History Hub permalink
Minding those P's and Q's.
This discussion has been closed.
-
Message 1.Â
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Wednesday, 10th August 2011
Thinking back, life seemed to be bound with rules on behaviour and just about everything else. Many are now a thing of the past or possibly we have a new set, more appropriate to modern living?
When speaking, never put yourself first, always last.
Never drop h's.
Always look at the person you are addressing.
Always say please and thankyou.
When writing, never begin a sentence with I.
A one inch indentation at the beginning of all paragraphs.
Bad spelling and messy writing is impolite.
There were a lot concerned with the consumption of food
Never eat with your fingers.
Never eat with your mouth open.
Never make a noise whilst eating or drinking.
Never eat off your knife.
Never begin eating until everyone has sat down at the table.
Never leave the table whilst others are eating.
Always serve yourself last.
When finished eating lay the knife and fork together on the plate.
The television is always turned off at meal times or when visitors arrive.
Any others from the past that aren't seen as so important in this day and age? -
Message 2
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Wednesday, 10th August 2011
Perhaps, a cabbie asking passengers if it was okay that he was sitting with his back towards them.
-
Message 3
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Wednesday, 10th August 2011
Hello, Therese,
Those rules are for everyone: I recall a few gender-specific ones too.
Girls should not whistle.
Girls should keep their knees together when sitting.
And from secondary school:
Girls should not wear a cardigan on the street.
(And one I learnt by experience): Girls should not sit on their suitcase outside a shop.
Girls should not go into cafes.
And (apparently) for males:
Walk on the outside of the street. (my husband still does this - nearly knocks me over in his haste to get there - I find it very odd)
Hold the doors for women.
Open car doors for women.
There's also: Don't take the last piece on the plate.
There still seems to be a rule that you start eating till everyone has their meal, at least judging by the number of times people tell you to start without them.
I would still turn off television if visitors arrived (not if they were staying), or more likely in my case the radio. Otherwise you can't hear easily and it is distracting. Sometimes rules have a practical purpose.
I recall an uncle once telling me (and no one before that had - I was about 18) that my letter started too often with 'I', something I have been aware of every since, though not all that good at correcting.
But I was lucky, I was brought up in a single-sex family by a grandmother who had brought up four sons, on a farm, and my father was a very easy-going liberal man (ie he let his daughters do what they liked).
And I think we didn't have lots of rules either, apart from ones to keep the house cleanish and tidying (ie pick up your towels, don't come inside in muddy boots). But not long ago my son said he didn't always like to go to people's houses for meals, because he had to eat everyone whether he liked it or not. Now, I am sure I never told him any such thing, so that must have just been his natural timidity and sense of manners (people would find that odd about that particular boisterous and loud son, but people have more than one aspect to their personalities).
Perhaps new ones are to do with smoking, and not giving offence unnecessarily. Care with language, for instance.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 4
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Wednesday, 10th August 2011
ID, I must be out the ark but I do still try to adhere to most of those rules on your list.
There were lots more food related ones, never hold your knife like a pencil, lay down knife and fork , crossed, while chewing, never cut your dinner roll, tear it, always put the butter on the side of your plate using the butter knife, tip the soup bowl away from your and never, ever, eat in the street!
I'm a little ashamed to admit that I do notice people's table etiquette and, although I try not to, find myself having wicked judgemental thoughts.
Gentlemen remove hats when indoors. The complicated rules of who should be introduced to whom and in precedence of age and gender and when you should get up from sitting to shake hands. Letters addressed to married women with their husband's initial.
Even the layout of the address has changed, apparently no longer sloping from left to right but now with a straight left hand margin.
Many were silly and trivial but sometimes knowing the conventions was reassuring in unfamiliar social situations. -
Message 5
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Wednesday, 10th August 2011
Yes, you read often of people who were or are uncertain of what utensil to use at a dinner party, though of course if there were no rules, you wouldn't have to worry. Tipping the soup bowl away had a practical element in that any spillage didn't wash all over your clothes. And putting your knifes and forks in particular ways means they don't get collected before you've finished.
I learnt all sorts of rules at our school hostel that had never crossed my ambit before - and that really I haven't needed since. The butter on the side of the plate one for instance. At my hostel there was also a rule that you didn't ask for things for yourself, but had to check with your neighbours what they wanted. It worked better in theory than practice and for scared shy little girls like me meant I often went without butter, since no one offered it and I wasn't supposed to ask for it.
In our prep time, we had to stand and apologise (to about 100 girls and the one staff member) if we sneezed, but not if we coughed. Otherwise absolute silence was required for the two hours. Amazing that we were so well behaved or sheep-like that apart from the odd whisper this rule was adhered to. My husband needed a couple of aides to prevent kids climbing out the windows or fighting each other at his school near Sheffield!
Those letter layout rules changed with computers and word processors.
I'm not a person who likes rules much (or at least think they shouldn't apply to me particularly) and I do find when reading military books that the heirarchy in these and the way people have to be addressed or deferred to irritating. I only learnt recently from the War boards here that NCOs are never called 'sir', for instance. These sort of nonsenses don't appeal to me.
Sorry about all the typos in that last post - someone phoned in the middle and wanted me to go and do something so it got a bit rushed, but we didn't have to eat 'everyone' at the table, of course. Would have been rather full! And I think there needed to be a 'not' here and there.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 6
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Thursday, 11th August 2011
Girls should not whistle.
Girls should keep their knees together when sitting.Â
And girls shouldn't cross their legs when sitting, only their ankles. Possibly it became acceptable for women to cross their legs after the invention of pantyhose?
No slouching, back straight, shoulders back and chest out.
No leaving the house with wet hair.
Always wear clean underwear when leaving the house, just in case you need to go to the hospital. Although that one could be just my mother's little quirk!
No swearing.
No chewing gum.
No smoking in the streets.
And (apparently) for males:
Walk on the outside of the street. (my husband still does this - nearly knocks me over in his haste to get there - I find it very odd)
Hold the doors for women.
Open car doors for women.Â
Firm handshake, a soft handshake was considered disrespectful.
Rising when a women walked into the room or sat down at the table.
Pulling a chair out for a women and seating her first.
Ferval has already mentioned removing a hat indoors, but tipping a hat when addressing a women.
Definitely not hats worn at the dinner table.
No swearing in front of women.
I thought there may be more rules governing the behaviour of women but thinking on it, the men had just as many. -
Message 7
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Thursday, 11th August 2011
Always wear clean underwear when leaving the house, just in case you need to go to the hospital. Although that one could be just my mother's little quirk!Â
Certainly not just one of your mother's quirks. One of the things people still consider these days, though I have realised that if you are in an accident bad enough to go to a hospital there would be mud and blood and you might well have dirtied your pants in the terror of whatever moment it was. However clean pants is just something females at least put on automatically; it is the age and prettiness of mine that I sometimes wonder about.
No chewing gum is very sensible, since people seem to think disposing of it can be done any old where.
Waiters still pull your chair out for you - I don't trust this and like to see exactly where the chair is before I sit on it.
And I would expect kids to take off their beanies or whatever before they sat at the table.
In 2004 I was walking along a public path near the beach at Southampton or Portsmouth and a man tipped his hat to me. My husband said, "It's a long time since a man doffed his hat to you." I'm not sure I ever remember such an occasion before.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 8
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Thursday, 11th August 2011
The only hat I have ever doffed to a lady was our (compulsory) school cap, in the 1940s. We were told we had to raise our cap if we passed a teacher in the street. Aged 11, I was embarrassed to meet four of them, all young women probably in their early 20s, so I hoisted my cap. They all giggled as they passed me. What a pillock I felt.
I certainly would never wear a hat indoors. It's a rule that doesn't seem to apply to wearers of baseball caps. Once asked a 40-year old baseball-cap-wearer why he kept his on, indoors. He seemed confused by my question.
But, it's in with the bricks: I still try to walk on the outside of a lady. Always understood it was because of the waste products they used to casually throw out of upstairs windows. Doesn't happen now, but walking on the outside just feels right. Bonkers, of course.
I always hold a door open for a lady - despite having (only once or twice) been given a scornful retort by one of these unmannerly "wimmin". Next time it happens I shall say: "Oh I'm terribly sorry, I mistook you for a lady." -
Message 9
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Thursday, 11th August 2011
I'm delighted if someone holds a shop door open for me, why do they all seem to be made so heavy these days? it's not as if you're trying to get into a bank vault or a medieval keep and if you're carrying anything or pushing a buggy, it's nigh on impossible to heave the blessed things open.
-
Message 10
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Friday, 12th August 2011
I'm happy to have doors held for me - and to hold doors for people. Those 'wimmin', Jak, don't like the feeling they might be being patronised or that you are doing something you wouldn't do for a man, ie you feel they are incapable. They wouldn't want to be thought of as 'ladies' anyway - I don't myself. And though I like to think of myself as a feminist, actually people seem to go out of their way to protect me and I let them, so perhaps my husband's right that I'm not really.
I'm sure the reason my husband walks on the outside (aside from habit) is to perhaps stop me being splashed. But I am awaiting the day when he trips me up in his hurry to get there and I go bang down onto the footpath. Someone else said to me recently she felt exactly the same when her husband does this.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 11
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Friday, 12th August 2011
Well, Caro, of course I'd hold a door open for anybody, rather than let it slam in their face, but it seems strange to me that the word "lady" raises hackles. It's only a polite term after all.
How does the chairman at a public meeting address the audience if he wants to be up-to-date? "Men and women"?
Even the word "women" seems to cause offence to some, presumably because it contains the dreaded word "men". My wife once received some leaflets from a feminist group who referred to themselves as "womyn" - or it might have been "wimmin" - which struck both of us as plain daft. -
Message 12
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Friday, 12th August 2011
That is daft, yes. But there is a connotation to 'lady' of someone in need of protection who doesn't do anything much and to whom you feel superior really (someone like me, that sounds!). There's also something similar in the word 'gentleman' - tends only to be used of old men that you feel are a bit past it. You wouldn't refer to the head of a high-flying corporation as a gentleman.
It doesn't apply in groups really - I remember playing bridge where you would greet the table you went to with "Hello ladies" as of course "Hello women" just isn't right. Nor is "Hello men", though I wouldn't say "Hello gentlemen" either. (if I were addressing a meeting I wouldn't say "Good morning ladies and gentlemen" either, though.)
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 13
Posted by Priscilla (U14315550) on Saturday, 13th August 2011
A few years back when on a course an English woman from one of the last original kibbutz - going there from Manchester as a young girl in the very early post war days, - delared at our first meal together that she would try to observe our accepted polite practices but not to count on it. Food for thought, there.
She explained that they were taught from the start to observe no curtesies - 'From the few survivors of camps were people had stood in line for whatever horrors awaited them, you can understand that.,' she remarked.
For m own part, I try to keep to the observances mentioned here and when receiving them make a point of saying thank you. When I hold back doors for sometimes streams of people to go hrough - I often have say it for them, of course.
It's mostly about looking to someone else's comfort , I suppose.
Regards, P. -
Message 14
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Saturday, 13th August 2011
I often feel uneasy about my elbows.
I was taught, "All joints on the table will be carved" - everyone these days ends up leaning on at least one elbow, drinking and laughing, but I still fear punishment.
And fancy being told to eat jelly and ice-cream with a spoon and fork - that was really daft, but apparently eating *any* pudding with just a spoon was the mark of the beast - or so I was led to believe.
But the jelly rule is wobbly these days, as indeed are most rules.
I now feel neurotic about all the posts I have sent beginning with "I".
Like this one. -
Message 15
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Saturday, 13th August 2011
Oh Temp, I feel like a child again at the dinner table. Elbows off!
This thread has started me off in all sorts of directions, one being, does anyone still use fish knives and forks? Or cake forks?
It also takes me back to Steptoe and Son and a discussion of the correct order to pour tea and milk. Are you a mif - milk in first? The gist of it was, when fine china was first introduced, it couldn't take the heat of the boiling tea so the milk was put in first but when the newer, more prestigious porcelain arrived, it could so the tea was poured in first and so it was possible to display how good your china was by blithely pouring the tea directly into the empty cup.
Are table manners as important as accent in defining class and is this still the case? -
Message 16
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Saturday, 13th August 2011
Hi SST & ferval
You've got a really interesting discussion going; thanks.
The glaze on tin-glazed earthenware had a different coefficient of expansion from the ceramic and would flake off in the manner ferval describes if heated. Porcelain would be fine if exposed to hot water since the fabric is really a glass-ceramic blend. Earlier attempts to imitate Chinese porcelain, like the beautiful English creamware were, I understand, fine with hot water too.
Fish knives, originally silver, seem to have been part of a Victorian enthusiasm for having specialised eating tools. I suppose steak knives and soup spoons have just about survived into the modern era. But I doubt if anyone aside from A list celebs needs individual glasses for sherry, burgundy, moselle, claret, brandy and champagne. Oddly there is a change of taste with champagne since the 'flute' has entirely replaced actresses' slippers and those shallow wide glasses designed to resemble actresses'....parts.
In my local I am automatically served draught beer in a glass, for obvious reasons, but when drinking my favourite Newcastle Brown Ale I am always asked if I want a glass or not.
TP -
Message 17
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Saturday, 13th August 2011
...and those shallow glasses designed to resemble actresses' ... parts Â
I thought the champagne saucer was a celebration of the beauty of the breasts of Marie-Antoinette, TP? Or was it Madame de Pompadour? "Some French tart anyway", as they said on Monty Python.
But saucer, flute or tulip to serve your champagne? Just what is correct nowadays? There's always something to agonise over, isn't there? -
Message 18
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Saturday, 13th August 2011
Hi SST & ferval
You've got a really interesting discussion going; thanks.Â
So no-one else has been interesting TP! Most ungentlemanly, I should slap your wrist with my fan. If I could or if, indeed, I even owned one.
Not only were we not permitted to put elbows on the table, I remember not being allowed to put them on school desks during lessons either. -
Message 19
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Saturday, 13th August 2011
Hi id
Oh dear, what a sad blunder. I did mean the immediately past discussion on table manners, but that is really no excuse.
I will consider myself fanned!
TP -
Message 20
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Saturday, 13th August 2011
Oh dear. I'll try and revive the immediately past discussion!
Eating fruit nicely - an absolute nightmare! Someone once said that the politest way to eat a pomegranate is privately. I'm sure that's true: the pomegranate is a baffling fruit.
I was always quite confident about bananas until I saw Barbara Cartland on TV talking about good manners (I was about ten). BC insisted that a banana should always be eaten with a knife and fork and that the simian method is quite unacceptable. I've worried about that ever since.
It is said that at Oxford a promising scholar is only invited to become a Fellow if he or she can pass the Small Fruit Test. The aspiring young academic has to show that he or she can successfully spear little slippery fruits like cherries and grapes using a tiny fruit fork and not make a terrible mess with fruit shooting off in all directions over the floor.
Isn't it all daft? Really posh people don't give a you-know-what anyway. They do as they please. -
Message 21
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Saturday, 13th August 2011
There is a scene in Cranford where Deborah Jenkyns insists that oranges be eaten in the privacy of one's room, that gardian of the town's morals thought their consumption was not for polite company.
But I have never heard that there was a correct way to eat any fruit, just assumed that it came under the general category of table ettiquette. -
Message 22
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Saturday, 13th August 2011
Well, apparently there is, ID - but the cruel thing about the Oxford test is that you don't have to eat cherries and grapes with a fruit fork - it's OK to eat them with your fingers, even at a formal meal! I'd have thought it's actually rather bad manners trying to catch people out like that, even as a joke. I once tried to eat my grapefruit with a soup spoon - I was talking too much and didn't notice what spoon I'd picked up. I was very embarrassed.
Can you imagine the Duke of Edinburgh giving a hoot about the "correct" way to eat a piece of fruit?
I think the "Cranford" reference is very telling - many of these "rules" were surely devised by the aspiring Victorian middle classes - especially the women!
That said, people in Chaucer's day who tried too hard to have "dainty" (Norman?) table manners got laughed at - like the Prioress in the Canterbury tales. Chaucer mocks her pretensions to be a French speaker *and* her pleasure in "proper" etiquette:
"At mete wel y-taught was she withalle;
She leet no morsel from her lippes falle,
Nor wette hir fingres in hir sauce depe.
Wel coude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe,
Tha no drope ne fille upon hir brest.
In curteisye was set ful muchel hir lest.
Hir over-lippe wyped she so clene
That in hir cuppe was no ferthing sene
Of grece whan she dronken hadde hir draughte." -
Message 23
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Saturday, 13th August 2011
Ooooh, that's another one - grapefruit spoons with a serrated edge.
Napkins should never be folded at the end of a meal in a restaurant in tribute to the duke who never knew such poverty existed.
Are these petty niceties a purely British phenomena? Apart from not eating with your left hand in some Muslim countries, and that's not not really petty but sensible given the toilet arrangements, what is just not done where? -
Message 24
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Saturday, 13th August 2011
I was always quite confident about bananas until I saw Barbara Cartland on TV talking about good manners (I was about ten). BC insisted that a banana should always be eaten with a knife and fork and that the simian method is quite unacceptable. I've worried about that ever since.Â
SST, you worry far too much about all this trivia! I would be worrying about Barbara Cartland more - there's something wrong with someone who tries to box people up like this.
TP, my first reaction at your little post was to think, "Huh, what about my contributions!" And my second was, "Did he mention ID, who began this discussion?" Having talked a sentence ago about worrying about trivia please feel free to consider me hypocritical.
Back to the subject: I find peaches the worst fruit to eat - assuming they are beautifully ripe. But I have the sort of build which means that most meals end up in part down my front, not improved by my almost always reading at meals. I like creamy foods and gravies etc and they are very hard to always keep in their place. In public I try really hard, but usually unsuccessfully.
However those aren't really rules that have changed. I was never brought up with the mantra that children should be seen and not heard, but nevertheless when I look back to my secondary school years, the ability to be still was valued - and assumed. As I mentioned earlier we had prep for two hours where we stayed quietly in place. For our end-of-year thing, with parents in the town hall, the choir which I belonged to sat on the stage for the whole time, and WERE NOT ALLOWED TO MOVE ANY PART OF THEIR BODY. No little itches, no changing positions (except to stand and sing), no folding or unfolding arms, which all had to be in the same position.
I find it disconcerting and am not very sympathetic to children in classrooms now, who seem to have to leave the room for the toilet every few seconds, and who think being expected to sit at a desk for more than a minute is a form of child abuse.
And language rules were much stricter. My grandmother would clap her hand in front of her mouth if she said "Damn", and then say, "Not on a Sunday". Or she would sing "Tulips from Amster- shhh". A joke for us. On the other hand my great-uncle who lived with us, peppered every sentence with at least one and probably two 'bloody' s. It didn't rub onto us kids, who never swore. Everyone now just swears as a matter of course - and not just damn. I have almost got used to 7-year-olds casually saying 'f...' but I'm afraid I still don't like to read in my serious historical novel women being described as 'c...'. Ah well.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 25
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Saturday, 13th August 2011
Heavens Caro, what kind of correctional institution did you attend? Even in the 50s I don't remember that degree of regimentation even if I was regularly given the belt for talking in class. Much good it did although I can only specifically recall the two occasions when it was totally undeserved.
Language certainly has changed, I was chastised by my mother for saying something about not having the guts to do something. 'Guts' was not a word a girl should use. On the other hand, I had a unmarried great aunt who had made a success in business and moved in really quite posh circles and she could swear like a trooper. The one word she couldn't abide was 'messin', an old Scots word for a mongrel or generally mangy cur. -
Message 26
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Saturday, 13th August 2011
Ferval
Very good. You use napkin which is U; not serviette which is non-U. How are you on mirrors (or looking-glasses)?
TP -
Message 27
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Saturday, 13th August 2011
Do you mean, what do I have in my toilet/lavatory/ cludgie?
-
Message 28
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Sunday, 14th August 2011
It doesn't matter how many times I read that lavatory is the 'proper' word, I still loathe it. I wonder if that is because my grandmother always talked of 'the lav'. Perhaps toilet to me was more modern. Anyway I find lavatory both pretentious and not euphemistic enough.
I don't know about petty etiquettes, ferval (and some of those we have been talking about have a reason - even the excessive quietness on stage that we were subjected to (at my quite normal single-sex secondary school) has the perfectly reasonable reason (oh dear, should think of a synonym for one of those but can't be bothered) that little movements are distracting to the audience. Right, that sentence got completely away on me, so I will start again.
In Maori society, and I am sure many others, there are rules for all sorts of living, and woe betide you if you break them. I remember reading Frederick Maning's account of living as a Pakeha-Maori in the very early days of NZ European settlement and his house/hut was burnt down because he cooked where he slept (or some mixture of roles disapproved of). Many of their rules had hygiene or health reasons, but others seemed just to enforce various separations/gender differences etc. Whether they have the sort of odd little rules that class differentiate I am not sure. (There were class differentiations in Maori society. Chief down to captured slave.)
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 29
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Sunday, 14th August 2011
Very good. You use napkin which is U; not serviette which is non-U.Â
Really? I had never heard that before. In Australia it was always a serviette, napkin is a little too close to what goes on a baby's bottom.
But in Greece, a serviette is a women's sanitary product so not a good idea to ask for one in a restaurant. Some words are a mine-field, sigh. -
Message 30
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Monday, 15th August 2011
SST, you worry far too much about all this trivia! Â
I haven't really spent the last forty or so years worrying about how to eat a banana, Caro - but I'm sure you realise that!
Feminism has at least done one thing for us: it got rid of the need for "ladies" to use polite, pretty little euphemisms when they wish to tell everyone they are going to the loo. Nobody likes vulgar expressions such as "bog" - or worse - but I wince just as much at:
"I'm going to powder my nose."
"I'm going to the little girls' room."
"I'm going to spend a penny."
SST. -
Message 31
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Monday, 15th August 2011
The first two I find awful, but for some reason I don't mind "spending a penny". There are plenty of phrases for going to the toilet, but I find there is a definite lack of words for what you do there. Even trying to think how to say this has left me a little bereft. The words are either twee and childish- wees and poos, No 1 and 2, or medical - urinate and defecate, crude - piss and sh*t, or American - BM. There's no easy laid-back words like 'loo' or even the more formal 'toilet' which is quite satisfactory.
Hope I'm allowed all those words - have remembered trying to correct a 'white' which become accidentally sh*ite was banned on grounds of offending people and using immoderate language. Or similar.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 32
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Monday, 15th August 2011
Ferval, I was going to respond to your 'degree of regimentation' query with the reply that I went to a perfectly ordinary girls' school. However tonight somewhere else I wrote "Left, right; left, right,left", which has reminded me immediately of the crocodile we had to form to go to school from my hostel and then back home for lunch and again after school. (After lunch we got ourselves back to school with no army chants.) All in beautiful step if possible. When my kids were young we saw the girls doing this and my sons were absolutely flabbergasted that I had walked like this to school every day. (Last time I was passing, though, I noticed girls seemed to be being dropped off in taxis - what is wrong with ordinary old buses? The younger generation...)
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 33
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Monday, 15th August 2011
I hate 'wee' and 'poo', particularly when used by and about adults, even for children I'm much more comfortable with the ones my children were familiar with, 'tiddle' and 'jobbie'. I do like the Scots, 'cludgie' for toilet, sounds right somehow.
The female euphemisms are cringeworthy but the male ones can be even worse, 'point Percy at the porcelain' or 'sprinkle my shoes' for example. -
Message 34
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Monday, 15th August 2011
"I'm going to powder my nose."
"I'm going to the little girls' room."
"I'm going to spend a penny."Â
Or worse, "I'm going to the rest room", as they say in the US. Whatever is done there, it is not resting or restful. Relieving possibly. -
Message 35
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Monday, 15th August 2011
That nasty Jonathan Swift wrote a "girls are gross" poem called The Lady's Dressing Room which contains the immortal line:
"Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia sh*ts!" -
Message 36
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Monday, 15th August 2011
Seems there are as many rules applied to the use of chop sticks as there are to a knife and fork
Forbidden is:
Placing the chopsticks straightup into a bowl of food; this refers to death in Eastern Asian cultures
Pointing or gesturing with the chopsticks in hand
Sticking the chopsticks into the food
Licking the chopsticks or biting the food off the chopsticks
Offering table members a taste of your meal using the chopsticks
Accepting a bowl using the hand you use to hold your chopsticks
Obligations are:
Placing the chopsticks next to each other on the especially intended holder when you pause or finish eating
Taking the food from the dish with the back of the chopsticks (not used for eating) to put it into your own bowl. Turn the sticks over when you start eating.
A bowl of soup or rice can be picked up to decrease the distance between food and mouth (to prevent spilling) -
Message 37
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Monday, 15th August 2011
And the newest set of P's and Q's, governing behaviour on the internet. Netiquette!
-
Message 38
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Monday, 15th August 2011
Hmmmm, this sounds familiar -
-
Message 39
Posted by Billygoatgruff (U14440809) on Monday, 15th August 2011
The thing I find curious is the need to tell people your going to the toilet. Even more curious the need to let them know what you intend to do when you get there.
I don't need to know, no one does, so why do so many people feel the need to broadcast it to the the world. -
Message 40
Posted by Thomas_II (U14690627) on Tuesday, 16th August 2011
In reply to islanddawn:
When speaking, never put yourself first, always last.Â
We´ve a phrase for that, which goes:
"Der Esel nennt sich selbst immer zu erst."
"The Donky calls himself in the first place always."
All the other things you´ve mentioned, I´m familiar with and was taught in my youth also. To some people, they seem to be out of date. -
Message 41
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Tuesday, 16th August 2011
Hi Thomas!
Years ago in Germany I was told it was considered unmannerly to cut a potato on your plate with a knife. The German who told me this was smiling, and he may have thought it was a bit old-fashioned, but it still bothers me (a bit) when I'm eating in Germany.
I don't want to look like a foreign barbarian - so:
should I worry?
Cheers!
Jak. -
Message 42
Posted by Thomas_II (U14690627) on Tuesday, 16th August 2011
Hi Jak,
I´d rather say that it depends on the size of the potato
.
Where should you otherwise cut the potato if not on your plate?
You´d better asked him to take the potato and cut it for you so you´d not contravene the manners expected in this locality.
Quite seriously, I´ve never heard of some manners like you´ve been told and I consider it rather as "barbarian behaviour" to eat the potato picket up by the fork and eat it from there bit by bit.
In every decent restaurant, you´ve no problem in cutting potatoes with a knife. I´d say it would be rather considered "unmannerly" to do it the other way round.
I´m not sure whether you´ve been fooled by this man or that he was some old chap from the country who was used to "do not cut your potato with a knife"
You better forget about this odd advise and don´t worry when going out to some restaurant in Germany.
Cheers,
Thomas -
Message 43
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Tuesday, 16th August 2011
Thanks, Thomas - and what a weight off my mind!
But I remember (somewhere) seeing a scene set in a German restaurant where two elderly ladies muttered to each other about the appalling manners of a man at the next table: "He must be a foreigner! He's cutting his potato with a KNIFE!"
Maybe it was in an old film, or maybe some "Teach yourself German" programme on the TV. Maybe it was simply trying to make the point that the old ladies' attitude was comically out-of-date.
It's a relief to know that in future I won't have to mash my spuds up with a fork. Not even with a censorious old Dame in the vicinity.
Jak. -
Message 44
Posted by Thomas_II (U14690627) on Tuesday, 16th August 2011
Hi Jak,
It's a relief to know that in future I won't have to mash my spuds up with a fork.Â
It´s precisely that which is rather considered as bad manners when mashing potatoes up with a fork. In restaurants it is requiered to use fork and knife, otherwise it is recommended to order mashed potatoes when available on the menue.
My late father used to mash up his potatoes with a fork, and even he did so when going out for dinner in restaurants (he didn´t care about what others may have thought about it). But I never did so, because I was raised to use fork and knife to cut the potato on the plate from the time when I´ve been to the Kindergarden owards.
Probably the joke from that setting was a failed try of German humour.
By the way, I´ve been told that in Italy, when you put the napkin on the plate it´s a sign of discontent with the dish or even an offence towards the cook. Since then I always leave the napkin beside the plate when travelling abroad (in every country).
How long have you been learning German?
Thomas -
Message 45
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Tuesday, 16th August 2011
All the other things you´ve mentioned, I´m familiar with and was taught in my youth also. To some people, they seem to be out of date.Â
Hi Thomas,
Yes, as someone already commented here, the rules of behavior are mostly directed toward consideration for the other person. Evolved over time to enable us to co-exist peacefully and respectfully, that many now appear to be out of date could be an indication in which general direction we are headed? -
Message 46
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Tuesday, 16th August 2011
Hi again, Thomas.
How long have I been learning German? This is embarrassing. In 1946 they introduced this new language in my school, and I was put in the German class. It seemed a bit controversial at the time, just after the War, but I quite enjoyed it for four years till I left school.
Later, called up into the Airforce, I was posted to Germany, and quickly found how little I knew. I've had occasional short bashes at the language since, but I still have to look up word-endings - after all these years. (Don't let me put anyone off learning German, it's just that I'm a bit thick.)
Anyway, I guess the "not-cutting-potatoes" thing is just an old tale, like civilians having to step off the pavement to make way for army officers. Probably all a long time ago, but these stories endure.
Thanks for your info about Italy - I'll be very careful with my napkin there.
Jak. -
Message 47
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Tuesday, 16th August 2011
that many now appear to be out of date could be an indication in which general direction we are headed?Â
Certainly, many of those about how men and women interact are very dated. By the way, does anyone know why women over 75-ish never say thank you when a door is held open for them?
Matthew Sweet's "Inventing the Victorians" has an interesting chapter on how the Victorian middle classes invented all sorts of rules to make themselves feel better about themselves. For instance, women weren't supposed to eat cheese. Posh Victorians would have been horrified by a fish knife in 1855, but would have found it compulsory in 1879. Manners seem to be victims of fashion like everything else!
How about this gem from 1879 in "All About Etiquette" on the subject of padding underwear: "A little may be used judiciously to round off the more salient points of an angular figure, but when used for the purpose of creating an egregiously false impression of superior form, it is simply snobbish."
The Victorians loved this self-improvement in manners so much that the genre inspired ridicule and spoofs.
As for swearing, many words we find crude today were perfectly acceptable before middle class Victorian hysteria became outraged by any reference to bodily parts or functions. The c-word even appears in Chaucer. -
Message 48
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Wednesday, 17th August 2011
The c-word even appears in Chaucer. Â
It also appears in the transcripts of the questioning of the witnesses involved in the Katherine Howard investigations. It is with some shock - even in 2011 - that you read what William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton, recorded when he questioned Mary Hall, one of the girls who had known Kat Howard during her wild days before she married the king. Mary didn't mince her words - or the words Manox the music master had used when he had gossiped with her about Kat Howard: " 'I know her (the queen) well enough,' the young man had boasted, 'for I have had her by the c***, and I know it among a hundred.' " Nice example of 16th century Courtly Love there!
Another Councillor, Sir Thomas Wriothesley - who actually interviewed Manox himself - toned it down a little bit for Henry. Manox had named "the thing plainly", but Wriothesley obviously decided that this might not go down too well with his master. " 'Yet,' he said to her, 'let me feel your secret (naming the thing plainly) and then I shall think that indeed you love me.' "
A day or two later Manox and Katherine met up again "in my Lady's Chapel Chamber at Horsham." Manox himself now realised he'd better watch his P's and Q's and indeed his C's. On this occasion he confessed he had "felt more than was convenient." -
Message 49
Posted by Thomas_II (U14690627) on Wednesday, 17th August 2011
Hi Jak,
In 1946 they introduced this new language in my school, and I was put in the German class. It seemed a bit controversial at the time, just after the War, but I quite enjoyed it for four years till I left school.Â
That´s interesting for I wouldn´t thought that this was possible in 1946.
Later, called up into the Airforce, I was posted to Germany, and quickly found how little I knew. I've had occasional short bashes at the language since, but I still have to look up word-endings - after all these years.Â
That´s the same thing I´ve with English. But I´m not the only one, because the way you learn a foreign language in school is different from the way the people speak it when you´re going to the country of that language. Since a couple of years, all new books I´ve purchased are in English language only and I also have to look up some words in the dictionary and of them I´ve various, but the better way to find some explanations is to use the Penguin books, although they explaine it in English, but there are at least a couple of words I´m already familiar with.
What isn´t a topic in any language lessons are the different pronouncings by slang or dialect in some areas. You´ve surely even experienced that when you´ve been to Germany during your military service. But never mind, even some native German speakers have difficulties to understand these people in North-Rhine-Westfalia when they don´t use standard German.
Cheers,
Thomas -
Message 50
Posted by Jak (U1158529) on Wednesday, 17th August 2011
Hi Thomas -
Yes, it was something of a novelty. When the headmaster announced in the school hall that a new language was being added to the curriculum, and then said "German" - there were gasps, and giggles, and even some of the teachers had grins on their faces. It's all a long time ago!
I was happy to be put into the German class. In those days I had a collection of German army badges and buttons, obtained from PoWs who worked on a nearby building site, in exchange for cigarettes. This sort of "fraternisation" was highly illegal of course, but it was a "craze" among a lot of my school pals, so we risked it. The Gerries all seemed decent blokes, but we little 11-year old spivs drove a hard bargain. I never heard of any of us getting an Iron Cross, but I had an Eastern Front medal ribbon. And other bits and pieces with strange words - so I was curious to know what they meant.
Anyway, German seemed to be an easier language than the French we were already learning. Easier to pronounce, at least, although our first teacher had a strange accent - "dor" for "der", "Fenstor" for "Fenster" etc. I've no idea where she got that from - she was English.
In Germany, any slang or strange pronunciation passed me by, among all the other rapidly spoken words I didn't understand. But once (in Schleswig-Holstein) as I approached a group of old men gossiping, I thought they were speaking English. Not so - it was Plattdeutsch. Descendants of the old Anglo-Saxons of Angeln, I suppose.
But to get back to manners. Isn't there some rule in Germany about taking the paper off - or leaving it on - a bunch of flowers, before presenting them to a lady? It isn't something I do often enough to know what is the polite procedure here in Britain, but they seem to take these things much more seriously in Germany. I was politely corrected on one occasion, but have forgotten what I did wrong.
All the best -
Jak.
About this Board
The History message boards are now closed. They remain visible as a matter of record but the opportunity to add new comments or open new threads is no longer available. Thank you all for your valued contributions over many years.
or  to take part in a discussion.
The message board is currently closed for posting.
The message board is closed for posting.
This messageboard is .
Find out more about this board's
Search this Board
Â鶹ԼÅÄ iD
Â鶹ԼÅÄ navigation
Â鶹ԼÅÄ links
Â鶹ԼÅÄ Â© 2014 The Â鶹ԼÅÄ is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.