Yeah its funny that, also if you say "im wanting [blank]" instead of "i want [blank]" it comes over much less rude even though its essentially the same thing

My parents always said to us when we were little 'I want never gets' if we said we wanted something.

@@Laura_Norda same for me! Cant ever say i want without feeling guilty

In Australia people say 'can I get...' when ordering.

I work in a Costa that serves a lot of Asian students and I can confirm that they say "I want" a lot. I don't see it as rude because I understand that learning a language is difficult but it can seem rude to British people for sure. I also hear "I want a cup of - insert drink name-" a lot too, not sure why.

Absolutely. I don't think I'd ever reply in a different way (other than slight variants, "yeah, good thanks" etc) unless I knew the person very well. For example, if I pass my neighbours and they ask how I am, I'm always good/fine/alright. If my friends or family ask and neither of us are in a rush, THEN I might answer more honestly/in more detail.

casually: y'alright? alright? & 'aight? all mean much the same & generally are/should be replied to with exactly the same abbreviated version of the greeting (it's generally not a question, really - unless it's asked by a friend & in private) ^^

How you know some one is English... the response to how are you? must be "good/alright/ not too bad" followed by "and you?" Any other responce and they are 100% an imposter!

Im british and i just say "yh, u". Guess im apart of that 10%

I'm British and I still have a mini crisis on how to reply, because I hate to be insincere and do what most people do!

I have lived in Japan and have always thought this!

Love of tea and seafood, everyone else thinks we have weird humor, we're really super similar.

Don't forget our need to expand! In the past anyway. Empires!

@@WindsGuardian I'd rather that we each did forget that to be honest.

@@VerticalBlank better to remember in the hope that we don't make the same mistakes again.

I was taught the same, it's served me well over a similar (cough) number of years

May I have...

“Can I have ... please,” or “may I have ...” or “I’d like ....” Any one of those would work as they imply a level of cooperation rather than a demand from the requester.

But on the other hand "if you don't ask, you won't get" 😊

@@shamteal8614 its not about asking for something its about how you ask shows your level of respect to the person your asking

Most of the books on Japanese politenes is written from an American perspective. In reality, Japan and the UK are very similar in their use of indirect language and extensive use of politeness.

Remember that what's considered polite varies from culture to culture. Just because a culture doesn't do something that we consider polite, doesn't mean that they're less polite.

@@MrEsphoenix umm, yes. There is literally a well known international scale grading cultures on how polite they are. Some cultures are absolutely more polite than others. British and Japanese score very highly on this and the USA scores as one of the least polite. That isn’t a good or a bad thing (I am not suggesting that polite = better) but it is definitely the case that not all countries are equally polite, just in different ways.

@@DavidSharpMSc I would also say it's quite complicated, based on the old class systems etc. For example bowing to a lord/lady is polite, but you wouldn't expect a lord/lady to be particularly polite back to a commoner, whereas in Japan everyone bows to everyone, no matter the class, don't they? Just one example though.

@@itsrobm8 Indeed. One “politeness” difference I found quite interesting was that in Japan it is considered polite to announce a morning greeting to a whole room when you arrive at work in the morning, whereas in the UK shouting like that would be considered rude. Meanwhile in the UK it is considered polite to greet coworkers individually as you pass them when you arrive at work, but in Japan that would be considered a rude imposition. I can see both sides of it now.

Not for the last 50 or so years it hasn't been....... Standards have slipped somewhat. Bring back National Service, along with sending children up chimneys to clean them. I once walked past 2 schoolgirls - both in uniform - smoking in a shop doorway. On my walking past, one of them threw a cigarette packet on the floor next to me. There was a rubbish bin about 10 feet from where she was standing, so I said "excuse me, you just dropped your cigarette packet on the floor". She replied "oh it's ok, it's empty". Lots of hope for the future then?

@@Brian-om2hh I don't agree, for the most part, most kids are taught manners, of course there are unfortunately, kids that are dragged up by ignorant parents who themselves were not brought up correctly either, but that's nothing new. As for what to do with young delinquents, it's beyond my remit I'm afraid.

See I think I'm in the minority but I find most kids to have better manners than most people older than me nowadays or my generation. (me being 32 now) I've always been raised to use my manners & poor manners does/can bother me! But think it's more about the individual and way ones raised.

@@JackRabbit002 exactly, from being as young as I can remember, if didn't say please and thank you, my mum, grandma and grandad (these are the people who raised me) would come down on me like a ton of bricks, I did this with my daughter and no doubt she will do this when she has kids

@@Brian-om2hh You live in a rough area.

while most people find constant sniffing annoying, i very rarely meet people who actually think the person doing it is being impolite, its more like a sympathetic ‘ugh this situation is annoying for them and for me’ thing because we know they’re self aware but cant stop. the only people i know who get angry about it are generally rude to everyone lol, so this list surprised me!

@@chickenfoot2423 I don't get angry it's just an annoying background noise. It's annoyance builds though, I have been in the office before and one of my nearby colleagues has been doing it for hours it starts to grate and I have to find something g else to do.

Omg. Someone did this when I was in a classroom at university doing an internship. All I could hear was this one person sniffing the entire time. I was this close to throwing a packet of tissues at him but I don't like conflict and was too polite. Yeah, don't do that. If you've got a runny nose, go ahead and blow lol

@@ocarinajourney5374 you say that but people I still know from school still complain about one of our GCSEs in which I was almost constantly blowing my nose and that was 4 years ago.

@@chickenfoot2423 I definitely think it's impolite. My colleague sat next to me for a whole hour and by the end I wanted to punch him in the nose.

I once worked with a rather unpleasant woman who never once said please or thank you in all the years I knew her. She wasn't a culture though, but more of a vulture............

Da Mighty Shabba I live in San Sebastián, my friends think it’s funny how often I say please and thank you, but i steadfast refuse to change 😂

@@tomlangdonec You're one mighty fine chap. Never change.

Peter Wright thank you you’re too kind

It's becoming less important in the UK these days.

It's amazing that something that happened nearly 750 years ago still echos in our daily lives.

In my experience, 'bless you' is mainly used in Southern England and is seldom used anywhere else in the UK.

@@Jams848484 It killed 60% of the population, that's bound to leave a mark.

I looked into this for a translation class once. It's quite interesting. Almost every country in the world that was either affected by the plague, or that speaks the language of a country that was affected by the plague (countries in North and South America, for example) has their own version of the phrase "bless you". The plague didn't really hit East Asia (aside from originating in China) and there was limited spread of western languages in the area, so East Asian countries never developed their own version of the phrase. From experience, a Japanese person will either say nothing when you sneeze, or they will ask if you are okay, cold, or if you have a cold (friends and relatives at least, not so much strangers).

Germany and Russia, and probably other places say 'Good health' or 'be healthy' for the same reason, but it may be a bit more obvious what they mean than the rather more obscure 'bless'.

I NEED YOUR TEA LEAVES, YOUR HOT WATER AND YOUR TAKEAWAY CUP

May I have your clothes, boots and motorcycle, please?

@@karepanman2770 of course! how rude of me not to offer! can i get you anything else? something to eat on your journey perhaps? a map?

It's okaye I have Skynet GPS! Hasta La Vista Cookie!!

Don't make a scene? Only in the south.

@@yasashii89 it's a middle class thing, I think

You're looking at the superficial top coat of vocal dressing and social interaction. The actual cultures are in almost no way similar.

Japan, yes. English culture is very disrespectful, I've found. I lived in the USA and the kids there all call adults sir and ma'am. Here in the UK they don't respect adults or authority figures. Try telling off a group of people in the UK and you'll get physically or verbally abused.

@@voicesofww2 I was actually stating the opposite. The British may not say sir/ma'am, that's only an American thing but we are all very respectfully of our peers and elders etc. Maybe check out videos of Americans who have traveled or who stay in the UK and they all state how nice the population is.

Well they do say Japan is the Asian version of the United Kingdom

I would only tell a very close friend that they had put on weight out of concern. Not someone I hardly know unless I wanted to insult them.

@@Linh-rv5dg I was very thin as a child and in my early teens so that would have been a compliment.

It's a good job the Japanese share our tendency to queue!

When I take the bus, I go to the upper deck if there is one. All the priority seats are on the lower deck for obvious reasons.

I'm British but I assume this would also be rude in Japan (maybe even more so?)

Was in a shop the other day and the person at the front of the queue had gone to the exit of the tills rather than the entrance, but everyone else just queued up behind her rather than going to the proper entrance and pushing in, or calling her out on her mistake.

@@David-vm4ee Definitely! It was actually quite surprising how many similarities UK and Japanese have in terms of this kind of thing. Especially when most of the other countries i've visited or worked in were so different.

I won’t tell a stranger but I won’t like to my friends if I’m sad or angry

Which is why you shouldn't ask the question in the first place. Tad bit inane.

Yes we never say I want,my parents would have clipped my ears if I ever spoke to someone like that.

It is also a left over from the Black Death, when sneezing probably ment you did not have long to live God bless you.

@@iantait309 Which is an interesting cultural meme in that sneezing wasn't a symptom of bubonic plague, and is uncommon in pneumonic plague. Coughing was far more likely to be a symptom and spread the disease.

@@delivix Thanks for that, I was thinking of the old rhyme Ring a Ring of roses, atissue atissue we all fall down.

@@iantait309 I get the reference and I agree with you. I think the reference to sneezing shows how they misunderstood the plague at the time. The "pocket full of posies" line is interesting as it's a reference to the scented bags that the well-to-do used to carry round with them to suppress the foul odours they encountered when walking through the filthy, diseased streets.

@@iantait309 As far as I am aware, there is no actual specific origin of 'God bless you' as a response to sneezing. A wide variety of cultures wish someone well after they sneeze, whether or not they invoke deities. This is probably a common custom, particularly for societies that believe or believed in intercessionary prayer, because sneezing is associated with illness. A lot of ancient cultures also had a breath/spirit association and they may have believed someone lost part of their life-force or soul etc. when they sneezed.

I can understand not necessarily saying 'please' when ordering... but being handed your drink and just walking away without any acknowledgement?? Is that normal in Japan??

I never thought I was polite before this, but watching that scene made me realise that I literally use “please” and “thank you” as punctuation

@@otocan it's normal in a lot of places afaik. not everywhere has equivalents of please and/or thanks.

​@@sjs9698 I'm learning Japanese at the moment and they do have ways of saying please and thank you. Maybe they don't use it as often as we do in almost every setting.

Squirming in the non-politeness 😅

I don't. It facking awful. She is starting to sound like an uneducated chav.

@@iatsd 😂😂

@@iatsd said by the guy who says "facking" and cannot spell "it's". Chavs are not necessarily uneducated but you clearly are mate.

@@iatsd Another cultural difference in England, demonstrated really well by this comment is, classism. Big problem here that stems from the hierarchal monarchy and the systematic oppression of the poor and working class. I'll revert to the traditional British saying, 'If you haven't got anything nice to say, don't say anything at all'. I really like your accent Shizuka!

@@iatsd You can have a working class accent and be well educated, actually. The same way you could also be educated and an elitist twit. Judging a persons education based on their accent rather than words, thoughts and actions is really rather shallow.

She doesn't know the difference yet.

interesting, I had heard that it was said a people believed that sneezing was thought to be the body expelling out the devil or his 'vapours'. In Bavaria where I lived for several years the traditional greeting in this Catholic area is 'Gruss Gott' which translates to God is great or as we might more commonly hear it now ...... ............ Allahu Akbar !!

I was told in my church that you said it because people used to think that your soul temperately was pushed out with the sneeze and you said " god bless you" so the devil did not get it during that time.

@@jonathanperrins8432 - the difference seems to be that our Church assumed the devil was already in us !

Yeah I think the plague thing is just an urban myth, I remember it being on QI about the origin of 'Ring a ring a roses' song. Plus sneezing is not a symptom of the plague, even the pneumonic type.

@@Wang_Monkey Was just about to say this about sneezing not being a symptom of the plague. Watched a vid earlier about Dark Nursery Rhymes. LOL!

Yes I also noticed that.

Oof. Don't be so mean. ;P

@@LordBilliam ?

Great reply, people forget that this is a christian country despite the efforts of many to change that status. Be very careful what you wish for.

By accident not by accent.

@@fionagregory9376 Got you LOL !

the mediaval story (German) goes a poor but honest man was reduced to abject poverty and could no longer stand the plight of his starving children, so he decided reluctantly to rob a wealthy man in his town. On his way he met another 'man' going the same way, as they walked they struck up a conversation the other man somehow knew where he was going and his intent , and revealed he was the Devil himself going to reap a soul (!) but let slip the man would neeze 3 times and if no-one said bless you he would take the mans soul the devil helped the poor man into the town house and waited for the man , whilst the poor man helped himself to the silver, finally the owner came into the room and began sneezing, the poor man now terrified for the other mans soul on the last sneeze said loudly Bless you, whereupon the devil issued a scream of rage and vanished in a cloud of sulphurous smoke, when he had everything explained to him(!) he rewarded the poor man with more wealth than the littles he had already taken, since then it has been a european custom to wish a blessing of good health on anyone who sneezes.....this story is apparently one from the 1200's...it seems sneezing was seen as a precursor to a satanic attack back then :)

The explanation I ws given is that sneezes are caused by a devil in your nose. Saying "Bless You" drives it away.

@@jonathanwetherell3609 ITS prosit in Sweden (your health) and in badly spelt german its gesundheit which is roughly the same, so they probably all have a similar source :)

Both risk stuffing up the sinus, apparently

No loud or continual sniffing!!!!!!! - spot on. - preferably wipe not blow if it would disturb others or is near food - physically turn away from people /table if you really do need to blow. Some people leave the table.

Mustn't grumble, could be worse, definitely not never better! :-)

I agree with you. It makes me cringe to hear people saying that they're good.

The old fashioned form was, "How do you do?" to which the correct reply was, "How do you do?" The words change for the same or similar sentiment but as a rule one does not answer in the negative because the point of asking is definitely not to listen to how bad your day has been or indeed, how good your day has been. It's essentially a polite greeting rather than an enquiry, unless it's among family or friends of course but even then they aren't necessarily asking because they want to know. Normally, "Fine thanks, how are you?" is acceptable. The Americanism I spotted was in the please and thank you part, where the shop assistant example ends with "...have a nice day." We tend to see that as vacuous and/or disingenuous, like they're reading from a script because, well, they are. We see so many examples of US TV where it happens, not to mention places like Disney Stores where staff are instructed to give us the American experience, or were when they first opened in the UK. To be fair it's little different to the example of "How do you do?" above but we see a huge difference between a polite greeting from an acquaintance or even a passing stranger to a shop assistant saying the same lines to everyone and looking decidedly British as they do it, ie bored and put upon. We dislike it even more if it's accompanied by a fake smile and no matter how good an actor you are, we'll see that smile as fake immediately.

Language evolves. There's nothing wrong with saying can I get or i'm good

My grandfather always used to say "I'm in good health thank you", so saying "I'm good" seems like a perfectly logical contraction of that regardless of American influence. Nothing to worry about.

Or American... :)

Tea please.

I'm with the Japanese on this one. Nose blowing reminds me of wet farts. Should be practised discreetly/privately. Oh the times I gagged in public because of blatant, wet, gurgling, snottery.

Haha. Feel head-first into the UK-US divide there!

Especially from 2020

Happy slurping! :-)

Dude, if you get permission to slurp, you slurp XD

Lol

Oh damn, I think I've finally worked out the Qs in that phrase! Is it the phonetic 'k yu' in "thank you"? I knew what the phrase meant from context, but I never understood how Q stood for thank you, hah.

You are a bad man

No need for an apostrophe if a word is just plural.

Ah, the days when only east asians did quaint things like wearing masks

If you sneeze now apparently your a diseased ridden freak and your looked at with disgust and they can't get away from you quick enough!! The human race as finally gone mad!! FACT

I coughed twice in a café because I drank too fast as I was in a rush and the waitress looked like I just killed her mother

It's a quick and effective way of getting to the front of any queue at the moment.

@@Grimread True.... a good coughing fit works wonders!!

Trust me, she's right in every part of England I've lived.

Hah, I have aspergers and don't think I have ever asked back 'and you?' unless it is a close friend and I am genuinely interested in how they have been. It annoys me sometimes being asked by anyone else, as it is just seems like such a fake formality. I had not considered I was coming across as rude xD The lack of 'please' and 'thank you', on the first one got me though. Really irks when I see that in public.

"How are you" is actually a difficulty for _most_ foreigners, even the closest European neighbours. Some learn it but others (like me) can never get used to it: I always take the question literally at first and have to suppress the thought "I'd tell a close family member but none of your business".

@@darkraft1020 As far as I know I don't have Asperger's but I too find this incredibly frustrating and agree with your comment about "fake formality". Especially as a daily thing when entering the office "Hi, how are you? Fine thanks, you?" 70 times a day :S

traditionally greeting someone 'how do you do?' was answered by the same phrase. It was just a formality of polite exchanges where no answer was actually required !

@@Daneelro - just say 'well thank you'. If you're interested then you can always ask the follow up 'and you ?'

Japanese are generally taught American English at school and the textbooks are from the western USA. The teachers tend to tell the pupils that English is all about freedom, and a lot of Japanese people enjoy English because it is perceived to be so liberal and free and unconstrained. I tried telling my coworkers that this really only applies to English as used in the west coast of the USA, and certainly doesnt apply in the UK, Canada, southern USA or even the eastern seaboard. They dont really listen… “English = no politeness rules” is deeply ingrained in the Japanese understanding of English, unfortunately.

"Can i get an X" or "can i have an X" works too, i think it just have to be phrased as a request rather then an order is what makes it polite.

Or even "I would like...". Considering how close in meaning it is to "I want...", It's amazing how much more polite it sounds.

@@KnIf0rTITAN if one is being served " can i get is wrong " .

@@shaunrogers2256 You would be correct but it is always assumed that the word "please" is at the end of a request in the UK, for example "Can i get a pasty please" is a perfectly acceptable and polite way of phrasing something in everyday usage..... never forget your "invisible words" like "please" and "thank you", any transaction where the words "thank you" is not used between the two parties at least 3 times was a rude exchange in my book. "Can i get a pasty please" They give you the pasty - "thank you" "That will be £2.50 please" You give them the money - "thank you" They give you the change - "thank you" I call them "invisible words" because people in this country forget just how often they say it without thinking.... it's a good thing.

@@KnIf0rTITAN you miss understand, one cannot say can i get a pasty please unless you are retrieving it yourself. One could say can i get your coat / scarf or whatever then you would be expected to go and get it.