Questions to Ask Someone About Their Culture
Questions for asking someone about their background and family without treating them as a spokesperson for a whole country, with notes on wording that goes wrong and how to follow up after the conversation.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What did dinner look like in your house growing up?
Why ask it
Concrete, easy to answer, and it produces detail no general question about traditions ever gets: who cooked, who ate first, whether the television was on, what appeared on an ordinary Tuesday rather than a feast day.
Which holiday matters most in your family, and what actually happens on the day?
Why ask it
Asking what happens gets the timetable and the family arguments rather than an encyclopedia entry. People describe their own household precisely and their culture vaguely, and the household is the part worth hearing.
What is the dish people always get wrong when they make it outside your family?
Why ask it
Food complaints are specific and usually funny: the wrong rice, a skipped step, the restaurant version served here. It also lets them be an expert on something without being asked to represent anyone.
What did your grandparents do, and where did they live?
Why ask it
Two or three generations back is where family history and larger history meet: a trade, a village, a border that moved, a migration. Most people know more than they expect to and are rarely asked.
What language do you count in?
Why ask it
The language someone counts, prays, or swears in is usually their first, whatever they now speak most fluently. A small question that opens onto how many languages are actually running in their head.
Is there a word you use that does not translate cleanly?
Why ask it
Anyone bilingual has one of these and generally enjoys explaining it. The explanation usually requires describing a whole situation or relationship, which tells you more than the word itself does.
What is a joke or reference that only lands with people from home?
Why ask it
In-jokes mark the edge of a shared world. You will not find it funny, and that is the point: it shows what they cannot share here without a paragraph of setup first.
What do you miss that is small: a smell, a sound, a particular shop?
Why ask it
Homesickness lives in small things rather than landmarks. Asking for the small version skips the tourist answer and often gets something they have not said out loud in a long time.
If you have lived in more than one country, what took longest to get used to?
Why ask it
Adjustment stories are concrete: how appointments work, how people queue, what counts as rude, how cold a room is kept. Keep the question conditional, since not everyone has moved anywhere.
What music did your parents play in the car?
Why ask it
Childhood music arrives with the entire household attached to it. It also gives you something to listen to afterwards, which is one of the few ways to actually follow up on a conversation like this.
What is expected of you in your family that people here find surprising?
Why ask it
Expectations about money, visiting, weddings, and caring for parents vary enormously and create real strain. Ask about their family specifically rather than about their culture in general.
Who counts as close family for you, and who gets a say in big decisions?
Why ask it
Where the line around family sits, and who holds a vote on a move or a marriage, differs far more than most people assume. An answer that includes cousins, in-laws, or a grandparent with an effective veto reframes most of what they have already told you about their own choices.
What do you do differently from your parents, and how did that land with them?
Why ask it
Every generation edits what it inherits. What they dropped, and how the family took it, is often an unfinished story rather than a settled one, so ask lightly and let them decide how far to go.
What is the polite thing to do in your family that a visitor would never guess?
Why ask it
Small etiquette rules are the ones guests break: shoes at the door, refusing food twice before accepting, never arriving empty-handed, arriving deliberately late. Asking is much better than guessing.
What gets assumed about you that is wrong?
Why ask it
This gives them room to correct something said to them personally, which is a more useful and less abstract conversation than discussing stereotypes in general.
When people use your country or culture as one word, how far off is that?
Why ask it
Single labels flatten region, language, class, religion, and the difference between a capital city and a village. Most people are quick and precise about why the word does not describe them.
How do you decide what to pass on to children?
Why ask it
Transmission is a series of decisions rather than a default: which language at home, which holidays to keep when nobody else has the day off, whether to correct an accent. The answer shows what they consider load-bearing.
What did you push away when you were younger and come back to later?
Why ask it
Common and rarely discussed. Whatever someone rejected as a teenager and returned to as an adult tends to be the part they now hold most deliberately.
What should I do, or not do, if I visited your family?
Why ask it
Practical, and it makes you a better guest. You get instructions about gifts, shoes, timing, and what not to compliment, which no amount of reading provides.
What is something about your background that is hard to explain to people here?
Why ask it
A good closing question, because it invites the thing they have stopped trying to explain. Expect something about family obligation, humor, or grief, none of which survive translation well.
Asking about someone's background well
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Ask about their life, not their nation
- Keep questions on their family and their own experience. Nobody can speak for a country, and being treated as an ambassador gets tiring quickly.
- Use their own words for places and groups. If they say the north rather than a country name, follow that.
- Do not ask someone to explain a news event from their country of origin. It is a common request and an unwelcome one.
- Offer something comparable about your own family when they answer. A one-sided interview reads as data collection.
Wording that goes wrong
- Where are you really from. Ask where they grew up, or where their family is from, and only if it comes up naturally.
- Compliments on their English, which land as surprise that they can speak at all.
- Comparisons that rank places as cleaner, safer, or more advanced. These end conversations even when meant kindly.
- Guessing someone's background out loud and asking them to confirm your guess.
When something surprises you
- Say it is new to you rather than that it is strange. The first invites an explanation; the second asks for a defense.
- Ask what the reasoning is before deciding what you think. There is usually a practical history behind a practice that looks arbitrary from outside.
- Accept short answers. Religion, politics at home, and the reason someone left are often not first-conversation material.
- If you get something wrong, correct it briefly and carry on. A long apology hands them the job of reassuring you.
Afterwards
- Learn to pronounce their name, and the names of their family, correctly. It matters more than any question on this page.
- Try the food, watch the film, or listen to the music they mentioned, then tell them what you thought.
- Ask again in a few months. People say more once they know you listened the first time.
- Note the dates they told you about and say something on the day.