About British people 3—Nonchalance: How he said

24/September/2025 in Kraków

British people look nonchalant

because they speak their own language


At the airport in London,
my boots triggered for an extra security check

It took less than 10 seconds, and
the male English officer said;

"Thank you sir, have a good day yeah"


His words sounded very nonchalant

"Thank you sir"
"Have a good day"

Both lines contained almost no emotion
They sounded quite dry

Apparently the prime reason is;

he must repeat these lines 1000000 times every day as an airport worker, and it came out of his mouth automatically

But still, I felt
this was a kind of nonchalance that only native speakers could give off


I personally think
we tend to put too much emotion into words when speaking a foreign language

Our approach to a foreign language is analytical
We tend to interpret foreign words in a literal way

As a result
while natives say "Have a good day" habitually, automatically, without any rational/emotional process,
non-natives often add a tiny little bit of excessive emotion to the words


There is always a gap between our words & our emotions

And we can’t fully translate our emotions into words, even in our mother tongue

Yet, at least in our first language,
we can measure the distance between words & emotions more accurately, and
have better control over the amount of emotions we inject into words