If there is a people who have perfected the craft of the gratuitous interrogative, wouldn’t that be the British? Or is it just the English? How do they manage to turn everything into a question? They do, don’t they? Could it be that the failure of the Empire has taught them there are no certainties in the world? And if that is true, wouldn’t it be better to ask than to state? But why do I always suspect that the English, just like the French, are not looking for answers and that they are only asking because they think it is good manners? Do they find declarative sentences rude? Is not a casual conversation on a London street entirely made up of questions?
“How are you?”
“A bit of an awful day, isn’t it?”
“Well, it’s rained for a week, hasn’t it?”
“Just bloody awful, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is, isn’t it?”
“Oh well, is it getting late?”
“Is it?”
“We can’t really spend the day chatting, can we?”
“It would be lovely if we could, though, wouldn’t it?”
Is it my imagination or is there a contentious undercurrent of one-upmanship here? Are both of the interlocutors trying to somehow trick the other into a declarative sentence? Why? Is it to see who has the best manners?