Nordic Conversations Are Different

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14 points·shangaslammi··3 comments

This hits home in so many ways. I'm scandinavian, working in SF. For the first 4 months, I hardly got a single word in in our meetings, and when I did I was immediately talked over.

This was really frustrating until I learned it was just the conversation style and I just had to adopt it. I still find it very exhausting, since I essentially have to force myself to be what to me feels unreasonably aggressive.

Sometimes I listen to Americans and it just sounds like their thoughts are being verbalized. Like their stream of conscious thought coming from their mouth. I don't feel the need to verbalize every thought that comes along.

Generally speaking, I live in hope that it is thoughts I am verbalizing.

But what you describe is not unusual for extroverts. Some seem to need to work out their thoughts by speaking them aloud. I have known one or two whose procedure seemed to be to say something and hope that it made sense.

Are Americans in general more extroverted? I don't know, having lived mostly among native Americans, with a sprinkling of immigrants, all my life. I will say that there are large regional differences within the US. A saleswoman at a dealership in central Pennsylvania once unnerved me by saying nothing for a minute or two: in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area, auto sales personnel do not like dead air.

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