I spent a long time in the UK and currently live in Czechia.
In the UK if you stood in a group conversation and weren’t saying anything, people tried to involve you and asked you questions. In Czechia, unless you said something, you would be ignored*. I know this is kind of an odd thing to consider but I’ve determined it’s the one thing that decides if I’m able to find actual close friends in a society. Because I’ve spent several years here (am Czech) and although I’ve made acquaintances I’ve never met anyone who was more interested to get to know me than I was to get to know them. This has left me feeling lonely.
So in order to know where else I’d fit in, I’d be curious to know how this hypothetical situation would play out in your country. I know the dividing line must be somewhere between UK and CZ but don’t know where. When I visited Eastern Germany and spoke German it was only marginally better than Czechia.
*So when trying to make conversation, all the effort had to come from your side (which gets tiring). In the UK you could feel that the other person was trying to help carry the conversation too. And actually, I’ve found this happens when non native speakers switch to English too (eg. when Erasmus people came)
I think Brits are unusually great at casual conversation. Most of mainland Europe would struggle in comparison.
I’m Scandinavian, so clearly we don’t come out looking too good. I think a lot of people will be well meaning and curious, but talking to strangers is just not something we do.
The Spanish seem to be as extroverted as the Brits or more, except that it’s generally reserved for other Spaniards. Other people would probably be too weirded out by it.
In Italy I feel like regional differences are huge. I lived in Florence where people were similar to Norwegians in this respect, but Italians from other regions living there were super extroverted.
Living in Berlin I got the impression there are two types of Germans. One is very open minded and sociable, the other is very happy to talk to you about their hobby, whatever it is.
Belgians are good fun, they’re used to language confusion, and they don’t take themselves too seriously.
The French are good fun, they’re not used to language confusion, and they sometimes take themselves too seriously.
I don’t want to comment on the Dutch.
Belgians are good fun, they’re used to language confusion, and they don’t take themselves too seriously.
I love that about Belgium.
Ah this is very useful to know
Interesting, I always thought it’s on a individual level not country level.
I’m here in South Korea and I don’t speak Korean so I can’t answer it for Korea, but I know some expats from the west who I speak the same language with. For some background, I speak Polish, German Swedish and English.
There are three guys who I know here, and my partner observed the same as me when I talk to them.
The German answers with short answers and I have to carry the whole conversation and pull every single information slowly out of him. He doesn’t offer anything on his own and doesn’t ask questions. We still hang around because our partners and the children like each others, but to be honest it’s sometimes exhausting.
The guy from the Netherlands is much more easy to have a conversation, he asks questions and offers some information on his own, so it’s nice.
The third guy is from Israel. We met randomly on the playground and from the start it was so easy to have a conversation because both of us are carrying it ask questions offer anecdotes from earlier in our lifes, etc.
It’s not easy to find friends once you’re past 30 and not in school and university anymore. But there is still hope. Sometimes you have to find a workaround and perhaps you can find some Brits around you? ;-)
Oh wow, it must be so interesting to get to compare it side to side like this!
Fascinating, I’ve found that many people (including me to an extent) tend to have slightly different personalities for each language they speak and their English speaking one is often a bit more outgoing than their eg. Czech one. Although it seems not to be the case for the German guy you mentionOh perhaps it is, but we speak German because he struggles a bit with his English.
Oh I see
It’s not easy to find friends once you’re past 30 and not in school and university anymore.
I think this is probably the much bigger factor. Especially in an office work environment many middle-aged people also do not appreciate smalltalk and are not interested in friendships with work colleagues (for various understandable reasons).
There seems to be something like pub culture though, where in some countries its perfectly fine to go solo to a pub and strike up a conversation with strangers, while in others that would be highly frowned upon.
Germany is much like Czechia in that regard. There is a slight regional divide where people in the south are a bit more amicable than in the north. No comparison to the UK though. Recently visited there for 2 weeks and found it incredibly easy to just have friendly conversations with random people. On the other end, Denmark was probably the coldest I’ve visited in terms of people. Still friendly, but very to the point, with basically no chance to strike up a random conversation.
Ah I see, so it’s not an Eastern bloc thing and ppl in NW Germany keep to themselves as well?
Czechs are kind of known for being cold and distant. It’s a lonely place to live. I just went on a holiday and people could be so friendly and chatty in some other countries, at least reassuring me that it’s not me who’s the problem.
Brits and Germans are definitely friendlier and more sociable than Czechs (or Dutch) but the real chatty ones are down South, around the Mediterranean.
