Since I have lived in the US all my life I don't have the "country" difference but the cultural difference. There was a conversation on Ravlery a while back about the use of "ma'am" and "sir". I still use when addressing someone especially and older person or person of respect. Apparently it is cultural. I guess the southern area of the country has that more ingrained in our upbringing. To us it shows respect and to many people in the northern states apparently it was considered smart alect. I think the "sorry", "thank you", and "RSVP-ing" are really mostly about good manners. I think we should say sorry to someone if we bump into them or if we hurt someone, I think we should always say thank you, it shows appreciation of another person. As to RSVP, yeah whatever happened to it? I mean in this day and age if you don't want to talk to someone you can e-mail or text them. "How are You"? Well I think it has become such a source of "lite talk" with no real meaning to it. Does the over use of the word "like" mean people today have no real grasp of vocabulary? Possibly. Or maybe it is just laziness.
Being someone who is of a generation where saying like all the time is considered normal, I think it is actually something else entirely. When I was in school it was absolutely drilled into us that we should not say Um, or ah or any of those other verbal space fillers that come out when you are trying to come up with the next word. I think that what happened is that we all filled the void with 'like' which, ironically, ended up annoying our seniors more then the tics they were trying to replace.
1. I can't stand "like", but it's better than using f* as a filler word which I have also heard.
2. When a friend of mine went to Japan, she said she couldn't understand the television shows but noticed that when talking heads were chatting, the current non-talker said "Hai" at every breath pause of the talker. Apparently a "I'm listening" signifier.
3. When my sister went to Germany as an exchange student, she found that answering "Yes" to the question "Do you want a piece of cake?" meant she got a piece of every cake available. Answering "No" to the same question meant she only got one piece of cake. She found no option that meant "no cake at all".
In Southern California it is customary to display your middle finger while in traffic when someone has done something you do not like. I find it quite difficult to keep myself from showing my finger when my child is in the car with me. Instead I yell BAD WORD, BAD WORD but it's not nearly as satisfying.
I'm from the generation of "Yes, please./No, thank you." No, thank you?! That mystifies me. "Yes thank" you would make sense and maybe "No, but it's kind of you to offer, even though I really don't want what you're offering." But "No, thank you." I don't get it, but I still say it.
I had it pointed out to me yesterday that I was clearly at least a bit of a Southerner and not from California, because when I was trying to emphasize a point, I'd said, Oh honey. You betcha. Both phrases were regional, I was told--and correctly so, when I thought about it.
I'm not a Southerner, but my native Maryland is a mixture. South of the Mason-Dixon line, yes, and a slave state once, but emotionally and historically, it split from the South during the Civil War. (The troops defending Washington were stationed on their soil, they weren't dumb.)
In Southern California, we say "I'll call you" and have absolutely no intention of doing that. I don't know if that's regional or not, just that it happens with me and to me on a daily basis. OTH, it surprises the heck out of me when someone actually does call after one of these exchanges and I find it slightly annoying. HUH???? Weird.
I'm Australian, so my verbal ticks are (in scientific parlance) TNTC.
My sister Philippa is a person who has the chronic habit of saying 'Sorry' - so much so, that my husband when he sees a bus that often has the LED light sign that say "SORRY" (as in, 'Sorry, not in service') calls it a Philippa Bus (because they always say 'SORRY'. My mother, not one to laugh at others, used to think it was a really good joke, and used to laugh out loud to it.
The bus company has now amended the signs to read "Sorry Not in Service"
I am 50 yo, but come from the 'please, thank you, RSVPing' era. My inlaws used to be surprised that I would turn down cake - No thank you - and my sister-in-law quizzed me about it. If I wasn't hungry I wouldn't want food, but to her - she couldn't understand how I could refuse, I think she felt it was bad manners.
"How are you" which almost everyone in Australia says instead of "hello" drives me mad. Why ask when you don't want to know the answer? In New Zealand they tend to only ask if they mean it.
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