5 manners I didn't know in England | manners and etiquette in the UK | Japanese perspective 

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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 😅

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 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.

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!

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.

She doesn't know the difference yet.

By accident not by accent.

@@fionagregory9376 Got you LOL !

Or American... :)

Tea please.

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.

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

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.

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 :)

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