Questions to Ask About Someone's Culture
Twenty questions for learning about a colleague, friend or partner's cultural background without turning them into a spokesperson. They ask about their own household and habits rather than about a country or a group in general.
The questions
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Where did you grow up, and where did your parents grow up?
Why ask it
Two generations rather than one, because the gap between them is usually where the interesting material is. It also avoids the guessing that comes from asking where someone is from, which many people have been asked too many times.
What languages get spoken in your family, and which do you use with whom?
Why ask it
The pairing matters more than the list: one language with grandparents, another with siblings, a mix at home. People often notice as they answer that they are a different person in each language.
What gets eaten at your family's table that would not be at mine?
Why ask it
Framing it as a comparison between two households keeps it specific and mutual rather than turning them into a guide to a national cuisine. Ask who cooks it, since that answer is usually about a particular relative.
Which celebration in your year actually matters to you?
Why ask it
Adding actually gives permission to skip the famous holiday in favour of the one their family keeps properly. It also allows someone to say that none of them do, which is a real answer people rarely feel able to give.
What do you do on that day, hour by hour?
Why ask it
Asking for the sequence rather than the significance gets past the encyclopaedia entry into their actual household: who arrives, what gets cooked, what everyone argues about. This is where the conversation usually comes alive.
Was there a rule in your house growing up that your friends' houses did not have?
Why ask it
Rules about shoes, food, bedtimes, elders, money and visitors are concrete and easy to describe, and they carry culture without requiring anyone to summarise it. Answers are frequently funny.
How do people in your family show that they care?
Why ask it
Feeding, worrying, giving money, criticising, showing up unannounced: the vocabulary of affection differs sharply between families and is often invisible to the person inside it. This is one of the most revealing questions in the set.
What is expected of you as a son, daughter, or grandchild that you find hard?
Why ask it
Obligation is where culture is most keenly felt and least often discussed. Naming the hard part invites honesty rather than a defence of the tradition, and it should be asked once trust exists rather than at a first meeting.
What did you have to explain to people over and over as a child?
Why ask it
Almost everyone from a minority background has a specific tiring explanation from childhood: a name, a diet, a holiday absence, a headscarf. Asking about the repetition rather than the difference acknowledges the labour of it.
Is there something people commonly get wrong about where your family is from?
Why ask it
This invites correction on their own terms instead of you testing what you think you know. Answers often concern geography, language, religion or lumping several distinct groups together.
What did you keep from how you were raised, and what did you drop?
Why ask it
The two halves together are what make this useful, since asking only what they kept implies tradition is the default. Most people have sorted their inheritance deliberately, and hearing the reasoning is the point.
Is there a part of your background you know less about than you would like?
Why ask it
Language loss, a grandparent who did not talk about the past, a religion nobody explained. This is a common and slightly sad experience, and being asked about it is usually welcome rather than intrusive.
How do you handle situations where you are the only one who knows what is going on?
Why ask it
Translating for parents, explaining a funeral custom to a partner, being the person asked at work: these are practical burdens rather than abstract identity questions. The answer tells you how to be useful.
What music or films from your background would you actually put on?
Why ask it
Actually put on filters out the canonical answers in favour of what they like, which may be entirely unrelated to heritage. Both outcomes are informative and neither needs justifying.
Whose way of doing things do you follow when two traditions disagree?
Why ask it
For anyone in a mixed family, this is a live and practical negotiation about weddings, funerals, holidays and children. Asking how it gets resolved is more interesting than asking how it feels.
What do you want to pass on, and what would you be relieved to let go?
Why ask it
Pairing the two prevents the assumption that continuity is always the goal. The relief half often names something specific about gender roles, obligation or religious observance, and it takes some trust to say.
What advice from an older relative has stayed with you, whether or not you took it?
Why ask it
The clause about not taking it is what makes people willing to answer. It also produces the exact wording, often in another language, which is usually the best moment in the conversation.
Where do you feel most at home, and is that a place or a group of people?
Why ask it
The choice between a place and people is what makes this worth asking, and many people find their answer surprises them. It works well for anyone who has moved country, including within one.
How would you like people to ask about this, since I imagine it goes badly sometimes?
Why ask it
Handing over the terms of the conversation is a genuine courtesy, and the answer is often specific and immediately usable. It also acknowledges the tiring version of this conversation without making them describe it.
Is there something about your background you wish somebody would ask about?
Why ask it
A good closing question because it lets someone talk about what interests them rather than what is commonly asked. The answer is frequently mundane and much more particular than any question you would have thought of.
Asking about someone's background well
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Getting the framing right
Ask about their household, not their culture
A question about what happens at their family's table is answerable. A question about what their culture believes makes them a spokesperson for millions of people and usually produces a careful, empty answer.
Make it an exchange
Answer the same question about your own family, including the parts that are ordinary or embarrassing. Culture questions in one direction only become an interview about difference.
Follow specifics, not categories
When someone mentions a dish, a rule or a relative, ask about that rather than widening out to the tradition it belongs to. The particular is where the actual conversation is.
Do a little homework first
Knowing roughly where a country is, or that a festival exists, means you are asking about their version rather than asking to be taught the basics. It is a small effort that changes how the questions land.
Where these work and where they do not
- With a new colleague, stay in the first half of the list: food, celebrations, household rules, languages.
- With a partner's family, the questions about obligation, showing care and mixed traditions are worth the time, but not at a first meeting.
- At work in a group setting, avoid anything that singles one person out as the representative of a background.
- With someone who has recently migrated, the questions about explaining things repeatedly and feeling at home tend to land harder than the ones about heritage.
- With a relative of your own, the questions about what was kept and dropped often start a conversation nobody in the family has had.
What goes wrong
Where are you really from
Any version of this asks someone to justify belonging, and most people have heard it hundreds of times. Ask where they grew up, and where their parents did, which gets the same information without the implication.
Treating one person as the source
Following an answer with so is that what your people believe undoes whatever the question achieved. Keep it about them and their family throughout.
Displaying what you already know
Naming the dishes, the festivals or the history you have read about turns the conversation into a performance of your own interest. Ask, then be quiet.
Pressing when the answer is short
Culture questions can touch on migration, loss, religion and family conflict. A brief answer is a boundary, and rephrasing it is worse than dropping it.