zlacker

Googled that ‘yes’ thing. Not different from my experience in other parts of the world. ‘Yes’ means ‘yes, sir’ only in the army. What is your environment?

>>myst+(OP)
As someone living in the Nordics my experience already with central Europeans and especially so Americans is that these cultures are already much more high context than the Nordics. I guess up here we're all borderline autistic?

>>Maxion+N1
I've done business the other way around, Western Europe with Finland. I think it's just different context? There are unwritten customs and meanings in Finland as well, just different ones.

Even UK vs Netherlands is a significant difference in how things work in business deals and that's just a 45 min flight. Unspoken expectations are different on how the other side is supposed to behave.

>>Maxion+N1
I am entirely convinced that the entire country of Germany suffers from Asperger's.

Denmark is a bit better, maybe because they drink more ? Dunno.

>>4gotun+Ld
I have observed the same across a bunch of linguistically Germanic countries (DE, AT, CH, NL, DK, NO, haven't been to SE, didn't observe it in IS), and I thought of it as "cultural autism." Apparently "higher context" is the politically correct way to say it. Now I know!

>>4gotun+Ld
Germany answers the question, "What if autistic engineers got to have their own nation?"

>>myst+(OP)
> ‘Yes’ means ‘yes, sir’ only in the army.

Not really, if you get a "yes" in the Netherlands, Nordics, Germany or Poland it does mean, simply, yes.

The consequence of which is that actually getting a "yes" takes a lot of work.

I don't dare speak for other countries, no experience there.

>>4gotun+Ld
As someone who's visited both countries a few times, Germany is more of a drinking culture. Wikipedia agrees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_c...

>>n4r9+Ez
As someone who has lived in both countries, the Danes drink much more in a social setting.

Maybe the overall consumption is higher in Germany, but in Denmark everyone is out drinking much more than in Germany.

>>theodr+cl
Danish and Norwegian are not linguistically Germanic. If anything, German has more old Norse influences. And dutch.. Well, dutch is the illegitimate child of england and germany.

>>4gotun+4K
>Danish and Norwegian are not linguistically Germanic

Where do you get that notion? My education (and some googling to refresh my memory) has Norwegian, Swedish and Danish classed as "North Germanic" according to comparative linguistics. That is one subset of the West Germanic languages which most of northern Europe speaks.

>>Arn_Th+UP
You are right, west germanic is what I had in mind. In my mind north germanic never made sense, but I guess I will leave that to the experts :)

>>4gotun+OJ
In Germany people drink less - but those who drink really drink a lot. Averages don't tell the story.

>>4gotun+4K
Speaking as someone with an academic background in Germanic historical linguistics: this is thoroughly incorrect.

>>bojan+rw
I live in Germany. 'Ja' here means 'ich stimme zu' only when explicitly asked. That's why Germans stick 'Ja?' after every second sentence. Ja? In general, 'ja-a...' means 'I hear you', same as almost everywhere else. That has been my experience.

>>myst+7J1
The 'ja?' with a question mark means 'right?'. It just happens to be the same word as 'yes'. So no, not same as almost everywhere else.

>>nuance+oy2
And why do they say ‘right?’ every time? Because without it my ‘ja’ does not mean ‘yes, sir’, but rather ‘I hear you, go on’. So, same as everywhere else.

>>myst+(OP)
Hardware engineering, where an inappropriate yes can mean massive amounts of time and money wasted, making it a very low context environment, by necessity.