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MONKEY
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18 Apr 2011, 5:45 am

cdfox7 wrote:
MONKEY wrote:
It's cool with me. But it can be quite cringeworthy the way some of them try to seem English or they obsess over English things that only a small part of the country actually identifies with. Oh and the posh toff stereotype. It's like the Anglophile version of weaboos.


That's down the American view of a limited parts of our country, there's more to the UK than London. Our national media don't help with there focus of the South-East.

I spend many a time correcting yanks about my city. they only think its only the home of The Beatles, the true is there more to my home city than the fab four.


I don't think most Americans even know my city exists.


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Tequila
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18 Apr 2011, 5:51 am

CoalBogey wrote:
British-English is archaic and confusing.


That's before you get into the endless dialect words that make up the accents of English in the United Kingdom.



cdfox7
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18 Apr 2011, 5:52 am

MONKEY wrote:
cdfox7 wrote:
MONKEY wrote:
It's cool with me. But it can be quite cringeworthy the way some of them try to seem English or they obsess over English things that only a small part of the country actually identifies with. Oh and the posh toff stereotype. It's like the Anglophile version of weaboos.


That's down the American view of a limited parts of our country, there's more to the UK than London. Our national media don't help with there focus of the South-East.

I spend many a time correcting yanks about my city. they only think its only the home of The Beatles, the true is there more to my home city than the fab four.


I don't think most Americans even know my city exists.


Stoke-on-Trent or another one of the Stoke's in England?



MONKEY
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18 Apr 2011, 5:54 am

cdfox7 wrote:
MONKEY wrote:
cdfox7 wrote:
MONKEY wrote:
It's cool with me. But it can be quite cringeworthy the way some of them try to seem English or they obsess over English things that only a small part of the country actually identifies with. Oh and the posh toff stereotype. It's like the Anglophile version of weaboos.


That's down the American view of a limited parts of our country, there's more to the UK than London. Our national media don't help with there focus of the South-East.

I spend many a time correcting yanks about my city. they only think its only the home of The Beatles, the true is there more to my home city than the fab four.


I don't think most Americans even know my city exists.


Stoke-on-Trent or another one of the Stoke's in England?


Stoke-in-Trent


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Tequila
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18 Apr 2011, 5:57 am

cdfox7 wrote:
That's down the American view of a limited parts of our country, there's more to the UK than London. Our national media don't help with there focus of the South-East.


Yup. 12.5% of the UK population live in Greater London. More will obviously commute in from neighbouring counties but even so that's a small part of the UK. They seem to think that London and the Scottish Highlands are next door to each other. In American terms they may be but the UK isn't that small a country. Even Northern Ireland, which is often considered 'small' even by the people that live there isn't that small, really. Belfast to the border with the Irish Republic takes fifty minutes and driving from Belfast to Londonderry (near the border with the Republic of Ireland) takes an hour and a half in the car. As well as that, many parts of Wales are very isolated (the valleys) with most of the people living in the large towns and cities.

Also, the population of the UK is skewed by sparsely-populated Scotland. England is densely populated, sure, but that's mainly in the towns and cities. Outside them they can be very rural places, especially in the north of England.



Last edited by Tequila on 18 Apr 2011, 6:00 am, edited 2 times in total.

cdfox7
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18 Apr 2011, 5:58 am

MONKEY wrote:
cdfox7 wrote:
MONKEY wrote:
cdfox7 wrote:
MONKEY wrote:
It's cool with me. But it can be quite cringeworthy the way some of them try to seem English or they obsess over English things that only a small part of the country actually identifies with. Oh and the posh toff stereotype. It's like the Anglophile version of weaboos.


That's down the American view of a limited parts of our country, there's more to the UK than London. Our national media don't help with there focus of the South-East.

I spend many a time correcting yanks about my city. they only think its only the home of The Beatles, the true is there more to my home city than the fab four.


I don't think most Americans even know my city exists.


Stoke-on-Trent or another one of the Stoke's in England?


Stoke-in-Trent


:D I got family living your way, nice place



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18 Apr 2011, 6:02 am

Tequila wrote:
CoalBogey wrote:
British-English is archaic and confusing.


That's before you get into the endless dialect words that make up the accents of English in the United Kingdom.


Haha yep. Maybe we just like confusing people, which might explain the random mix of Imperial and Metric system measurements. For example some visitors think that our road signs are in Kilometres.

I assume by your 'NO to the EU' status that you might have something to say on this subject? :P



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18 Apr 2011, 6:09 am

IdahoRose wrote:
How do you feel about Americans or Canadians having an interest in your country, or at least certain aspects of it (ex. British Invasion music, literature, royalty, rugby, Victorian England, etc.)?

How do you feel about Americans or Canadians typing using British spellings and phrases? Does it annoy you? Do you find it amusing? Does it cause you to think, "Well, at least not all of them spell incorrectly"? :lol:



It seems quite natural to me, for some Americans or Canadians to have an interest, as many have ancestors from England/Britain/UK, and we are their cousins. Likewise I know that I have American and Canadian cousins, as well as Australian, and so I find their lifestyles interesting.

However I am concerned about the influence American culture is having over here, not that I necessarily have anything against American culture, but I would prefer it stayed in America. This country has changed so much in the last 30 years, I worry we are losing our own culture. But I suppose this isn't entirely relevant to your question.

My grandparents emigrated to America and became citizens, so I have a special fondness for the US. If the US wants to have a special fondness for the UK then that's fine with me.



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18 Apr 2011, 6:10 am

CoalBogey wrote:
Asp-Z wrote:
Quote:
How do you feel about Americans or Canadians typing using British spellings and phrases? Does it annoy you? Do you find it amusing? Does it cause you to think, "Well, at least not all of them spell incorrectly"? :lol:


I wish they'd do it more! "American English" is ruining our language, and even worse, people here are starting to miss letters out of things too (and I think we mostly have American spell-checks to blame for that, f**k you Microsoft Word).

How hard is it to put a "u" in "colour"? I mean really.


I'm with Mr Webster and the Americans on this one. Faultless logic. Why does "colour" need a "u" exactly?

British-English is archaic and confusing. Did you know that in Italy they don't even have a word for dyslexia? It doesn't exist. Whereas here we have to invent a disorder which just means 'wasn't taught to read or write properly as a child'.


A load of bull, American-English is based on an older form of the Queen's English. Also I have an Italian friend that has dyslexia.



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18 Apr 2011, 6:11 am

CoalBogey wrote:
Tequila wrote:
CoalBogey wrote:
British-English is archaic and confusing.


That's before you get into the endless dialect words that make up the accents of English in the United Kingdom.


Haha yep. Maybe we just like confusing people, which might explain the random mix of Imperial and Metric system measurements. For example some visitors think that our road signs are in Kilometres.

I assume by your 'NO to the EU' status that you might have something to say on this subject? :P


It works for us. We're not changing it.

The other point is that Ireland, unlike the UK, does use kilometres instead of miles. So when you cross the border you often aren't told that the speed limits are in km/h rather than mph, although main roads will often tell you. It doesn't help that it is often impossible to tell when you've crossed - even locals struggle with it.



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18 Apr 2011, 6:18 am

CoalBogey wrote:
Tequila wrote:
CoalBogey wrote:
British-English is archaic and confusing.


That's before you get into the endless dialect words that make up the accents of English in the United Kingdom.


Haha yep. Maybe we just like confusing people, which might explain the random mix of Imperial and Metric system measurements. For example some visitors think that our road signs are in Kilometres.

I assume by your 'NO to the EU' status that you might have something to say on this subject? :P


Personally I think the metric system is incredibly dull. I'd go back to farthings, crowns, shillings and sixpence if I could. Pints over litres any day of the week. Inches over centimetres. And if they try to change us from miles to kilometres, well I'd like to say I'll go on a march, but I couldn't cope with that, so I'd write a stern letter or two and frown even more than usual. :tongue: :)



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18 Apr 2011, 6:30 am

cdfox7 wrote:
CoalBogey wrote:
Asp-Z wrote:
Quote:
How do you feel about Americans or Canadians typing using British spellings and phrases? Does it annoy you? Do you find it amusing? Does it cause you to think, "Well, at least not all of them spell incorrectly"? :lol:


I wish they'd do it more! "American English" is ruining our language, and even worse, people here are starting to miss letters out of things too (and I think we mostly have American spell-checks to blame for that, f**k you Microsoft Word).

How hard is it to put a "u" in "colour"? I mean really.


I'm with Mr Webster and the Americans on this one. Faultless logic. Why does "colour" need a "u" exactly?

British-English is archaic and confusing. Did you know that in Italy they don't even have a word for dyslexia? It doesn't exist. Whereas here we have to invent a disorder which just means 'wasn't taught to read or write properly as a child'.


A load of bull, American-English is based on an older form of the Queen's English. Also I have an Italian friend that has dyslexia.


It seems you are right about dyslexia in Italy. I should check my sources, and probably state things in a less inflammatory way ("invent a disorder"):
Quote:
So why do Italian dyslexics read better? "The difference is not in the languages themselves," says lead author Eraldo Paulesu of the University of Milan Bicocca. "It's in their writing systems, which vary in complexity for historical reasons."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... z1JsAYU6B5


I thought American-English was based on people like Noah Webster logically 'improving' it. I still strongly believe that in informal contexts people should spell however they want, it's our language. Anyway I'm probably derailing the thread as usual. And I must get back to work. :)

IdahoRose wrote:
How do you feel about Americans or Canadians having an interest in your country, or at least certain aspects of it (ex. British Invasion music, literature, royalty, rugby, Victorian England, etc.)?

How do you feel about Americans or Canadians typing using British spellings and phrases? Does it annoy you? Do you find it amusing? Does it cause you to think, "Well, at least not all of them spell incorrectly"? :lol:


I think Anglophilia is cute!



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18 Apr 2011, 11:53 am

CoalBogey wrote:
I'm with Mr Webster and the Americans on this one. Faultless logic. Why does "colour" need a "u" exactly?

Because it's pronounced kuller, to which colour is a better approximation than color, whatever Webster would have liked you to think. As I've said before, he had the right idea, but some of his execution was terrible. Also note his particular ideas on how to spell didn't take off because of 'mass acclaim among right-thinking sensible Yanks righteously eager to simplify the language' - they took off because he bullied them into circulation among school boards, or something along those lines.
English is an atrociously badly spelled language - it doesn't help that it's written in an alphabet which isn't suited to it and is missing a few key letters - but ol' Webby didn't do more than swap one subset of bad spellings for another equally bad lot - and provoked a million of these while he was on... *looks around for yawning smiley*


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18 Apr 2011, 2:31 pm

Neither are particularly great. "Colur" would be better... probably.

Quote:
*looks around for yawning smiley*


:lol: Let me know if you find it, I could use it every time I get into some sort of 'debate' online, especially when I read my own posts.



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18 Apr 2011, 5:20 pm

Truth be told, I recognise (e.g.) sulfur as a better spelling, but I'd balk (or possibly baulk) at using it. :)


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18 Apr 2011, 5:47 pm

I should probably answer the OP.

Quote:
How do you feel about Americans or Canadians having an interest in your country, or at least certain aspects of it (ex. British Invasion music, literature, royalty, rugby, Victorian England, etc.)?

Having an interest in the country, good for them.
British Invasion, well, some of it's very good. Good for them.
Royalty, if they find it attractive they don't understand it.
Rugby, their taste is in question.
Victorian England, as per Royalty.


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