Before moving to the Netherlands, I wanted to prepare myself for what I was getting into. Sure, Canada –> Netherlands shouldn’t be too much of a culture shock, but one thing I repeatedly heard was that the Dutch are supposedly very direct. I had received complaints regarding my own directness back in Canada, so I figured – and for the most part, I was correct – that I would fit well into Dutch contexts because of this trait.
Six years later, I’ve had occasion to revisit the question of Dutch directness. This is because I was surprised last week by experiencing for myself a major linguistic difference concerning argumentation – one that I believe to have enormous impact on perceptions of directness:
In a class I have to take for Dutch immigration we were asked to define ‘feedback’. I’m on Easy Street, since the word derives from my native language, but keep in mind I’m in a room filled mostly with refugees who don’t know Dutch or English very well. A person says in their limited Dutch, feedback is a ‘response’ given by someone concerning something you’ve done. The instructor asked the room if we agreed – and here my response in English versus Dutch turned out to be vastly different.
Do I agree with them? Yes; they are not wrong, and I think in a parallel way. Even if it’s not a carbon copy of what I would have said, in English I would say I agree with them. However, the question was asked in Dutch; the phrasing being literally “are you at one with this person?” – and my answer completely shifted poles.
I was not completely ‘at one’ with their answer, which meant I disagreed with them. To say you’re ‘at one with someone’ connotates being unified, and treading the exact path as them rather than merely thinking on a parallel track. You essentially allow them to speak on your behalf, so unless you completely agree to this extent, you cannot claim agreement. In my experience this does not encourage an air of disagreement so much as nuance: in the situation above, the person’s response defined the action inherent to feedback, but I would personally add something about feedback’s goal of doing better next time.
Perhaps the more accurate translation of ‘agreement’ and its English connotations into Dutch would be “daar ga ik in (met je) mee (maar)”. In its felt sense, this means “for practical purposes I’ll go along with you”, but it insinuates both that there is some difference of opinion, and that further discussion is expected regarding this.
To agree with someone in Dutch feels much more intimate, and is a more radical commitment than in English. It is much easier given these connotations to say you don’t agree with someone; but it is not a conversation-stopper like it sometimes is in English, because you are then expected to point out precisely where the differences lie. In practice, if the Dutch are indeed ‘more direct’, I think these connotations contribute significantly. It is certainly much more comfortable linguistically to have differences of thought, since ‘being unified with another person’ is quite an extreme statement.
