How long a pause should (0) ELAPSE between one speaker finishing and the next beginning? The answer, it out, varies dramatically across cultures — and the mismatches can generate friction that neither party quite knows how to In many Anglophone settings a gap of more than a second or two begins to feel uncomfortable, one of the speakers to fill the void. In Finland or Japan, by contrast, the same interval would be entirely unremarkable, perhaps even welcomed as a sign of considered thought. What is happening, linguists suggest, is that silence different cultural meanings. For some communities it signals openness and respect; for others it awkwardness, disagreement or disengagement. Neither reading is inherently correct, yet each feels so natural to its speakers that alternatives barely to mind. Travellers who of this variation often report misreading conversations for years — interpreting polite Japanese restraint as disapproval, or mistaking Italian overlap for rudeness. The takeaway is a modest one: in the pauses between our words, we more than we tend to realise.