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Sometimes expats find it difficult to handle excessive noise or silence.
I dread Thursdays, the day when the Portuguese maid comes to clean my in-laws’ house. My husband and I live in the basement, but I can hear this woman talking to herself and singing out of key from two floors away. When she talks with my mother-in-law, the decibels increase tenfold. I feel so uncomfortable with the noise that I avoid going to the kitchen. I keep a ceramic bowl and a can of soup downstairs for times like these. Loud times.
The other day I almost choked on a wheat cracker when my husband said something to his mom in Portuguese. Since he started talking suddenly in a loud voice, I jumped as if there was some emergency. It took about ten minutes for my heart rate to slow down, and he was simply asking his mom if the mail had come.
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Americans have a reputation of being loud and obnoxious abroad, but I think it really depends on what culture is being visited. We tend to be comfortable with the speech volume level we’ve grown up with, and when we encounter something different from the norm, we aren’t sure how to interpret it.
I often think my husband and his parents are fighting when they’re speaking Portuguese, but usually they are just having a normal discussion. We’ve been living at his parents’ house for nine months now, and I’m still not used to the volume level used in typical conversation. I try to use logic and tell myself, “They are not fighting. This is normal. This is just how they talk,” but I still can’t manage to convince my body to go off high alert. I get goose bumps. I can’t focus on anything, and I often retreat to a quieter place in the house.
We also come up against these cultural differences when we’re talking to each other. Most of the time when my husband is having a conversation with me, he keeps his volume level low in a typical “American style,” but when he launches into his Portuguese mode I often interpret it as him being angry or rude. I feel like he’s “raising his voice,” but at those moments he probably isn’t even talking as loud as he does with his parents.
In some countries, talking in public above a certain decibel level is a crime. A British poultry auctioneer was charged with noise pollution for speaking at a volume over 80 decibels in a public market (Poultry World, August 2006). In the US there are also regulations for how loud people can be in public places, whether talking, playing music or operating tools. Any violation can be considered as “disturbing the peace,” and others will call the police if they feel their “right” to peace and quiet is being ignored.
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While living in Pakistan, I often wished I could report people for violating the quiet of residential neighborhoods. Most Pakistanis could sleep through fighter jets flying overhead, but I wake up to a quiet sneeze or a deep breath. We lived in an area of Lahore where most people had live-in servants, and when a homeowner would arrive outside his gated garage, he would blare the horn repeatedly until someone came to open the door. It didn’t matter if he came home at noon or at 2 a.m., beeping was customary.
I learned from experience never to move next to any empty plot, because if the owner decides to build on it, construction crews work during the night hours to avoid the heat. Cement grinders and jackhammers run from sunset to sunrise. The construction workers also like to blast Punjabi pop on crackling radios during their “work hours.” I remember griping, “Shouldn’t this be illegal? Isn’t there anyone we can report this to?” Our landlord’s family downstairs slept through the ruckus just fine.
I wonder if we can ever completely adjust to different noise thresholds, or if what we’ve learned to interpret as normal and abnormal volume levels stays with us even as we experience different cultures. After three years in Pakistan and almost a year in a Portuguese house, I still can’t sleep through someone quietly walking down the stairs. A friend of mine, who has been married into a Portuguese family for over ten years, says she still isn’t used to the noise either.
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Can we adjust to louder conversation levels or longer silences, or is what we’re exposed to as children the threshold that we’ll feel comfortable with for our whole lives?
Have you ever visited a culture that was notably louder or quieter than your own? How did it make you feel, and how did you deal with it? Share in the comments section below.
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14 Comments... join the discussion!
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“Sensitive like teeth” – interesting way to think about it! Thanks for sharing your story as well Varma.
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Noise can vary by family quite a bit. When I would visit a grade school friend of mine at his house I would laugh because his whole family talked loudly. My family is very quiet and talks at what I would call a normal volume.
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Yes, even within cultures families and individuals also have different noise thresholds. My mom always said my dad’s side of the family was loud, but now compared to Duarte’s family they don’t seem so loud anymore!
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There are some days when noise bothers me abroad, and some days when it doesn’t. But when the Filipinos here start singing bad karaoke at 8 a.m. on Saturday-that’s when it bugs me!
There’s a little karaoke hut next door to the house where I’m staying. Anyone can use it, at any time of day. And it’s LOUD. I can hear it from every room in this gigantic house, blaring the ‘classics’- Gloria Estefan, Oasis, Nirvana, The Spice Girls, Beyonce, and Tom Jones.
Every song I once enjoyed is now ruined haha. At home, karaoke is reserved for drunken celebration. Here, it’s a reason to get up at 7 a.m. and wake up all the neighbours.
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Karaoke at 7 in the morning? Wow. I thought throat clearing in India at 5 am was bad (made me want to puke), but that doesn’t sound like a nice wake up call either.
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I find this amusing, only because just this morning I was awoken by construction in the apartment next to me. Only, I think its the apartment next to us, but it honestly could’ve been an apartment three over. When I got home from work last night (with a miserable migraine), they were at it. Of course, I have it lucky. My community enforces the quiet hours, and they only can work from 8 am- 9 pm. I have friends who aren’t so lucky.
In China, I often think people are yelling at me or screaming into their phones because they speak so loud. A couple weeks ago, the electricity company ladies came and were yelling at me about a late payment (from before I moved in). And, by yelling, I mean speaking at that normal ear throbbing volume.
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I was laughing thinking about your electric company ladies talking to you. It’s so loud you think they’re being rude, but they’re not, they’re just talking normally. Let me know if you ever get used to it!
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i think it’s more individual thing than being cultural,,
i can’t sync with my brother, he speaks so loud, even when i mention it ,he can’t help himself, he will just wait 5 seconds and tries again with only changing his facial expressions, thinking now he is talking with normal threshold,then i pretend that it’s ok, while actually it’s still not ok.
and some people including my brother :p , they talk on cell phone like they are standing 1 mile away trying to talk politely without a cell phone.↵ -
Ooh, Muhammad beat me to the punch, I was going to bring up cellphone etiquette too! I’ve noticed that in a lot of East Asian countries, people cup their hands over their mouths when they use cellphones in public, so the whole coffeeshop/bus/park doesn’t have to hear their conversation. How I wish North Americans would do the same…
I know exactly what you mean about mistaking a loud conversation for an argument, Heather. My friend in university used to have booming, wall-rattling conversations with her mother on the phone in Polish. Though she always sounded angry to me, she insisted that they were just chit-chatting about banal stuff. I can imagine your confusion, but as always, your dilemma has produced a great read for the rest of us.
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I find that I learn to tolerate a different country’s natural noise level, but never become completely immune to it being different. I think Americans are especially sensitive about noise when it comes to sleep. That’s the time when our defenses are naturally low and coping becomes more difficult.
Here in Turkey I can handle the Arab-inspired volume just fine… until it comes time for bed. That’s when I start cursing the so-called ‘lullabies’ Turkish parents sing to their children, which, to me, sound like shrill cries of pain.
I’ve found that most Turks also like to fall asleep with the TV going full-blast, which makes sleep for me nearly impossible. Come morning all is well again… That is, if I can make it through the night!
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Oh I totally understand. The night time is the worst. Sometimes during the day I can adjust (sometimes…) but at night it’s nearly impossible. I have lots of ear plugs.
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Arriving at LAX airport recently from Japan, the first thing that struck me was the noise level of Americans at baggage claim!
A California girl myself, it shouldn’t have been that jarring, but two years abroad did sensitize me to it again.
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Hmm maybe I should consider moving to Japan…
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