We all know the English like to understate their humour, but how about the rest of it? Well there is certainly a minefield to negotiate when it comes to the daily grind! One must be very careful when expressing their opinion, for not only must one interpret the coments of others with the possibility of understatement, but if comments are made without out it - all maner of things may be blown out of proportion by the poor Englishman on the receiving end. Fortunately there are several tell tale signs that you may be offending your fellow Englishman – listen for frequent smatterings of “to be honest”, and “to be fair” – the frequency of these – particularly “to be honest” is crucial. When these have reached fever pitch, there is only one option for the Englishman “to be frank…”. When you hear this, run for the hills, the shit has hit the fan!
So after dealing with this kind of situation – how does one progress to avoiding it? Negation! Not only negation, but double negatives! Yep turn a positive sentence the other way round with a negation at the end. The first time I heard this I was convinced that the English were just trying to knock off European ‘class’ by saving the crux of the sentence to the end. Nothing so flash here, they are just being polite. I find this most amusing given the love English profess for their own language and using correct grammar! They even take this to the point of contracting the wrong part of the sentence, but that’s a long way off course for what I’m getting at here.
One final word, remember understatement is a two way street – so next time if there is even the remotest possibility of something slightly negative being said about you – it probably is! Hit em back with a few lines of “to be honest’” and you should be on a level pegging.
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