Good morning sirs

I hope no one gets offended, but is there anyone who can explain why the indians say “Sir” like that? I mean, it’s so characteristic, I don’t criticize it, I’m just genuinely curious.

It’s due to the nature of social interactions in India.

In most of our native languages, we don’t directly address someone by their name, unless we’ve been acquainted before (sometimes even after, if it was just a formal acquaintance). We add a little something for politeness and respect. So it’s always ‘firstname’-ji or ‘lastname’-ji, for example, in Hindi.

Since there isn’t a direct carry over for this in English, people adopted sir or ma’am as replacement.

That’s more or less it. It’s about respect when interacting with another person.

You’ll notice that people who have been brought up in or are more familiar with western culture don’t really do this.