[Systemic33]

In all honesty, a lot of this “directness” comes down to the fact that literal translations sound a lot harsher in English than what the non-native speaker necessarily meant.

In Denmark there’s the same sort of experience by foreigners, and I’ve heard it happens in Germany as well.

The situation is that in the local language, there’s a lot subtlety that simply gets lost in translation.

You can probably throw a little culturally bluntness on it as well, but the majority is down to translation.

[Ambroos]

I'm not so sure. The majority of Belgians speak Dutch and we are perceived as a lot less direct. The first example in the article, "What do you want?" or the translation in Dutch, is something you'll rarely hear in Belgium. We would use the Dutch variant of "How can I help you?" or a more polite version of "What would you like?".

Belgians wouldn't dream of telling someone on the train to keep it down (we'll just stare disapprovingly and hope for the best), while the Dutch will just get up and ask someone to be quieter.

And Belgians aren't as honest in communicating negative things. We usually have the bad habit of casting doubt over our own opinions before stating them. "I might be mistaken, but I think this might not work because..." is a very common thing. Many people do things like this even when they are very confident they are not mistaken. It'd surprise me if the Dutch do this.

[mtrimpe]

Having grown up with 1/4 Belgian and 3/4 Dutch culture I can very much confirm.

For me, the main thing is that the Dutch simply don't layer their speech whereas in most other cultures there is huge difference between what's being said and what is really meant by that.

In Dutch culture that basically doesn't exist except at levels where it's inevitable (politics, upper management) and even there it's much less subtle than it would be elsewhere and you need to carefully calibrate to see if your conversation partner picks up on it or not.

Given that there is no such double/hidden layer to use it's no surprise that we inevitably became more blunt and direct.

Perhaps it's a result from our long history as traders and the realization we can't possibly manage double/hidden layers for all the cultures we interacted with and thus ended up throwing out the concept altogether.

[DoreenMichele]

Perhaps it's a result from our long history as traders

That was my thought as well. Trade languages are always intentionally simplified and essentially impossible to use for dropping indirect hints. I believe this is very much a feature, not a bug. It substantially reduces opportunities for cross cultural misunderstandings and faux pas.

Apropos of nothing, I really liked the Dutch proverb in the article "Just be normal. That's crazy enough."

[jules]

The literal translation of "What do you want?" is "Wat wil je?", and this is considered impolite. You're unlikely to hear this from a Dutch waiter. You might hear "Wat wilt u?", but even this is rather curtly. The words "je" and "u" both get translated to "you" in English. "U" signifies respect.

[Fnoord]

"U" is the equivalent of "Sie" in German, but the Germans are far more gründlich (thorough) with using Sie correct. It instantly makes you feel more a respected customer.

[tankenmate]

In middle English and early modern English there was the distinction between thou and you (nominative case; thee and you for the accusative/dative case), the first is familiar and the second is polite. Obviously these days the familiar has been dropped and so indirect idiom takes the place of the honorific.

[cr1895]

"want" vs. "like", isn't it still just willen in het Nederlands?

I seem to recall hearing "wat kan ik voor u doen?" or "wat willen jullie drinken?" for example. I'm still learning Dutch, but neither of those carries more or less directness or softness to me.

[Ambroos]

I was going for "Wat mag het zijn?" which is something I hear a lot when going out, but is hard to translate. I thought the distinction between want and like in English conveys a similar idea.

[Fnoord]

Oh, if its from the south, they got a little bit more customs & manners over there IMO. Try Maastricht, for example.

Literally, it'd be "what may it be" but I don't think a good translation is possible. It'd end up with something like "what is your preference?" but I could come up with a Dutch, formal version of that: "wat mag het u believen?" where "believen" is an equivalent to "wünschen". A German could say, in short, "Sie wünschen?" and with the correct tone and body language it wouldn't be rude. You could say the same about Dutch; tone and body language are very important in communication (I have autism and am in an autism support group where this was recently addressed wink.)

Or perhaps rather "what would you like to order", but shorter. A German translation would end up with "Was möchten Sie haben?" though the Dutch one you mentioned cleverly avoids "du vs Sie" aka (in Dutch) tutoyeren [1]. I find it weak; get over yourself and treat the customer as such. Heck, how about having pride in treating your customer well? Something thoroughly lacking in The Netherlands. And I get it; sometimes you're tired while working such job or it is late or a bad day but this isn't that; it is systematic, and rather rampant in "Randstad" (big cities in Holland).

The Germans use "bitte" a lot more, and are always formal in situations where the Dutch have swapped to "jij/je". Especially Vodafone Netherlands (who got their helpdesk ironically in Maastricht) is so obviously using "jij/je" on their support pages. Cringeworthy! Hello?! I am your customer not your acquaintance!! Also compare for example casual restaurants in Germany and The Netherlands.

It isn't that these rules of using "u" don't exist in Dutch; they do. Its just -slowly but surely- being used less and less with a turning point around the (wild) '70s.

[1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutoyeren

[cr1895]

>"Wat mag het zijn?" which is something I hear a lot when going out

I don't recall ever hearing this in the NL. Maybe it's a Flemish thing.

[wila]

It is a common question in the southern parts of the Netherlands.

[donkeyd]

I visit Belgium quite regularly. I've also noticed that people never really greet each other in the streets, unless they're already familiar. In the Netherlands it's quite normal to greet pretty much anybody.

[furyg3]

To some degree you're right, but as an American who is (now) fluent in Dutch, it is not all up to translations.

The Dutch will tell each other if they don't like someone's shoes, if they should have prepared better for a meeting, if you wouldn't mind keeping it down, etc.

[donkeyd]

What's funny though, is that this often isn't true in the workplace. I worked at Apple for a while, an American company in the Netherlands and their way of giving direct feedback was tough for a lot of people.

[mpol]

I can agree with this. I have translated software from English to Dutch, and when doing literal translations, things get pretty bad. Even the word of "please", which gets translated to "alsjeblieft" is quite bad in the context of software. It has an emotional burden that we don't want in Dutch, it is used when begging for a cookie. We often try to have less of those strong emotions, and that can come across as direct and rude to English speakers.

It doesn't cover everything, but it does play its part.

[pwagland]

I don't think that this captures it correctly, otherwise the Dutch, for example, would be considered polite when speaking Dutch. But they aren't they basically say the same thing. The example about the hair cut from the article is a case in point. The Dutch tend to be more direct about these sorts of things.

[dmichulke]

I don't think so.

For your argument to hold, the Dutch (or Danish or Germans) should be perceived as more polite when speaking English, yet they aren't.

Either this or they all speak bad English (which is unlikely due to speaking other Germanic languages and getting 50% of their colloquial American English via Netflix and/or Hollywood)

[roenxi]

I spend a lot of time talking about engineering problems, the word 'failure' now means something very specific to me. It means 'didn't work as intended'. If my cup leaks a bit, that is failure. Often things fail for very good reasons.

That is really, really different from what failure means in everyday English, which is much closer to 'somebody didn't succeed due to a neglect of duty'. I usually regret the times I use the word failure in conversation, because in my head it has come to mean something that is really quite mild. I typically can't convey that to a normal listener if I reflexively slip it into a conversation.

Maybe a literal translation from another language loses subtlety and becomes harsher following a similar principle? Each word has a range of meanings, and the closest word in a different language won't ever quite cover the same ground.

[pwagland]

This is, of course, also true.

However, at least in the case of the Dutch, there is more to it than that. The Dutch have no problems saying "that's not right" whether they say that in Dutch or English, that particular phrase translates to the same thing (Dat klopt niet vs that's not right). And they have no problems (in general) saying that to a stranger, their boss, or their subordinate.

[mantas]

Who would have a problem stating "that's not right" if something is indeed wrong? Americans seem to have no problems to say this either.

The only case I could come up with is Indians. But maybe that's just my experience with cheap outsourcing...

[pwagland]

Well, the author of the article is assumedly from the UK. In general, this is not what they would say. They would say something like "respectfully, I'm not sure that's correct". One is a lot more "direct" than the other.

[mantas]

Do people actually say that in their daily lives? I thought that's only IT Crowd over-the-top joke :|

[dmichulke]

Isn't this a (software?) engineer/developer problem?

I agree developers may use "failure" or just boolean predicates ("That statement is false!") in a very exact way that may be perceived rude.

But I believe that issue is orthogonal to the directness of the Dutch. Still, beware Dutch developers until we sorted this out ;-)

[clan]

Non-native speakers will either first construct sentences in their native tongue or be heavily influenced by native idioms.

Just because you speak another language does not mean you assimilate the culture. The word "please" is easy to translate - but I have to remember to be more cordial and remember to use it. It does not come naturally in my own tongue.

Things do get lost in translation.

I absolutely loathe the amount of "sorry for your inconvenience" in each and every communication with american support staff. To my ear it sounds insincere. But I do appreciate the fact that it would sound impolite to an american user if left out.

Being polite is not in the words themselves but how they're used. And to my mind that is predicated on culture.

[BrandoElFollito]

> I absolutely loathe the amount of "sorry for your inconvenience" in each and every communication with american support staff.

Same in France. As a French, I hate the "merci pour votre compréhension". It drives me crazy because this is such an empty sentence.

[jacquesm]

In the meantime, Dutch, Danish or Germans speaking English are doing a lot better in terms of communication in foreign tongues than their English counterparts in Dutch, Danish or German.

[mantas]

> For your argument to hold, the Dutch (or Danish or Germans) should be perceived as more polite when speaking English, yet they aren't.

That'd be true if they were just missing polite words in their languages. Yet the difference is in wording, not in politeness of wording.

I'm no Dutch, but in my native tongue "what do you want?" is perfectly fine and polite question. Where're less polite variations too. "What would you like to order" is not unheard of. But "what can I get you?" would sound totally out of place.

Meanwhile we have 2 different words for "you" - polite and not. Which is lost in translations.

[cr1895]

>they all speak bad English

I wouldn't say bad, but I would say it is often spoken without the nuance of a native speaker. In my experience Dutch peoples' English is strongly influenced by Dutch.