[just to spell it out for the story's sake, both me and my wife are Finns]

Well, here’s one story of confusing americans: I’d gotten perfectly used to these “we’ll get together sometime soon” and “we’ll have to invite you to dinner”-things that really didn’t mean a shit. And I was fine with that. Once you learn to use the phrases yourself, it’s way easier to avoid people when you can pretend to be nice

Anyway, one time in the midwest (we’d been living on the east coast at the time) we met this 100% american couple at a party. The husband seemed quite enthusiastic and told us “since you’re new here, we’re gonna have to take you to dinner someday soon!”. So here I was thinking that ‘sure, yeah, whatever, like that’ll happen.’ To our great surprise he then calls over to his wife “hey XXX, why don’t you come over here with our calender… let’s see.. how’s day after tomorrow for you?” 30 seconds later we’d set the date & time for getting together.

I was totally shell-shocked. This was not how it was supposed to go. So I guess it just goes to show that americans can be confusing just by themselves, you don’t necessarily need any cultural differences

Americans? Confusing?? I am from the UK and grew up by a US airbase, surrounded by Americans. UK and US people both say things which we don’t mean.

What I find most strange, and annoying because I do it and wish I didn’t, is how the English tend to be polite to people we really don’t like. I’ve stayed in touch with someone I really dislike for a year precisely because of this.

Thats why Finns get this reputation of being rude and unfriendly. We don’t say things just to be polite, because if you say something you are taught to honor your words. So a Finn won’t make any promises they cannot keep.

Wherefore for a Finn foreigners are untrusworthy and “full of shit” so you rather get in contact with a Finn because you don’t need to second-guess the meanings.

Of course – there are nuances – and theres a load of Finns that are “full of shit” too.

In the internet, the US American people are so friendly! At least those AP/BF/SAHM sites (what? you don’t know these abbreviations?) are all hugs and prayers (prayers?!?!). They seem like a totally different kind of people altogether. And they remember other people’s names, and their children’s names!

This has always been an issue to me, both in the U.K. and especially in the U.S. when people say these nice things because it’s a habit of speaking, or small talk. One lady said once “Nice to see you”, while she was not even watching at me, and was turning her back towards me. For me this was rude, not polite. And I prefer the Finnish rudeness, which means actually integrity to me. Of course, I miss small talk in Finland, and the small polite gestures.. but still. In this area, I want always be a Finn, and say only what I mean, and stand behind for.

Yeah, the Finnish way of speaking seems preferable to me. But then, I’m from Texas….

A few years back I worked in France with some other foreigners, including one Englishman.

I’ve never been a friend of early mornings (or anything AM really). Whenever I met the Englishman, which usually happened at morning coffee, I was bound to be in a bad mood. And of course he’d ask me “Hello, how are you?” or “How do you do?”

Now I know you’re supposed to say something like “I’m fine, how are you” or something like that. It never happened; I gave a literal answer every time. I wasn’t trying to be ‘rude’ on purpose.

What makes this interesting is that when someone asks me “How are you” in Finnish, I usually come up with something like “I’m ok”, “Could be worse”, …

I don’t have any concrete statistics on the matter, though. One of the reasons is that “How are you” is rarer in the Finnish greeting protocol =)

(Language-related customs tend to be misunderstood at times. Once I tried to explain some of the differences between Finnish and most Indo-European languages. Unfortunately she thought that we completely lack the concepts of man and woman, when I told her that Finnish doesn’t have gender-specific personal pronouns…)

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“Of course – there are nuances – and theres a load of Finns that are “full of shit” too. ” Well, it’s nice to know that you don’t think it’s ONLY foreigners who are full of shit. This sort of imbecility is all too commonin Finland. Finland, Finland uber alles.