What a Russian Smile Means | Hacker News Reader

What a Russian Smile Means

nautil.us

65 pointsdannyow67 comments

> There is even a Russian proverb on the topic: “Smiling with no reason is a sign of stupidity.”

No there is not. There is a saying that "laughter without a reason is a sign of a fool" ("смех без причины - признак дурачины"), not smiling. I doubt any American will consider unreasonable laughter to be normal.

I'm Russian, and I parse "смех" as equivalent to "laughter" and "smiling". Yes, they're technically different words, but a person who smiles without a reason looks equally as idiotic as another who laughs without a reason.

As another slav, we use smeh for laughter or smilih, nasmeh for just smiling, and krohot for just intense laughter.

We also find The American Smile to be weird. Especially the forced toothy grin part.

Took me years of practice and Americans still can’t tell when I’m smiling while everyone back home thinks I’ve gone crazy.

The OP's right though.

This particular proverb refers to laughing or giggling, not smiling, and the article twists it to fit the narration.

As another Russian I don't see how it's just about laughter or how any native speaker could think that. "Смех" in proverbs stands for general happiness just like "плач" (literally "crying") does for general unhappiness.

I think your confusion comes from not fully understanding the meaning of the word "smiling" here. You overgeneralize it a bit into laughter and giggling.

The proverb is not far from English "Ignorance is bliss" it says that one who is happy without reason might be just stupid. TFA is actually talking about how Americans are trying to seem happy with their smiles so this proverb is appropriate here in my view. As for the literal interpretation of proverbs in general and this one in particular: nobody needs a proverb for "if you are laughing like a maniac for no reason then there might be something wrong with you".

As an American I don’t think that “ignorance is bliss” indicates that the ignorant person is a fool, per se. Ignorance might be purposefully and carefully chosen. It’s often used as a general debate on whether you wish to know something or not. For example, if you could know the exact date on which you die, would you wish to know? Choosing yes or no wouldn’t indicate foolishness.

It also sounds different from the several translations the Russians provided here.

So, as an American, do you see any similarity between "you might be happier if you did not learn about your situation" and "if you are happy now it might be because you are not aware of your situation"? Could there be a common theme of ignorance leading to happiness or I am just seeing things?

But that's just your personal interpretation of a Russian proverb which may or may not be shared by other Russians.

I, for one, don't.

The article, however, misquotes the proverb without any mention of such extended interpretation.

In Romanian we inherit the same proverb and its direct translation would be something akin to laugh like a fool (for no apparent reason)

Romanian is not slavic but our cultures intermingle quite a bit

Proverbs are not exclusive to one ethnic group.

You cannot "parse" proverbs to your liking, they have usus. No one would say that to a smiling person. I believe it's ever being said now only to children, who burst with laughter after whispering around or on hearing the word "toilet". And clearly this proverb is irrelevant to the topic, since we "parse" US smiles as happening for an obvious reason - social convention.

As an American who spent a year as a visiting researcher inside Russia's Foreign Ministry, I can confirm that these differences in decorum are very real.

They are common knowledge in Russian society, and Russian diplomats are trained to take them into account when emulating Western social graces.

Broadly speaking, in my experience Russians conceive of smiling as something precious, to be shared with friends or family, not wasted on strangers crossing your path. However, if you have occasion to interact with someone (e.g., asking for directions), they may smile, particularly if something about the conversation generates a feeling of closeness. I got a lot of smiles and handshakes in Moscow from strangers when they found out I was studying at MGIMO, since they (incorrectly) assumed it meant I'd snubbed Harvard or Yale.

I'm from Poland and here people don't smile like they do in USA.

Don't even get me started on "How are you?", I always want to reply honestly to that, and I don't feel much obligation to reply back (I usually don't care how some stranger feels, why should I?). That's probably the hardest in learning English for me.

i don't understand this. i have never answered как дела with "i have syphillis and my mother is dying and i'm underwater on my mortgage".

https://russian.stackexchange.com/a/604

"how are you" serves the exact same purpose - who would argue otherwise.

This kind of greeting is, however, not appropriate to complete strangers and might be considered an inappropriate familiarity.

From the top answer in your link. I’m with the gp, it’s grotesque when everyone I come across in America in a supermarket or pharmacy all ask this.

Edit: why does this comment minimize?

you're missing my point: it's a throwaway greeting whenever it is used (between friends in russia or between strangers in the us) so there's nothing "grotesque" about it nor should there be anything confusing about it once you understand the purpose. it's simply a greeting and not actually a question. many times people in america don't actually even answer the question. completely equivalent to здраствуйте or добро пожаловать or whatever.

Except the gp was specifically talking about strangers, and your link points out that this Russian phrase is overfamiliar for strangers. That is the whole point! From the gp (I usually don't care how some stranger feels, why should I?)

It’s a whole other issue if your friend says it, but that isn’t what he was talking about.

But it's not overfamiliar because the expectations are different.

The way Russians and others justify their discomfort with "How are you" is by complaining that an honest response isn't requested or expected, and giving one is awkward.

That is exactly the same situation with "как дела". Though you would only use it with close friends, it is intended as a throwaway comment, not expecting an honest response.

"How are you?" is not at all a throw-away greeting among genuine friends in the US, at least not among those who think about what they're saying.

When used as a greeting, even among friends, no one says how are you expecting any response other than "fine".

>at least not among those who think about what they're saying.

Words can have different meanings depending on context. "How are you?, or what's up?" can be used as greetings instead of questions. It has nothing to do with "thinking about what your saying".

In my experience* the genuine inquiry is vocalized sightly differently from the throw-away getting, but they definitely both exist. You'll get an odd look giving a genuine answer to the greeting and incredulity or even be considered rude if you answer the inquiry dismissively.

Interpersonal communication is fraught with opportunities for misunderstanding at the best of times.

*I've spent all 29 years of my life in the Northeast USA, for context.

But it's not equivalent to здравствуйте. I wouldn't say "как дела" when I'm walking into a job interview, or when I'm entering a doctor's office. I would say "good morning", or "hello" - доброе утро, здравствуйте.

But in America, it's actually totally acceptable to say "how are you" to your potential future boss or your doctor, and they understand that it's a greeting.

just like the person i responded to you're not getting the point. among the people that use each greeting they are equivalent. i'm exactly saying outside of formality they serve the same purpose. yes in russia you only use that greeting with familiars and in america it's acceptable to use it with anyone. that's besides what purpose it serves.

"how are you" is not equivalent to "как дела" in this context. You don't get asked "как дела" by every single grocery store clerk.

Understand that a lot of retail employees in the US are under orders to say "How are you?" -- and they're risking a "write-up" if they don't.

So, if the employee seems to mean well, I try to smile slightly and say "good".

Which staff specifically? (the cashiers, etc) Although it's bad in all cases.

I'm from the UK, and I feel exactly the same way, so it's definitely not a non-English language thing - more of a US thing.

The inappropriate use and overuse of phrases such as "how are you doin' today?", "y'all have a great day!" etc are things that really get on my nerves when I'm in the US or deal with US customers. Why ask how I am. If you don't care? Why tell me to have a great day if you don't care?!

It's just all so infuriatingly fake!

It may be "fake," but it's also being nice (i.e polite) to the other person by, if not extending to them an invitation, but at least giving them a chance to start an informal conversation with you, if they want. I find this an extremely civilized form of behavior - something that is not as often found in the rest of the world.

It's not civilized or polite, just an accepted dance to start a conversation. But if you think about it, personal questions from strangers is sort of rude and puts other person into a vulnerable position.

It is rudeness, but it's easier to be friendly when you are a bit rude. Politeness makes things more formal.

> but it's also being nice (i.e polite)

Well, I find it inpolite, offensive even, to literally pretend to care about how I am or how my day has been, and to waste my time by needlessly dragging out salutations.

>Why ask how I am. If you don't care?

British people use "How are you?" as a greeting too. Not sure what you're on about. It's a greeting not a genuine question.

Nah, Brits use "You ok?" or "Alright?" as a greeting. :P

When I lived in England I was very confused by this, because in the beginning I thought they were worried about me when they said “are you alright?”

Sometimes, but like another commenter said, it's generally more of a glib 'alrighty' or 'alreet?' (or 'fit like?' where I'm from), with no expectation of extending it beyond that - what I'm complaining about is the over-enthusiastic, positively dramatic 'how are YOU doing today?', with an expectation of actually dragging salutations out when neither side actually cares!

> 'how are YOU doing today?', with an expectation of actually dragging salutations out when neither side actually cares!

This isn't something I regularly encounter in the US, and I live in the South.

99% of the time I interact with a cashier, salesperson etc... I say "Hey how you doin?" and they say "Fine", or reply back with "How you doing?". Who are you interacting with that acts like this? Maybe they treat you differently because of your accent? Maybe they actually want to talk to you because of the novelty.

> Who are you interacting with that acts like this

The majority of the people I interact with - colleagues, customers, hotel staff, restaurant staff...

> Maybe they treat you differently because of your accent? Maybe they actually want to talk to you because of the novelty.

Huh, hadn't considered that. I'll try putting on an American accent next time, see if that holds them off ;)

Alright?

> Why ask how I am. If you don't care? Why tell me to have a great day if you don't care?! It's just all so infuriatingly fake!

Try to think of it more like a protocol handshake, or a preamble to a conversation, than an exchange of content. It's a scripted way to begin talking. Weird socially scripted questions that are not necessarily intended to be taken literally seem to exist in most languages & countries.

'In most languages, this phrase is used more as a greeting or part of a greeting rather than as a enquiry about your health. The reply is often along the lines of "I'm well/fine, thank you, and you?"'

https://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/howareyou.htm

Ah, now this I agree with - you do need a sort of verbal handshake before starting a fresh interaction with someone.

But... if you're writing a protocol you need it short and efficient - you don't drag it out to include 'salutations' soliciting all sorts of useless information you don't care about!

How about:

Person 1: fit like? (or 'alright?'/'alrighty?' if you prefer) Person 2: aye, grand (or 'yes, fine' if you prefer) Person 1: [INSERT ACTUAL CONVERSATION HERE]

Maybe I should write this up as an RFC...

As an immigrant, that was one of the cultural adjustment that I had to do in the US. In my home country in SE Asia, people usually ask "Have you eaten (have you had a meal)?" as a greeting. It's easier to answer with "No, I haven't." or "Yes, I just had lunch" for example.

But when I moved to the states for college, I was perplexed as to how to answer "How're ya?" or "What's up?". :D I learned to answer that question with a standard, "I'm good. Thank you". But even nowadays, I sometimes venture to answer it honestly like, "I'm okay. [insert some really honest reason why I'm just okay]" or "I'm busy, but it's all good".

This is just a small example of adjustment that I made as I try to settle in my new home.

Well I'm a native born American and I always answer it honestly. There is always something up, either at work or with my family or friends. It doesn't hurt to spend 10 words mentioning it.

There's a lot of variations so even some natives will share your frustrations, though personally I think the option variety is a nice feature. You can have amusing moments when you've queued up an automatic response and get the wrong trigger. "Gorgeous day huh?" "I'm well, you? Err..." Sometimes just ACK-ing works well if you really don't want to think about it... "What's up?" "Sup." "Howdy?" "Howdy." Regional / cultural greeting patterns can be used though to initiate moving from total stranger to closer stranger more quickly when you reply in certain ways... "Wazzup?" "Wazzzzuuuuup." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oL7v7PLac)

In the US if you ask someone if they've eaten there's a good chance they'll think you're asking them out to dinner.

> Have you eaten yet

This is a greeting in quite a few SE Asian countries that I'm aware of. I've heard of it for Thailand (gin khao mai), Myanmar, and Singapore. I always answered yes/the default answer. But maybe I'll try no next time I visit for free lunch? :)

I am in Russia now. I can say that people do smile normally if they feel like the conversation warrants it. But there’s not so much “fake” tinseltown hollywood pleasantry.

Americans in the US have a saying “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all.” It is a culture very much fine tuned for business, which is why you want to make sure to grease the wheels of an interaction, and there is nothing to be gained by being straightforward with what you actually think. It’s avoidance of conflict and closing of a sale.

I remember when my grandparents immigrated to the USA they would relate stories like:

1) A woman would approach and say “hi, how are you”? And they would start answering but she would just walk on by LOL

2) My grandfather would offer a seat to a woman but she just started yelling at him for doing it.

Later, they adjusted. But even the word “you” — which Russians thought is “rude” because there is no “polite You” for strangers — actually is the polite version of Thou, because (unlike the Amish) the English got so polite that they just stopped using Thou altogether!

The "How are you?" question is a way of setting the context of the conversation quickly. Most of the time, everything's okay ("I'm good, what's up with you?"). But sometimes it's not and the "How are you?" question gives you an opportunity to express that it's not: ("Man, I'm feeling pretty crappy right now").

I'd say that depends a lot on who you're talking to. I would answer like that to a close friend, but for most people I know I'd never answer more negatively than something like "eh, kinda stressed, but it's ok", and for a complete stranger (like krzyk mentioned) I would only ever say "fine" or a synonym.

I would rather look at smiling people around me, even if the smile means nothing, than looking at sad faces in Russia. Everytime I go back to visit friends I notice how grumpy and angry most people look and you become to look like that too - the more you look at them.

This. Having lived in Soviet Union (which was even grumpier) I cannot agree more with you.

Not this. Having lived in Russia, this is something which is neither good nor bad. It just is. The faces are not sad or grumpy, they are relaxed. Nobody pretends to be happier than they are.

You just got used to smiles everywhere. There is nothing more to it.

At least in Russia, when someone smiles at you, it means something.

> The faces are not sad or grumpy, they are relaxed.

Same for me. I sometimes make a deliberate effort to smile to appear more approachable, but smiling is far from the resting position ofy face muscles.

(I'm German.)

When an average American is forcing his smiling just to make my day better it means more to me than a grumpy face of an average Russian, and makes my day better, and I don’t care if he is really happy or not, he made me happy, that’s what I like about American smiles

I'm a US person. While going through aggressive cancer treatment and concomitant depression, I was encouraged by my caregivers to smile as much as possible to elevate my mood. They even encouraged me practice smiling while alone. N=1, but this did seem to help. It seemed to lower my stress when around other people, and I noticed that they would be smiling more too (although this may just be because I was finally noticing something that was going on around me.)

Otherwise I have "resting porg face".

I see the smile, in my personal slice of American culture, to be a sign that "I mean you no harm, I have positive intentions towards you", which is a valuable piece of information, both to give and receive. And truthfully, someone who is not feeling well disposed towards me and intends to make my life more difficult rarely approaches with a smile. Perhaps in Russia people are not so open about their intentions to each other and these outward indicators have less value?

> I mean you no harm, I have positive intentions towards you

But what is the point of smile as "intention indicator" if literally everyone around are smiling to each other? Do you want to say that in the US seller that trying to sell defective goods wouldn't smile?

Well usually everyone around you means you no harm. The person who looks at you and doesn't smile is legitimately more likely to not care if you get hit by a bus or not, even if they have no ill intention towards you. The crazy guy whose alternate personality is telling him to stab you is definitely not smiling but staring at you and muttering to himself.

Of course context matters. I don't trust a smile from a used car salesman. I trust a smile more from someone I am playing basketball with, or that I pass while hiking in the woods as they have no incentive to deceive me. And if I don't get a smile from someone I pass while hiking in the woods I would be more on my guard.

Sometimes I wonder how these sorts of cultural subtleties are compensated for, when defining a set of clinical psychological personality disorders.

Cluster A (paranoia): https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/dsm-5-the-ten-personalit...

Cluster B (drama): https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/dsm-5-the-ten-personalit...

Clister C (anxiety): https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/dsm-5-the-ten-personalit...

Take either culture's description, and stack it next to the other, and the incompatible resolution or reconcilliation between the two certainly sounds like it could add up to any of those disorders.

When you listen to the sort of discomfort and culture shock that seems implicit in these stories of adaptation, to the wrong set of ears, this all might sound like mental illness.

Growing up in one place, and then living in another, only to feel the longing pangs of nostalia and familiarity for what your childhood instict defines or recognizes as normal, clash with the reality of a world turned upsidedown, feels like a recipe for being plied with medication, if you tell the wrong person.

It feels like this process scaled up to millions of people, is exactly the sort of thing that drives conflict around the world.

I get tired of articles and people that put us Americans all in the same smiley "how's your day going so far?" box. Maybe the average is like that in most places, and sure you can draw contrasts to other places. But as a grumpy east coaster living out west I find it somewhat irritating too, and I know I am not alone in this.

Hey, UK person here. Every time I visit the US or deal with customers from the US, I'm bombarded with fake well-wishing, accompanied by equally fake grins. You've given me some glimmer of hope that it's not quite everyone in the US who is like that!

As a Russian, living in America, I would suggest not to take any clues about social behavior from Russians. It's all shades of dysfunctional from the bottom to the very top.

Even dealing with a simple “How are you?” felt complicated. People in Russia didn’t engage in this kind of social script, and to her it seemed unnecessary. Did they really want to know how she was? No.

This reminds me of my younger self. I would pause and reply with an unvarnished and detailed analysis of my current status. Is it just me, or do other people think that some cultures shifted a bit on the Aspergers spectrum from other cultures? I certainly think that's the case for some subcultures.

It means you're drunk.

> If she answered honestly (“I’m tired”), which is what felt most natural, she worried she’d come off as rude.

I'm not understanding the word "natural" here. Would her honesty be given in a spirit of satire, confusion, fear, something else?

For example, suppose in response to her saying, "I'm tired," I replied, "Now that we've established your propensity for reflexive honesty in response to unexpected questions, what is your bank account and routing number?"

Would she take the joke in a spirit of playfulness, or alarm?

Edit: clarification

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