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What British people mean when they say 'sorry'
- ghostpepper 5mo agoThis is how it's used in Canada too
- beefsack 5mo agoI think it would be the case in many of the commonwealth countries. You hear "sorry" being used a lot like this in Australia too.
- stavros 5mo agoThis 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".
- toast0 5mo ago> 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.
- ButlerianJihad 5mo agoI 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
- benj111 5mo agoI 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.
- analog31 5mo agoOddly 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."
- AngryData 5mo agoYeah, this would read just as well for the upper midwest. Although "Ope!" is also interchangeable with sorry in a lot of situations.
- thrownthatway 5mo agoThis is use in Australia and is short for ”oops, sorry about that”.
- SyneRyder 5mo ago"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?
- thrownthatway 5mo agoIt’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.
- SyneRyder 5mo agoSandgroper 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 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.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- thehoff 5mo agoI’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”.
- stvltvs 5mo ago"Sorry, I thought I heard you say _____, but that's all an unfortunate misunderstanding because otherwise you're in deep shit, right?"
- Fnoord 5mo agoI 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...)
- enochthered 5mo agoI’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…
- dieselgate 5mo agoI 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
- thrownthatway 5mo agoThe usage of "I beg your pardon" is not uncommon in Australia, but more ironic.
- roarcher 5mo agoI'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.
- tdeck 5mo agoI'm familiar with the expression but if an American said that to me, I'd probably think it meant "rethink what you just said".
- roarcher 5mo agoIt 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.
- nutjob2 5mo ago'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.
- soopypoos 5mo agosorry 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
- marcus_holmes 5mo agoAustralia entered the chat
- Izkata 5mo agoIsn'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?
- roarcher 5mo ago> 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.
- ccppurcell 5mo agoThe 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)
- roarcher 5mo agoIt'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.
- sayamqazi 5mo agoI 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
- RajT88 5mo agoThe British have a similarly strange relationship with the word "Brilliant".
- unfunco 5mo agoAren't holidays brilliant? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgMgkl-gRxk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgMgkl-gRxk
- porker 5mo agoWe like our sarcasm and disappointment.
- DonHopkins 5mo agoScottish culture is pure dead brilliant! Tracy Ullman doing Nicola Sturgeon and Mhari Black .... pure dead brilliant!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eV5TbEydy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eV5TbEydy0 Glasgow! Pure Dead Brilliant! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwomQzigGuc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwomQzigGuc PdB C to PostScript compiler: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29964903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29964903
- tim-projects 5mo agoSimilar to Amazon reviews, British people like to either give a 1 or a 5. Not similar to Amazon reviews Brits default to 1. So when it's a 5 it's particularly meaningful.
- jakub_g 5mo agoThere's a famous table with what Brits say vs mean: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/ha0rz/british_english_phrases_and_what_they_really_mean/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/ha0rz/britis... e.g. "very interesting" -> "clearly nonsense"
- nly 5mo ago"Fucking brilliant" = I'm so sick of this shit, fuck my life "absolutely fantastic" also works
- _jackdk_ 5mo ago[dead]
- eptityri 5mo ago[dead]
- mettamage 5mo agoAs 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.
- instalabsai 5mo ago“Sorry” is used almost always passive aggressively in Dutch: “Sorry maar”, “Sorry hoor”, “Sorry zeg”
- mxmilkiib 5mo ago"I am sorrowful that.." Scottish n ASD here, I've come to use the above (or just "I'm sad that..", maybe "conflicted" sometimes) to those who use "sorry" to me, the ambiguity of the overloaded meaning leads me usually to say "no need to apologise, though I do appreciate the sentiment!"
- fellowniusmonk 5mo agoMi dispiace.
- cromka 5mo agoDi niente
- jameswhitford 5mo ago[flagged]
- xaxfixho 5mo ago[flagged]
- maleldil 5mo ago> 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- cromka 5mo agoYou'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?
- whe5herthe 5mo ago[flagged]
- xaxfixho 5mo ago[dead]
- casty 5mo agoSorry?
- DonHopkins 5mo agoMeanwhile in America: Can The Family Have a Good Time Playing Sorry? | The Carol Burnett Show Clip https://youtu.be/_uBib8TatmA?t=397 https://youtu.be/_uBib8TatmA?t=397 You should also wink after ringing the little bell.
- dwb 5mo agoI 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.
- anal_reactor 5mo agoTBH 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.
- smusamashah 5mo agoNow 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.
- mamonster 5mo agoThis 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.
- a_e_k 5mo agoI'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.
- oliwarner 5mo agoExcuse 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.
- dfawcus 5mo agoThe 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.
- chris_j 5mo agoIndeed. 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".
- benj111 5mo agoNot 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.
- peterpost2 5mo agoGlaswegian here, I would use sorry as an "can I get past" also.
- BrandoElFollito 5mo agoThis is exactly like in French and the other languages I speak. I am not sure BE is a spacial case.
- throw696688 5mo ago“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.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- throw696689 5mo ago[dead]
- nly 5mo agoThank you for buying their books
- implements 5mo agoPart of the transaction is the performance of a service role - they’re thanking you for allowing them to help you. But also it might be a habit if they’re used to serving a queue of customers (“Thank you for waiting”) or just a polite verbal cue that the transaction has started or again the habit of saying thank you on being passed something hand to hand (often shortened to “ta”).
- ndsipa_pomu 5mo agoThere was a whole sitcom called "Sorry!" starring Ronnie Corbett (famous from The Two Ronnies) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081937/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081937/
- wesleyd 5mo agoOntario, an apology is not an admission of liability: https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/09a03 https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/09a03 So very Canada. Sorry!
- plumbees 5mo agoOh I'm sorry, but this makes total sense. I say sorry so much that I have seen people take it as admission of responsibility. And it's not good. Glad there are laws that understand the nuance of language.
- tim-projects 5mo agoThey missed "Sorry not sorry." :)
- plumbees 5mo agoI came here to say sorry. Actually interesting I remember saying sorry in the sense of, "Can you repeat what you said?" and it annoyed one of my friends so much that she essentially trained me to say pardon instead because it was annoying her. Didn't realize it was part of my Canadian heritage.
- plumbees 5mo agoSub question if anyone is interested. I often have to ask people to repeat themselves but when I go get hearing tests they say I'm perfect. It's a little annoying. I've copped it out to this framework: the hearing tests only tests the range of the human voice, but it doesn't test say, understanding through other systems. For example, I cannot for the life of me understand anything my nieces or nephews say over the phone. Speech practice aside I believe that given that their voices are high pitched, I'm assuming the phone lines (and online meeting rooms) collapse the human voice to a smaller wavespace for efficiency, hense forth clipping the highs and the lows making it harder to distinguish the nuances of the sound. I can understand them just fine in person, but over the phone is such a nightmare. I've developed a bit of an ear as you when when you are around a group of people for long enough. (I.E. parents not able to understand customer service folks when they resort to short form, "slang" English, vs standard pronunciation.) Wonder if anybody else has gone down this rabbithole a bit deeper and can share their insights. (All this because I wanted to qualify the "actually interesting" statement....
- jakub_g 5mo agoI have the same observation, when I need to ask someone to repeat, it's usually not because I didn't hear the sound, it's that my brain CPU struggled to process and decode the sound fast enough. Sometimes I ask to repeat and while saying it, the background brain CPU thread figures out what was said. This usually happens in my non-native languages (but not only), and especially for speakers with accents I'm not used to.
- eloeffler 5mo agoLiterally all of these meanings are used in the same way in German. And actually, the word "Sorry" itself, too. Not all Germans do it, but I'd say a fair share. I think, because the German "Entschuldigung" is four syllables long :D But that would work the same way and for example in the pub situations you can shout it much better: "Ent-shool-dee-goong?" I wasn't aware this is something that doesn't work in all English-speaking countries. I may have overused the equivalent of the word in other languages, too. Scusi about that.
- stuaxo 5mo agoMy German friend lived in the UK for a whole and went back for a bit. In a lift in Germany a lady tried on friends foot - friend said "sorry". The other lady said "Well, you shouldn't have been standing there".
- mock-possum 5mo agoIt’s a signal that you’re asserting yourself.
- makingstuffs 5mo agoThey forgot “I’m sorry?” meaning “You can’t have said what I though you said, can you repeat that?”.
- khelavastr 5mo agoThe fundamental difference between deteriorating British culture and successful American culture: British feel "indignity of open confrontation". Honestly shocking. The indignity in America is usually in NOT eventually openly confronting wrongdoers. It's embarrassing and cringe-inducing to read that even one person--much less an entire culture -- feels more dignity getting beaten down and bullied by strangers or peers than confronting them openly or berating them publicl.
- KempyKolibri 5mo ago“feels more dignity getting beaten down and bullied by strangers or peers than confronting them openly or berating them publicl” is rather hyperbolic and (in my opinion) doesn’t capture what’s going on here. I think this speaks more to a culture of thinking of other peoples’ experiences/rights/feelings as well as their own. Whenever I drive in the US I’m always staggered by just how selfish people are on the roads, for example. Is another car very clearly merging onto a highway where it would be easy to make enough room for them to merge? In the UK, 90% of the time the cars on the highway will make room. In the US I’ve literally never seen it happen.
- burnt-resistor 5mo agoCanadian: "Sorry, hold my beer."
- novaleaf 5mo agoI must have read too many british books as a kid, because that's the way I use it. Though, they don't mention the "I am sympathetic to your plight" version of sorry that seems to confound ppl a lot (which I also do)
- LennyHenrysNuts 5mo agoPlease, stop using the word British for the English. Welshmen are not English, the English are not Scottish. English politeness is not necessarily a feature of our Celtic brother and sister's national character.