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)

  • Jeena@piefed.jeena.netEnglish
    7·
    2 months ago

    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? ;-)

    • SubArcticTundraOPEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      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 mention

    • poVoq@slrpnk.netMEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      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.