AIBVB - Am I being very British (lighthearted thread)

[Wills]

I want to know situations where you think to yourself "No other culture would do this! I'm sooo British"
So for me we have 4 kids and despite warning them that it's their planet and could they turn off lights as well as energy bills are going up etc they fail consistently. So Dh has lost it and changed the worst offending light switches to ones that react to Alexa so that we can go to bed and basically say "Alexa turn off all lights". The thing is that whenever I give Alexa a command and it does it I always say thank you. I'm responding to a computer with politeness, enough so that my younger kids are doing the same and the older ones just laugh. Anyone else have similar examples of being very British.?

On the queuing thing, when HMQ dies it was a very British way to mark her passing by creating the longest queue ever.

'The Queue' even had its own weather forecast whch I found both endearing and very, very British!

I thank bus drivers.

In many countries around the world, it’s normal to say ‘please/thank you’ or whatever their equivalent of good manners is. Sometimes it could be the version of the phrase implies ‘please/thank you’ in their language. Also many other countries queue.

Of course people say please and thank you in other languages. And even the Parisians can be polite when they put their mind to it 😉, but the British are excessive.
One of my Polish students told me that she went home for for Christmas and her mum was putting food on her plate. Her mum would say, potatoes? And she say, yes please. And then, thank you after. She did it for every item. In the end her mum was shouting at her to stop it. My student thought it was funny how she'd picked up the British habit. I think she was a bit proud too. Honorary Briton.

Ha ha! Me too. It irks me Alexa doesn’t.

She does!

LOL that is truly British as well.

Mine never does! Hang on… Maybe it’s Siri I want to say you’re welcome to my thank you 🤔

Try it, just "alexa, thank you". Bet you she does

A lady ran over my foot with her trolley in Tesco the other day and I said sorry

I've just tried it, she said, "anytime".

She switches between anytime, you are welcome and something else as well😁

My husband always offers our cleaner a cup of tea when she arrives even though she's been coming for a year and doesn't drink tea/coffee, just soft drinks. I think it's hard-wired in to him!

Me too & mine does say you're welcome.

Thank you for this! Of course you have to say ‘Alexa’ first. I was trying in settings.

We foster and our current teen fs has developed the habit if we say thank you to him he replies youre welcome, and expects it back.in return! I'm now wondering if we do this sub conciously with each other and he has picked up on it!

Queuing and saying sorry for nothing.

British people do say please, thank you and sorry more than some other countries but that doesn’t necessarily mean they would be perceived as more polite.

For example, I recently listened to a podcast about learning French that talked about students learning the French language not being taught that it’s rude in France not to greet a shop assistant. Whereas here, going up to the counter, smiling and saying “Can I have x please?” is fine. There were other points of etiquette but that was the most obvious one.

Being indirect about asking someone else to do things, or saying no, is a British trait, but can also vary between families and between individuals obviously!

Yes, but different ones? And we are laughing here about British quirks.

I’ve lived in both Canada and Germany, both of which are polite in different ways (Canadians do say “sorry” a lot too) but they are different.

So in Canada, there is a lot of societal pressure to be “nice”, rather than “polite”. There is a joke about a Canadian man who goes to an event and finds another man saving a whole row of seats. “Can I sit here?” says Man A. “Sorry, I’m saving these seats for my friends” says Man B. “Thanks, Friend!” says Man A, and sits down.

This is funny in Canada because there is no way for Man B to say “you aren’t my friend” without sounding unkind, which is unthinkable, so he is stuck accepting this guy nicking his seats. Not remotely funny in England because it is perfectly acceptable here for man B to say “no, you aren’t my friend and you can’t sit there”.

The jokes about saying sorry in every situation translate fine between the UK and Canada, but lots of other jokes don’t, because measures of politeness are different between the two countries.

I always say thank you to the bus driver where I live. But the buses only have 1 door. When I go somewhere like London where buses have a middle door. I worry for the next hour that i haven't said thank you and that the driver must feel unappreciated

Is this British enough? I joined a queue for an empty toilet.

puttingontheritz I still break out into a cold sweat about the time we were perceived to have pushed in front of an elderly couple in the supermarket in Brittany. In actual fact, we got to the queue about 0.01 second before them, but it looked like we'd pushed in, and I know I should have offered them our place, but the DC were trying to murder each other and I just wanted to get out of there.

The temperature dropped about ten degrees, and the cashier's face was like stone. It was definitely made very clear that we had been rude 😳

I wave when the Amazon icon waves, I appologised to it the other day when I missed it waving, I also wave to sheep, cows, crows, flying geese and any dog in the distance that wags their tale at me. (Wouldn't insult a cat by waving at them)
However think it's more of a "That mad old bint waving lady in the village" thing than a British thing.

MarshaMelrose · Yesterday 22:38

The reason why we are so polite in our speech is because, unlike many languages, we don't have a polite form of "you".

Neither do Norwegians, I work there a lot and the first time I was on a Norwegian ship (30 years ago...) a guy at dinner said, "Give me the salt." I thought, "How rude!" and passed it. I mentioned it to another Brit, who said that it's just their way, they don't have a word for "please."

Nowadays, the younger ones will say, "venlig," (friendly). That's less likely from the ones from small, rural communities.

As for queuing, people in the former Soviet countries queue properly, too.

As for queuing, people in the former Soviet countries queue properly, too.

Not the satellites 😂 animals

I go to France all the time and will now amend how I ask for things. I'm sorry if the thread comes across as only the Brits are polite. Whilst I can see how some can take that it wasn't meant. However I'm fascinated but the insights to other cultures. I never knew to do this. Thank you 😀