10 things you should know about UK culture

Posted by Sarah Heys on

This post was contributed by Great British Mag, a digital magazine that covers every facet of living and studying in the UK.

If you’re heading to the UK or have recently arrived, firstly welcome! And secondly let us give you a crash course on British culture, which can often be subtle, seem contradictory and will be different to what you are used to.

Brits love to apologise

Bumped into someone? Say sorry before walking away. Need to get someone's attention? Start your sentence with sorry. Need to squeeze past someone in a crowded room? You guessed it - say sorry as you move past.

Sorry is widely used to qualify a whole host of things and can quite frankly get very confusing, especially if you are left wondering why you are being apologised to. Just remember it’s just the British way of being polite and our need not to inconvenience others.

Brits are fussy about queuing

Brits are famous for their love of queuing and they take it very seriously. In the UK there is really no excuse for jumping to the front of the queue. Even if you are in a hurry you should not cut in front of others as this is seen as incredibly rude.

Talking about the weather is a national sport

Talking about the weather is practically the national sport in the UK. British weather can change in an instant and Brits like to say that one can experience four seasons in a day. Whether it’s hot or cold, raining lightly or chucking down hail, the weather is a source of endless entertainment and conversation.

Talking about the weather also plays into something we call “small talk” which is exchanging a polite, no-meaningful conversation with someone, and you guessed it the most popular topic is talking about the weather.

Brits love to drink tea

Whilst coffee is a popular hot drink in the UK. In our hearts we are a tea drinking nation and we down a whopping 36 billion cups of tea every year, so don’t be surprised to see people drinking gallons of it every day and getting endless offers of a “cuppa.”

Tea drinking is as much about enjoying the drink as it is about having a break, a good old “natter” – and it’s the perfect way of making friends and finding out the latest gossip.

British spelling is different to American spelling

If you didn’t already know British English is quite different to American English and the main difference is that British English keeps the spelling of words it has absorbed from other languages, mainly French and German. Whilst American spelling is mostly as the word sound when they are spoken, so the spelling is more phonetic.

And whilst we on the subject of how different the two types of English are be warned there are many words that don’t exist in British English that do in American English and a great many that mean something quite different, so be careful what you say!

Curry is the national dish

In Britain, curry is king, and Chicken Tikka Masala is the national dish!  Thanks to the immigration of people from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh you will be able to find delicious and authentic curries from South Asia. London has Brick Lane; Manchester has "Curry Road;" Birmingham has "the Balti Triangle."

You can also find food from most parts of the world in the UK thanks to how multicultural the country is so whether you are craving a curry from Pakistan, Sri Lank, Thailand or Japan you’ll be able to find one.

The UK is made up of four countries

It’s worth noting that the United Kingdom is made up of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and that each part has a devolved government, slightly different laws and a distinct culture, accents and in the case of Wales a different language, which is Welsh and is spoken alongside English.

On the whole the rivalry between the diff