Lancaster has been quite a fun and enjoyable experience
I did have one experience that gave me pause and a brief moment of embarrassment. I was taking part in a dance class on campus and a common part of class was switching dance partners in order to learn how to dance with a greater range of people. Anyhow, at one point, we switched partners again and I was paired with a girl I had met the week before named Hannah who I got along with quite well. I was glad to see her, so when I said hi to her, I formed a peace symbol with my fingers with my palm facing towards me. At that moment, her smile turned sour and and she simply said “rude,” in a not so friendly voice. I was confused so I asked what what so wrong with my gesture, as I’m quite fond of using this sign in this U.S with people I’m familiar with. She explained to me that the way I did the peace sign was extremely disrespectful here in the U.K and I was supremely embarrassed and that it only appropriate to have your palm facing the other person, such as in this photo of Winston Churchill. I made it a point to not make another slip-up like this.
I asked a friend from Birmingham to explain why she responded in this way and he said that it was akin to giving someone the middle finger in the U.S, or equivalent to the f-word. I thought it was pretty absurd. Firstly, the forward facing peace symbol seems overly formal and not very cool. Secondly, what difference does it make which way your palm is facing? It seemed like such a small difference, the fact I offended someone appeared a bit absurd. My thought process being “We do this (well, me the very least) all the time in the U.S, so why are people so up and arms about it here.”
But despite my consternation, nearly every English person I interviewed on the matter responded the same way. “You did what?!” or they would respond with second hand embarrassment. What seemed like a harmless innocuous gesture to me, had the same connotation at “F**k you buddy” here in the U.S to people living in the U.K. They saw the malice within the gesture as purely self-evident and not needing any explanation at all.
I think reflecting on this will prepare me to do more research on the countries I plan to visit in the future. Perhaps learning gestures that might offend would be helpful in the future. Gestures such as thumbs up and peace signs appear to be rude in other countries, both which I am quite fond of, so it might be worth doing prior research before I inadvertently tell another European to “F*** Off” again.
On the whole, however, I managed to not offend to many English folk and learned quite a bit of their vocabulary and I in turn taught them some American slang along the way. I learned that if one is dead tired, you say that you are knackered. Instead of jumping jacks, they have star-jumps here in the U.K (which I think is more accurate than our word). Instead of saying “how are you?” as a greeting, the English, particularly people from the north (which have a rivalry with southerners for being overly “posh”), they will say “Hi yalright?” to which the person being asked replies with a “Yeh.” Probably my personal favorite, however, is what you say when the prospects of an endeavor don’t look promising or if something is not visually appealing, you say “Oh that’s bloody grim.”
As an American, I was subject to countless polemics by the English for pronouncing words “incorrectly.” For example, the county in which Lancaster is situated is known as Lancashire. So, when I spoke to a friend about Lancashire, they were very unimpressed with my American way of saying it. Here in the U.K, the suffix -shire is pronounced as in “sure”, as opposed to our “shy-er.” In addition to this, Birmingham (the second largest city in the U.K) also has a surprisingly different pronunciation from the American city. While I was used to pronouncing the entire word, here in England, the G and H are silent, producing “Bir-min-am.”
I loved my time in England joining all types of societies was my favorite part. Took part in ultimate, swing dance, meditation, debate, yoga, and the hiking club.
