“Thank You” in Hindi and English Mean Very Different Things

As a non-American, this was one of the biggest culture shocks I faced. On the surface, relationships in the US seem very transactional (not making the judgment that they are really transactional). For example, in the US a son would thank his parents for paying his college tuition. In my culture, this would be insulting because it would suggest being distant from family, in the sense that the son ought to believe his parents wealth is his also, and later willingly contribute his earnings when his parents need anything. It is a difference in the degree to which individualism is the norm.<p>Reminds of the book &quot;Debt&quot; by David Graeber. He talks about how many cultures have systems where everyone is indebted to their family and community, and this debt is never to be settled. To want to settle a debt (or to even calculate it) would indicate that a relationship has ended. So it is a huge culture shock to see the degree to which calculation plays a part in US relationships (like Sheryl Sandberg precisely splitting domestic chores with her husband 50:50).<p>I have a feeling that the non-American system is better because it fosters closer family ties, but that might just be because that&#x27;s the system I&#x27;m familiar with.

Perhaps he doesn&#x27;t understand that &quot;thank you&quot; is usually meant as a simple, polite acknowledgement. A heartfelt expression of gratitude in English is said not with a stock phrase, but by stopping, looking at the person, and explaining your gratitude to them.<p>He is confusing our stock phrase with something that is an entirely different concept.

As an English speaker, I agree with others above that this article misses a huge point about our language.<p>Yes we use thank you a lot, even for some things people may consider &#x27;trite&#x27;. I&#x27;m from the UK so I use it a HELL of a lot.<p>But I want to call out 2 points based on this:<p>1. As mentioned above, just thanking someone can turn their day around, and most times I feel rude if I do not say it (that is my cultural upbringing).<p>2. For me&#x2F;the English culture, it is a multi-faceted word. It can be used in everyday scenarios, or it can be used in deeply emotional ones.<p>The article doesn&#x27;t seem to acknowledge this, so perhaps the OP hasn&#x27;t truly grasped the intricacies of the language.<p>As an aside, I did find the information about the attitude towards &#x27;thanks&#x27; in Hindi really interesting. Thanks!*<p>*sorry, couldn&#x27;t resist. ;)

I say thank you often, and every single time it&#x27;s because I feel gratitude. This guy is doing it wrong.<p>&gt; After moving to America, it took me several years to say thanks to people without actually meaning it. Putting “thank you” on the tip of my tongue, ready to escape at a moment’s notice, rather than extracting it from the depths of my heart, was one of the hardest language lessons I had to learn in the United States.

As an American, I&#x27;ve sometimes been bothered by the use of thank you. It is fine as a pleasantry at a restaurant. But it always felt odd coming from a boss or from the company CEO. I think to myself, &quot;I didn&#x27;t do this piece of work as a favor to you, I didn&#x27;t because you are paying me and you told me to do it.&quot; It is interesting to read that this view is more common in other cultures. I also dislike putting &quot;thank you&quot; in an email, before they have agreed to do the favor or task. It feels very presumptuous. Am I crazy or do other people feel the same way.

I live in the UK, and whenever I travel back to Bulgaria, I get told off for saying &quot;sorry&quot; and &quot;thank you&quot; all the time.<p>In Bulgarian, the word for &quot;thank you&quot; is &quot;благодаря&quot; (&quot;blagodarya&quot;) but people often fall back to a simple &quot;мерси&quot; (&quot;merci&quot; - the French word, yes) for transactional thank-yous.<p>I&#x27;m not really sure whether that&#x27;s because &quot;благодаря&quot; is reserved for sincere, heartfelt thanksgiving or because the word is just too long to say very often.

I think it&#x27;s important to point out that India is very culturally diverse. I have lived in Mumbai for 22 years, and Canada for 8 years. I have said &quot;thank you&quot; to people all my life. I do it consciously and sincerely - cashiers, rickshaw drivers, waiters, friends, peers, everybody. I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;ve ever offended anybody - at least not that I know of.<p>With regard to family - neither of my parents&#x27; respective families are overtly religious, and neither of them have Hindu or Muslim ancestries. We say thank you to one another all the time. In fact, I can&#x27;t relate to what the author is saying at all! In the spirit of sharing&#x2F;learning about new cultures, here&#x27;s hoping that the 7% of us (7 million people) aren&#x27;t painted with this broad brush.

When I was an English teacher in China, I noticed something similar. Saying &quot;thank you&quot; to friends I made there resulted in a look of confusion, being taken aback, and not quite knowing how to respond. Over time I noticed a pattern and concluded that the interpretation was that friends shouldn&#x27;t need to say thanks to each other, and saying it turned interaction into something more formal and less friendly.

Something I haven&#x27;t seen anyone bring up is the way that &quot;thank you&quot; or &quot;sorry&quot; are delivered.<p>I&#x27;m not familiar enough with other languages to know if they have similar variances in speech, but in english you can very much change the meaning of your message with the tone of your voice or your rate of speech.<p>Nearly any phrase can come off as condescending given the right delivery.

Taught this kind of stuff in India for a while for a company providing phone support. It&#x27;s not just &quot;thank you&quot;, it&#x27;s also &quot;please&quot; and &quot;sorry&quot; - both are considered rude&#x2F;inappropriate outside of certain settings. There&#x27;s a huge difference in etiquette that is a cause of frustration on phone calls (particularly for support). Both sides are (usually) trying to be polite, but perceive the other side as being very rude. This is one of the main reasons (of about a half a dozen) that cause support calls to go sour.

Come to think of it, in India I have almost never really &quot;thanked&quot; many among my family, but have done it for almost everybody else, and often I have found a compliment works in places where a thanks might seem too formal. Saying &quot;I had an amazing time at your place and will miss the food&quot; carries the sense of gratitude without the sense of formality in India.

Although not as extreme as in this example, the American custom of saying &quot;thank you&quot; and &quot;please&quot; all the time is considered excessive to the point of being insultingly trite by many cultures.<p>And I regularly hear Americans complain about people from other cultures being impolite because they don&#x27;t say &quot;thank you&quot; or &quot;please&quot; all the time.<p>AFAIK in most cultures these kind of phrases are generally more formal and tend to signal a certain distance that in the wrong context can be interpreted as condescending.

In America we are conditioned with a moral duty to be appreciative for what we have and how fortunate we are. It probably stems from the religious nature of some of the early colonies, which religion was Calvinist in nature and big on divine providence, and how it is only by the whim of God that you have a roof over your head, food on the table, a supportive family, etc. We set aside an entire day -- Thanksgiving -- for expressing gratitude and in practical terms that&#x27;s stretched over a four-day weekend.

In Greece, saying &quot;please&quot; can sound condescending. You pretty much want to avoid saying please, and politeness comes from the phrasing. &quot;Can you bring me a glass of water&quot; is the polite version of &quot;bring me a glass of water&quot;, although the latter is also usually made polite by adding &quot;re&quot; (to friends) or adding &quot;a bit&quot; (&quot;bring me a glass of water for a bit&quot;, it doesn&#x27;t translate well).<p>Saying &quot;please&quot; to anyone you&#x27;re even slightly familiar with would be at least weird, and in many cases condescending and offputting.<p>&quot;Thanks&quot; is somewhere between the US and India, where you don&#x27;t thank everyone all the time, but do thank people who&#x27;ve done you a favor, or in service settings, people who have been good to you (good servers&#x2F;shopkeepers&#x2F;etc).

Similar to the cultural difference when Russians do not smile [1].<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.russianlife.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;why-dont-russians-smile&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.russianlife.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;why-dont-russians-smile&#x2F;</a>

Over here in Germany we even had an optional &#x27;Cultural differences&#x27; workshop you could participate in, which discussed things - both for Germans and for people from the US, the presenter was from the US - that might seem awkward at first.<p>The ~social fillwords~ were on the list. Lots of thank you &#x2F; you&#x27;re welcome plus the really irritating &#x27;How are you?&#x27; variations.<p>Wouldn&#x27;t you find these differences between any culture though? Is Hindi&#x2F;Indian vs. English&#x2F;US especially surprising?

In other news, different cultures are different.

“Thank you for coming to my home” actually meant, “It’s time for you to get out of my house.”<p>Seriously? Find new friends. When I thank people after hosting an event I do mean to thank them for choosing to spend their time with me. I feel like this post is blently dishonest and caricaturing just to tell a nice story.

There&#x27;s a similar problem with my native language[1] and &quot;sorry&quot;. The standard word, <i>samaavenna</i> literally means &quot;forgive me&quot;. As a former British Colony (Sri Lanka) most of us have got used to the English words -- even non-English speakers will automatically say &quot;sorry&quot; or &quot;thank you&quot;.<p>But once &quot;thank you&quot; is said, most people awkwardly respond with &quot;ah&quot;, because there&#x27;s no phrase in the language for &quot;you&#x27;re welcome&quot;.<p>Come to think of it, we don&#x27;t even have a universal second person (a &quot;you&quot;). You need to know the social standing of the person before you can address him&#x2F;her!<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sinhalese_language" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sinhalese_language</a>

India is a more hierarchical society in general, and one doesn&#x27;t feel the need to thank the servile class for services rendered. Outside family and close circle of friends, a &quot;thank you&quot; can lubricate social interactions.

In the military you will often hear &quot;Don&#x27;t thank me. The government thanks me twice a month.&quot; So there are parts of american culture where these pleasantries are less common.

This is not specific to Hindi speaking people. Even here in South India, Saying you Thank you is usually considered an insult as mentioned in the article.

It&#x27;s about the same in Russia (well, as far as I can tell by looking at my friends and relatives), to the lesser degree perhaps, but the same.

This is partly in line with my experiences. It&#x27;s more subtle than it comes across in the article. I&#x27;ve thanked servers, taxi drivers, and others, but don&#x27;t recall thanking a bus driver.<p>I have thanked my parents and they&#x27;ve never had issues. However, in general thanking elders is considered bad form, but asking them or appreciating their blessing isn&#x27;t. Is that very different?

This reminds of what David Graeber said about debt: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs</a><p>He mentions that historically, cultures tried to keep people indebted to each other, and not settle the debt as is in fashion now. The reason was to keep people doing favors to each other.

It looks like &quot;shukriyaa&quot; (शुक्रिया) is a way of saying &#x27;thanks&#x27; in situations where formality is inappropriate. Can anyone confirm&#x2F;deny?<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikihow.com&#x2F;Say-Thank-You-in-Hindi" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wikihow.com&#x2F;Say-Thank-You-in-Hindi</a>

I asked some friends from Indian (Jaipur, Pune, Delhi) and they do not confirm this.

As people say (more eloquently) in the comments, he&#x27;s just wrong assuming that people in America say &quot;Thank You&quot; just to end a transaction. But it makes for a better narrative, doesn&#x27;t it?

I don&#x27;t understand the big insight that&#x27;s supposed to be in this article. About every country uses &quot;thank you&quot; in a different way. Like what, they discovered cultural differences?

&gt; “Thank you for coming to my home” actually meant, “It’s time for you to get out of my house.”<p>That&#x27;s a good observation.

Ok! So I was a fool felt happy seeing a &quot;Thankyou&quot; message after every transaction or signup :&#x2F;<p>Well, thank you!

My two cents:<p>Usually, acting very polite and formal in informal settings could send the wrong message to people around you from certain cultures as it would be interpreted as the speaker establishing barriers between him&#x2F;her and the rest and that he&#x2F;she views them as strangers not as friends which is totally off-putting.<p>The problem manifests actually in formal settings where some cultures don&#x27;t have these &quot;lubricants&quot; such as &quot;thanks, please ..etc&quot; in place to ease everyday situations. So, when you expect a simple &quot;thank you&quot; like for helping someone on the street as a small gesture of gratitude towards you and you don&#x27;t get it, you don&#x27;t really know exactly if they&#x27;re being deliberately rude to you and sending their message very clear or they&#x27;re just being &quot;natural&quot; and &quot;easygoing&quot; i.e. being themselves.<p>You can&#x27;t really tell and it&#x27;s just a reckless form of gambling to take offense at their acts. So, I just give them the benefit of the doubt and assume no malice intended.<p>Lastly and I speak only from my observations and experiences, some Indians are &quot;obtuse&quot; for the lack of a better word and it seems that most of the social cues that you expect to be interpreted very easily by everyone are completely lost on them but from what I understand now, these people usually come from rural areas and lower socio-economic backgrounds.<p>So, you basically should not really put too much thought into their processes. That&#x27;s how they&#x27;ve been raised and therefore are products of their environment. Just move on!

Just to add something, in our culture Egyptian that is, we mostly behave and act like Americans when it comes to these forms of courtesy.<p>We expect people to exchange (Shukran: Thanks), (Afwan: Welcome), (Lao samahet: please) and so on and so forth in these situations and the lack of them in certain contexts could be interpreted by some folks in certain cases as rudeness and hostility shown toward them.<p>However, we don&#x27;t take it to the extreme like Americans would usually do and just insert these courteous words in every sentence or interaction as it might be interpreted as a form of snobbery (distancing yourself from people around you) or fake politeness which is not very tasteful.<p>Anyway, I just got used to the American way when I&#x27;m around Americans and honestly if it were to me, I would take excessive courtesy over the lack thereof or plain rudeness any given day but that&#x27;s just me.

I&#x27;m from India and I completely get what the author is saying, but why is this article on &#x27;Hacker News&#x27;?