Greetings - Ways to Say Hello

People greet each other in every country and culture. But they say and do many different things to greet each other. Greetings seem simple, but they are often a complex part of language. In English, people greet each other in different ways depending on the situation. People also use different greetings depending on how well they know the other person.

Greetings may also be different in different countries that speak English, in Australia people often say ‘G’day.’ In parts of the United States people may greet each other with ‘Howdy!’ or How you doing? In the United Kingdom people more commonly say ‘Hiya.’

But there is more to greeting than words. Some greetings also include particular movements. For example, in many places it is common for people to shake each other’s hands when they meet In some cultures, such as Latin America, the Middle East, Southern Europe, people kiss each other on the side of the face, the cheek. Some people give hugs by putting their arms around each other and squeezing.

So how do people know what to do, especially when traveling between countries and cultures? Jamie Bowlby-Whiting told about a difficult greeting experience on his blog:

“I thought they were going for the kiss. But it was the hug. Now I just wet their face. And then hit them in the nose with my head. It was so embarrassing (窘迫的)!”

People can avoid these embarrassing experiences. They can research how to greet correctly before connecting with people of other cultures. It is especially important to learn if there are any forms of greeting that may not be used in a particular country. For example, in some countries, like Japan, kissing is not considered a good way to greet someone. Sometimes cultures also have different greetings for women and for men.

A person may not always know the correct greeting. But the most important thing when greeting someone is to show respect. Try your best and apologize if you offend someone.

Good manners play an important part in keeping peace and goodwill (友好) in a community. A man with good manners doesn’t hurt other’s feelings, and therefore he’s on good terms with everyone .In this way he helped to keep peace in society.

But a man with bad manners has no respect for others He uses words carelessly and behaves rudely towards others and causes a lot of unpleasantness. In the end, he himself will suffer most. Everyone will avoid him and he will be forced to live a lonely life.

To live well in society, money alone is not enough. We should also have good manners, for it’s human nature to seek friendship; and friendship cannot be bought with money. Friendship has to be earned through our own attitude towards others. If we are kind to others, they will be kind to us, and kindness is essential to good manners .Bad manners drive away friends as well as our own family members.

A man with god manners has many friends. He commands the respect of all those who come into contact with him. He doesn’t talk ill about others. Even when he’s provoked, he tries his best not to offend others. He has sympathy for the weak and the disabled.

There are, however, many people who behave so well outside their homes that they are respected and admired by everyone. But in their own homes they are worse than the devil. Such people cannot be said to have good manners. It doesn’t take long for others to discover this.

If one’s manners are good, one behaves well everywhere, even when one is away from the critical eyes of others. It is therefore essential to have good manners.

Lying is something that most of us are expert at. We lie at ease, in ways big and small, to strangers, co-workers, friends, and loved ones. Our capacity for dishonesty is as fundamental to us as our need to trust others, which ironically makes us terrible at detecting lies. Being deceitful is woven into our very fabric, so much so that it would be truthful to say that to lie is human.

The universality of lying was first documented systematically by Bella DePaulo, a social psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Two decades ago DePaulo and her colleagues asked 147 adults to write down for a week every instance they tried to mislead someone. The researchers found that the subjects lied on average one or two times a day. Most of these untruths were not offensive, intended to hide one’s inadequacies or to protect the feelings of others. Some lies were excuses—one subject blamed the failure to take out the garbage on not knowing where it needed to go. Yet other lies—such as a claim of being a diplomat’s son—were aimed at presenting a false image. While these were minor crimes, a later study by DePaulo and other colleagues involving a similar sample indicated that most people have, at some point, told one or more “serious lies”—making false claims on a college application, for example.

That human beings should universally possess a talent for deceiving one another shouldn’t surprise us. Researchers speculate that lying as a behavior arose not long after the emergence of language. The ability to control others without using physical force likely gave an advantage in the competition for resources and mates, similar to the evolution of deceptive strategies in the animal kingdom, such as camouflage (伪装).“Lying is so easy compared to other ways of gaining power,” notes Sissela Bok, an ethicist at Harvard University who’s one of the most prominent thinkers on the subject. “It’s much easier to lie in order to get somebody’s money or wealth than to hit them over the head or rob a bank.”

As lying has come to be recognized as a deeply-rooted human trait, social science researchers and neuro-scientists have sought to explain the nature and roots of the behavior. Researchers are learning that we tend to believe some lies even when they’re obviously contradicted by clear evidence. These insights suggest that our tendency to deceive others and our weakness to be deceived, are especially consequential in the age of social media. Our ability to separate truth from lies is under unprecedented threat.