How people express gratitude in other countries can often be puzzling for expats moving across cultures. When trying to verbalise appreciation, you might actually be insulting someone.
A human response
When the explorer and anthropologist, Peter Freuchen spent time living with the Inuit of Greenland over 100 years ago, the 6′ 7″ Dane proved right at home, happily hunting walruses, whales, seals, even polar bears. One day, after he’d been on an unsuccessful expedition, he met another hunter dropping off several hundred pounds of meat outside his hut. Freuchen thanked the hunter profusely but the man snapped back: “Up in our country we are human! And since we are human we help each other. We don’t like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow.”
A common courtesy
While expat partners today are unlikely to live among a community of hunters in the Arctic Circle, it’s still possible to make a similar faux pas when expressing gratitude in cross-cultural scenarios. People from the US and the UK, in particular, come from a culture where saying ‘thanks’ and ‘please’ is a common courtesy. But in other cultures if we constantly thank people for trifling matters we might be seen as insincere or overbearing.
Why would you thank yourself?
If you are to forge friendships with Indians, Chinese, Filipinos, and people from many other Asian countries, you can even insult them by saying ‘thanks’. One Chinese tutor explained why to an American writer living in China: “Good friends are so close, they are like a part of you. Why would you say ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ to yourself? It makes no sense.”
From east to west
Raised in India, the writer Deepak Singh had rarely said ‘thank you’ to anyone, so imagine his surprise when an American police officer pulled him over, gave him a speeding ticket, then said: “Thanks, and have a good day!” Singh eventually realised saying ‘thank you’ in the US marked the end of a conversation or an interaction, like a “period at the end of a sentence”. Initially he had wondered why people thanked him for visiting their house when they were the ones who’d invited him over. Then the penny dropped. ‘Thank you for coming to my home’ actually meant, the party’s over and now you can leave.
