What’s Polite and Impolite Question in Your Country?

What’s Polite and Impolite Question in Your Country?

            What’s polite and impolite question for conversation in your country? That’s important question to us, to find the answer before we have conversation with foreigners. It’s because there are some question which are commonly used by Indonesian people to have conversation are impolite for people from others countries.  To find the answer, I asked a group of foreigners that I met at “BonBin” (a Famous food court on my faculty), they are consist of many countries such as; France, Lithuania, Tunisia, China, Argentina, Germany, Morocco, and Switzerland. I found some interesting answer from them, and this time I want to write the answer according; Cathy, student from China and Steve, student from Germany.

            Cathy is student from China, she now studying Bahasa Indonesia in my faculty. She has lived in Indonesia for one month and will stay for about six month.  When I asked her about impolite question in her country, she answers with unique answers. She said the in polite question is such as “How many girlfriend/boyfriend that you have before? “. She said that is a harsh question, it’s same as like “how many is your boyfriend/girlfriend right now?”  She also said a question like “What is your father/mother job? “ is also in polite question.  Beside that she said beside private matters, those are polite question.

            Steve is student from Germany, he’s has been in Indonesia for one year. Steve said that the first impolite question is about money. It’s impolite to ask someone about “how much is your salary?” or “How much money do you get every week/ every month?”. It’s also impolite to ask someone political side, it’s impolite to ask “are you left side or right side?” Religion question also sensitive issue, when you asked it in conversation.  The common conversation that Germany people had is about; sport, hobby, activities, food, etc. Steve also noted that they prefer to talk directly to their purpose. He also said that most German people is very concern about time, they prefer to done their work in time. It’s make them less have talk each other, even for have a little joke, it’s very rare for them to have it.

            Have a little talk with this group of foreigners is very nice. They had good responds of my question, instead my English is not very good.  The situation also enjoy, the answer my question while they have lunch.   There is Philip, foreigner from Switzerland which give me a joke, he answer “the polite question in Switzerland, is which not impolite ones”. Philip also told me that Swiss people usually make a joke about French.  They also ask me about Indonesian people joke. Unfortunately I can’t give them a good joke, because it’s difficult to make funny joke in English.

            At the end, I have some conclusions for my talks with them.  The first is they commonly used non private topics to have conversation with others people. It can be such as; sport, music, hobby, activity, etc. The private matters are impolite topics, it can be such as about; money, politic, family, relationship, age, and physical condition. The impolite question is can be said as rude question, and it’s bit hard for them to answers such kind that.  We must know what polite and impolite ones are, so we can have a good conversation and not make hurt feeling our partner.