by axxxm
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