Why the British are Insane

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I don't like the metric system mainly because when I hear something expressed in it I can't picture it without converting. It takes work to figure how warm 40 degrees C or how far 3 km is, but I can instantly picture 90 degrees F is quite hot and how for 2 miles is.
In the US besides scientists we do use metrics for a few things - medications are given by mg, wine and liquor (but not beer) in mL or L (as are bottled sodas), that's about it. Many people - especially older people - still call the 750 mL bottles a "fifth" - because before going metric the standard bottle was a fifth of a gallon and the sizes are very close.

exactly!

all hail the metric system!

I can't think of one thing I like about America other than landscapes/scenery but that has nothing to do with the nation itself.

I can think of probably 10-20 things I like with Britain.

USA is the one place in the western world where I would rather die than be living.

Insanity? We prefer to be called "eccentric" if you don't mind. :p

And no. We don't call biscuits muffins. We call biscuits biscuits, with the exception of chocolate chip cookies.

We call those super size fairy cakes* muffins just like you do, probably because the idea was exported from you guys, because before you sent us super size muffins we just had fairy cakes - cup cakes to you guys, which makes just about as much sense as fairy cakes, because neither fairies nor cups were harmed in the making of either.

Muffins are the bread rolls that are used in the making of Eggs Benedict.

:p

that's fine.. The whole point of foreign countries in general is that they are different. You go to a foreign country expeciting things to be different

Like when I went to London back in '91; the driving on the left was not too scary, I used the Tube (or subway, or whatever it's called. One's a great train system, the other's the sewer. You figure it out... I finally got the bit about foreign when I saw soccer (footbal) goals in the projects (council houses?) instead of a basketball court...

All that original thread being said...I wouldn't be a bit surprised if there isn't a similar site devoted to having France invade Britain to instill their 'superior' ways and mannerisms...

European cars have speedometers in km ONLY. The UK has both. There are many foreign cars that I presume will use km ONLY in their car. All cars sold in the UK have BOTH MPH and KMH. So, that encourages Europeans NOT to visit the UK, but we can "invade" them easily so to speak.
The cars are sold with left hand set up stalks... Asian cars seem to be able to correct this for right hand drive.

In all fairness, we "insane Brits" could call the US insane in the same retrospect. It seems as though many people are familiar with the accent of London and surrounding areas. Not everyone talks like that. Different parts of the UK have varying accents depending where you are.

Eh... that's Britain for you.

Re Alphabetania's post:

We're not mad. We are inscrutable. We use language as a smokescreen, not a means of communication. It is innate.

Here, it's acceptable to walk down a public street with a fag in your mouth. But it is not acceptable to walk down a street in your pants.

We may have a free health service, but you have to look hard to find it. You have a medical problem, you go see a doctor. Only there are thousands of doctors in all sorts of subjects: history, archaeology, physics, education. There's even rumoured to be 1 or 2 doctors of foreign languages, but I find that dubious. Why bother when the rest of the world speaks English?

Anyway, when ill, you don't go see a doctor, you go and see a G.P. Which stands for General Practitioner. He/She is not actually practicing. They finished practicing when they left medical school. And they don't work in practices, they work in surgeries. And no, they don't actually do any surgery in a surgery. That would be too obvious. Guess where surgery is done? In a Theatre.

Which is very confusing when your a child in hospital and the nurse says "you have to be ready for theatre this afternoon" and you think you're going to see a play and wonder why they anaesthitised you for it so that later you can't remember anything about it at all.

Criticism that we don't get metric is unfounded. It only looks like we don't get it because our use of the terms is so much more sophisticated that the rest of the world. We use both systems in subtle contexts that show our superiority.

Using temperature as an example, we use Farenheit to measure heat, and Centigrade to measure cold. On a hot day, we say "wow, it must be in the 90's today". On a cold day we say "brrr... it's must be nearly zero". See?

And so it goes..... A fat chance is the same as a slim chance. Pajams are items of clothing worn by a Persian man for lounging around in the day. We liked the concept but thought it would be improved by subtly changing the meaning to that of clothes worn at night and that no sane person would ever wear in the day.

Hey, you should know better than to make fun of people who have a really serious neurological impediment. LOL!

The first time I heard of "fanny bags" I thought it must be a new disease for females only.

HAR HAR

You're as barking mad, both of you.

ManErg, there's worse...I was reading a US needlecraft book and I first came across those embroidery hoops that have a pad to sit on so you can have the frame across your lap and have both your hands free to sew. But I read the words 'fanny frame' and thought it must be some kind of torture device used by gynecologists.

I work with Americans, so the common language that divides our nations is an endless source of fun.

One of the best bits is 'pudding'. Over here, what you in the US call 'pudding' is just called instant dessert or more likely by the most popular brand name, Angel Delight.

Pudding as the British know it is either a) a generic term for the dessert course in a meal, or b) a specific type of dessert made by mixing suet, flour, sugar and other ingredients and boiling or baking the result.

Unless it's Yorkshire Pudding, which is made by mixing flour, eggs and milk and baking them in the oven with the meat juices when you're cooking your Sunday roast. (Although, I understand in Yorkshire itself they used to serve this as a first course to fill themselves up when there wasn't much meat. And in some places it used to be made without the meat juices and served as a dessert with jam, or jelly to you guys.)

Or Black Pudding, which is pigs' blood mixed with oatmeal and salt, made into a sausage and cut into slices and fried with eggs, bacon, sausages and fried bread as part of a 'full English' cooked breakfast.

Confused yet?

Then we get into the different types of pudding (the sweet, boiled kind), like jam roly-poly and sticky toffee pudding and, of course, Christmas pudding. And then we get to the one that always gets Americans doing a double-take: Spotted Dick. Which contains quantities of currants, hence the 'spotted' bit.
Here's a recipe: http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/513173
If you come to Britain, you should definitely try this.

BTW, that thing about the Queen taking back rulership of the US has been going round a while as attributed, in some form, to John Cleese. Don't know if that's true but it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

By a muffin you mean those cakes with big tops that spill over the bun case? You call them biscuits?

English slang is hard to cope with within England, never mind internationally!

In Coventry, we call certain types of bread rolls "batches".
In Huddersfield they call them "teacakes".
In Hinckley, they call them "cobs".
Generally up north they can be called "baps".
Another general slang term is "buttys".

I bet there are at least 40 variations on this word within England, so it makes my head hurt to imagine what you call them!

That caused me to laugh and spit coffee all over my monitor screen at work ! !!



In the UK, our language is still quite 'class' ridden despite rumours to the contrary. What's really confusing is when the highest and lowest classes use an identical word, but the middle classes use something different. I think 'pudding' is an example of this. Working class people have "pudding" after dinner (or tea...but that's another story that could take a book to explain). Middle class people have "dessert" after dinner. Yet whenever I've mingled with the upper crust, they call it 'pudding' again and to ask "what's for dessert?" could signal to everybody that you are a "social climber with pretentions, not genuine class".

The point is that the words we use have meanings beyond the dictionary definition.


SO true! And incredibly, AFAIK it is ONLY in Coventry as people from only 15 miles away (24.14016 km, you see why miles are better?) in Birmingham have *never* heard of the word 'batch' used this way.


I can highly recommend the book "Darkest England" by Idries Shah to anyone wanting evidence that the British are the most inscrutable nation on earth. http://www.amazon.com/Darkest-England-I ... 086304039X. Hilarious, yet illuminating at the same time!