Questions to Ask Someone About Their Culture
Questions to ask someone from another culture 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. Most suit a friend, a colleague or an in-law. The Interview group is for a student set a multicultural interview for a class, and adds what an assignment sheet expects: permission to record, how the family came to live here, school, health, and showing the person what you wrote.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Home and language
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 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 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.
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.
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 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.
Family
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.
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.
How is disagreement handled in your family?
Why ask it
Directness, deference to elders, and whether conflict is aired or absorbed vary enormously. This one explains more about a cross-cultural relationship than any list of customs.
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.
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.
Identity
How would you describe your background, in your own words?
Why ask it
Lets them set the terms: nationality, region, religion, language, or a hyphenated identity. Guessing the label first is the most common way this conversation starts badly.
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.
What role does religion play in your day, if any?
Why ask it
"If any" matters: plenty of people are assumed devout because of their background. Answers range from five daily prayers to nothing but a family funeral, and both are useful to know.
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.
Is there something you do automatically that people here find odd?
Why ask it
Gets at habits rather than beliefs, which is where daily life actually happens. Answers are usually small: how they eat, greet, apologise, or handle money.
Do you feel like you switch between two versions of yourself?
Why ask it
Common for people raised between cultures and rarely asked directly. Some find it exhausting, some find it useful, and a few reject the framing, which is itself an answer.
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.
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.
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.
Is there something about your culture you'd change?
Why ask it
Asking this shows you are not treating their background as untouchable. Many people are more critical of their own culture than any outsider would risk being.
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.
Interview
Before we start, may I record this or take notes, and how should I name you in what I write?
Why ask it
Settle this before anything personal is said. Some people are glad to be named in a class paper and others want a first name only or a changed one, and schools differ on recording and on naming interviewees, so check what your course requires as well.
Is there anything you would rather I did not ask about, or left out of the write-up?
Why ask it
A veto offered in advance tends to make people say more, because they know where the edge is. Keep to it even when the subject they rule out is one your assignment sheet lists.
How did your family come to be living here, as far as the story was told to you?
Why ask it
Most interview outlines ask for the family's history, and this asks for it as a story. Some families arrived last year and some have been in one town for centuries, so let them choose where it starts, and leave visas and legal status out of it altogether.
What were you taught as a child about how to treat older people?
Why ask it
The values heading on an assignment sheet is hard to answer, and this is one corner of it with rules attached: who is served first, how a grandparent is addressed, whether you may contradict one. Rules are far easier to quote in a paper than a statement about respect.
How were school and work talked about in your house?
Why ask it
Listen for who was expected to keep studying, who was expected to start earning, and whether those were the same people. The exact sentence a parent used is worth more to your write-up than a summary of what the family believed.
Were the boys and girls in your family raised differently?
Why ask it
Interview guides call this gender roles, a phrase that gets a lecture in reply. Asking about brothers, sisters and cousins gets examples: who did which chores, who could stay out late, whose schooling came first. Take the answer down without arguing, since your paper is where your own view goes.
Which moments in a person's life does your family mark, and which of those have you been at yourself?
Why ask it
A naming, a coming-of-age ceremony, a wedding that runs for days, a mourning period. The second half matters, because a ceremony they attended comes back as what they wore and who cried, and one they only know about comes back as a definition.
When someone in your family is ill, what happens first: a home remedy, a call to a relative, a doctor?
Why ask it
Nursing and health courses tend to want this one. Asking what happens first gets the real order of events, and people often name a soup, a tea or a particular aunt before any clinic. Write it up as one family's habit, not as medical advice or as what everyone from their background does.
Does eye contact, touch or how close people stand work differently in your family than it does here?
Why ask it
Communication style is a standard heading on these assignments and is hard to ask about in the abstract. Three named things give them something to react to, and the answer may explain a moment in the conversation you are having.
Has your background ever changed how you were treated at school, at work or in a shop?
Why ask it
Assignments usually ask about prejudice, and this is a gentle and honest way in. Naming three places lets them pick a small story or a serious one, and the one they offer is the one to write about: do not press for worse.
If my classmates remember one thing from this interview, what should it be?
Why ask it
Their answer is rarely what you would have picked as the main point, which is the reason to ask. Quote it word for word, and consider opening your conclusion with it.
Can I show you what I wrote before I hand it in?
Why ask it
A read-through catches misheard names and places, and it is the fairest offer an interviewer can make. Check your deadline before you make it, so that it is an offer you can keep.
Getting it right
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 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.
Has anyone here ever got it right in a way that stuck with you?
Why ask it
A more useful question than asking about slights, and it tells you concretely what respect looked like: a name pronounced properly, food remembered, a holiday acknowledged.
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.
If I want to learn more, where should I start: a book, a film, a person, a place to eat?
Why ask it
Ends with something you can act on, and it moves the burden of educating you off them. Following up later is what makes the whole conversation credible.
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.
For a cultural diversity interview
- Read your assignment sheet against the list before you choose. Family, values, communication, religion, health and prejudice are the usual headings, and each has a question here that asks for an example where the sheet asks for a summary.
- Pick someone you can go back to. A neighbour or a classmate's parent will answer a follow-up message; a stranger found for the assignment may not.
- One sitting with one person will not cover five groups of questions about their family. Take two or three from each group, and keep the first two and the last two of the Interview group whatever else you cut.
- Write up what one person told you about one family. Turning their answers into what a whole culture believes is the mistake the assignment is there to correct.
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.