welcome back to my channel!

Recently lots of students have asked me,

when British people say "that's interesting",

do they actually mean they think it’s boring

and not interesting?

They heard that the way British people speak isn’t very direct,

and we tend to beat around the bush.

It hasn’t been just one student who has asked me this,

there have been many.

So I thought I’d make a video to explain

whether we mean it’s interesting or not.

I found an article from The News Lens.

They have an article about British culture,

which I don't quite agree with.

So I want to share my views on this.

I’ll explain it sentence by sentence.

The first one is "It's not bad".

So if you go somewhere like maybe to see a movie

or a theatre production or you eat some food

and a British person says “yeah, it's not bad”.

They mean usually pretty much what they've said,

which is, it's fine.

It's nothing special.

It would be quite rude if you’d made some food for them

and they said, "It's not bad".

That means they didn't really like it that much.

Saying "It's not bad" means it's not bad.

It's not very good, but it's not bad.

As simple as that.

But most of all it depends on the person's tone, right?

If someone says, yeah it's not bad.

They probably think it’s pretty good.

If they say, err... it's not bad.

That means they don’t really like it. Right?

The next one is "It's interesting".

What do British people mean when they say "It's interesting"?

So one of my students is actually doing her PHD

and her supervisor kept saying to her,

oh yeah that's interesting

And so she felt like, oh no, they don't like it.

I was like, no, that's not what they mean.

They actually mean it's interesting.

I think it's terrible that many students think that

when I’m saying that what they said is interesting,

they think I’m lying.

When I say "It's interesting"

it's because I really find it interesting.

Now of course, sometimes you do get people saying

things are interesting

because they're not really sure what to say,

that does happen.

Maybe you say something that's just kind of outside of

their realm of what they know how to respond to,

like they just have nothing to say back to that.

Like if you say something completely random like,

I've been working on my ant collection,

or some random example,

then they might say, oh okay, that's interesting.

It's like, I don't really know what to say to you

but I'm happy for you,

and so I want to say something positive

because I want to encourage you.

So that's interesting.

But other times it actually is because it's interesting.

It's interesting means,

hmm it makes me think, in a good way.

Yeah so I don't want people to be walking around in England

thinking like,

oh everyone hates me

or thinks that what I'm saying is not interesting

or boring or they don't like me.

Because that's definitely not true.

It's either they really think what you're saying is interesting,

which is most of the time,

or they're not sure what to say

so they're just kind of trying to encourage you.

The next one is quite interesting,

It's probably my fault.

Again, the article says that

this means that it's definitely your fault.

If someone says it's my fault, it means it's your fault.

I wouldn't really say that's true.

If I say to someone "it's probably my fault",

then either it genuinely is my fault and I'm apologising,

or I'm trying to find a reason why it partly is my fault,

which again would be a truthful reason,

such as, oh I should have explained more clearly

or if I hadn't done that

then maybe this wouldn't have happened.

So I'm just sort of taking responsibility for my side

of the situation.

Maybe also that means that

you are a little bit at fault as well,

but I really don't think British people would really admit fault

if they weren’t at fault.

That would be quite strange to do I think.

Like why would you take on some responsibility

when it's not your problem?

But it's not as simple as me saying,

It's my fault means it's your fault,

like no.

The next example is "If you don't mind".

The author said that there was some food left over at dinner

and so he or she said, "Can I finish it?"

so as to avoid waste.

And the host instead of saying yes or no,

said "If you don't mind".

The meaning of "If you don't mind" here is,

sure yeah, please do, as long as you're okay with it.

Please help me finish this.

The next example is "I'll see what I can do",

and the example is if your partner is going to

take the rubbish out and you say,

oh would you mind also getting something from the shop

whilst you're outside

and they say "I'll see what I can do".

I think there's an element of truth to this one.

I'll see what I can do has a feeling of,

it might be a little inconvenient for me,

but I'm going to try and help you anyway.

It usually has a positive meaning.

It's like, I'm going to try and help you.

And then last of all, they go into some email starters like

“Hope you're well”

“Hope you had a good weekend”

I would say yes, that is definitely something

that's added in to be polite

and it's just a way to sort of establish good relations

I suppose.

It's like before you say, oh please do this for me,

you want to make sure that

you're putting the relationship before the task.

It's best to express your sincerity towards them

before asking them to do something.

Otherwise, they might just feel like,

oh you just want something from me,

you don't really care about me as a person,

which isn't really nice at work.

So it's kind of just to make the workplace

a little bit nicer I think.

What I would say is true is that

there is probably more passive aggression

in British culture compared to some others.

Passive aggression, which recently in slang

has been shortened to "pass-agg",

basically means when you're feeling kind of

angry and pissed off

but you just pretend like everything's fine like,

oh it's fine, you know, nothing.

I'm totally fine, yeah.

But to know the difference

you really just need to sense the tone.

So if someone says, oh that's interesting.

They might mean, what the f*** are you saying?

But if someone says, oh that's really interesting,

they mean,

I'm actually really interested in what you're saying,

please keep talking.

And if you're not sure what they mean,

just take the words at face value.

I think that’s a safer bet than thinking it's the opposite.

So if someone says, "that's interesting",

most of the time,

they do mean that it’s actually interesting.

I know it must be quite confusing because it kind of

seems like British people are hard to read.

Maybe it seems like there's a lot going on under the surface.

But it's usually just issues that we have with ourselves,

like I don't know, maybe they're shy

or just don't know how to deal with

social situations or something.

So I wouldn't take it personally

unless you have strong reason to believe that

this person is angry or upset with you.

I think people do try to be as honest as they can.

Definitely, there's an aspect of

people not liking confrontation.

People don't like confrontation in this country

so they won't say things directly

if there's a risk of it creating an argument.

People just find it a lot easier that way

rather than making a big deal out of things.

People would prefer that the issue wasn't there,

so you can just go along with that I think.

But that doesn't mean that

whenever they say something positive,

they're actually meaning something negative.

That's definitely not true.

Okay, so that's pretty much all I wanted to say today.

Keep in touch and I'll see you soon!