Questions to Ask a Foreigner
Questions for getting to know someone who moved here from another country, going past where are you from, covering what surprised them, what they miss, language, holidays, going back, and what people here always get wrong.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
How long have you been here, and how long did you think you would stay?
The gap between the two is the interesting part. Someone who came for a year and stayed nine has a different relationship with the place than someone who arrived intending to stay, and it opens the whole conversation without asking anything private.
- 2
What was the first thing that felt strange?
First impressions stay sharp for years, and they are usually about something small: how people queue, how loud restaurants are, how much ice goes in a drink. It is easy to answer and it gets past the polite version of this conversation quickly.
- 3
What do you miss that is hard to explain to people here?
The answer is rarely food or family, which are the replies people expect. It tends to be a texture: a kind of light, a way of arguing, a shop being open at the right hour. Asking for the hard to explain version is what invites the real one.
- 4
What did nobody warn you about?
Everyone who moves countries gets prepared for the big things and blindsided by paperwork, weather, or the specific loneliness of having nobody nearby who knew them before. Whatever they name is the thing they had to solve alone.
- 5
What is the food you cannot get here, or cannot get properly?
Almost everyone has one specific item and a strong opinion about the local imitation of it. It is a light question that reliably produces an animated answer, and often an invitation to go and eat something.
- 6
How often do you speak your first language in a week?
For some people it is daily and for others it is a phone call on Sundays, and the difference shapes how far away home feels. People who rarely use it often mention the strange experience of losing words in their own language.
- 7
What do people here always assume about your country that is wrong?
It hands them the floor for a correction they have wanted to make for years. Take the answer as given and resist the urge to supply your own example, which is the usual way this question goes wrong.
- 8
What do you find yourself explaining over and over?
Different from the previous question and usually more tiring: how to say their name, why they do not know a particular television show, what their qualification is equivalent to. It tells you exactly what not to make them do again.
- 9
What is easier here than at home, and what is harder?
Asking for both halves is what makes this work. The easier half is usually structural, healthcare or transport or paperwork, and the harder half is usually social. Asking only the positive half turns the conversation into a compliment they are obliged to pay.
- 10
What holiday do you still keep, and how do you keep it here?
Keeping a holiday in a country that does not observe it means taking a day off for it, moving it to a weekend, or letting it go by. The workaround is the story, and it frequently comes with an invitation attached.
- 11
How do people at home think your life here is going?
There is nearly always a gap between the version sent home and the actual one, and most people are aware of it and almost never asked about it. It goes deep without being intrusive, which is a rare combination.
- 12
What did you have to learn that nobody teaches you: the paperwork, the banking, the small talk?
Bureaucracy, building a credit history from zero, and the unwritten rules of conversation are the three that come up. It is a practical question, and if you know anything useful this is the moment you can actually be of help.
- 13
Is there a word in your language you wish existed in this one?
Nearly everyone bilingual has one, and explaining it requires describing a whole situation, which is where the good part is. It also puts them in the position of expert rather than guest for a few minutes.
- 14
What was the first thing here you actually liked?
Liked rather than admired, and first rather than best. The wording usually produces something unexpectedly small and specific, and it is a warmer question than asking what they think of the country.
- 15
How often do you go back, and how does it feel when you do?
The common answer, that home has moved on without them and they now feel like a visitor there, is one of the harder parts of living abroad and is almost never asked about. Give it room instead of moving on quickly.
- 16
Has your accent or the way you speak changed, and do people at home notice?
Being teased at home for sounding foreign is a widely shared and genuinely strange experience. It also opens up which language they now think in, count in, and swear in, which are often three different answers.
- 17
What do you call home now when you are not thinking about it?
The slip is the answer: which place gets called home in an unguarded sentence about going back. Many people notice their own answer for the first time when somebody asks.
- 18
What would you take back with you if you left tomorrow?
It asks what has been absorbed rather than what has been endured, and answers tend to be habits rather than objects: a way of working, a directness or a reserve they did not arrive with.
- 19
Is there anything you have given up on getting used to?
There is always one, and being allowed to name it without having to be diplomatic is a relief. It is also more honest than asking what they dislike, which invites politeness by design.
- 20
What do you wish people asked you instead of where are you from?
A good closing question because it hands the conversation back. Whatever they name, ask it next, and remember it for the next person, because the answer is usually not specific to them.
Asking about somebody's country without making them the delegate for it
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
Asking well
Asking well
- Ask about the person's life, not their nation. Nobody wants to be the spokesperson for eighty million people over one drink.
- Follow whatever they get animated about and drop the rest of the list. This works as a source of two or three questions, not as a sequence.
- Where are you from is not forbidden, it is just exhausted. The follow up is what makes it a conversation: what was the street like, what did you do there, would you go back.
- If somebody answers briefly, that is an answer. Plenty of people moved for reasons they do not want to discuss with someone they met an hour ago.
- Do not ask them to say something in their language, and do not attempt their accent.
Questions that usually land badly
Questions that usually land badly
- Immigration status, visas, or how they got here, unless they raise it.
- Which country is better.
- Anything beginning with I have always wanted to ask someone from your country.
- Politics or conflict back home as an opener, especially if it is currently in the news.
- Guessing where they are from, then guessing again.
- No, but where are you really from.
If they are new here
If they are new here
Somebody in their first few months usually needs two things nobody offers. The first is practical information: banking, doctors, phone contracts, how deliveries work, which pieces of paperwork are urgent and which can wait. The second is simply being asked again another day. Most people who have moved countries describe the same experience of pleasant first conversations that never turn into anything, so the useful thing is not a better question, it is the second invitation.