2012/7/13 Simon Parsons <[email protected]>: > > Being English, I find all of this very interesting. Here, we say "Pleased to > meet you" when we probably are not.
Same here (I'm German). We also ask "How are you" although we are not at all interested, and we answer "Fine, thank you" no matter how we really feel. And as a former husband I have learned that it is crucial to give the right (not necessarily correct) answer if your wife asks questions like "Am I too fat?". :) All these are words of no real matter, they are empty gestures and everybody knows that. But this is not the same as real questions and answers. When asked to do something I either say "yes" or "no" or "I'll see what I can do but pls do not count on it" as a polite "no". . > I would not normally mention Germans in this context, but having German > relatives, they have told me that it is well-known in Germany that we > English say many things that we do not mean and this causes some > communication problems, but most importantly, that because of this the > English cannot be trusted. Of course, we think we are just being polite. ;-) I don't know where your relatives are living but I haven't heard that in all my life. :) Of course you should not visit with somebody just because he said something like "You must visit us over the weekend soon!" - or wait in front of the phone because somebody said he/she will call you one of these days. All these are empty gestures while socializing. I experienced that English people can be very straight with saying "no". :) But (again) I think that we should differ between such gestures and social interaction amd real questions like "will you do a re-packaging of foo?". In such questions there is no room for politeness, it asks for a straight "yes" or "no". -- wobo
