Cross posted with Edwin, sorry.
Anthropologists have huge debates about such social conventions and courtesies.
There are places where one must acknowledge every single person that one meets or passes, using the correct phrase that accords them their 'place' within the community. Not to do so is a huge affront.
Then there are cities where intentional ignoring is a necessity of life otherwise everything would grind to a halt. One physically cannot greet every individual.
I live in a village; to walk past someone without at least eye contact, or a quiet word, or a nod of the head, is a social slight. It is discourteous. My eldest son now lives in the largest city in our country. He finds it's something of a seachange walking up from the train station when he comes home to visit
We don't say Good-bye. It's too formal, too final, for us. We'll say, "Cheerio", or, "See you later", even when it's simply someone who has been served in a shop and is unknown otherwise and there is no social connection where the later might apply.
Others in my country won't make a definite plan to a certain time, just in case they're not alive to fulfill it. They will say, "If I'm spared."
Societies are both conventional, within themselves, and fluid, in their connections with others.
The members of those societies are no longer fixed, static, only immersed within that culture. Interaction with others, and the history of the culture as it arises, changes things, changes conventions, changes courtesies.
What can't change dies. What cannot adapt dies. Nothing is static, nothing is fixed, nothing is eternally unchanging.
Familiar is comforting though, understanding the mindset, the social conventions of one's own society, and finding place within it, is reassuring.
Language is a major connection to other peoples, while it reaffirms belonging to one's own culture. Witness the Scots who use vocabulary on this British forum, for instance, or the Welsh, or Northern English, or any of the myriad of language/thinking patterns that are native to our islands. We speak in English for the most part in the UK and much of the Western world, but we think in our own cultural grounding, and words aren't everything. Pronunciation is a huge factor in the perception of words used. From a simple query to a demand or a plea, the words might be the same, but the entire meaning changes. "Help me", is a good example.
Help me ?
Help me!!!
Help me ?
It's interesting to hear how other people view the world though; to hear how they relate to others, their conventions within everyday life.
Loan words from other languages is a world wide phenomenon. French lends itself to so many. Scottish cookery terms are often corrupted French words, the internationally used plea for help is another. Mayday, Mayday…m'aidez, m'aidez….help me, help me.
Indian words too are scattered like glitter on a Christmas card
from pyjamas to chai, from bungalow to mugger, from aubergine to rice.
The words aren't always necessary. That eye meet, or head nod that I mentioned earlier, can carry a conversation in themselves sometimes
From a quiet, "aye!" and an eye roll skywards and a raised eyebrow at the incipient downpour, to the, "aye
", that acknowledges friendship.
Not having a word for please, or thank you, or swear words, doesn't mean that the concept isn't known or understood, simply that the culture concerned somehow finds no need to use those words for those situations.
To claim that a culture has no gratitude at all, no concept of thanks, however, is an anthropological anomaly.
I know that in some youth cultures the word 'righteous' fills in the space and saves face while giving an acknowledgement that something was well done, properly done.
Do the Cree feel that something properly done is righteous ? I don't know, I only know of them from the posts of a couple of individuals who post on the forum, and take it as read that they are representative of their culture. Whether that culture is their family, their clan, their village, township or their country, isn't yet given.
Mine has a phrase that suits though, "It's nae loss whit a freen gets".
M
