Different cultures have different ways of “handing over the floor” to the next person in a conversation. In some cultures, people basically interrupt all the time, and whoever can talk louder gets the next turn. In others, there are long pauses between when one person finishes talking and when the next begins. In the U.S. we are somewhere in the middle. I’ve been noticing that the amount of delay I expect between “turns” is just a tiny bit longer than the average. It’s barely a split second’s difference, but it becomes really noticeable if I talk with people that are fast speakers: it becomes almost impossible for me to get a word in, because I always open my mouth to say something just a fraction of a second after anyone else does, and so someone else almost always beats me to talking.

It’s a fairly funny problem when you look at it from a distance—very much like the problem you see when someone from a culture with a smaller “personal space zone” is chatting with someone from a culture with a larger one. The person who is used to standing closer will “chase” the other one around the room, as Person B inches away to feel comfortable and Person A inches closer again.