Illustration: Dov Ber Cohen

Myth: Americans expect everyone to speak English.

Reality: According to Brooklyn-based David Grosser, who has served as a consultant for businesses involved in import-export business with Europe for many years, the myth of the Ugly American — the one who never learns the local language, who expects the natives to accommodate his habits — is now a misconception.

“It used to be true about 30 to 40 years ago,” he admits. “My father traveled all over the world, and the joke was that the American is the one who gets off a plane, and as soon as his foot hits the ground, he yells out, ‘Who speaks English here?’ ”

Ari Siegel, a Chicago-based entrepreneur and business broker with experience in China, says learning even a few words of a foreign language goes a long way toward establishing camaraderie. One businessman he knows charmed a group of Chinese executives when he was able to sing a Communist revolutionary song from the 1950s they’d all grown up with.

“In most factories today, there’s a person on staff who speaks English,” he says. “You used to need a middleman, but today, many people have some rudimentary English.”

But it’s not easy making yourself understood in a foreign country, especially when the language is very different from English. A lack of comprehension could lead to mistakes or cheating.

“It’s always better to speak the language or to have a person who understands and is present at meetings and at all dealings,” says Rabbi Gad Bouskila, the rabbi of Congregation Netivot Israel in Brooklyn, whose menswear business and other enterprises take him all over the world. “People are usually honest, but in some countries, you have to be wary.”

Myth: You need to learn all the fine points of local culture before you set out.

Reality: David Grosser attended business school in New York in the 1970s, and back then, he was taught rules of etiquette, like in Japan, you should bow rather than shake hands. Today, such concepts are common knowledge.

“American companies have subsidiaries all over,” Mr. Grosser says. “They no longer have to teach people how to behave. On the contrary, many foreign companies are coming to the US to sell, and they’re the ones studying how to sell to Americans.”

People in Japan bow when introduced, but in Hong Kong and most of the Far East, they shake hands; in fact, it would be considered extremely impolite not to do so. But Fruma Green,* who travels the world for her family’s jewelry business, doesn’t shake hands with men. She negotiates the tight spots by making sure she’s carrying a cell phone in one hand and a notebook in the other. When people see she’s flustered at not having a free hand left to shake, they usually don’t insist further. Her second trick is to sneeze and carry a lot of tissues.
“In the Far East, people are very germophobic,” she says. “When you get off a flight from Canada in the winter, they put fever strips on your forehead. So if you look sick, they’re happy to keep their distance.”

(Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 759)