As a Latin American (of Italian heritage!) that moved to the US, I learned this the hard way. Many times, as an introvert, I sometimes like to be silent myself

As a Latin American (of Italian heritage!) that moved to the US, I learned this the hard way. Many times, as an introvert, I sometimes like to be silent myself, even if I'm enjoying the moment. As the article say, this doesn't tend to be a problem in Latin America, because people are always talking over each other (and that's fine!), so anyone keeping quiet works ok. But in the US, you're expected to talk, so keeping quiet means something is wrong. I finally got tired of people asking "what's wrong? why aren't you saying anything?" (and not understanding when I answer that nothing is wrong and that yes, I'm having a good time). So I started making a point of saying something of no value every now and then, to fill my quota. This seems to make everyone happy.