Comments by "Lynott Parris" (@DenUitvreter) on "American Reacts to Why The Dutch Are So Direct (They Say What They Mean)" video.

  1. What the British miss here (as usual) is that the Netherlands is much more unlike Britain than they assume and has been for centuries. The Netherland is and has been much more equal and egalitarian, peasants have been discussing water management with nobles and merchant for ages. A lot of the British politeness is about not being inclusive, to identify people as lower class because they don't understand the complicated social rules and polite ways of conversation. The British middle and lower class have adapted to the upper class complex rules, the Dutch upper class was sidelined by the merchants, often from humble beginnings and the peasants. Don't forget the Pilgrim Fathers didn't flee England directly, first they went to the Dutch Republic with it's religious tolerance but they fled the religious freedom there, they were worried about the influence of the Dutch sexual morale on their children (this was nothing wild, just that sexual joy was fine within marriage and public display of affection was allowed for courples and fiancees). The British and the Americans are the exception here, they are the prudes. Germany, France, Scandinavia, are much more like the Dutch than like the British and the Americans.
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  2. That was my take too. All that mind reading and complex beating around the bush is something you have to be raised with to truly master, so the upper class can identify the peasants by their manners easily and exclude them. Anyone can learn straigth forward rules of politeness, so they lack that purpose, the complexity of communication is wanted. The British tend to overlook how classist they are and have been, and how equal the Netherlands has been for centuries. They ar looking for the common ground, protestantism, but that's actually not a common ground, and they feel to see the immense difference in the historical structure of the societies.
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  3.  @cmcmanus1974  I'm well aware of the distinction but one of the B's in BBC stands for British. My point was that they missed the class angle because they assume a similar development towards a more equal society, while the language goes back to a time with far greater differences between the countries in that respect. I don't see what his has got to do with your personal experience.
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  4.  @arturobianco848  The Netherlands and to a lesser degree Flanders are the product of rebellion, ordinary people not letting themselves be boss around by nobles. No matter the upward social and mainly financial mobility and some kind of class redevelopping from it, ordinary people have jobs that don't allow for politeness and beating around the bush because there is danger and there is instruction. Traders can't let eachother guess about the deal either, and with people speaking different languages (natively) the first that gets skipped is the politeness and other complexities.
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  5. Maybe, but this video ist mostly aimed at work culture and there is a huge difference between the hierarchical German work culture and the egalitarian Dutch one, also concerning directness of course. You can also tell your boss his idea sucks. This is also the flipside of Dutch efficiency, in the Netherlands everyone 'has to have his pee over it'. The decision might already have been taken or will be taken at another level, but still everyone has to have a say, being at least heard.
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  6. That's a nice video indeed, that tosti/sandwich story from Akyol keeps cracking me up because it's so familiar to my working experiences.
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