Critizine.com

I was just thinking about some misunderstandings I sometimes have with friends from other countries. Sometimes they seem to think I'm too bold in the things I say and then they feel insulted. While, most of the time, I don't mean to insult them. I'm pretty straightforward in the things I do and say, and sometimes this leads to a lot of misunderstandings between people from other cultures. Though i would describe myself a member of the 'being Dutch and direct, not meaning to offend you'-club.

But what is a cultural misunderstanding exactly? I've been browsing the web and found an interesting article about this phenomenon (although this is between British and American English, but as some of you might know: it's a whole world apart! Not only in geographical distance, but also in language). Cultural misunderstandings

"A cultural misunderstanding occurs when something--a word, gesture, object, social context, almost anything you can think of--has different meanings in two cultures. Sometimes the misunderstandings get resolved, sometimes they lead nowhere, and sometimes they can escalate to anything from love to war."

Now turning to the core of this message: I meant to ask you guys if you ever had any cultural misunderstandings? And if you had, what was it about or what was the problem?

very true.

Quoted from "TamaraNite"

political correctness we are experiencing in the US

I guess that's not only the case in the US I'm afraid. The same is happening in here in Holland and other countries. I'm confronted with it each day in my studies, but also in meetings of political parties, since I'm an adherent of two: one on a national level, the other on the EU-level. It's quite funny to see how people from different countries tend to respond to other cultures. Usually things can be straightened out, but only if people are open minded enough to admit that they interpreted something wrong. Usually it leads to endless discussions about who is right and who is wrong. Which I could define, in this context, as a huge cultural misunderstanding.