Hi, my name is Patrycja, and I\u2019m currently studying BA (Hons) Computer Animation Art and Design at Bournemouth University. I\u2019m Polish and I came to the UK in September 2018 to study. Even though I\u2019ve been here before on a school trip, actually living in England is completely different than what I expected. Even if you\u2019ve visited before, some things might be shocking and you might find out some interesting facts about the UK that you won\u2019t be told about in English classes at school in your home country.<\/p>\n
You can\u2019t be prepared for everything: The accents<\/strong><\/p>\n Before I came to England, I thought that I knew English quite well. I was learning it for years, I have family in Scotland and Australia, and I had all my International Baccalaureate exams in English, and I was using the language on a daily basis at school and sometimes outside. However, after coming to the UK and socializing a bit, buying fast foods, etc., I realized that even though my English is good I still have problems with understanding common slang and words young people say. I had to Google some meanings of words used in text messages a few times! I sometimes couldn\u2019t easily understand things were said to me because of the person\u2019s accent, or someone didn\u2019t understand me fully because of my accent. It gets better after a while, but I never expected pronunciation to be so important! To be fair, before coming here, I couldn\u2019t tell different accents apart, like British and American ones, without really thinking and analysing them for a while, so it might be a good learning experience to actually try listening to some strong British accents. They can be really beautiful, but also surprising, and the fact that there are so many adds a little bit of colour to life here.<\/p>\n Surprises, surprises, surprises…<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the interesting things I\u2019ve noticed about British people is that they are really nice! They\u2019ll start talking to you at the bus stop or in the shop, for example, about the weather or the cute bear you have attached to your bag. The Bournemouth bus drivers are so nice and can make your day. They have made me smile when I\u2019ve felt upset so many times, and it is such a nice thing. The shop assistants and people in restaurants will sometimes call you \u201clove\u201d, \u201csweetheart\u201d or \u201choney\u201d and they sound so nice saying it. People are so polite here. Something peculiar is that a lot of people say sorry all the time, even if they haven\u2019t done anything to apologise for. People might walk past me in a tiny kitchen, and say sorry even if they are not even close to you. They just say sorry a lot. I sometimes feel the urge to tell them to stop saying sorry because they haven\u2019t done anything wrong! They say \u201cplease\u201d and \u201cthank you\u201d a lot too. It might be hard at the beginning to get used to saying those words so much, and I might even seem rude to people as I\u2019m still not using them as much as others. I make sure to say \u201cthank you\u201d to the bus driver, but with the more casual things among friends… \u00a0I still find it strange that someone is apologising to me or saying thank you for a really small thing.<\/p>\n The words that I just can\u2019t get used to<\/strong><\/p>\n During my English lessons, I\u2019ve found that I didn\u2019t really learn some of the words that English people use on daily basis. I\u2019ll often hear people say \u201cAlright?\u201d instead of \u201cHello\u201d. It\u2019s quite self-explanatory, but it means \u201ceverything okay?\u201d in a similar way to \u201cHow are you?\u201d Personally I found it really surprising, and it threw me a bit. However, the word that I just can\u2019t get used to is \u201ccheers\u201d being used instead of \u201cthank you\u201d. I never would have expected that this word could be used for that, and for it to be used so often! English people use it interchangeably with \u201cthank you\u201d, and (seeing as how I mentioned how much they say \u201cthank you\u201d) I think it\u2019s safe to assume that you will hear this word a lot if you come to the UK!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hi, my name is Patrycja, and I\u2019m currently studying BA (Hons) Computer Animation Art and Design at Bournemouth University. I\u2019m Polish and I came to the UK in September 2018 to study. Even though I\u2019ve been here before on a school trip, actually living in England is completely different than what I expected. Even if… Read more » about Peculiar accents and politeness… Cheers!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2927,"featured_media":11129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[499,496,828,12,1648,1638],"tags":[450,1232,945,710,1115,1116,1358],"class_list":["post-11128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-computer-animation-visual-effects","category-ug-courses","category-international-student-stories","category-student-blogs","category-student-experiences-abroad","category-undergraduate","tag-arrivals","tag-ba-hons-computer-animation-art-and-design","tag-interesting-facts","tag-international-students","tag-patrycja-poczkai","tag-poland","tag-uk-facts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2927"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11130,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11128\/revisions\/11130"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}