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Comment by pesfandiar | Hacker News Reader

Personal anecdote: My mother tongue (Persian) is very complicated when it comes to conveying respect to strangers. You need to be very careful to use the right terms and exchange obligatory niceties. That's why I often try to hide my mother tongue when interacting with fellow Iranians. For instance, it's a lot easier to order food at an Iranian restaurant in English than Persian. English just means business.

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In Sweden, there was a campaign to drop titles and respectful pronouns in the late 1960s, and instead use "du" - "you" or "thou" rather - the singular form, which was considered impolite.

It worked out to be a success, and when I was a kid in the 80s I can't remember anything else than the new system, except perhaps on film and maybe by some rather old conservatives.

Interestingly, and somewhat both ironically and telling, younger people, those younger than 30 perhaps, have reinvented a NEW formal address ("Ni" [you]) that was previously considered to be rather rude. I must say that although I'm not old enough to really know the old system, I still get a bit annoyed by just that failed attempt to be polite.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du-reformen]

I speak an Eastern European language. I know exactly what you mean.

I suspect all this linguistic baggage slows down communication and must have some impact on business. Compare it to English - it's so much easier to just get things done when you speak it.

I have to concur: English definitely is the most streamlined language that I know of in terms of "social overhead".

languages where you can convey respect by certain forms of words and its inherent link with social status or superiority are a pain to get the initial social coordination. cause you're judging and gauging consistently on how to play it especially with strangers.

Frickin' Japanese. There are some social customs that tie into this: when two salarymen meet for the first time, the first thing they do is wordlessly exchange business cards, so that the right honorifics, registers, verb forms, and such can be used depending on who outranks whom.

And they have so many words to express degrees of gratitude and denote degrees of favours. So I was told by a fellow startup guy who speaks Japanese.

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