Questions to Ask Someone From Another Culture

Press Next question for one respectful question about a person's own culture, and Show follow-up to hear more.

Questions to Ask Someone From Another Culture

How does your family spend a free day together?

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Which part of that day would you never skip?

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How it works

These 100 cultural questions to ask one person cover everyday life, food, holidays, family, school and work, and language and manners. Each asks about their own life and family, never for a verdict on a whole country.

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For a cultural interview assignment

Before the first card, press Topic and choose what the assignment covers. Easy cards take a sentence to answer: How do you say hello in the language you grew up with? After a round of 12, Copy the list copies the pressed topic to paste into your notes.

For a host family, an exchange partner or a new neighbor

Food and the table and Holidays and celebrations suit a first dinner: What would you cook for me if I came to your home? Nothing asks about politics, money, legal status or what a person believes.

Questions and answers

What are good questions to ask someone from another culture?

Questions about their own life: What sounds would wake you in the morning where you grew up? How does a guest know the meal is over in your family? What is a proverb you grew up with, and what does it mean?

Which subjects does the deck leave out?

Anything that asks one person to speak for a whole country, and anything about immigration or legal status, politics, money, health or belief. A holiday is asked about as something the family does, not as something to defend.

What can I ask an exchange student about school?

School and work has cards such as What did a school day look like from first bell to last? and What did you call your teachers? Each has a follow-up, such as Which part would surprise a student from another school?

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All 100 questions

Everyday life 17

  • How did you get around as a child: on foot, by bus, by bike, by car? Follow-up: What did you pass on the way?
  • How does your family spend a free day together? Follow-up: Which part of that day would you never skip?
  • What about your family's daily life surprises a first-time guest? Follow-up: What do guests get used to fastest?
  • What did your family and the neighbors do for each other? Follow-up: What is a good neighbor, to you?
  • What do people in your family do to relax in the evening? Follow-up: Who decides what everyone does?
  • What do you do differently when you are away from home, and what do you keep? Follow-up: Which was harder to keep up?
  • What does a market or a shop near your home look like inside? Follow-up: Which shelf or stall would you head for first?
  • What does a normal weekday morning look like where you grew up? Follow-up: What did you do first after waking?
  • What is something small from your childhood that is hard to find now? Follow-up: What do you use in its place?
  • What is the weather like where you grew up at this time of year? Follow-up: What do people do because of that weather?
  • What sounds would wake you in the morning where you grew up? Follow-up: Which of those sounds do you like best?
  • What would a visitor to your home town get wrong on the first day? Follow-up: What would you tell that visitor the night before?
  • When does the day start and end in your home town? Follow-up: At what hour is the town at its loudest?
  • Where did the children on your street gather in the afternoon? Follow-up: What went on there until dark?
  • Which everyday habit of yours do other people ask about? Follow-up: How do you explain the habit to them?
  • Which place do you mean when you say home? Follow-up: When did that meaning shift for you?
  • Which street or yard game from your childhood should I learn? Follow-up: Who taught you the rules of those games?

Food and the table 17

  • How does a guest know the meal is over in your family? Follow-up: What happens after the plates are cleared?
  • What are the table manners you grew up with? Follow-up: Which of those manners do guests most often miss?
  • What do people eat with in your family: hands, spoon, fork, chopsticks, bread? Follow-up: How did you learn to do it well?
  • What do you drink with a meal at home? Follow-up: What is poured for a guest?
  • What does a usual family dinner look like at your house? Follow-up: Where does everyone sit?
  • What does sharing food mean in your family? Follow-up: What would it mean to turn down a second helping?
  • What does the taste of home do to you when you find it somewhere new? Follow-up: When did that last happen to you?
  • What food at your family's table are guests nervous to try, and what does it taste like? Follow-up: How would you talk someone into a first bite?
  • What is a dish your family makes that you love? Follow-up: On which days do you eat it?
  • What is a meal for a special day in your family, and how long does it take? Follow-up: Who does which job in the kitchen?
  • What was on the breakfast table in the house you grew up in? Follow-up: Who made that breakfast?
  • What would you cook for me if I came to your home? Follow-up: What should I bring to the table?
  • Which dish took you a few tries to enjoy? Follow-up: What won you over to it?
  • Which dish would you want your grandchildren to know how to make? Follow-up: Who taught that dish to you?
  • Which home-cooked dish do you crave when you are away? Follow-up: What comes closest to it?
  • Which snack or sweet reminds you of being small? Follow-up: Where did you get that snack?
  • Who is the best cook in your family, and what is their dish? Follow-up: What is the secret, if you are allowed to say?

Holidays and celebrations 17

  • How do people in your family celebrate a new baby, a graduation or a new home? Follow-up: What is given, said or cooked for it?
  • How does your family welcome the new year? Follow-up: What must be done before the day begins?
  • How is a birthday kept in your family? Follow-up: What does the birthday person have to do?
  • What decorations go up for a holiday in your house? Follow-up: Whose job is it to put them up?
  • What did you love about holidays as a child that you see differently now? Follow-up: What changed the way you see it?
  • What do you wear for a celebration at home? Follow-up: Who helps you get ready for it?
  • What does your favorite holiday ask people to remember? Follow-up: How is that story told to children?
  • What games or contests belong to a holiday in your family? Follow-up: Who usually wins those contests?
  • What happens at a wedding in your family? Follow-up: How long does a wedding last?
  • What music do you hear at a celebration in your family? Follow-up: Who starts the dancing or the singing?
  • What sweets or special foods appear only on a holiday? Follow-up: Which one do you eat too much of?
  • What tradition has your family changed or invented? Follow-up: How did that change come about?
  • Which celebration did you first meet outside your family? Follow-up: What did you make of it the first time?
  • Which celebration in your family's year do you wait for most? Follow-up: What do you look forward to most in it?
  • Which holiday does your family keep in its own way, and how? Follow-up: What is hardest to get right each year?
  • Which holiday would you invite me to, and what would I need to know first? Follow-up: What would I be given to do there?
  • Which tradition would you fight to keep, and which could you let go? Follow-up: What makes the first one matter so much?

Family and growing up 16

  • At what age is a child treated as grown up in your family? Follow-up: What changes for the child on that day?
  • How did your family choose your name? Follow-up: What does your name mean, or who is it from?
  • How has your family's way of doing things changed between generations? Follow-up: Who noticed the change first?
  • What chores did you have as a child? Follow-up: Which chore did you try to dodge?
  • What did the elders in your family say when a child complained? Follow-up: When do you catch yourself saying it?
  • What did the oldest person in your family remember that nobody else could? Follow-up: Who is keeping those memories now?
  • What did you want to be when you were small? Follow-up: What did the grown-ups say to that?
  • What did your family expect of you, and what did you expect of yourself? Follow-up: Where did those two meet?
  • What does a family gathering look like, and who comes? Follow-up: Where do the children end up at a gathering?
  • What from your upbringing would you pass on unchanged? Follow-up: What would you pass on with changes?
  • What name did you use for your mother's mother, and for your father's father? Follow-up: What do those names mean?
  • What stories or songs did you hear at bedtime? Follow-up: Who told or sang them to you?
  • What were you never allowed to do in front of guests as a child? Follow-up: Who was strictest about it?
  • What were you taught about how to treat older people? Follow-up: How do you show it day to day?
  • What work did the adults in your family do, and how did children help? Follow-up: What did the helping teach you?
  • Who looked after you when you were small? Follow-up: Who did you spend the most time with?

School and work 16

  • How did you greet a boss, a teacher or an elder at your school or first job? Follow-up: What would a first name have meant there?
  • How does a workday start and end where you have worked before? Follow-up: What happens at lunch on a workday?
  • How were students expected to behave in class? Follow-up: What happened when someone did not?
  • What did a school day look like from first bell to last? Follow-up: Which part would surprise a student from another school?
  • What did school teach you that was not in any book? Follow-up: Who was it that taught you that?
  • What did you call your teachers? Follow-up: What happened when a teacher walked into the room?
  • What did you do at break or recess at your school? Follow-up: What was the game everyone joined?
  • What does being a good student mean where you went to school? Follow-up: How does that compare with other schools you know?
  • What does being on time mean to you, and where did you learn it? Follow-up: When has that caused a mix-up?
  • What is different about school or work now compared with what you first knew? Follow-up: Which difference do you like?
  • What jobs did the adults around you have when you were a child? Follow-up: Which of those jobs did you imagine doing?
  • What was homework like at your school, and how much was there? Follow-up: Where did you sit to do it?
  • What were the clothes for a school day where you grew up? Follow-up: What did you think of those clothes then?
  • What would I see walking up to your first school? Follow-up: How many students were in one class?
  • Where did lunch happen at your school, and who made it? Follow-up: What was a usual one like?
  • Which class at school made the week worth it for you? Follow-up: What made the teacher of it good?

Language and manners 17

  • How close do people in your family stand when they talk, and how loud does it get? Follow-up: Who in the family is the loudest?
  • How do I say your name the way your family says it? Follow-up: What do people most often get wrong about it?
  • How do you say hello in the language you grew up with? Follow-up: How would you greet someone older than you?
  • How do you show respect when you speak to an elder or a stranger? Follow-up: What changes in the words you choose?
  • What are the words for thank you in your home, and when do you use them? Follow-up: What does the other person say back?
  • What do you bring when you visit a relative's home, and what would you never bring? Follow-up: How is a gift handed over and received?
  • What do you say before a meal, or when someone sneezes? Follow-up: What does it mean word for word?
  • What does a guest do on entering your family's home? Follow-up: What does the host do first?
  • What is a gesture that means one thing in your family and another outside it? Follow-up: How did you find out about the difference?
  • What is a proverb you grew up with, and what does it mean? Follow-up: When was that proverb last true for you?
  • What is a word from your language that I should learn first? Follow-up: How do I say that word properly?
  • What is easy to say in your first language and hard to say in another? Follow-up: How do you get around the gap?
  • What is polite in your family that seems odd to others, or the other way around? Follow-up: Which way do you follow now?
  • What should I have asked you about your home that I did not? Follow-up: What would your answer to it be?
  • Which language did your grandparents use with you, and which did your friends? Follow-up: Which one do you use when you are tired?
  • Which language do you think in, dream in or count in? Follow-up: When does the language switch on you?
  • Which word from home do you reach for and find no other word will do? Follow-up: When would you use that word?
How this list was compiled

Written for this page by the Game Night Generator editors in October 2026; no question or follow-up is copied from another list. The questions are for one person: a classmate or neighbor interviewed for a school assignment, a host family, an exchange partner, a pen friend. Every card asks about that person's own life, family and home town, and none asks them to speak for a whole country or people. Nothing asks about immigration or legal status, politics, money, health or what a person believes; a holiday or a custom is asked about as something the family does. No country, people or custom is named on any card, so no card carries a fact to check. Levels are an editor's judgment, not a measurement: easy is answered in a sentence, medium takes a short story, hard asks for a comparison or a look back. On 2026-10-02 a script compared every question and follow-up with every other list on this site, and lines that repeated one elsewhere were rewritten. On 2026-10-03 every card was read again, and the cards that assumed the person had moved to a new country or spoke English as a second language were reworded so that a classmate born nearby can answer them too. Licence: own work