hey guys welcome back to how to switzerland sarah here today and today's video is going
to be especially dedicated to all of the swiss viewers watching because
i'm going to be sharing with you some things that you should avoid saying to americans
so i recently did a video talking about some things that you should not ask swiss people
and we got an overwhelming amount of comments and people saying that i should really do the
video the other way around for all of the swiss people watching so swiss people know um what to
avoid mentioning or discussing when they talk to americans and this is actually a very uh great
suggestion from you guys so thank you so much by the way there are so many swiss people watching
um we have between like 50 to 70 of all of the views coming from switzerland so special thank
you to all the swiss people supporting this channel i really really appreciate it so yeah
back to the video in my experience a lot of swiss people really um like visiting america
they like to meet americans they really like the culture at least that's what i've experienced as
an american i've had an over mount overwhelming amount of swiss people say how much they want to
go visit california or florida or new york city and how they've road tripped around the country
or whatever a lot of people here seem to want to do that so i thought that this video might help
for those swiss people watching that want to go to the united states and want some advice on how to
deal with americans but of course this can go the other way around a lot of american tourists visit
switzerland every single year or move here and become expats here so if you're swiss you probably
if you're not visiting america you probably bump into americans in your everyday life especially
if you live in a very touristy kind of city and sorry guys i always have to say this but quick
disclaimer before i get into the points and that is whatever i tell you not to say not to ask the
complete opposite is also going to be true that is just how cultural differences work whatever
my subjective personal experience has been or my thoughts or my opinions are you will find people
with the exact opposite point of view that's just how it works but in my experience americans
in general are very friendly open-minded people that love to talk that love to be asked questions
and they're pretty much open to everything but yeah anyways let's just get into the points
first thing to be aware of when you are talking to americans as a swiss is the type of english
you are using so i would say don't use british english if it is possible i know in school here
matthias has told me that they teach british style english and i have noticed that as well that when
i'm talking to swiss people that they might use words like trousers lift jumper um or things like
that that americans do not say now i mean who am i to tell you what kind of english to speak when
you're visiting america as a person that barely can speak enough german to get around and i live
here so anyways but if you are swiss and you are interested in improving your english for
a trip to the united states or whatever i would recommend that you would just look up the common
um differences between british and american english although americans will not be insulted
if you use british english they definitely will not take offense to that or anything like that it
just might lead to some uncomfortable situations because if you walk in a department store and you
ask where are the jumpers they might not have any idea what you are referring to and it might
just lead uh to some awkward situations or you'll definitely kind of stand out as a tourist um if
you use british english words that americans don't really understand what they mean and of course
there are good amount of words that are said in british english that are actually offensive or
rude in the united states so you might just want to be aware of that but again you guys if you
can speak english and go over there you're you're better off than i am so major props but it's just
something to consider second thing to be aware of when talking to americans is how americans
talk about their ancestry okay so let's get this situation that happened to my husband all the
time he is swiss and he would be in america and he would meet somebody and it would come up that he
is swiss and the american would respond and say oh my gosh you're swiss me too like my family's
from switzerland i'm swiss or they would say oh i'm german or i'm french and um this would lead
matthias my husband to be like oh that's really cool like do you speak german or what part of
germany or what part of switzerland are you from and then the american would be like
oh no i'm not like from there i'm like from there like my my ancestors are from there and americans
tend to talk like that i know this is a little bit different but if you're in the united states
and americans talk about their where they're from or their uh ancestry they're talking about you
know like great great uh great grandparents and at this point they pretty much have
no uh ties to those countries or very weak ties usually they don't speak the language or a lot
of times they may have never even been to that country but they sometimes refer to themselves as
as from that country so if this comes up if you meet an american and they say oh i'm swiss
2 don't expect that they actually are like from switzerland like born there or raised
there or even that their parents are from switzerland they could be referring to their
great great great grandparents being from switzerland moving on to point number three
and this has to do with american chocolate okay so you swiss watching you have some incredible
chocolate in this country the best chocolate in the world the best chocolate that i've ever had
amazing quality amazingly delicious and if you go to the united states and you eat chocolate
in my experience most swiss people's reaction is not positive to eating american
chocolate i've heard from matthias that it tastes fake it tastes overly sweet it tastes grainy it
tastes sugary and it's just not real chocolate you'll hear that a lot it's not real chocolate
and if that is your opinion that is perfectly fine that is perfectly valid but if you would outright
say to an american that you think their chocolate is gross or that it is not good or that is not
real chocolate they might find this slightly offensive because whenever you are talking about
somebody's food especially you know chocolate for a lot of us americans like we grew up on hershey's
chocolate hershey's is probably the main producer of chocolate in the us i don't know if that's a
fact or not but it's the chocolate that i grew up eating and um if you would say that you think
it's gross or you don't like it or you you just think it's bad quality they'll probably be like
what are you talking about and they really might not like to hear that okay moving on to point
number four that you should really keep in mind if you are dealing with the u.s americans is to avoid
saying anything anti-american and i know that this is like a pretty big topic it's
almost like i feel like that's a pretty big statement of me to say don't say anything
anti-american but you need to remember that the united states is is very different it's
i've never lived somewhere i've lived in you know a good amount of countries and i've never
lived somewhere that has as much patriotism as the united states americans are instilled with a
lot of pride for their country from the time they are very very young and most americans are very
very proud to be american and have an extremely low tolerance for people saying negative things
about their country and i know this seems kind of obvious and obviously this is just good manners um
wherever you go if you travel anywhere it's never good to say negative things about the country
that you are visiting but just keep in mind that in the us it is in my opinion it is another level
of patriotism so if you would say anything about i don't agree with this as far as your laws i don't
agree with this as far as your politics i don't i don't think you have good public transportation
or whatever even if it's true i think it's best to just kind of keep those thoughts to yourself
because you might find that you could really piss some people off and really upset them if you say
really anything negative i've experienced this myself as well on youtube you guys i make
videos talking about cultural comparisons and whenever i mention something that i didn't you
know have the best experience with in the united states for something that i think is perhaps done
better in different countries this always comes with an onslaught of comments of people saying
um that i'm wrong and that if i disagree i should just leave america and never come
back or i should give up my passport and there's just a lot of really proud americans out there
that don't want to hear anything negative even if it is true so i would just advise you to just keep
those opinions to yourself but again this goes for any country because i have seen this the
other way around as well i can tell a short story i'm sorry guys these videos are always so long
but we were in grindelwald about two years ago and we were on a train and i was talking with matthias
and we were just talking i don't know about what but some lady kind of like injected herself into
the conversation because she heard that i was american by my accent obviously and she's like
oh you're american too are you visiting blah blah blah and i was like no i live here or whatever
and she was like oh what did you think about um grindelwald like what did you think about
jungfrau yak and she had done a bunch of stuff and i was like oh like yeah it's really pretty
like it's a great experience i got a good time and she's like oh i just hated it i thought it was
really horrible and i didn't like it at all and i don't even know what i'm going to do tomorrow
we were going to go to burn but we drove by in the train today and it looked really ugly and i don't
want to go there and i was just like wow lady this is really just bad manners this is really bad
etiquette to be in switzerland as a foreigner and verbally in a train making these negative comments
about the country even i mean i was just really thrown back by this and um yeah just it's not it's
never good it's never right to say something negative especially if you are visiting just
keep those thoughts to yourself because it really doesn't help anything all right moving on number
five the fifth thing that really you should not ask americans is who did you vote for or
what do you think about obama or what do you think about trump or what do you think about hillary
or what do you think about bush now i know that this sounds super obvious that it's inappropriate
to ask people these questions to their face but i get asked these questions all the time as an
american living in switzerland and sometimes it is actually one of the first things that people bring
up with me they'll be like oh you're american like what do you think about trump and what's going on
and i just think it's kind of inappropriate to discuss politics with people i just think i just
think it's bad taste it's bad manners to discuss politics especially with people that you barely
know um because it just it's a dividing issue and it's not something that most people want to
talk about openly especially at like a cocktail party or something like i'm just there trying to
have a good time like everybody else because i'm an american you don't need to come up to
me and try to talk politics i think it's a bit inappropriate okay so point number six this is
kind of a cultural difference but you definitely need to keep it in mind as a swiss if you are
dealing with americans so americans are actually quite indirect in how they talk compared to swiss
so the swiss if they say something they generally mean it and they mean that they will do it and
they will follow through with it and this is not the case with americans so let me just give you
an example if if you're swiss and you're chatting with an american you're just chit-chatting maybe
you just met or you'd spend some time together and then at the end of the conversation
the american says hey like it was so great meeting uh you we should definitely grab lunch sometime
okay this is not an invitation to lunch as weird as that sounds this is really not an invitation
to lunch this is a polite way of saying goodbye i had a nice time meeting you and that's kind of
weird i know it sounds kind of weird and i think as americans when you grow up there you understand
when people say things like let's keep in touch or let me know next time you're in town or let's grab
lunch or let's catch up soon we kind of understand that unless a specific date
and time was given that this is just kind of a pleasant treat and it doesn't necessarily mean
that this will happen and in fact a lot of the times i think americans understand if
somebody says yeah let's stay in touch it kind of means that you're probably not going to hear
from this person anymore and i know this is very confusing um but this happened with matthias a lot
in the u.s he found that people would say let's get together sometime and then if he would try to
pursue that he would find that that person would maybe not reply or he would find out sooner or
later that this person did not actually mean it when they said that so if you meet an american
and you're leaving each other and they say hey we should definitely grab coffee sometime don't
jump in and say oh really awesome how about next week at three because the american will probably
be like oh uh and they'll probably backpedal and talk their way out of it it's just a pleasantry
that is it unless they give you a specific suggestion of a place and a time just take it
as a weird way to say goodbye all right moving on to my last point point number seven
something to keep in mind when you are dealing uh with americans or in this case if you are a
swiss person talking in english is of all of these i think it's called swinglish words so
swiss mixed with english so there are a lot of words that swiss german-speaking people
think i don't want to sound rude but they think that they're english like they think that it's
used in the united states or in america or they think that it's an english word but it is actually
not and my husband uses these words all the time and it's actually kind of cute so i'll just name
a few of the main ones that come up all the time and the first one is to say hello together
okay because in swiss german you guys know you say halotsama or salitsama or chusama or in
german that would be you know hallo suzaman and it basically means like hello to a big group so
in english this does not really translate to hello together and i have noticed that a lot of swiss
people if they're speaking in english they will say this they'll say hello together or they'll
email if they're emailing multiple people and say hello together and we don't really have a plural
word for this for like a plural greeting so you can just say hello hey guys um if you're trying
to talk to multiple people but you don't say hello together and i've noticed swiss people say
this all the time when they're speaking in english another common swinglish word is partner look so
in swiss german they say partner look and they think that because i guess it's an english word
that we use it in english but we don't use this in english so the swiss say partner look when
two people are dressed similarly so say matthias has blue jeans and a white t-shirt on and i have
blue jeans and a white t-shirt on they would say we have a partner look and i've noticed
again that swiss people when they're talking in english they say partner look to describe that
kind of a situation but we don't actually say that in english as smart of a word as it is and
it makes a whole lot of sense we would say like oh they're matching or they're they're twinning
or something like that but we don't say partner look another one that comes up all the time that
i've heard a lot of swiss people use when speaking to me or other americans or english-speaking
people is the word old timer so in switzerland the word old timer is used to describe like a vintage
car um but in america an old-timer i mean it's not really like a positive term but it would
mean like an old person like you know with like a cane like maybe somebody who's like quite old
and to describe like their age like they're an old timer um but i guess kind of in like a negative
way i don't know i've never really used the word old timer but if you want to make it translate it
would translate definitely to an old person so i noticed a lot that people including my
husband would say like oh did you see the old timer and they're talking about a vintage car
and i'm like what like the car like we don't call it that we call it like a classic car or
uh yeah i guess a classic car but here they would call them old timer and that just does
not translate okay and the last one i do have to point out this last swinglish word because
it is used so often and that is the word beamer so swiss people often call an overhead projector or
they usually call an overhead projector a beamer that's what they use in swiss german and they tend
to take that over to english even though we don't call it a beamer in english so if you're talking
to an american and you call something a beamer they probably think that you're referring to a bmw
car because that is uh sometimes called a beamer in america you say oh he drives a beamer he drives
a bmw so if you want to talk about the thing that is in the ceiling that projects you know pictures
to a wall or a screen that's called a projector or an overhead projector not a beamer even though
swiss people use that word all the time in english i'm not sure why it's it's probably
easier to describe it honestly it beams something not a bad choice of words but probably most people
won't understand what you're talking about all right you guys that is it for today's video these
are some things you should keep in mind or not ask or not discuss when you are talking to americans
i hope that you found this helpful in some way if you liked it let me know by leaving this video a
thumbs up and i appreciate your support and i'll talk to you very soon in the next one bye
you