I was watching a video where a Brit referred to a bar as quiet. As in pretty empty without very many people, or much going on. She then went on to clarify, UK quiet, as opposed to American quiet, and I’m not sure I really understand what the difference would be.
****Edit: OK. For anyone interested, I decided to go right to the source and asked her directly in the comments of her video, and she replied. So, first off, this confusion was of my own creation as I misinterpreted what she had said. I went back to rewatch it, and what she had said was “quite quiet”, and then was making a distinction of the difference of the use of the word “quite”, not “quiet”. Her explanation was that when Americans say “quite nice”, they actually mean very nice. Where as when Brits say it, they mean not actually that nice.
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About 30dB
I don’t know what Americans class as quiet so it’s hard to distinguish the difference.
I class it as quiet (as a Brit) if there just aren’t a lot of people, lots of free space and can speak at a normal inside-voice level.
I don’t know how something could be more than that and still quiet?
I’m guessing it’s coming more from the general perception in the UK that Americans are louder than Brits are?
Does quiet mean not busy in American or do they not use it? Maybe that’s what she was clarifying – not busy rather than not loud? Just a guess though.
Quiet American is an oxymoron.
Americans are obnoxiously loud and most of them don’t know it.
If we’re going by the quiet coach on UK trains, it usually means everyone is silent except for one guy who is having an extremely important business meeting on speakerphone but nobody is willing to tell him to shut up or go away.
In the US it means people are not screaming but maybe talking at a volume that would be normal in the UK.
About the same as the difference between British quiet and Japanese quiet.
I’ve lived in the US and UK. In both countries, in a bar setting, if someone said ‘It’s quiet right now,’ I would take that to mean ‘not busy.’ I wouldn’t expect them to mean ‘quiet’ in the sense of ‘not noisy’ in that context.
I would imagine the difference is literally quiet (US quiet) and “not busy” (UK quiet). That or just making fun at Americans being stereotyped as loud in general
I think she meant that in the UK it would be understood that the bar didn’t have many people in, whereas in the US it would be understood to mean that the volume of noise was low. I’m not sure if that’s how it would be taken in the US though.
I’d probably say that Brits tend to understate, rather than the other way around.
> Her explanation was that when Americans say “quite nice”, they actually mean very nice. Where as when Brits say it, they mean not actually that nice.
It’s a bit more complicated than that:
* “It’s *quite* nice” = “it’s a bit shit”.
* “It’s quite *nice*” = “it’s not as shit as I was expecting”.
Freaky. I watched that same video yesterday.
‘Quite’ can be used in both senses in Britain. It’s all about context.
I was in a little tea room before Christmas. It was fairly busy and there was an American family having lunch. Honestly they were so loud! We were right across the room from them and heard every word they were shouting at one another. Everyone else was doing their best British, whispering over their scones politeness.