Why All Right?

I spent my first year in the UK as a study abroad student at the University of Bristol. My school back home had sent a record eight students to Bristol that year, and I was more than a little concerned about spending the year in a pack of Americans.

So, when it came time to apply for housing, I did some research and got myself into one of the dorms they weren't marketing to Americans. I was the only yank there; pretty much everyone else were from the west and north of England.

And when they spoke, their accents were like nothing I'd heard before. I was used to BBC English, or the dulcet tones of Colin Firth and Emma Thompson in Jane Austen movies. Regional accents were often incomprehensible, though if I concentrated, I could usually work out what people were saying.

Except when I'd see someone walking down the hallway, or upon entering the kitchen -- there was some brief phrase they'd always say, and I couldn't for the life of me work out what it was. It seemed to be some sort of pleasant greeting, but definitely not "How are you?" And whenever they'd say it, I'd sort of smile and shrug -- not quite knowing what to say.

Finally, after a few weeks of cluelessness, I finally asked one of my floormates: what is it you all keep saying? Turns out it was "All right?" as a question, leaving out the subject and verb.

And like "How are you?" in the States, one is not particularly expected to respond.

That's one of those things they don't tell you in the guidebooks. Now that I'm back in the UK for a while, I figure I had better get blogging, and I figure a lot of my blogging may be about some of those little differences. All right?