at all, just some random meeting, I’ll typically try and open up the topic for the other party—say, asking something like, ‘What do you do with your time?’, which then allows them to either interpret it as me asking for their job, or talk about their favorite hobby, or whatever. Then, either there’s some common ground, or not—in which case, not much point in forcing a conversation.
Not sure if that’s emblematic of my culture (I’m German), but it’s what I usually aim for, and so far, I seem to not have caused many great scandals. Or if I did, I was entirely oblivious to them, which is just as well.
I typically meet people through my children and their friends so that’s normally what we talk about. It can be a bit awkward because my kids’ friends’ parents aren’t necessarily people I’d choose to hang out with. Now that they’re a bit older I can just drop them off and don’t have to socialise. That said, now that they’re a bit older they’ve made friends who have pretty cool parents so I don’t mind sticking around for a chat.
The “what do you do for a living” topic tends not to come up until we’ve moved past the basic small talk. Most people have jobs that I don’t really know anything about anyway.
“So what do you do to earn a crust Bob?”
“I’m in sheet metal manufacturing”
“Oooh kay… and what does that entail?”
“Well, we supply T joint gadget strips to a couple of big appliance firms like Harvey Price and Fisher Pickles”
I’m left with no idea what the person actually does when they walk in to their office.
+1
(Although two chaps might risk sport, especially during the season or when England are playing)
Just to add a few specifics - roadworks and potholes. For those who don’t know it’s quite unusual these days for a British road to have a surface. Hence the above. And thank god for that, because I’m awful at small talk.
j
In the same vein, the only somewhat political subject you can use for small talk here is complaining about Deutsche Bahn (our national railway company). In the face of only 63% of trains being punctual, after decades of the Bahn promising to get better while everything gets worse, everyone can relate to that and has their own stories.