介绍:
Keywords
1.Greetings can be very different in the UK and US
2.British humor V.S American humor
3.Is there any difference in lifestyle between UK and US?
4.How does TJ feel spending 7 years to get his PhD？
Well, it's not quite... we're not enemies, right? You assume that everything is normal and that you know what's happening. But really underneath, there's some kind of problem, some kind of complication is maybe a better word that you don't expect.
Yeah, can you give us some like specific examples so that we can get a feel of it?
Yeah, one very good example that I've come across several times because it's such a habit of mine is greetings.
So in the UK is perfectly normal, especially in the north of the UK where I'm from, to say, are you all right as a greeting, right? Are you all right?
That's not just in the north. I hear people say that a lot in London or around London as well. I that used to confuse me because in my book, when you ask people, are you all right as a way of greeting, it sounds like you assume that I'm ill.
Right. And so the Americans feel the same way as you. It implies there's something wrong. Like, are you okay as if they've had an accident or fallen over or something has happened or they look very ill or something, I remember just 2 or 3 days ago, I went to a social event.
And I saw somebody that I had met once before and I thought I'll go and talk to him, and I walked up to him and said, “are you all right?”, and he looked at me, and he said I'm fine. What's wrong? You know, as if there was some big thing I needed to talk to him about.
Then I had to explain to him. No no, I'm just saying hi, right? That's the way it goes. It's interesting because you get different advice from different Americans you know. So Americans they don't say are you all right? They say how are you? how's it going? something like this. Yeah.
But then what you say to that, do you actually reply and say how you feel or do you say nothing?
I think it's just fine, right? In British culture is when they ask you how are you, they expect you to say I'm fine. Like I'm okay, I'm doing well. They don't expect you to tell them exactly how you feel, even if you feel bad that day, even if you feel a bit under the weather, you don't say, in British culture you don't like announced that because that was not expected.
Yeah, there's maybe let's say like ten, maybe if I'm lucky 20 people in the world, when they ask me if I'm all right or if they ask me how it's going, that I will say to them a genuine answer, I'll say it's going okay or I'll say not so good today, but I’ll live or something.
But one thing that's very common in the UK is that you give some kind of comical answer or something that's a little bit unusual difference. So I remember I went into the office and saw one of the members of staff and they asked me how I was, and I said I must be fine because my heart is still beating. And they look very confused by that. I feel like in the UK you can get away with these kind of slightly maybe eccentric responses. The British eccentric it's...
Just like British humor is very very dry, I think that's the thing. British humor does not translate very well into American humor. I don't think to the general public, maybe in certain crowds, but certainly not in general public.
It's true that the Americans seem to really like to signpost that they're making a joke.
So everybody knows, you know, from the tone of voice, from the body language that it's big and it's a joke and it's exciting. Whereas, yeah, the English kind of like to slide the jokes in to normal conversation and say something counter intuitive. And it's like a landmine.
