I also like how they used the lack of a German word for smalltalk in the article. Whenever I explain differences between German behavior and Anglo-American behavior to Americans/Brits I tell them the German language has no words for smalltalk, jaywalking, and date rape to set the tone for my explanation. :)
'Thanks', and 'please', are used in Dutch only when there is much to thank for (saving someones life, or at least possessions or the like). While in English they are part of almost any question or exchange, no matter how trivial.
Another one is 'how are you doing', which in Dutch is used to express concern/interest between close friends, or towards a stranger looking extremely distressed. While the English use it almost instead of the neutral 'Hi' between people who met once before. At first it made me wonder whether I looked alright (yes I shaved and showered, and all :).
So yes, they take getting used to, and a common mistake for Dutch/German people probably is (it was for me) thinking that they are meant as strongly as one is used to. But it does not take long to get used to.
Call it a cultural bias, but I slightly prefer the Dutch/German way, as it takes up less time, makes it more straightforward to find out what people think (fewer understatements as well), and does not deflate the meaning of the terms used as much...
(strangely enough the English don't use different terms or pronunciations when there is more to thank for, than the usual, making it hard to judge the extent of gratefulness / problems, etc)...
Anyway, at home they think I am very polite now, thanks :)
As something like a native English speaker I was surprised how often people in Dutch say please and thank you in the Netherlands! (Flanders is of course a different cultural ball-game with politeness rules that remind me of German or French)
The informal would-you-mind-please word is "alsjeblieft" and it is normally used in any interaction with a child or someone in a shop, or even friends of whom you're asking a favour.
And while the informal thank words "dank je wel", "bedankt", "dank je" and "dank" are slightly less used than in much of the English-speaking world, they're still used for lots of stuff that is rather more trivial than saving someone's life. And seem always to be used after asking someone to do something like move their bag off a seat in a packed train... ;-)
And the Dutch certainly say informal hello's - with a slightly smaller bewildering array of sound-words than their goodbyes - with a lot more polite abandon than you'd find in urban English-speaking societies.
I suspect there's a kind of politeness-blindness working here: cultural norms and paradigms are fairly invisible once you're embedded into a society. Once you move, like wybo, the differences snap into focus.
Interestingly, attitudes differ even among German-speaking countries: Austrians often criticize the German "yes means yes, no means no" attitude. I've read an article which attributed this to Austrians' centuries of experience with their Balkan neighbours, which has increased their acceptance of slack and thus has made them much more relaxed than the Germans. Not sure in how far this is true ;-)
Very formal people the German speaking Swiss.
The Vietnamese have a similar attitude. The "Thank You" on your electric bill? The Vietnamese attitude is WTF?
I'm sure that would be fun to watch.
(I was born and raised in EU, living in the US currently.)
What a ridiculous article. Of course Germans have inane conversations about the weather and other trivialities. You know what the German word for "small talk" is? It's "small talk".
Growing a new social circle in Germany is a complete bitch in large part because people really are less superficial and more direct. The "etiquette of simulation" makes everything so much easier. I'm not saying it's all that easy to get to know people in my home country, Ireland, but there is at least a place where talking to total strangers will not get you funny looks, the pub.
And dating, oh god, dating.
I miss Germany.
I miss Germany.
Why, are German women like: "Yes, all required attributes check out. How far is your apartment?"
Or sometimes you're making small talk with someone because you actually are interested in them, and just want to keep the first minute or two of the conversation light for whatever reason. Maybe you haven't seen them in a while and do want to catch up on really general things, or the weather really has been odd lately, or you can't think of anything to say right away and having some stock questions gives you a chance to get your bearings.
Just because it's a bit formulaic and routine doesn't mean all small talk is insincere.
And that's why I prefer NYC : I prefer people to listen to what I have to say, rather than rate me based on my cultural baggage...
When will this idea that because Language X doesn't have Y, the idea Y represents is alien to X speakers finally disappear ?
Although language does have an influence on one's thinking habit, this idea is a gross misrepresentation of very complex phenomena.
There's no word in French for the verb "to need". There's no future tense in Finnish, nor are there any articles. There are no perfective verbs or declensions in English.
Yet, if an idea is intelligible, chances are you can express it in any language, and translate the result in any other.
Hungarian has no word for "to have". No, really! The equivalent circumlocution for "he has X" is more or less "there is X for him".
Languages are weirder than most people give them credit for.
The question is : does it behave like one ?
« Hungarian has no word for "to have" »
Just like Finnish and, curiously enough, Russian.
On the other hand, Russian has several movement verbs that don't exist in English nor in French ("to swim" will be either "плавать" or "плыть", for instance)
Un moment, s'il vous plait. J'ai besoin d'un dictionnaire Français. :)
Translates as: One moment please. I need a French dictionary.
Sure, but there is an expression for the idea - the article didn't just say that there isn't a word for small talk, it said that Germans don't even do small talk. The example given was that th German translation of a Paddington Bear book actually just cuts out the small talk, which does indeed seem to support the idea that you disagree with...
Verbs are a lot more complex in French than in English, so I'm glad they went that way. Seems a lot simpler than adding a whole new verb.
Huh, really? How do they express phrases that refer to future events?
N.B: I just finished my first semester of German. Please someone correct me if I am anyway wrong.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telicity#Telicity_as_an_aspect
Otherwise, it's a matter of context.
As some light googling will reveal (or thinking for a few seconds, if you are, like me, a native German speaker), German does indeed have a word for small talk. There is „Plausch” (that’s the noun) and “plaudern” (and the verb). I suspect that there are also a few other words in regional dialects. („Schwätzchen”, maybe.) There is also „Tratsch“ but that’s more along the lines of gossip and usually between two people who know each other.
I do suspect that small talk is rarer in Germany but I would like to see a quantitative study confirming that, not (what seems like) idle speculation from a Professor who doesn’t even know that her own language has a word for small talk.
Klatsch? Gerede? I'm pretty sure Heidegger's Gerede comes pretty close to what we call "small talk".
"Klatsch" is not "small talk", it's "gossip".
"Gerede" is a word that I've only heard in debates to suggest that something is not to be taken seriously, i.e. it has serious negative connotations. Perhaps it used to mean "small talk" in the past when Germans did such things, and then changed to have the negative meaning when small talk fell out of favour? Of course, the German word "Smalltalk" also tends to be used negatively ;)
Speaking as a professional translator.
The actual difference between "small talk" and "gossip" is slight enough that they easily overlap depending on the situation. Certainly they show that the German language is capable of conceptualizing the various rituals that we refer to as small talk.
Just because English has no precise translation for "Gemütlichkeit" doesn't mean that English speakers never feel comfortable among a small circle of friends at a restaurant.
I'd also like to say that after many years of living in Germany, I'd say that the notion that no small talk ever takes place within the borders of the country is ridiculous. It might not be taken to the extreme art form that the Brits do it, but H. sapiens talks. Incessantly. Whether there's something to talk about or not.
From a German perspective, this is uncomfortably close to deceit.
IMO, this is one of the reasons the Germans lost the war. The English speakers are by nature sneakier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_(flying_bomb)#Deception
http://www.suite101.com/content/allied-misdirection-fooled-g...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer#Influence_and...
