Comment by RangerScience
2 years ago
My brother had a good tip when traveling internationally; ask questions where the correct answer is “no”. So don’t ask if the food is vegetarian, ask if there’s meat in it. Of course, that was for language barriers.
Also, I don’t know how to tell you this, but that doesn’t sound like an “ask” culture- that sounds like a “yes-man” situation.
It's definitely cultural. You only get this "yes" answer to every question from this area of the world starting somewhere in the middle east through to western parts of asia. It's not any specific country or language, but it's definitely from that region.
Or in this case don't ask yes/no questions. Don't give them he option to give the answer they think you want to hear.
What have you done?
What is your next step?
Oh, good advice. Reminds me of another tidbit:
A lot of people will hear "why" as accusatory: "why did you do it this way?!" becomes a question about culpability rather than causality; "what" is (apparently) what you want to use: "what led you to make these choices?"
(it's probably a moving target tho, although one that moves slowly)
Yeah “why” implies internal thought processes. “What” is about external actions.