How Brits Politely Escape Conversations
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Right. If you're learning English and you've ever been stuck in a conversation you didn't know how to get out of in English, this one's for you. Picture this.
What social rules do Brits follow to exit conversations?
You're in the work canteen. You finished your lunch about 10 minutes ago. The person across from you is mid-story about their weekend, their kid's football match, their mother-in-law's three-hour visit. You've laughed at all the right bits, but now you need to go. You've got emails. You've got a meeting at half one. You've got, frankly, a million things you'd prefer to be doing than sitting here letting her chew your ear off. And here's the moment where everything could quietly fall apart for you if you're a non-native speaker. Because in Britain, we have a load of unwritten rules. You don't say, OK, that's enough chatting. Back to work. You don't finish your meal and announce, right, I've finished my lunch, so I'm going.
And you definitely don't sign off with goodbye. I will see you tomorrow. Now, none of these are wrong. Exactly. In plenty of cultures, they're perfectly polite. Some would even appreciate the efficiency. Others might respect the directness. But in Britain, they land with a tiny but impactful thud. the other person if they're british will smile and nod and say no worries and quietly downgrade you in their mind forever and the worst part you'll never know about it Welcome to the British English Podcast. I'm Charlie, your host, and today I'm going to give you a three-step formula for leaving any conversation in British English without ever coming across as slightly socially awkward, robotic, memorised, or worst of all, rude.
And if you stick around till the end, I'll include a bonus tip about the one situation where you can break the formula entirely. Right, let's get into it. So the thing about Brits is that we are incredibly indirect, which you might well know by now, but this particular social rule might even catch Japanese people out. And I say that because I understand that the Japanese culture is also indirect, but different in many little ways. So when we leave a conversation, we don't just leave. We have to do this weird little dance. We have to make the other person think feel like we'd love to stay. But life is cruelly pulling us away from one another. It's a tiny piece of social theatre, almost. We're saying, I enjoyed this immensely.
I wish I could carry on. But sadly, something more important than my free will is forcing me to go. And if you skip that dance, you sound cold, you sound abrupt, you sound, dare I say it, a bit bloody rude. And in British cultural standards, sounding rude by accident is one of the worst things you could ever do. Now, you might have a slightly similar necessity in your culture. I'm not imagining that if you're Spanish, you're allowed to just passionately stand up mid conversation and run away. Nor a German can just press their finger up against your lips because they might have a meeting to go to. But these specific phrases we use are worth your attention because getting them right is the difference between sounding like a textbook and sounding like an actual person.
So yes, here's the formula I've made up for you that I think works brilliantly. Step one, the softener. Every natural British exit starts with a little signal word and I'm calling it a softener because it softens the blow of you saying that you are going to leave. It tells the other person, get ready, we're about to wind this conversation down. And your options for these softeners are the following. We have, right.
Anyway. Well. Right then. And maybe, maybe. Look. OK, right. Anyway.
Well, right then. Look, those are your five options. OK, that's basically it. So pick one, stick it on the front of your sentence and you're already a third of the way through your exit strategy. Or as I'm coining it, your Brexit strategy. It's good, isn't it? But whatever you do, and I'm serious about this, do not skip this softener. Otherwise your exit sounds like you're slamming a door in their face. So yeah, that's step one, the softener.
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