A Canadian is not likely to yell at you for standing/walking on the wrong side, but you better watch out for the Death Stare of Death.
I may reflexively apologize if I inadvertently touch someone (even if they’re the one who’ve stepped on me), but that’s not the same thing as being polite. It’s just automatic.
And, of course, whatever totally insignificant news is making the rounds. “D’you hear about that shoe they found in the High Street?”
Substitute “Koreans” for “Vietnamese,” and I could tell almost exactly the same story.
When I was growing up in Queens, New York, many of the local mini-grocery stores were owned by either Greeks or Koreans. And the difference in the way customers were treated was enormous!
If I walked into the store of a Greek, he would chat me up, call my “my friend,” and make a fuss over me, even if he’d never seen me before!
Korean shopkeepers, on the other hand, are extremely brusque. They just want you to hurry up, pay for your goods and leave. They don’t chat, they rarely smile.
Now, I don’t mean to insult the Koreans. In fact, when a shopper is in a hurry, he’s probably better off going to a Korean’s store!
Once you understand that this is simply a standard cultural trait, you don’t mind Korean brusqueness. On the other hand, Korean shopkeepers in largely black neighborhoods are often EXTREMELY unpopular, probably because black shoppers misinterpret standard Korean icy reserve as racism.
Mostly, I find it uncomfortable because it makes the conversation seem like work.
Maybe this is an UK class thing I’m transposing onto a different society, but it also feels like the person is evaluating you. For example, if you grew up somerwhere very poor or very rich, or went to a very famous university, the person is going to make snap judgements of you based on that. Basically, it makes talking to a lot of Americans (especially women) feel like a job interview.
It also makes the conversation feel a bit less organic/natural. You may rightly mock talking about the weather etc, but to me the American alternative when you just meet someone has a feel of “ok we just met let’s have the just met conversation! where are you from?” Ugh.
pdts
I have a former-student/friend whose family is pointedly from Japan. They had visitors from Japan who said they wanted the American experience, so they got them into the home of church friends, who are American white.
Two days later the people came back: “They didn’t feed us!” Skeptical looks among the family…
They called the white family and got, “Well, they sure don’t eat much. We kept offering them food, but they kept refusing it. Then they left.”
The host family didn’t offer it after two refusals and took them at their word, leaving them hungry.
The great American physicist Richard Feynman and the humorist Dave Barry both wrote of their frustrations with this approach. I have to say I think it’s at least inefficient.
Thank you! I grew up in that culture and I found it incredibly annoying too. How phony. It takes fishing for compliments to new lows.
But it’s just not the reason in this case. There are plenty of jinxes and avoidance of random things, but this isn’t one of them. False modesty isn’t a matter of superstition but of saving face.
If it were a matter of bad luck or upsetting some supernatural force, the person would tell you “Shh… don’t say that” or “Maybe it’s not so good to talk like that…”.
If religion and politics are prohibited topics, does that mean they are also unimportant and/or superficial? And don’t political/religious leanings affect how a person behaves in daily life?
What’s a “Little Emperor” dynamic?
It could also be a case of “not a big deal”.
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But how do you sustain a conversation that way beyond a minute or two? Does everyone have to be experts on football and weather?
Smalltalk would seem to be really difficult without lead-ins to other topics, the opportunity to ask questions with longer answers, etc.
So what do you do when you actually want to get to know someone but aren’t interested in the same sports? How do you find topics of overlap to continue the conversation if you’re not allowed to talk about anything?
That would be the one that causes death, right? 
As a German, I can confirm this observation, but it made me curious: in which German region did you make these experiences? ( I would guess somewhere in the North)
Drove me a little bit mad at first (I’m an American who lived there for a while in the '90’s), but I quickly grew to quite appreciate the directness and lack of inscrutable fakeness that Americans naturally display, not to mention many American’s rampant passive-aggressiveness (especially on the west coast).
I was being a bit flippant about the football. It’s really a matter of avoiding topics which might make a stranger feel socially awkward. Asking about your career is sensitive because what if you’re unemployed? Or doing a shitty job in a room full of professionals? Politics and religion can cause heated discussions which just don’t feel appropriate in strange company - you could get into a row and embarrass yourself, the other person, your partner or your host.
So you stick to non controversial topics: ‘where did you go on holiday?’ ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Oh, do you know such and such?’ ‘This food is delicious, do you cook?’ That kind of thing. It’s called ‘smalltalk’ for a reason.
And you never EVER ask how much someone earns. Even close friends. I don’t know what ANY of my friends earns.
Just saw this. Yes! That is what i was alluding to.
I didn’t say that the Israeli response was worse, or mine better. It simply was more direct and to the point. That may be good or bad depending on your point of view.
“Little Emperor” refers to the enormous spoiling of an only child due to China’s one-kid policy. Here’s wikipedia’s take.
Poor old CAPTAIN, is that the best you can do ?
Its like being savaged by an angry sheep.
Better luck next time.
Bye bye .
I thought “where are you from?” was one of the proscribed topics? What if you’re from someplace famously poor/wealthy?
Not a nationality but a culture—Deaf (capital D, not small d) are known to be very blunt.
I don’t know of any place in the US where it’s not considered extremely boorish to ask an acquaintance how much they earn.