I recently had to write a formal e-mail in Czech, so I wrote it in English and then translated it using an online translator. Before sending the e-mail, I asked my Czech teacher to check it for mistakes. To my surprise, grammar and spelling were not the (main) issue. Apparently my e-mail didn’t seem very ‘Czech’ in either content or style: it contained ‘far too much personal information and lacked directness. Evidently the words had translated fine, but the two cultures hadn’t.

Writing that e-mail got me thinking about how complex and multilayered cultures can be. For example, people say the British are reserved, yet I had just written a run of the mill British e-mail, and apparently it was too personal and revealed way too much. Could it be that the British are not as reserved as people think, and instead just reveal themselves in more indirect ways? I mean, if you ask a Brit how they are then they’ll likely shut you down with ‘I’m fine’, but, as I had just found out, they’re constantly leaking personal details in friendly e-mails to people they don’t even know.

On the flip side, Czech e-mails favour distance, directness, and formality. But if you ask a Czech how they are, they will likely offer an answer way too honest and intimate for the British palate.

Such contradictory behaviours are why labelling a country’s people as ‘open’ or ‘reserved’ is so reductive. Dip your toe in the water of any culture and you’ll find a host of aspects that don’t tally with one another (in ways that go far beyond a country’s inhabitants being reserved in some aspects and outgoing in others).

When you’re travelling (or living abroad) you can mimic the local rituals, study the national psyche, read about the history, but you will never understand the culture like a local does. Most cultural behaviour is automatic, subconscious, and so layered that even a native wouldn’t be able to isolate its parts; it would be like trying to pull apart the mechanics of your own mind – you can only go so far, because there is never any end to it.

Whatever approach you take in your efforts to ‘fit in’, an important step might be to stop trying to solve ‘why the culture is a particular way’, and accept you will never fully understand the way a native does.

Also, it sounds counterintuitive, but if people from different cultures want to understand each other, it might, on occasions, be better to emphasise their differences rather than to try and seamlessly blend in. For example, maybe it would be better if I write my Czech e-mails in a very British style; that way the recipient will know I’m foreign and give me the benefit of the doubt, rather than seeing my blunders and thinking I am a Czech with no understanding of etiquette. Surely the first option will bring us much closer to understanding each other than the second?

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