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How the Finnish Survive Without Small Talk (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Finnish people often forgo the conversational niceties that are hard-baked into other cultures, and typically don't see the need to meet foreign colleagues, tourists and friends in the middle. As Tiina Latvala, a former English instructor in Sodankyla, Lapland, explained, part of her job was to introduce her young students to the concept of small talk. "We had a practice where you had to pretend to meet someone for the first time," Latvala said. "You had to pretend you were meeting at the cafe or on a bus and [that] you didn't know each other and do a bit of chit chat. We had written on the whiteboard all the safe topics so they didn't have to struggle with coming up with something to talk about. We brainstormed. They usually found it really difficult."
"[They're] about basic conversation," she explained. "The answers are already there. We are taught to answer 'I'm great, how about you?'; 'How is your mum?'. It was very clear how to be in a conversation, as if we didn't already know. It was very weird as if there were right answers to the questions." There are more hypotheses than answers for why Finnish culture has a veil of silence permanently stitched in place. Latvala believes their trademark directness has something to do with the complexity of the Finnish language and the fairly large distance between cities (Latvala's reasoning: If you've travelled any distance to see someone, why waste time?). [...] It isn't for lack of skill, for Finland has two national languages -- Finnish and Swedish -- and Finns begin English lessons when they're six or seven. But rather it's because when faced with expressing themselves in second (or third) language, many often choose to not say anything rather than risk not being fully understood. However, when among their own, silence functions as an extension of comfortable conversation. "'It's not about the structure or features of the language, but rather the ways in which people use the language to do things,' Dr Anna Vatanen, a researcher at the University of Oulu, explained via email. 'For instance, the 'how are you?' question that is most often placed in the very beginning of an encounter. In English-speaking countries, it is mostly used just as a greeting and no serious answer is expected to it. On the contrary, the Finnish counterpart (Mita kuuluu?) can expect a 'real' answer after it: quite often the person responding to the question starts to tell how his or her life really is at the moment, what's new, how they have been doing.'"
"[They're] about basic conversation," she explained. "The answers are already there. We are taught to answer 'I'm great, how about you?'; 'How is your mum?'. It was very clear how to be in a conversation, as if we didn't already know. It was very weird as if there were right answers to the questions." There are more hypotheses than answers for why Finnish culture has a veil of silence permanently stitched in place. Latvala believes their trademark directness has something to do with the complexity of the Finnish language and the fairly large distance between cities (Latvala's reasoning: If you've travelled any distance to see someone, why waste time?). [...] It isn't for lack of skill, for Finland has two national languages -- Finnish and Swedish -- and Finns begin English lessons when they're six or seven. But rather it's because when faced with expressing themselves in second (or third) language, many often choose to not say anything rather than risk not being fully understood. However, when among their own, silence functions as an extension of comfortable conversation. "'It's not about the structure or features of the language, but rather the ways in which people use the language to do things,' Dr Anna Vatanen, a researcher at the University of Oulu, explained via email. 'For instance, the 'how are you?' question that is most often placed in the very beginning of an encounter. In English-speaking countries, it is mostly used just as a greeting and no serious answer is expected to it. On the contrary, the Finnish counterpart (Mita kuuluu?) can expect a 'real' answer after it: quite often the person responding to the question starts to tell how his or her life really is at the moment, what's new, how they have been doing.'"
"Hi! How are you"?
"I'm Finished."
<conversation over>
They drink. A lot.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That sounds fantastic. I wish I could go through the day without much of the banal conversation that makes up the first hour or two of every workday. Why are they attempting to train them out of it? Train the rest of us not to do it. I don't need to know how the weather was by your house. We work at the same place, I live 5 minutes away from you. It was mild.
The Scandanavian Cold shoulder is already famous. It's just the way it is. So?
Actually most of friends are from there these days. I actually find it refreshing. You don't have to fuck around with useless talking. They will tell you how it is--simple and to the point.
I mean, as an object-oriented language, Smalltalk is pretty good, but it didn't seem to make inroads outside of IBM supported systems.
I fail to see the problem with any of this. Small talk is time wasting bullshit to try to keep up pleasantries. Instead of asking pointless questions you already know the answer to, why not just find someone you can have a worthwhile conversation with instead of having both people engage in an activity that neither find particularly enjoyable or stimulating?
Trying to teach Finnish people to partake in this idiocy is like actively teaching a dog to crap on your carpet.
I don't think I figured out till my early '20s that most people don't actually expect an answer when they open with "How are you doing?", much less an honest one, and I grew up here. Nobody tells you these things.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
Especially the forced kind at stores. I hate it when there's a line and I have ice cream and the cashier has to jibber jabber with everyone. Or after ansering the cashier on how I'm doing, the bagboy who heard my answer asks the same question.
How about shutting the fuck up and doing your job so we don't have such goddamn long lines? And Publix with their hitting you up for the shitty charity du jour.
And they wonder why people are shopping online.
Get drunk. Have sex. No small talk required.
“It is worth repeating at this point the theories that Ford had come up with, on his first encounter with human beings, to account for their peculiar habit of continually stating and restating the very very obvious, as in "It's a nice day," or "You're very tall," or "So this is it, we're going to die."
After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this--"If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.”
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
No. That's Michigan (particulary the UP).
If you ask Germans "how are you?" (or the German "Wie geht's dir?") you can expect either getting a full rundown of their health, work, financial, family and marriage situation or just a "fuck off" look (which basically means "None of your business, stranger!"). It's just one of the language and culture differences you have to adapt to: Words don't mean the same even if you can perfectly understand them.
Small talk isn't something that the Finnish are lacking, it's rather something that the Americans are very good at. Very similar with smiling by the way: Americans do that all the time, Europeans not so much.
Montreal to Toronto is roughly the same distance as Helsinki to Oulu... which is already like half the maximum possible distance to drive in Finland. I don't think they can use the excuse of "distance between cities" in such a small country.
I can relate to the Finns. Smalltalk is something I had to learn too. The idea to exchange phrases to gauge the mood and the sympathy between people was new to me. I still tend to actually answer to "How do you do?" instead of just replying.
I've survived quite nicely. Thanks for asking.
Most of our small-talk boils down to one of these common scenarios: ...and it all kicks off from there.
"Hey how's it going, shite weather today isn't it?"
"Hey there auld (old) yin (one), ye got yer wife pumped yet?"
"Did you see that awful game last night? Fuck was that about?"
"When's tea and crumpets?"
"Fucking Tories, what are they all about? Get that old fart kicked out"
What started as a casual encounter in the street at the daily shop visit ends up down the pub, half drunk, at 1pm. Sometimes there is even a fight.
Britain, what a marvelous place.
I didn't think Smalltalk was still a popular programming language. Anywhere.
We should sentence the Finnish to telepathy.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
"I wonder what the politicians are like in Finland?"
Pretty much the same, except maybe not quite as corrupt. Is that your only criteria?
In English-speaking countries, it is mostly used just as a greeting and no serious answer is expected to it.
Though that may be true today, I believe in the past, it was simply a way to elicit from people whether or not they were sick...so you'd know to stay away from them.
There's a reason "we" have Welcome mats. It meant, only come in if you're well (not sick.)
There's a reason we say and do the things we do...generally we have to look to the past to understand them, as their reason for being useful then, may not serve a function today.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
...from Scandinavians in general.
How do I know? Because I spent most of my life in 3 scandinavian countries, and I can pretty much sum up the major differences, and what they have in common.
Norwegians: Very straightforward people, you sort of have to agree if something is funny, and you'll have to let them in on the joke, if you want to kid around. They're very much independent of E.U. for a reason, and that is because they have their own way of doing things. A word is a word, and there's never anything hidden behind it, they can also be a bit stale and boring when it comes to sarcasm and longer lasting jokes. They're fairly authoritarian but without the totalitarian style in them, they can loosen up quite a bit - generally likes to travel to Denmark to get wasted beyond recognition and make complete asses of themselves, and have an easy time understanding Swedish and Danish.
Danes: People with possibly the best sense of humor of all the Scandinavian countries (I'm Norwegian originally btw. so I might be biased here), but they generally never take themselves too seriously. One of the biggest trait Danes have is that if they really like you, they will take the jokes on you so far you'll go crying home wondering where you went wrong (I did for the longest time when new to Denmark), but 6 months later I realized they're really just masters of sarcasm and funny. Even their TV ads reflect this, if anyone can joke about themselves and anything, it's them. But when it comes down to brass tax (like money) the generic Dane changes in nature immediately, they take their personal economics seriously (My grandmother warned me about this before I moved to Denmark for 10+ years), and she was right, more than I'd ever care to admit. Danes in general will gladly be friendly with any strangers, but it'll take 3-6 years before you get "invited" into their private circle of friends and family. They might seem very open and free, but they're like...that on the surface, if you want to go deeper, you gotta fight and work for it. But then again, you probably have a very good friend. Their housing prices are through the roof, and overvalued in every single way, new players hardly have a chance of getting a foot in - without bringing the previous owners high evaluation and lifestyle with them, and paying for it later. Norwegians have this in common with them as well.
Swedes: These are supposed to be the neutral counterpart of the two, anyone who know just a little bit about history, know what happened to Norway during the second world war, but the Swedes are a bit ashamed of that, because they're a very open to everyone kind of people, and they are almost TOO open about that today, which is why there's trouble in paradise right now (clearly reflected by the rising Right wing over there), but the Swedes are like the Danes when it comes to long-term friendship...it generally takes a few years, but then you'll have a friend for life. However, Swedes are not that easy to impress - unlike the Danes they have this "thinking" way of everything, they literally overthink everything, this is why it's so hard to get a job in Sweden - but once you GOT a job, they will try everything else before letting you go - Danes, not so much, for the Dane it's all about how you blend in, for the Swede - it's all about what you bring to the table, and once you're in - you're gonna have a job for a VERY long time, as they tend to question themselves first, before questioning you. I'd say that the Swedes are the most Authoritarian of all the Scandinavians.
FInnish people: Oh boy, they're basically nothing like the Swedes, Danes or Norwegians. They are very direct (as the article suggest), don't like to small-talk too much, and they are VERY straightforward about basically everything. They're workhorses like NO ONE you've ever met. I've got some Finnish colleagues, known quite a lot of Finns, and you'll be pleasantly surprised that they're just as different from each other as the rest of the population, but they DO share this "seriousness
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
1) It's spelled Asperger's.
2) There's no capital letter for autism. It's not a proper noun.
Two married Finns are sitting a table for their wedding anniversary, not talking.
The wife eventually reaches over and slaps her husband.
He sits there for a bit then asks, "why did you slap me?"
She says, "That was for 30 years of bad sex."
He then sits there for awhile, then eventually reaches over and slaps her back.
She says "What was that for?"
He says, "That's for knowing the difference!"
The people of Earth should learn from the Finns and start appreciating The Silence.
I think smalltalk is utterly boring and I usually either steer the conversation into something meaningful instead, or just try to end it.
There are few occations in my life when I actually have to engage in smalltalk, such as when important customers accidentally bump into me. But otherwise I have freed myself from that BS.
Wow... never expected to see a reference to that (by the way, wonderful) anime :)
In the Netherlands we do know small talk but usually not to 'the random stranger waiting at the bus stop', unless the weather is truly atrocious. And in business relations only as a brief introduction of one or two sentences before the actual contents of the meeting. I'm not entirely sure about small talk in personal relations... in that regard I associate that primarily with elderly at their monthly bingo meeting. In other words, only engaged in when having too much time on your hands...
Small talk is not really something I'm good at. I do smile a lot, just because I'm content being alive and that means 'I'm fine' usually should be a truthful response, even if not -everything- is. However, often I will try to fit in some actual information relevant to relationship I have with the person asking me that particular question. If you really want small talk with me, you're safer making a remark about the weather, because in the Netherlands you can talk a lot about that without running out of subject :P However, it may stop being small talk than and become a discussion about, at least seemingly, more chaotic weather patterns in the last decades and if that could be the effects of a changing climate caused by global warming.
If we look at actual population numbers then Finland would be the 23th in population after Minnesota but before South Carolina. And 2:d in area after Alaska but before Texas.
No, this is not about the language being different than English or that there's a different way of doing small talk. The Finns are very much different from their neighbors this way. When I worked a few weeks in Germany I kept quiet while everyone else at lunch was chatting away. When I worked in Finland I was doing most of the talking at lunch.
I don't know why you even mention "Americans", you could substitute "Norwegians" there and it will would be true in comparison.
The issue is not just small talk. Finns in general just don't talk a lot. They are very different from their neighbors. While some talk a lot and manage small talk, most are more taciturn, and some are just extremely reluctant to talk.
This is indeed a problem, as I've asked Finns direct questions and been unable to get any answer. This wasn't small talk, it was "when do you think your worker will have his task finished?" This may have been an extreme case, but it is not uncommon to have similar interactions. This isn't just a language gap, even Finns have told me they get frustrated with other Finns who don't like to communicate.
First of all, I wonder how widespread 'small talk' is among various cultures. The only country outside the USA I ever spent much time in was Japan, and the Japanese often greet each other with phrases like "Ogenki desu ka' (Are you 'genki' where genki means something like feeling good, the 'O' at the beginning means something like 'honorable' and is often dispensed with.) I also heard Japanese say 'Doko iku no?' a lot, a casual form of where are you going? So I guess they did have small talk. Actually the Japanese have a lot of levels of politeness and formality and the finer points take a lot of study, for instance how low one should bow when meeting each other and so on. So they may not be a good example.
I've read and seen documentaries talking about how Americans in Arab Countries often appear rude and brash and have to learn the proper etiquette there.
Maybe this all goes back to times with a lot of war and feuding, and a sort of diplomatic protocol developed. Did the Finns ever have a tradition of feuds or tribal warfare in their history?
Even in the USA there are variations. Old fashioned country manners might be if you going to visit somebody about some business back in the days before telephones were common, when you first called on someone, you'd first spend some time talking about other things, each others health, the weather, whatever. I think this was to show respect, and the amount of time spent was small compared to the amount of time of actually getting to somebody else's farm house, and it wasn't like the person you were visiting had been watching the big game on TV and was anxious to get back to it.
There's also the notion of upward mobility. As immigrants became more prosperous and moved into the middle class, they wanted to act properly. Emily Post's book on etiquette was a big seller.
There may be an egalitarian vibe involved too. Well, as I say in the title, these are speculations.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
There is a spectrum in Finland, from those who will chat with strangers to those who don't like to talk much with their closest friends.
Pouring with slush? Sounds like Summer is nearly there!
Now that he signed the "code of conduct", does he stop being Finnish? /s
How is that close enough? AC wrote "21st in area" when it would be 2:d, and "5th or 6th in population" when the real number is 23th! It's completely backwards ;)
Could it be that they are simply narcissistic? Maybe they are apathetic towards their fellow man and really don't care 'how they are doing'?
Now I'm not trying to paint all Finnish people with the same brush, but from the people I know in America, that's the trait that sticks out.
The AC above was pretty rude in his language, but I was thinking the same. As someone on the autism spectrum who has 2 kids on the spectrum, that sounds like how I and my son would communicate with strangers if we had a choice. I've learned to fit in through trial and error (much more on the error) and my Son is learning how to do so through special ed. However, people on the spectrum are often very literal and I do find insincerity very confusing. I have to stop myself from answering small talk honestly (like when someone asks "how was your weekend?" I start mentally evaluating how satisfactory it was and have to stop myself, forgetting that the random person trapped in the elevator with me just wants a quick and pleasant pre-canned response). I can definitely relate to how the article describes Finish communication style.
Smalltalk is actually quite an elegant language. There are still some powerful systems that were created in Smalltalk, though they may not be used in Finland. Personally I preferred Forth but I never found anyone else interested in using it for practical purposes. Some interesting stuff was done with Lisp but the code still looked awful on the screen. Even in those days Pascal was being left behind. Everyone jumped on C after a while and forgot the interesting languages that came before.
...omphaloskepsis often...
100 kilometers to south Estonians are (even more?) like what was described.
Over which sea? Are you saying you shouldn't speak English in England? Which language should we speak when we are "oversea"?
Personally, I find "small talk" useful like a modems use handshaking. I need to hear the other person's voice, their volume, their pitch, pacing and accent. We establish a volume and speed for talking before moving on. Small talk is when I can hear these things and get accustomed to how they speak before engaging in the real conversation. It usually only takes seconds and the benefit is that we're each ready to listen and won't need to ask the other to repeat themselves.
There once was a Finn who loved his wife so much.............. that he almost told her.
Autists are not nearly the only ones who avoid smalltalk and tend to be literal. The same goes for both the schizoid and schizotypal personality disorder and even for introverts with a healthy personality.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Very similar with smiling by the way: Americans do that all the time, Europeans not so much.
Yea, but they do it by showing their teeth, which is scary to most other cultures, even animals!
Non-Linux Penguins ?
We just do it when warranted, not 100% of the time just to put a fake smile to everybody.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Yeah, I was 35 before I learned that the correct answer to "How are you?" is "I'm ok thanks, how are you?"
Incidentally the correct answer to "How do you do" is "How do you do". No, I don't know why.
If we look at actual population numbers then Finland would be the 23th in population after Minnesota but before South Carolina. And 2:d in area after Alaska but before Texas.
Ummm, Finland is about 131,000 square miles, Texas is about 269,000 square miles. So, Finland is not bigger in area than Texas. Checking the size of U.S. states, Finland would come in fifth, after Montana and before New Mexico.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I gave a training in Helsinki. Wonderful people, friendly, smart, did the exercises in no time, during lunch asked questions about me and how I lived at home and sounded interested.
In class? Ask a question to get a little interaction, and I was met with stony silence. No feedback whatsoever. And then I got my evaluation results, and they were all happy with the training.
Lovely folk, really. I'd go back in a heartbeat, but yes, the stereotype exists for a reason.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
It's crazy expensive to drink in Singapore!
You know it's bad when you can save money by driving to another country to buy beer!
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
People on the Spectrum tend to be more intelligent the normal people and most of the problems autistic and those with Asperger's , are result of our culture demanding that they fail. Because the rest of us can't keep up with them if they are allowed to thrive. If you'd suck a bunch of people with autism and Asperger's and gave them their own City they would quickly outpaced the rest of society and no one none of the normies would be able to predict or curtail them because normies can't relate. This leads to a resentment on a primal level. and people with Autism or allowed to thrive Without Shame then the rest of us will never catch up and the future will be controlled by something different then what is now.
I have a hard acknowledging a six-hour drive (which takes you from the southern coast of Finland to a city halfway to its northern point) as "serious distance". You can drive across the entire country's width at its widest point in only eight hours, and from the southern coast to the northern tip in under fifteen... That's the extent of the whole country... The entire country alone is only one fifth the size of my province alone! It's in between the size of Montana and New Mexico. Just because central Europe has lots of little micro-countries doesn't mean that you can start attributing major societal attributes to the modest distance between cities.
yeah you are correct, I see now that I mixed up square miles and square kilometres when I compared the two.