Cultural Questions to Ask
Questions for getting to know someone's background at work, at school or in a friendship. They ask about that person's own family, language, food, names and habits rather than asking anybody to explain a whole country, which is the difference between a good conversation and an interview nobody agreed to.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Where did you grow up, and where did your parents grow up?
Why ask it
The two answers are often different, and the gap between them is the real subject. Starting with geography rather than with culture lets the other person decide how much of that gap to open up, and how soon.
What language do you count in, or swear in?
Why ask it
Counting, arithmetic and swearing tend to stay in the first language long after everything else has moved across, so this gets somewhere that asking which languages they speak does not. It also lets a heritage speaker say they understand a language they cannot read.
What do you eat at home that you never see on a menu here?
Why ask it
Restaurants adapt to local expectations, so the everyday dishes stay invisible: simpler, cheaper, and rarely asked about. People are usually pleased somebody wanted the home version rather than the restaurant one.
Which holiday do you actually take off work, whatever the calendar says?
Why ask it
The calendar answer and the real answer are different. Watch for the day somebody spends annual leave on because it is not a public holiday where they now live, since that is usually the observance that matters most to them.
What's something your family does that you assumed everyone did?
Why ask it
Almost everyone has one, and it is usually small: what happens to shoes at the door, how a visitor gets fed, who is served first, what a birthday involves. Framing it as a discovery keeps them from having to speak for a whole country.
Which of your grandparents' habits have you kept?
Why ask it
Habits outlast beliefs. People who say they have drifted from their background still keep specific practices, and naming one of those is easier and more honest than answering a question about identity.
What's the first thing you'd cook for someone you wanted to impress?
Why ask it
Asking what they would cook, rather than what their cuisine is, gets a dish with a person attached and frequently an offer to make it. If the answer involves an ingredient they cannot buy locally, you have learned something about the cost of living away from home.
What do people get wrong about where you're from?
Why ask it
Give this room and resist filling the pause. Most people have a short list, and the useful items are mundane rather than dramatic: the weather, the size of the city, what the food actually tastes like, how unremarkable daily life is.
What's the hardest thing to explain to someone who didn't grow up with it?
Why ask it
Aimed at whatever translates badly: a family obligation, a form of respect, a joke that only works in another language. The answer shows you where the effort of explaining sits, which is worth knowing before you ask them to explain anything else.
What do you miss that isn't food?
Why ask it
Food answers come easily, so ruling them out gets further: a sound in the morning, the way strangers speak to each other, one particular shop, being understood without having to spell things out.
How do people say no where you grew up?
Why ask it
Norms around directness cause more day-to-day friction at work than any large cultural difference. An answer about how refusal is signalled, and how it is meant to be heard, is immediately useful to anyone who works alongside them.
What counts as being on time in your family?
Why ask it
Punctuality is taught without ever being stated, and mismatches surface fast in friendships and at work. Ask about specific occasions, dinner at seven, a wedding, a party, because the answer often changes with each one.
Who in your family do you have to tell first when something happens?
Why ask it
This gets at structure far better than a general question about relatives. The person who must be told first, and what follows if they are not, describes a live obligation rather than a family tree.
What did your parents want you to become?
Why ask it
People can talk about this at length, and the answers are specific: a profession, a city to settle in, a marriage, or a plain instruction not to repeat what the parents had to do. It also opens up what they chose instead, and what that cost.
Which traditions have you dropped, and which have you kept on purpose?
Why ask it
On purpose is the part that matters. Everyone loses things by drift, and the practices somebody has deliberately kept or restarted after a gap are the ones they can explain and generally want to.
What did you have to work out about living here that nobody explained?
Why ask it
Practical and rarely asked. Answers cover paperwork, registering with a doctor, banking, how complaining works, what schools expect from parents. It shows how much was navigated unaided, and it usually makes you more useful to them afterwards.
What happens at a funeral where you're from?
Why ask it
Ask plainly and let the answer take as long as it needs. Practices differ in concrete ways: timing, burial, who prepares the body, how long people visit, what you bring. This is also the thing colleagues most often get wrong at the moment it matters.
What's a story from your family that gets retold every year?
Why ask it
A retold story is a culture in miniature, including the family's humour and its official version of events. Ask who tells it best and whether anyone disputes the details, which is where the second, better story usually appears.
What part of your name do people here get wrong, and does it bother you?
Why ask it
People tolerate a mispronounced name for years rather than correcting colleagues. Asking directly, including whether it bothers them, hands them the chance to fix it without having to raise it. Then use the corrected version, every time.
What would you want your children to keep?
Why ask it
A generous closer, and often the most considered answer in the conversation. What someone chooses for their children is a shortlist of what they think is worth real effort, and it usually includes the language, which is the hardest item on any such list to pass on.
Asking without turning someone into a spokesperson
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Phrasing that works better
- Say "in your family" rather than "in your culture". One person can speak for their household with authority and cannot speak for a nation of millions.
- Ask about a specific occasion instead of a general practice: this wedding, last funeral, the meal at the end of the fast. Specifics produce stories; abstractions produce summaries.
- Offer your own answer first when the question is personal. Otherwise the exchange becomes one person being studied by another.
- Accept a short answer as an answer. Some subjects are simply not interesting to the person you asked, and pressing turns curiosity into work for them.
Questions to leave alone
- "Where are you really from?" People hear it as a challenge to their answer, and it lands that way even when it is not meant that way.
- "Say something in your language." It makes a performance out of a person. Asking what a specific word means, in context, is a different and welcome question.
- "Is it true that your people..." Anything requiring them to confirm or deny a generalisation puts them in the position of representing a group.
- Politics, war and conflict in a country they left. If they raise it, follow. Do not open it because you read a headline this morning.
- Immigration status, visas and how they got here. It is a legal matter with real consequences, and it is not conversation.
When and where to ask
- One to one, not in a meeting. Group settings turn a question into a presentation, especially where they are the only person from that background in the room.
- Not during the week your workplace has designated for it. Being asked because it is a scheduled theme feels different from being asked because someone is interested.
- Sitting down over food, walking, driving. Side by side is easier for these subjects than face to face across a desk.
- Do your own reading first. Arriving with a basic understanding of the place, and asking about their experience of it instead, changes the whole tone.
When you get something wrong
- Correct and move on. A brief "sorry, thanks" and the right pronunciation is better than a paragraph of apology that makes the moment about your discomfort.
- Write the correction down. Asking for the same pronunciation three times reads as not caring, whatever you say about it.
- If someone declines a topic, do not raise it again later in a friendlier tone. They already answered.
- Reciprocate over time. The people who are asked about their background most are usually asked by people who never say anything about their own.