

Differences between German and British manners - ireadzalot
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13545386
"Germans really don't do small talk, those little phrases so familiar to the British about the weather or a person's general well-being, but which she describes as "empty verbiage"."
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sp_
Being German, I find it fascinating that so many people on both sides of the
Channel are so fascinated with the differences between the Brits and the
Germans. Coming from a German perspective, I don't think there is any other
country whose manners the German media is so obsessed with. Similar feelings
seem to exist in Britain with big Sun front pages about German misbehavings
once in a while covering all aspects of life (see "two world wars, one world
cup" for example).

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. :)

~~~
jdietrich
Hypothesis: German and British cultures are so similar as to create an
'uncanny valley' situation. British and Italian or Spanish habits are so
obviously different that individual differences are quite unremarkable.
British and German habits are so similar that any differences are unsettling.
Faux pas are much more painful when the situation feels very familiar.

~~~
sp_
Hm, this uncanny valley idea is actually really interesting. Thank you very
much for bringing it up. I'll think about this for a while.

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wybo
Am a Dutch student currently studying in the UK, and many of these differences
are true indeed, and possibly even larger between Dutch and English people
than between Germans and the English.

'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 :)

~~~
blumentopf
I think the Germanic approach is particularly helpful for Asperger people,
which are obviously prevalent in the IT industry. The social protocol is
easier to parse.

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 ;-)

~~~
barry-cotter
I was shocked to find out the Schwyer were even more um, polite, than the
Germans. Hallo is an implied "du", as was tschüss so unless you want to piss
everybody off, it was either Guten Tag or Grüssi and Aufwiedersehen.

Very formal people the German speaking Swiss.

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schrototo
> "In a lift or a doctor's waiting room, talk about the weather in German? I
> don't think so," she says.

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".

~~~
VMG
You're right, but what does it say about Germans when they have to borrow the
word "small talk"?

~~~
gloob
Much the same thing that it says about English-speakers when they have to
borrow the word "entrepreneur".

~~~
geebee
There is a slight difference, though, in that the English speaking world has
taken a huge amount of its vocabulary from French. It may be less remarkable
when Americans borrow a word then when Germans do this. That said,
"Entrepreneur", from what I read on wikipedia, was a 19th century import, not
a William the Conquerer import, so you do make a pretty good point - it does
seem more of a "borrowed word" than a core part of the language.

You'd have me convinced, except that I have it on the assurances of a fine
former US president that the French, in fact, have no word for entrepreneur.

~~~
lispm
English has a huge vocabulary from German. Even the royal family was mostly
imported from Germany.

~~~
geebee
Oh yeah, English vocabulary may be even more German than French... what I
remember is that while overall English vocabulary is heavily French, it leans
more German when you consider the most frequently used, conversational words.

~~~
sambeau
The little words tend to be Germanic the big words tend to be French. The
names of farm animals tend to be Germanic the names of meats tend to be
French. Swearing is Germanic.

It's a class thing.

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barry-cotter
I used to think smalltalk was annoying and useless. I was most of the way out
of that attitude by the time I lived in Germany, and was thoroughly rid of it
by the time I left.

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.

~~~
stcredzero
_And dating, oh god, dating.

I miss Germany._

Why, are German women like: "Yes, all required attributes check out. How far
is your apartment?"

~~~
barry-cotter
No. It's much more about intersecting social circles than other places I've
been. That said you can get places in nightclubs and the mindgames involved in
courtship are different. But if you wanted to settle down and were a
relatively respectable, solvent man, Germany'd be great.

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ChrisMac
_"For their part, the British have what House calls the "etiquette of
simulation". The British feign an interest in someone..."_

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.

~~~
mdda
There's also the aspect of accents. Which is less applicable in America
(IMHO). More small-talk = more exact understanding of where someone is coming
from (in all senses).

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...

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Typhon
« _The German language doesn't even have an expression for "small talk", she
says._ »

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.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> There's no future tense in Finnish

Huh, really? How do they express phrases that refer to future events?

~~~
xxpor
In German at least, the future exists, but is rarely used unless it is
necessary to disambiguate. For example, you would just say, Ich fahre morgen
mit meinem Auto in die Schweiz. Lit. translated: I drive tomorrow with my car
in/to Switzerland. More idiomatically translated: I will (or I'm going to)
drive in my car to Switzerland tomorrow. I assume it's the same in Finnish,
but it might not be because Finnish isn't even a Indo-European language.

N.B: I just finished my first semester of German. Please someone correct me if
I am anyway wrong.

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ugh
Can we please kill that stupid “X has no word for Y!” snowclone? Please? (Or
at least get people to do some basic research before they say something stupid
like that.)

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.

~~~
Typhon
On one hand, I want to say you should read the thread before posting, on the
other hand, if someone reaches the same conclusions independently from the
rest, it decreases the likelihood that we're all insane.

~~~
ugh
I did read the thread but only after my comment was already written. I feel
kinda bad about posting but I didn’t want to throw the comment away. (I
searched the thread for “small talk” before I started writing and didn’t find
anything because everybody who decided to write about German and small talk
seems to have decided to write “smalltalk”.)

------
BasDirks
"The German language doesn't even have an expression for "small talk", she
says. It is so alien that in the German translation of A Bear called
Paddington - Paddington unser kleiner Baer - it was omitted."

Klatsch? Gerede? I'm pretty sure Heidegger's Gerede comes pretty close to what
we call "small talk".

~~~
nhaehnle
Native speaker of German here.

"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 ;)

~~~
lispm
Unterhaltung

Konversation

~~~
barry-cotter
Both of those could be applied to any conversational exchange, whether
information was really being exchanged or not, and smalltalk is heavily
weighted towards the "not".

It's not what you say, but how you say it. /exaggeration

~~~
mhd
Schwatz, Plausch, Plauderei, Tratsch? And as we're getting very informal here,
local dialects take over. Which is one of the reason why "small talk",
sounding a bit more high-brow, was so easily adopted.

~~~
barry-cotter
Dear God, I don't recognise a single one of those. But what about people from
areas that might have local slang but don't have a dialect, like Niedersachsen
or (bits of) the Rhineland? And what about the university attending classes,
who are much more likely to become free-floating German instead of being
rooted to anyplace particular?

~~~
mhd
Germans from beyond the Danube are cold heartless people who don't chat. No,
seriously, I'm not really an expert when it comes to dialects, and there
doesn't seem to be a proper etymological German dictionary online. And just
because they don't appear to have a dialect (which is wrong anyway, it's just
that their dialect is now "proper" German) doesn't meant that there aren't
slang words. And it seems that a lot of the words for chit-chat area
onomatopoeic...

Just saying that there are words for mindless chatter that don't mean gossip
per se (i.e gossipy "Klatsch" vs. chatty "Tratsch").

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stcredzero
_For their part, the British have what House calls the "etiquette of
simulation". The British feign an interest in someone...

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://www.suite101.com/content/allied-misdirection-fooled-
german-defenders-in-world-war-two-a339014)

~~~
killedbydeath
Why do people forget about the Soviet Union when talking about "the war"?

~~~
jdminhbg
His post didn't mention the US or Italy either. I'm not sure what on earth
that has to do with a discussion about British and German etiquette.

~~~
stcredzero
_His post didn't mention the US..._

Last I checked, English is the language spoken in the US.

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IDGConnect
Even UK and German attitudes to IT secruity and social are very different. I
was fascinated to see that Germans are far more likely to block Twitter in the
workplace that Brits: <http://twitpic.com/52e4cm>

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pavel_lishin
Sounds pretty similar to articles I've read comparing American speech with
Russian.

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hexxs
Hi. I'm German and the word for small talk is "Schwätzchen"

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DasIch
The word is (almost) extinct and has long been replaced with "small talk".

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hexxs
Sorry but this is nonsense.

~~~
ido
Maybe it's a regional thing.

I have never heard the word used in the more than 6 years I've lived in
Vienna.

~~~
ugh
But surely, you must have heard someone talk of “plaudern”?

~~~
ido
Yes, that's a common word.

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jordinl
I like when British people say "we should have a proper catch up" and they
mean exactly nothing...

