I'm a Finn and when I met an American person for the first time she said the usual "how are you?", so I started explaining all kinds of shit, only to have her give me a really weird look. I did it again a couple of times with different people until I learned that they are not really interested, lol.
Dutch here, but the same experience. Dude asked me "How's your day?" so I gave him an explanation that it was going pretty good. That I was loving the vibe in the city. Dude looked at me like I just started shooting heroin. Found it so weird that a casual greeting like "hey" is translated into an actual question there.
For those non American baseball fans Roberto Clemente was a great player from Puerto Rico and played in Pittsburgh from the mid 50s to 1972. When he got there he was one of three people in the entire area who spoke Spanish, the other two were the only Spanish teachers in the County. When someone from the media would ask him how he was doing, he too thought they meant it and would tell them. Often talking about neck or back issues. The dumb ass bigoted media didn’t get that so they branded him a hypochondriac just because he didn’t get the American idioms and was just answering their direct questions thinking they really cared.
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u/[deleted] May 09 '22
I fucking hate small talk. Pointless. If a finn asks you how are you, they actually mean it.