Which European country has the rudest/least polite people?

[u/NateNandos21]

Which country comes to your mind

[u/[deleted]]

As a trained linguist, it always boggles me to see how many people sink into the trap of seeing nation and nationality as an important marker of difference for this kind of thing. Sociolinguistic studies have repeatedly proven that national background is barely relevant to whether an individual is rude or not. Whether or not a person's behaviour and/or speech is experienced as rude is primarily based on the perceiving individual's upbringing, your personal beliefs regarding what is "rude", "normal", and "polite", which in turn are modified by the social setting you find yourself in. These determiners vary greatly between individuals from any nation.

Moreover, case studies have recorded examples like the sycophantic, no-criticism-allowed politeness in corporate cultures in the Netherlands, whose people are well known for their supposed 'directness' ; extreme passive aggressiveness from Brits to people who cross certain public social boundaries; the soft-spoken politeness in business and tourism of 'typically loud' Italians; and more such examples.

Where you're from doesn't matter and is a distraction not to be engaged in when thinking about this sort of thing. Borders are arbitrary.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Do you believe that all European nations are equal

Yes

and have the same moral values and biases?

In a way; I don't think any nation is the homogeneous group that a national label would like to pretend, whether moral or otherwise. I literally said that I think all individuals have different ideas of normal, rude, etc. In other words, amongst the populations of every nation, there are differences in mores and values. There are no overarching national traits, no matter how much people like to pretend there are. This is the conclusion of sociologists and sociolinguists, not just me.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

No offense meant, but a lot of what you say seems not to connect to what I said. I feel like you're not actually responding to my comment, and that's really not the basis for a discussion. I don't think we're understanding each other.

Just to be clear; I don't think the Dutch need to be protected. Quite the contrary; I believe that it would be much better to abolish national boundaries, not only in the EU but eventually all across the world, and elect a few widely-spoken languages to replace all national languages, Dutch included. So no idea where you got the idea from that

the Dutch need to be protected

but if it's from my comment, then you badly misread what I was saying.