Before coming to the US I heard a lot of different stereotypes such as Americans being loud and big, loving fast food, and talks about sports and politics. Most of these were coming from TV shows and American movies and news. As a Russian, I also encountered a lot of stereotypes about these two countries not liking each other, so I would I have friends telling me that I won’t be well received and hear jokes. After coming here, while some stereotypes faded away, some I encountered and new appeared, I realized that these were mostly cultural shocks that were transformed into generalizations.
Something I found confusing was the “How are you?” as a greeting, I wouldn’t understand why when someone says that they won’t wait for my response and just move on. This was confusing for a lot of international students, so I guess we all believed in it being as a stereotype that Americans are too polite. Since sometimes people that we might not know would make comments such as “I love you look” or “you look amazing today”. I guess for me was very hard to get use to the fact that “How are you?” is a greeting and I still find it difficult, since where I come from this question carries a bigger weight than just a greeting, when someone asks you that it means that the person is waiting for a more elaborate response and will spend some time telling about everything that’s going on in their life. I think this will influence communication between U.S. Americans and people from other countries because for Americans this is a natural behavior and they don’t find it weird, whereas an international student might feel lost or confused.
I agree with Leela! I never considered the question to be anything more than a greeting until I began asking the same one in another language: “Ca va?” It was a little difficult for me to understand how, regardless of how you were feeling, you would always say that you were okay, but then I realized that we do the exact same thing in the U.S.! Thank you so much for sharing this!
Hi Bella!
I really enjoyed reading your assignment, particularly when you discussed the “How are you?” question. I’ve always considered this to be a casual greeting that one says on a daily, often hourly, basis. I never realized that it could be seen as a more personal, in depth question! When thinking about it now, “How are you?” does seem quite elaborate. It could discuss one’s physical or mental health, along with other private events that a stranger probably wouldn’t know about.