Questions to Ask Someone from Another Country
Questions for a neighbour, classmate, or new colleague who has moved here from abroad. They cover settling in, what is harder than expected, staying in touch with home, and what they would like from people here.
The questions
Open any question for the note
How long have you been here?
Why ask it
Sets the frame for everything else. Three months and eleven years are entirely different conversations, and asking spares you questions they answered years ago.
What brought you here: work, study, family, something else?
Why ask it
Offering options keeps it from sounding like a border check. It also matters practically, since a student, a transferred employee, and someone who followed a partner have very different lives here.
How's it going so far, honestly?
Why ask it
The word honestly does real work, because most newcomers default to saying it is fine. Expect a mixed answer, and resist the urge to talk them out of the negative half.
What's been easier than you expected?
Why ask it
Ask this before the hard version. It gets the conversation going without requiring them to complain about your country to your face.
What's been harder than you expected?
Why ask it
Usually bureaucracy, housing, healthcare registration, or making friends. If they name friendship, that is often a request rather than an observation.
Is there any paperwork or admin here you still find baffling?
Why ask it
One of the few questions where you can genuinely help within the hour. Locals know things about tax forms and rental deposits that no official page explains.
How are you finding the work culture compared with home?
Why ask it
Ask about meetings, feedback, and whether people say what they mean. Newcomers frequently misread local indirectness as approval, or local bluntness as hostility.
Who do you spend most of your time with here?
Why ask it
Tells you whether they have landed in a community from home, a mixed group, or largely nobody. The last case is common in the first year and rarely mentioned unasked.
How do you keep in touch with people back home?
Why ask it
Time zones, weekly calls, and group chats are the practical shape of homesickness. The answer often reveals who they are responsible for at a distance.
Where do you shop for food from home?
Why ask it
A concrete and cheerful question, and the answer is usually a specific shop or online supplier they are pleased to have found. Often ends in a recommendation for you.
What do you cook when you're homesick?
Why ask it
More specific than asking about favourite dishes, and the answer is almost always a plain everyday thing rather than a celebration food.
Is there anything about the language here that still trips you up?
Why ask it
Idioms, phone calls, and humour usually outlast grammar. Asking makes it safe for them to check things with you later, which is the actual value.
What do people here say to you that gets old?
Why ask it
Nearly everyone has a list, and being asked directly is a relief. Take the answer as instruction about your own conversation rather than as a complaint about others.
How do you handle holidays: yours that nobody here marks, and ours that mean nothing to you?
Why ask it
Both halves are awkward for newcomers, and an invitation often follows naturally. Ask when their next one falls and put it in your calendar.
Have you found a doctor, dentist, barber, anyone like that you'd recommend?
Why ask it
Sounds trivial and is not: reassembling this list is one of the slowest parts of moving countries. If they have not, this is where you can be genuinely useful.
What's something here you've come to like that you didn't expect to?
Why ask it
Lets them praise something on their own terms rather than answering "do you like it here." The answers tend to be oddly specific and often about weather, transport, or manners.
Do you think you'll stay?
Why ask it
Ask once you know each other, not on first meeting. Many people are genuinely undecided and have nobody local to say that to, since friends here hear it as rejection.
What would you tell someone from home who was thinking of moving here?
Why ask it
The advice format gets you the frank version, including the parts they would soften if asked about their own experience.
Is there anything you'd want from people here that you don't usually get?
Why ask it
Often something small and repeatable: being invited without having to ask, being spoken to at normal speed, being asked about work rather than about their accent.
Anything I can help with, or introduce you to?
Why ask it
Closes the conversation with an offer rather than more curiosity. Make it specific if you can, since a vague offer is easy to decline and easy to forget.
How to use these questions
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to ask
Spread them out
Three questions over a coffee, more next time. Newcomers get asked about their origins constantly, and the difference between interest and interrogation is mostly pace.
Lead with the present, not the origin
Starting with how the move is going, rather than where they are from, treats them as a person living here rather than a visitor being catalogued.
Follow an answer with an offer
If they mention a problem with housing, admin, or the language, say what you know. This is the main advantage you have over their other conversations.
Learn to say their name properly
Ask, repeat it, get corrected, use it. Offering to shorten it for them is a kindness that mostly serves you.
What to avoid
Asking about visas or status
It touches on legal precarity and is nobody's business socially. If it is relevant, they will raise it.
Opening with politics or conflict
Leading with your view of their country's government or a war in the region puts them in the position of representing it. Wait for them to choose the topic.
Comparing to score points
"Isn't it better here?" leaves only one polite answer. Ask what is different and let them rank it themselves, if they want to.
Treating one person as the country
They know their own family, city, and generation. Asking them to explain a nation of millions produces careful non-answers.
Warm generalisations
Praising their food, their family values, or how hard they work is still telling them what they are. It gets the same flattened reply as any other stereotype.