tosser...i happen to think that the london eye IS our greatest accomplishment (besides the beck tube map). as pal says, it did have a few minor problems but what great engineering feat didn't? i think you'll agree that we have a lot of great engineering marvels....like the rover 45, etc. all this greatness makes it very difficult to choose. let's just 'agree to disagree'.

NOBODY in the world does fake flying like we do. i encourage everyone to take the fake london eye 'flight' and even better, to visit the fake plane out in weybridge where you can 'fly' on this silly 'supersonic' flight while queen's 'don't stop me now' is played over the speakers. just as freddie is approaching issue in the song, the turbo boosters in the fake plane are engaged and you go 'supersonic'. it's a real hoot. not to be missed.

Well i of course was only jesting about the wrong righting of the South Bank Ferris Wheel - i agree and also Britain has many examples of great engineering - none the less than the Ironbridge in Ironbridge Gorge and the Blackpool Tower and the TV towers at Crystal Palace and even the old Crystal Palace itself and on and on - after all the Industrial Age began here and flourished.

oh2doula,

That was my thought exactly!! Hawaii is part of the US...you cannot say you want to go back to the US, you have to say you want to go back to the MAINLAND!!!

:-)

I've been visiting the UK for many years, now, and thought I'd mastered the art of ingratiating myself --or, at the least, not offending. I'm lavish with my pleases and my thank yous, never jump a queue, take care not to talk too loud, etc. But only this year did I discover that many British people are mightily put off by something that Americans routinely do that I'd never in a million years have guessed was offensive at all.

So here's the rule in a nutshell: never refer to someone in the third person if that person is present. Example: Bob tells me a joke. Ellen walks over and asks what's so funny. Indicating Bob, I say to her, "He was just telling me the funniest joke." Rude! Offensive! American! I must instead say, "BOB was just telling me..."

Apparently this gaffe is considered unforgivably rude to the person so referred to--speaking of him as if he wasn't even there, etc.--and offensive to everyone else who witnesses it. Maybe I'm just obtuse, but I don't think it would occur to me, or to most Americans, in Bob's situation to find this rude. Which just goes to show how easy it is to give offense even when you foolishly imagine that you're pretty much "at home" in another culture.

Cuttle, somebody's pulling your leg. It is pleasanter to refer to somebody by their name, but I don't think anybody would be mortally offended if you didn't. What if you don't know it or have forgotten it? Respectful behaviour towards others is all that's needed.

This is a great thread. Lots of times I've chuckled out loud. And I've learned a lot of good (and sometimes surprising) information. Though I asked about it, most of the etiquette about the tube I knew or would have known as common courtesy, but I do have a tendency to do the deer-in-the-headlights thing when surprised or confused, so it'll be good just to be thinking in terms of not coming to a dead stop if feeling lost and have everybody pile up behind me!

Perhaps so, but Toni Summers Hargis (a Brit, writing for Americans) goes on and on about this in her recent book, _Rules Britannia_. One of the relevant excerpts happens to be online here: http://tinyurl.com/6xp8fs

Having read Hargis (the book was on the "new books" shelf of the local library), I resolved to test her observation when I visited Oxford last month. I brought up the subject at a dinner table where sat half-a-dozen British acquaintances, and before I could even finish explaining, they all started nodding and exclaiming to one another how much they HATE when Americans do this. So if there's a conspiracy to deceive me about the existence of this sentiment, there are a lot of people in on it.

Cuttle

As a teacher that is something we regularly pull the pupils up on with "who's he/she?" If you know his/her name please use it.

You are spot on with us finding it rude.

anther thing that personally makes my hackles rise, and I have no idea why, is being called ma'am or mam. I know when someone is using it they are being polite but inside I'm thinking "just say yes not yes mam"

cuttle...guides that try to document cultural and other differences between nations nearly always exaggerate these differences. similarities don't make for interesting reading....ghastly differences (no matter how exaggerated) do.

using 'he' to refer to someone standing right there is generally something a skilled, gracious conversationalist will avoid in either america or britain. to say that britons are outraged by this is gross exaggeration.

I've looked at Hargis' site and I think her primary objective is to produce a book that sells commercially in the USA, rather than an academic study of manners in different cultures. It pampers to Americans' (unnecessary) fears of 'not fitting in'. Yes, if you know somebody's name use it. If you don't, live with it. I am English, in my mid-50s, and I don't 'HATE' the idea at all. The problem is being overstated here.

As for what we see as the excessive use of 'sir/madam' by Americans, that is something I suggest that sashh needs to get over. It is hardly ill-mannered. I quite like it. It is just a cultural difference, like Arabs shaking hands with everybody in a room before starting work. I found that irritating, but it is hardly impolite. I work a lot with US servicemen and they call everybody sir, regardless of rank. If I was stopped by a British policeman I would call him 'officer', in the USA, 'sir'. It is far more agreeable than being called 'mate' by somebody you have never met before as now happens here regularly. Mutual respect, that's all that's needed.

Everyone has their pet irritations, and those can vary with one's mood. I rather thought the "third person reference" thing was a bit old-fashioned, but obviously not in sashh's school (good on yer, ma'am! Sorry, "Miss").

I think this one may vary with context: using this could seem like deliberately cutting one out of the conversation, but equally, I might find it a bit irritating to have a relative stranger using my Christian name all the time.

I'm most familiar (I suspect sashh is too) with the "third person" issue in some childish complaint about someone, in which case the full, official, correction from my mother's generation would have been "Who's "she"? The cat's mother?",.

S says,

> "just say yes not yes mam" <

Down here in the South of the US, "Yes, Sir" and "Yes, Mam" are so deeply ingrained in us that it would be inconceivable to say just "yes".

((I))

Yes, ma'am and yes, sir--from my first babbling I was taught to use these as forms of respect and did so with my own children. Now my gut reaction when I DON'T hear the ma'am or sir is to feel the speaker is disrespectful, but then my brain kicks in and acknowledges cultural differences. So if the ma'am or sir is the least bit drawled (and usually even if it's not), you can be sure that it is said, even if automatically, with the intention of respect. I've enjoyed what I've learned on this thread. (Get to practice some of it in less than 24 hours, in London!)

One thing my tour guide stressed during my trip to London was to be silent on the Tube. He said that Londoners find that to be very offensive and that you will never see them being loud on the underground. Sure enough, only the tourists were the ones chatting in the Tube. If you want to remain inconspicuous, I recommend staying silent on the subway system.

I never heard about the rule of silence in the tube. The locals I noticed talking and laughing loudly sure didn't hear about it either!

Silence on the Tube - that's a hoot - i guess i've been riding the wrong Tubes.

It's not done to open up conversations with complete strangers, except in dire emergency. Even things like indicating you're reaching past someone to pick up one of the abandoned free newspapers tend to be done with a lift of the eyebrow and an indistinct mutter (don't ask me why).

Conversations with friends are another matter. Sometimes the only way to pass the time is to listen to accounts of other people's office politics.

ira and texas et al

I know it is a sign of respect and politeness, and I know it is ridiculous of me to be irritated by it.

Of course I would never say it to anyone's face.

Great thread LOL. Kate, you are always so droll...never talk loudly before coffee is a UNIVERSAL truth!

Back to the Hawaii thing...

I lived in Hawaii for years, it is absolutley A-OK to call the rest of the US "the mainland." Everybody calls
it that as in: "I am going to the mainland." Residents do get ruffled, however, if you refer to the mainland "the states."