As a Dutchie the way I used sorry is along the lines of “I am sorry, I won’t do that again.”
Then I had a long relationship with an ethnically Dutch person but culturally a Londoner (she grew up there) and also learned there is “I am sorry for your pain and wish I could take it away” (this implies though they probably would do it again because they are not sorry for their actions).
It was maddening at first but now I am used to it. I only do this in English though. In Dutch it’s almost like I physically can’t. It feels wrong to use it that way, almost unethical even.
I grew up in the states with a close friend whose parents are both from the UK and she's the only person I've known to say "I beg your pardon" with regularity. Is that a British/UK English thing too? I never hear/read it used otherwise but it seems more succinct and "proper" to me.
Mentioning it because I'm actually slightly surprised to see the "sorry, what did you say" usage here and in the article because it seems so pedestrian
I'm American and I've heard Americans say "I beg your pardon", but like you I've always thought of it as a slightly proper (maybe WASP-y) idiom. People frequently say "excuse me", "sorry?", or "say again?". At least I do. Maybe I should get my ears checked.
"I beg your pardon" like "Sorry" can have multiple meanings based on the situation and inflection.
It can be used to excuse not hearing something, to get someone to repeat something preposterous or to generally reply to something shocking without actually expecting the other person to reiterate.
Was on a London bus early one morning, not many people on the bus. One bloke got up from his seat to get off, he had a big bag and knocked it against one of the poles on his way out. He said sorry to the pole, there was no one else around. One of the most British things I’ve seen.
Isn't this just... normal? Maybe they use it more often, but (also in the Midwest as other comments mention) these uses are all more common than an actual apology.
But for a more distant example of the "I'm about to inconvenience you" usage being normal - isn't the Japanese "sumimasen" used almost exactly the same as these?
As a learner it feels like Japanese is full of this kind of formalized, preemptory apologizing in all kinds of situations. You go to the supermarket and ask if they sell stamps (the answer is no) and they say the formal apology "申し訳ありません" (literally: I have no excuse).
There's also ごめん下さい "gomen kudasai" (literally "please forgive me") which is used as a greeting when visiting someone's house unexpectedly. And どうもすみません "domo sumimasen" (literally "thanks excuse me/I'm sorry") when accepting someone's offer to help with something.
None of these necessarily imply the speaker has actually done something wrong or wouldn't do the same again.
> None of these necessarily imply the speaker has actually done something wrong
You’d be surprised. The culture of kidzukai has two core tenets:
(1) You must anticipate and cater to the other person’s every need and whim. If you fail you must apologize.
(2) You must not allow the other person to do (1) for you instead of you doing it for them. If you fail you must apologize.
This means that every interaction between people who are even slightly close to each other in the social hierarchy is 3D chess which always ends in one or both of you apologizing to the other.
p.s. Gomen kudasai is “please permit me” to enter your house, not really an apology like gomen nasai.
In the anglosphere maybe, but outside of that it seems to not be. My girlfriend is from SE Asia and her language's equivalent is evidently used exclusively to apologize for having wronged someone. I've had to explain my usage of "I'm sorry that [bad thing happened]" or "Sorry, but can I just [very minorly inconvenience you]" because she didn't understand what I was admitting fault for.
In her language I believe they use different politeness markers for these situations (they have an "excuse me" equivalent), but I'm not proficient enough to know them well.
The I'm sorry (that someone died) is easy to explain as it's obviously connected to the word sorrow. The hardest is "sorry?" (I didn't understand or hear you)
It's easy to explain, but her language (Vietnamese) has no relation to English other than forced adoption of the Latin alphabet, so she wouldn't see that connection.
"Sorry" is most commonly translated as "xin lỗi" which literally means something like "request forgiveness". It's connected exclusively to the notion of fault, not sadness. The real issue is that sorry <-> xin lỗi is a ubiquitous but poor translation, because the meaning of xin lỗi is much more specific than sorry.
I speak Urdu (another South Asian language). If you asked someone the meaning of sorry in Urdu they would always say "ma'afi/ma'af karna" which is very strictly "asking forgiveness" although it "can" be used as "I didnt hear you / come again" literally nobody ever uses it that way
Oddly enough "sorry" is also quite common in the upper Midwest US. If I bump into someone else by accident, and it's my fault, they will reflexively say "sorry."
"Ope" is in use in Australia? Sandgroper here and I've never heard it before. Is it only in certain cities, or a generational / social group thing? Or do I just need to get away from screens more often?
It’s probably just me. Tend to pick up things I’ve heard once somewhere.
On the other hand, I hadn’t heard sandgroper before and had to search to find out it meant Western Australian. Although, I definitely don’t get out much.
Sandgroper is just a shibboleth for Perth & WA people, I think, but it might also be generational. I'm old enough that Fat Cat & Humphrey B Bear mean something to me and are a shared experience, but probably not for people younger than me.
But saying sorry as a pre-emptive "oops didn't mean to step in front of you, mate" (when the other person had clearly walked into you), that has existed in Perth as long as I can remember.
That's all it means. Excuse my impertinence, presence, gaul, mere existence; I need your attention. Many languages have this overloaded phrase and use it just as a Brit would "sorry". It's formal deference. It's polite.
And it's not like we don't also shout "Oi!" when we need to determine whether or not some brigand possesses a licence for whatever it is they're doing.
I'm reminded of The Hobbit with the phrase "Good morning" in the first chapter:
> "Good Morning!" said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.
> "What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?"
> "All of them at once," said Bilbo. "And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain.
“Thank you” seems to be similarly versatile in London. You can’t go 30 minutes without hearing it. Once when I was in a bookshop and approached the counter with a couple books to buy, the shopkeeper opened with “thank you”. To this day I don’t understand what that was about.
The flaw with that article, it being the Beeb showing their bias, is that it mainly applies to the English Home Counties.
So it is a southern English habit, not a British one. The other parts of England are more direct, and will use more obvious phrasing. Similarly the other parts of Britain will be more direct.
Indeed. I've lived in the UK my entire life, and I've only ever heard "sorry" used to mean "excuse me, can I get past please?" in and around London. It still sounds weird to me. Where I come from (further from London), you'd just say "excuse me".
I think it would illustrate more to expand the abbreviations. In almost all these uses, it’s just a short version of the “obvious” dictionary-definition apology. For example, point two’s “sorry?” is short for “I’m sorry I didn’t hear you, can you please repeat that?”. It puts the blame for the conversational stumble on the listener - whether or not that’s correct - to smooth it over. Point three is short for “I’m sorry to interrupt you or mildly inconvenience you, but could you do this small thing for me, a stranger that you have no obligation to?”. And so on.
Now I want to know if "Thank You" also carries as many meanings. I came here from Pakistan for work 6 years ago. Article is about sorry the Thank you was a bigger cultural shock perhaps. Number of Thanks I got in first few months already surpassed all thankses I ever heard in Pakistan. This does not mean we are thankless but you won't get a Thanks for moving aside a step on a footpath, or holding a door if you ever did.
This is like when I went to Paris for a business trip and learned that a specific set of French bourgeois take "bon appetit" before a meal to mean "have fun eating this shitty food" (and that you shouldn't say it in a classy restaurant someone picked to take you to).
I thought I was being pranked at first but then I learned that the exact same rule applies in certain "high establishments" in Geneva.
This is 100% accurate. I've seen someone apologizing for being stepped on (accidentally, of course). It really does mean "we have, unfortunately and inadvertently, crossed paths and must now ward off the evil spirits by acknowledging this".
I was working on my front door and needed to get prone for a few minutes, when of course someone came along and commanded me to move, so I apologized that I couldn't immediately comply, and he fulminated for a while until stepping over my legs, and it wasn't the first time
I had always considered myself considerate and not blocking people and following posted etiquette rules and staying out of the way and being courteous in traffic but it seems the way now is to just follow commands by strangers and accept their abuse because I’m racist/sexist/privileged/trash
I suppose it is a variant on 'could you repeat that please?' which is a fun question to ask my kids when they were rude cause they'll repeat it (no filter / literally).
I used to always put my bag next to me cause I don't want to sit next to someone (when I was a kid, it'd hurt me when I was solo sitting alone in whole bus, but I learned to embrace that instead). Nowadays, people just point at the bag, and during primetime it is just annoying having to ask (esp someone pretending to sleep, on phone, or lookibg outside) because yes we all don't like the bus is full, we all wanna get to work/home. So I learned to just start with my bag between my legs or on my lap instead. And, since the bag doesn't pay for a ticket, it has no right to a seat.
So in Borderlands 4, one of the voice lines by the Siren called Vex after a kill is 'sorry not sorry'. But given the CEO of that company is Texan, I couldn't pinpoint how rude (if any) that was. Not like they can hear you after a frag anyway.
Some British slang is just lovely. Such as smoking a fag. In that regard, too bad I don't smoke anymore.
But in the instance of sorry, I assumed it was American, since Brits would say 'excuse me'. Brits are, after all, very polite (I'm Dutch...)
sorry that you're a cunt, now
1) get out of my way
2) speak up
3) get out of my fucking way
4) stop being a cunt for a bit (and get out of my way)
5) shut up
6) fuck off
TBH I'm way less polite than I used to be. I literally never use "sorry" except "I want to apologize for something wrong I've done and it's a big deal". When I bump into someone I usually just move on without acknowledging the situation. But I also butt in with help without a word - there's a surprising number of children I saved by randomly approaching the parent and offering band-aids without uttering a word.
I think I kind of accepted that I don't have hardware acceleration for pleasantries and I only use them when there's something very clear I can gain from that, like at work. Otherwise I default to "Pass me the salt." like saying a command to a subordinate. "Can you pass me the salt?" is peak politeness for me.
BTW there's a fun story. Back at the university I had some shit course with another faculty, and one of exercises was spotting things on a recording. I mentioned a scene where women in a third-world country were receiving education and said "... because those chicks were getting educated" and one girl got upset "WHAT DID YOU SAY?!" while the other one got sad "nobody has ever called ME a chick!". Of course the interaction wasn't in English so that wasn't the exact word I used, but yeah.
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
As a Dutchie the way I used sorry is along the lines of “I am sorry, I won’t do that again.”
Then I had a long relationship with an ethnically Dutch person but culturally a Londoner (she grew up there) and also learned there is “I am sorry for your pain and wish I could take it away” (this implies though they probably would do it again because they are not sorry for their actions).
It was maddening at first but now I am used to it. I only do this in English though. In Dutch it’s almost like I physically can’t. It feels wrong to use it that way, almost unethical even.
But maybe that’s a me thing.
“Sorry” is used almost always passive aggressively in Dutch: “Sorry maar”, “Sorry hoor”, “Sorry zeg”
I’m a Brit. It was only after living overseas that I realised just how mad our use of “sorry” can be.
An example. One day I was on the tube. My bag was on the seat next to me. A bloke gets on, points at my bag and says “sorry”.
What he actually meant, was “move your bag”.
The thing is, if he had said something so direct, I would have said “sorry, what did you say to me?”
And on and on…
I grew up in the states with a close friend whose parents are both from the UK and she's the only person I've known to say "I beg your pardon" with regularity. Is that a British/UK English thing too? I never hear/read it used otherwise but it seems more succinct and "proper" to me.
Mentioning it because I'm actually slightly surprised to see the "sorry, what did you say" usage here and in the article because it seems so pedestrian
“I beg your pardon” can be translated as “what the fuck did you just say to me?”
It’s getting quite serious if you have to whip that one out
I'm American and I've heard Americans say "I beg your pardon", but like you I've always thought of it as a slightly proper (maybe WASP-y) idiom. People frequently say "excuse me", "sorry?", or "say again?". At least I do. Maybe I should get my ears checked.
They'll also commonly say "pardon me", which is a bit nicer "say again", but definitely nowhere close to "I beg your pardon" uptightness.
I'm familiar with the expression but if an American said that to me, I'd probably think it meant "rethink what you just said".
It depends a lot on their tone. Most of the time I've heard it, it's a quick "begpardon?", sometimes with their ear cocked towards you.
When I see it in writing, I too for some reason picture an angry posh British man who is about to demand satisfaction.
The usage of "I beg your pardon" is not uncommon in Australia, but more ironic.
"I beg your pardon" like "Sorry" can have multiple meanings based on the situation and inflection.
It can be used to excuse not hearing something, to get someone to repeat something preposterous or to generally reply to something shocking without actually expecting the other person to reiterate.
I hear it most days in corporate tech.....
It's the perfect retort whenever someone expects a rose garden.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-eclUz-RYI
Reminds me of that Hale and Pace skit on the street.
https://youtu.be/VRmjbvChV_M
Was on a London bus early one morning, not many people on the bus. One bloke got up from his seat to get off, he had a big bag and knocked it against one of the poles on his way out. He said sorry to the pole, there was no one else around. One of the most British things I’ve seen.
Eh its sorry for "sorry would you mind terribly moving your bag" nothing so direct as move your bag alone.
> One day I was on the tube. My bag was on the seat next to me
Presumably you also said sorry in return?
Isn't this just... normal? Maybe they use it more often, but (also in the Midwest as other comments mention) these uses are all more common than an actual apology.
But for a more distant example of the "I'm about to inconvenience you" usage being normal - isn't the Japanese "sumimasen" used almost exactly the same as these?
As a learner it feels like Japanese is full of this kind of formalized, preemptory apologizing in all kinds of situations. You go to the supermarket and ask if they sell stamps (the answer is no) and they say the formal apology "申し訳ありません" (literally: I have no excuse).
There's also ごめん下さい "gomen kudasai" (literally "please forgive me") which is used as a greeting when visiting someone's house unexpectedly. And どうもすみません "domo sumimasen" (literally "thanks excuse me/I'm sorry") when accepting someone's offer to help with something.
None of these necessarily imply the speaker has actually done something wrong or wouldn't do the same again.
> None of these necessarily imply the speaker has actually done something wrong
You’d be surprised. The culture of kidzukai has two core tenets: (1) You must anticipate and cater to the other person’s every need and whim. If you fail you must apologize. (2) You must not allow the other person to do (1) for you instead of you doing it for them. If you fail you must apologize.
This means that every interaction between people who are even slightly close to each other in the social hierarchy is 3D chess which always ends in one or both of you apologizing to the other.
p.s. Gomen kudasai is “please permit me” to enter your house, not really an apology like gomen nasai.
> Isn't this just... normal?
In the anglosphere maybe, but outside of that it seems to not be. My girlfriend is from SE Asia and her language's equivalent is evidently used exclusively to apologize for having wronged someone. I've had to explain my usage of "I'm sorry that [bad thing happened]" or "Sorry, but can I just [very minorly inconvenience you]" because she didn't understand what I was admitting fault for.
In her language I believe they use different politeness markers for these situations (they have an "excuse me" equivalent), but I'm not proficient enough to know them well.
The I'm sorry (that someone died) is easy to explain as it's obviously connected to the word sorrow. The hardest is "sorry?" (I didn't understand or hear you)
It's easy to explain, but her language (Vietnamese) has no relation to English other than forced adoption of the Latin alphabet, so she wouldn't see that connection.
"Sorry" is most commonly translated as "xin lỗi" which literally means something like "request forgiveness". It's connected exclusively to the notion of fault, not sadness. The real issue is that sorry <-> xin lỗi is a ubiquitous but poor translation, because the meaning of xin lỗi is much more specific than sorry.
I speak Urdu (another South Asian language). If you asked someone the meaning of sorry in Urdu they would always say "ma'afi/ma'af karna" which is very strictly "asking forgiveness" although it "can" be used as "I didnt hear you / come again" literally nobody ever uses it that way
Doesn't it come from "sorry [to make you repeat yourself], could you repeat that?"
Ontario, an apology is not an admission of liability: https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/09a03
So very Canada. Sorry!
Oddly enough "sorry" is also quite common in the upper Midwest US. If I bump into someone else by accident, and it's my fault, they will reflexively say "sorry."
Yeah, this would read just as well for the upper midwest. Although "Ope!" is also interchangeable with sorry in a lot of situations.
This is use in Australia and is short for ”oops, sorry about that”.
"Ope" is in use in Australia? Sandgroper here and I've never heard it before. Is it only in certain cities, or a generational / social group thing? Or do I just need to get away from screens more often?
It’s probably just me. Tend to pick up things I’ve heard once somewhere.
On the other hand, I hadn’t heard sandgroper before and had to search to find out it meant Western Australian. Although, I definitely don’t get out much.
Sandgroper is just a shibboleth for Perth & WA people, I think, but it might also be generational. I'm old enough that Fat Cat & Humphrey B Bear mean something to me and are a shared experience, but probably not for people younger than me.
Helpful off-topic instructional video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWv3L6J1YVE
But saying sorry as a pre-emptive "oops didn't mean to step in front of you, mate" (when the other person had clearly walked into you), that has existed in Perth as long as I can remember.
How about Humphrey B. Flaubert (or Humphrey B. Flow Bear, if you prefer)?
From Green Bay to Dickinson, the complete utterance is “Op Sorry.” If one is not in a hurry it is sometimes “Oops, Sorry.”
I say "ope, sorry". Never realized it until I saw the midwest memes.
That's quite a ways.
I'd argue it's not just Green Bay-Dickenson on the east end, but also extending to like souix falls/Fargo on the west end
"Oop, sorry" was viscerally familiar to me
In Los Angeles, its the same in person, in a car it's the finger. (Unfortunately)
A hippie driving a VW Microbus leaned out the window and flashed me a peace sign, so I gave him half a peace sign in response.
Yeah I'm from Kansas and none of these meanings were new to me.
Excuse me.
That's all it means. Excuse my impertinence, presence, gaul, mere existence; I need your attention. Many languages have this overloaded phrase and use it just as a Brit would "sorry". It's formal deference. It's polite.
And it's not like we don't also shout "Oi!" when we need to determine whether or not some brigand possesses a licence for whatever it is they're doing.
I'm reminded of The Hobbit with the phrase "Good morning" in the first chapter:
> "Good Morning!" said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.
> "What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?"
> "All of them at once," said Bilbo. "And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain.
“Thank you” seems to be similarly versatile in London. You can’t go 30 minutes without hearing it. Once when I was in a bookshop and approached the counter with a couple books to buy, the shopkeeper opened with “thank you”. To this day I don’t understand what that was about.
The flaw with that article, it being the Beeb showing their bias, is that it mainly applies to the English Home Counties.
So it is a southern English habit, not a British one. The other parts of England are more direct, and will use more obvious phrasing. Similarly the other parts of Britain will be more direct.
Indeed. I've lived in the UK my entire life, and I've only ever heard "sorry" used to mean "excuse me, can I get past please?" in and around London. It still sounds weird to me. Where I come from (further from London), you'd just say "excuse me".
Not quite. If you had to get off a packed bus with a large rucksack I'd certainly be saying sorry and I'm from Yorkshire.
I think it would illustrate more to expand the abbreviations. In almost all these uses, it’s just a short version of the “obvious” dictionary-definition apology. For example, point two’s “sorry?” is short for “I’m sorry I didn’t hear you, can you please repeat that?”. It puts the blame for the conversational stumble on the listener - whether or not that’s correct - to smooth it over. Point three is short for “I’m sorry to interrupt you or mildly inconvenience you, but could you do this small thing for me, a stranger that you have no obligation to?”. And so on.
Now I want to know if "Thank You" also carries as many meanings. I came here from Pakistan for work 6 years ago. Article is about sorry the Thank you was a bigger cultural shock perhaps. Number of Thanks I got in first few months already surpassed all thankses I ever heard in Pakistan. This does not mean we are thankless but you won't get a Thanks for moving aside a step on a footpath, or holding a door if you ever did.
There was a whole sitcom called "Sorry!" starring Ronnie Corbett (famous from The Two Ronnies)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081937/
This is how it's used in Canada too
I think it would be the case in many of the commonwealth countries. You hear "sorry" being used a lot like this in Australia too.
This is exactly like in French and the other languages I speak.
I am not sure BE is a spacial case.
The British have a similarly strange relationship with the word "Brilliant".
Aren't holidays brilliant? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgMgkl-gRxk
Scottish culture is pure dead brilliant!
Tracy Ullman doing Nicola Sturgeon and Mhari Black .... pure dead brilliant!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eV5TbEydy0
Glasgow! Pure Dead Brilliant!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwomQzigGuc
PdB C to PostScript compiler:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29964903
We like our sarcasm and disappointment.
This is like when I went to Paris for a business trip and learned that a specific set of French bourgeois take "bon appetit" before a meal to mean "have fun eating this shitty food" (and that you shouldn't say it in a classy restaurant someone picked to take you to).
I thought I was being pranked at first but then I learned that the exact same rule applies in certain "high establishments" in Geneva.
This is 100% accurate. I've seen someone apologizing for being stepped on (accidentally, of course). It really does mean "we have, unfortunately and inadvertently, crossed paths and must now ward off the evil spirits by acknowledging this".
> I've seen someone apologizing for being stepped on
It is really rude to step underneath other people. Or to lay underneath other people. No wonder they appologized.
I was working on my front door and needed to get prone for a few minutes, when of course someone came along and commanded me to move, so I apologized that I couldn't immediately comply, and he fulminated for a while until stepping over my legs, and it wasn't the first time
I had always considered myself considerate and not blocking people and following posted etiquette rules and staying out of the way and being courteous in traffic but it seems the way now is to just follow commands by strangers and accept their abuse because I’m racist/sexist/privileged/trash
I think it's just acknowledging that the thing has happened, and you aren't pissed because you know it wasn't intended so they don't need to feel bad.
Of course this being Britain, the tone used could make this mean the opposite.
I’m in the US and definitely have heard these in similar situations.
Another I don’t think was listed is a way to blunt an aggressive statement just in case there may be a misunderstanding.
“WTF did you just say to me?”
Might be “Sorry, but WTF did you just say to me?” would imply some anger that could lead to a fight but hey, sorry maybe I misheard you?
Which could funny enough lead to more sorries “oh, sorry I thought you said something else”.
I suppose it is a variant on 'could you repeat that please?' which is a fun question to ask my kids when they were rude cause they'll repeat it (no filter / literally).
I used to always put my bag next to me cause I don't want to sit next to someone (when I was a kid, it'd hurt me when I was solo sitting alone in whole bus, but I learned to embrace that instead). Nowadays, people just point at the bag, and during primetime it is just annoying having to ask (esp someone pretending to sleep, on phone, or lookibg outside) because yes we all don't like the bus is full, we all wanna get to work/home. So I learned to just start with my bag between my legs or on my lap instead. And, since the bag doesn't pay for a ticket, it has no right to a seat.
So in Borderlands 4, one of the voice lines by the Siren called Vex after a kill is 'sorry not sorry'. But given the CEO of that company is Texan, I couldn't pinpoint how rude (if any) that was. Not like they can hear you after a frag anyway.
Some British slang is just lovely. Such as smoking a fag. In that regard, too bad I don't smoke anymore.
But in the instance of sorry, I assumed it was American, since Brits would say 'excuse me'. Brits are, after all, very polite (I'm Dutch...)
"Sorry, I thought I heard you say _____, but that's all an unfortunate misunderstanding because otherwise you're in deep shit, right?"
'Sorry' serves the same purpose as 'excuse me', 'yeah' or 'okay' in that it has a multitude of meanings depending on tone, intonation and context.
For instance 'yeah' can mean 'yes, continue', agreement, skepticism, (sarcastic) disagreement, enthusiasm, etc.
The cultural difference is what word is most commonly used.
Meanwhile in America:
Can The Family Have a Good Time Playing Sorry? | The Carol Burnett Show Clip
https://youtu.be/_uBib8TatmA?t=397
You should also wink after ringing the little bell.
Mi dispiace.
Di niente
Australia entered the chat
TBH I'm way less polite than I used to be. I literally never use "sorry" except "I want to apologize for something wrong I've done and it's a big deal". When I bump into someone I usually just move on without acknowledging the situation. But I also butt in with help without a word - there's a surprising number of children I saved by randomly approaching the parent and offering band-aids without uttering a word.
I think I kind of accepted that I don't have hardware acceleration for pleasantries and I only use them when there's something very clear I can gain from that, like at work. Otherwise I default to "Pass me the salt." like saying a command to a subordinate. "Can you pass me the salt?" is peak politeness for me.
BTW there's a fun story. Back at the university I had some shit course with another faculty, and one of exercises was spotting things on a recording. I mentioned a scene where women in a third-world country were receiving education and said "... because those chicks were getting educated" and one girl got upset "WHAT DID YOU SAY?!" while the other one got sad "nobody has ever called ME a chick!". Of course the interaction wasn't in English so that wasn't the exact word I used, but yeah.
how is this on hcker.news?? WoW!!
You've been her for mere 13 days, maybe stick a bit longer before you get the gist of the culture and drop comments like this?
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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