Umm... excuse me

As someone who is natively bicultural, it is sometimes easy to ignore that certain parts of your personality were forged by your one or the other side of your cultural influences. It has taken me several years to realize that certain things that I am accustomed to from living amongst Spaniards do not go over well in the US of A. Some cultural differences are pretty obvious and are quickly put to rest, like when I first went to college and had to stop my impulse to lean in and give two kisses to my female acquaintances. But others take years to decipher. The one that has taken me the longest to become aware of (so far), and still longer to try to change, has been American conversation dynamics.

You wouldn't think so, but conversation dynamics change radically from culture to culture. Spanish speaking culture, and probably much of mediterranean culture in general, is much more free-flowing than that of the Northern-European or Asian cultures that I most often interact with here in Boston. What do I mean by free-flowing? In Spain a conversation is not divided into turns. When you have something to say, you jump in and say it and are cut off when someone has something that they consider more important or interesting. Of course, this is an unconscious process and also a very subjective one. Often you have a situation where two or three people are talking at the same time and trying to take control of the conversation if they think that what they have to say is worth hearing. To someone who is not used to this, or who is shy, this can be an intimidating and annoying way of interacting socially, but to most people, especially close friends, it can be a very natural and dynamic way of conversing.

Since moving to the US, it has been quite hard to quit this way of talking to people. I constantly find myself in social situations where I realize that I am interrupting everyone and monopolizing the conversation. In other words: I am annoying. Imagine this scenario: I am in a group and an interesting topic comes up. As a good little Spaniard, I speak up and begin to tell people my opinion (in a blunt and Spanish way, not with the tact that other countries have developed... but that is another problem) or some anecdote. And I keep talking and talking until I realize that I have been talking too long, or until my wife squeezes my hand. You see, unconsciously, I am waiting for someone else to jump in, but no one does. While conversations in Spain can be a bit combative, they are also self-regulating. People here take turns, and each person is responsible for not going over the line. It took me forever to realize this.

It is funny, because in Spain I rarely hog a conversion; many of my friends there are much more verbose and opinionated than me. Not to mention that I lived with 4 of these guys for several years and became accustomed to having to interrupt and cut in if I wanted to be heard. Interrupting is rude in America, and I am finally training myself out of it, but it is quite hard.