American-British Q&A

[rickynumber24]

Also, a question for everyone: Who all do you think qualifies as a "Yank"? I've met a few people who take offense at including anyone who's not a New Yorker or New Englander in that. (And I may have met someone who said it was only New Yorkers.)

Being from the south, I would say that anyone who lives in a state was part of the union during the civil war is a Yankee. But we (including me) just use it as a joke these days, seeing as how we don't like slavery anymore either.

Yeah, it wasn't serious offense... Just insistence that it was a regional qualifier and not a national qualifier.

To foreigners, a Yankee is an American
To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.
To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner.
To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander.
To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.
And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast. -- E. B. White

It's odd that he picked Vermont, considering, etymologically, it really is a New Yorker. (From "Jan Kees", a Dutch equivalent of "John Doe", the way I heard it...) It's pretty much dead-on about a Yankee generally being a group not including oneself, though.

 

[SemiHumanTarget]

Just how bad is knife crime in the UK? I know the US gets a lot of flak for having loose gun laws, but I've read statistics and heard anecdotes from English friends that seem to indicate the UK is just as bad... people just prefer a different weapon.

I personally have been robbed at gunpoint twice, but only because I lived in a really bad neighborhood during college, but it dawned on me that actually USING a gun on someone is a huge risk because of the incredible noise it generates and the probable proximity of others in an urban area. But then I was hearing stories from English friends that a criminal strategy in the UK is to stab someone right off the bat, and then rob them.

I also have English friends who have told me they would literally lay down their lives for a number of not-very-expensive personal effects. Is it seriously that bad in the city?

 

[EllEzDee]

Just how bad is knife crime in the UK? I know the US gets a lot of flak for having loose gun laws, but I've read statistics and heard anecdotes from English friends that seem to indicate the UK is just as bad... people just prefer a different weapon.

I personally have been robbed at gunpoint twice, but only because I lived in a really bad neighborhood during college, but it dawned on me that actually USING a gun on someone is a huge risk because of the incredible noise it generates and the probable proximity of others in an urban area. But then I was hearing stories from English friends that a criminal strategy in the UK is to stab someone right off the bat, and then rob them.

I also have English friends who have told me they would literally lay down their lives for a number of not-very-expensive personal effects. Is it seriously that bad in the city?

Depends where you live. The poorer (lower middle class har har) parts of England have knife crime for obvious reasons, mostly in the London area, though Scotland has its fair share. I live in a "rough" neighbourhood in Lincolnshire (East Midlands of the UK), but i've never heard of anyone being stabbed or anything. Infact, surprisingly enough, the only knife crime in my area that i've heard of was actually within my close-family, almost-mugged at knife point on the way to the local shop. Seems more like it was a once-in-a-while kind of thing rather than knives being rampant.

Still, i'm not an expert and i don't read much more than the local news.

 

[rickynumber24]

People rarely use turn signals? Damn, that's the kind of thing I usually reserve my road rage for over here.

I stopped using mine because I kept getting "...the hell is that flashy light on the front of your truck, bro?" looks from other drivers.

And the left hand one doesn't work.

Wow... that's ... really disappointing. I've also found you get used to it, after awhile, just like you get used to the people who pull up to a stop light and only hit the turn signal when the light turns green.

As far as TV goes, I don't really care, I barely watch it as it is. The only thing that would destroy me is if I couldn't watch football (real football, not your version, no offense )

Then be prepared to be destroyed. The only thing you'll find on American TV is handegg EXCEPT for the world cup. That's the only time I've seen football.

Personally I don't care about any sort of team sports like that. Auto racing is my poison.

You'd be surprised... ESPN has actually started showing a remarkable amount of Soccer, based on the televisions where I eat lunch. I wouldn't know for sure whether it's just some big event right now, though, because I largely ignore sports altogether.

4) Roundabouts are called "rotaries" in Boston. They're not as prevalent as in Britain, but they're not unused. I have no idea where this thing about the town square being a rotary came from.

That's what they're called in Tennessee. Honest to god I've never heard them called a rotary. Roundabout, sure. Town Square for the one I encounter. But never rotary.

Yeah, "rotary" is a local term and not used in the rest of the country... and yes, the majority of the ones I've seen could have a legitimate but rather small green area stuck in the middle of it... if you could ever manage to cross the traffic in them. I'm largely of the opinion that they're an abomination, but that might just be because the only way to get into the one closest to where I lived when growing up was to wait for someone to take the exit that corresponded to your entrance and leave a hole in the stream of swirling cars.

14) This depends -- but New Yorkers (like my grandparents) call it a "New York" stop, and my dad complains that Boston drivers make a fine art out of running red lights.

Running reds isn't common here...unless you count making a right turn on a red. We do that all the time, and down here in the South it's perfectly legal unless posted otherwise.

Boston (and New York, for that matter, I'm pretty sure, but I'm familiar with Boston) has notoriously aggressive drivers. Right on red is normally legal, of course, but some people think you can cram another left turn into the 2 seconds between when your yellow light turns red and the other direction's red light turns green, and the proper behavior when the light is yellow is to floor it.

 

[JDKJ]

Also, a question for everyone: Who all do you think qualifies as a "Yank"? I've met a few people who take offense at including anyone who's not a New Yorker or New Englander in that. (And I may have met someone who said it was only New Yorkers.)

Being from the south, I would say that anyone who lives in a state was part of the union during the civil war is a Yankee. But we (including me) just use it as a joke these days, seeing as how we don't like slavery anymore either.

Yeah, it wasn't serious offense... Just insistence that it was a regional qualifier and not a national qualifier.

To foreigners, a Yankee is an American
To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.
To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner.
To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander.
To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.
And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast. -- E. B. White

It's odd that he picked Vermont, considering, etymologically, it really is a New Yorker. (From "Jan Kees", a Dutch equivalent of "John Doe", the way I heard it...) It's pretty much dead-on about a Yankee generally being a group not including oneself, though.

If you're gonna pitch rocks, you don't usually pitch them at yourself.

He probably picked Vermont to work in the "pie for breakfast" punchline. They really do eat pie for breakfast in Vermont.

 

[JDKJ]

You'd be surprised... ESPN has actually started showing a remarkable amount of Soccer, based on the televisions where I eat lunch. I wouldn't know for sure whether it's just some big event right now, though, because I largely ignore sports altogether.

I live in Los Angeles and I get more football on cable than I know what to do with sometimes. I get live Premier League and MLS and World Cup qualifying on Fox Sports Network and all sortsa underground leagues like CONCACAF and Liga Mexicana on the Spanish stations -- which I kinda like watching just to hear Andres Cantor scream, "Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!! Gol! Gol! Gol!

 

[Psymon138]

Just how bad is knife crime in the UK? I know the US gets a lot of flak for having loose gun laws, but I've read statistics and heard anecdotes from English friends that seem to indicate the UK is just as bad... people just prefer a different weapon.

I personally have been robbed at gunpoint twice, but only because I lived in a really bad neighborhood during college, but it dawned on me that actually USING a gun on someone is a huge risk because of the incredible noise it generates and the probable proximity of others in an urban area. But then I was hearing stories from English friends that a criminal strategy in the UK is to stab someone right off the bat, and then rob them.

I also have English friends who have told me they would literally lay down their lives for a number of not-very-expensive personal effects. Is it seriously that bad in the city?

It varies from place to place. Parts of London have it bad, Glasgow is somewhat notorious, as are some other inner city areas. The majority of the countries quite safe, no matter what the Daily Mail would have us believe.

I grew up in Croydon. For those who don't know, it's one of the Boroughs of London. It has a highest population of any of the Boroughs (over 300,000 last I checked) and something of a bad reputation regarding knife crime, and crime in general really. You used to hear about stabbings every week or so and theft/mugging was more common. But things are improving, it seems to have gotten less common over the past few years. I've only been on the receiving end of it once, on the train home. I know other people who've been attacked, one friend of mine has scars up her arm from fending off a knife attack.

 

[Ris]

Just how bad is knife crime in the UK? I know the US gets a lot of flak for having loose gun laws, but I've read statistics and heard anecdotes from English friends that seem to indicate the UK is just as bad... people just prefer a different weapon.

I personally have been robbed at gunpoint twice, but only because I lived in a really bad neighborhood during college, but it dawned on me that actually USING a gun on someone is a huge risk because of the incredible noise it generates and the probable proximity of others in an urban area. But then I was hearing stories from English friends that a criminal strategy in the UK is to stab someone right off the bat, and then rob them.

I also have English friends who have told me they would literally lay down their lives for a number of not-very-expensive personal effects. Is it seriously that bad in the city?

A lot of it is media hype. There are areas in England that have become notorious for it, just as there are areas notorious for gang-related gun crime; but I don't think either can or should be taken as representative of the country as a whole. In fact, as someone who's travelled about the country quite a lot I'd say that if you don't live in London you'd be forgiven for wondering what all the recent fuss is about.

That's not to say that there aren't high crime areas outside of London; just, well, what country doesn't have high crime areas?

 

[SemiHumanTarget]

True. Although, relatively speaking, Japan doesn't really have any high crime areas. I have never felt scared or in any kind of danger, even in the worst parts of Tokyo.

 

[JDKJ]

That's one of the upsides of having an almost completely homogeneous society and one which, to boot, recognizes and values its homogeneity. That homogeneity also explains, I think, why there's been almost zero looting and other forms of societal breakdown and dysfunction in the aftermath of the quake-tsunami. Societal cohesiveness is easily accomplished and maintained when the society is a homogeneous one. And the opposite is, I think, true: the more heterogeneous a society is, the more prone it is to social dysfunction.

 

[Biodeamon]

you forgot the maple syrups!
wait, crap the qoute didn`t work...

 

[Zykon TheLich]

[quote="SemiHumanThtml

 

[rickynumber24]

That's one of the upsides of having an almost completely homogeneous society and one which, to boot, recognizes and values its homogeneity. That homogeneity also explains, I think, why there's been almost zero looting and other forms of societal breakdown and dysfunction in the aftermath of the quake-tsunami. Societal cohesiveness is easily accomplished and maintained when the society is a homogeneous one. And the opposite is, I think, true: the more heterogeneous a society is, the more prone it is to social dysfunction.

On the other hand, one of my friends, who's an extreme Japanophile (and ethnically Chinese, which always felt a little ironic to me) complains that, as another side effect of that homogeneous society, they're xenophobic as all hell. He also notes this is going to increasingly be a problem because Japan's population is both aging and diminishing.

(They also did an amusing job of reverting to traditional ways when the earthquake hit, he observed, because he was visiting then: every store everywhere was out of rice and other traditional staples, but there was plenty of pasta on the shelves.)

 

[JDKJ]

That's one of the upsides of having an almost completely homogeneous society and one which, to boot, recognizes and values its homogeneity. That homogeneity also explains, I think, why there's been almost zero looting and other forms of societal breakdown and dysfunction in the aftermath of the quake-tsunami. Societal cohesiveness is easily accomplished and maintained when the society is a homogeneous one. And the opposite is, I think, true: the more heterogeneous a society is, the more prone it is to social dysfunction.

On the other hand, one of my friends, who's an extreme Japanophile (and ethnically Chinese, which always felt a little ironic to me) complains that, as another side effect of that homogeneous society, they're xenophobic as all hell. He also notes this is going to increasingly be a problem because Japan's population is both aging and diminishing.

(They also did an amusing job of reverting to traditional ways when the earthquake hit, he observed, because he was visiting then: every store everywhere was out of rice and other traditional staples, but there was plenty of pasta on the shelves.)

"Gaijin" is to the Japanese as "Yankee" is to the British. : P

Xenophobia would be a natural side effect of valued homogeneity. If we let the outsiders in, there goes the neighborhood.

Besides, it's one of the most densely populated countries on the planet. They could stand a little thinning of the herd.

 

[Fishir]

Sometimes I'll hear on the news that there is a huge muslim problem in Europe and Britain. Is there any truth to this, or is it just a media hype?

Edit: I do recall them getting upset for the cops having a puppy in a police cap or something.

 

[Scrubiii]

Sometimes I'll hear on the news that there is a huge muslim problem in Europe and Britain. Is there any truth to this, or is it just a media hype?

Edit: I do recall them getting upset for the cops having a puppy in a police cap or something.

Not sure what you mean by a Muslim "Problem". If you mean "are there a lot of Muslims" then yes, there are a large amount of Muslims in most large cities, specifically London and Birmingham are renowned for having extremely multicultural communities. If you mean "Are terrorists constantly blowing stuff up" then no, there have been very few real attempted terrorist attacks and successful ones are even rarer.

 

[Wadders]

Sometimes I'll hear on the news that there is a huge muslim problem in Europe and Britain. Is there any truth to this, or is it just a media hype?

Edit: I do recall them getting upset for the cops having a puppy in a police cap or something.

Not really. There's a lot of people from Eastern countries come to live here, but by and large they all get on with their lives and make no trouble.

There are a few groups (Muslims Against Crusades for example) who try and stir up the shit by various inflammatory actions, but everyone knows they're idiots, and I cant imagine they have a huge following among the Muslim community. Supposedly something like 40% of young Muslims want Sharia law in some areas of the UK (according to the Daily Telegraph) but that doesn't really amount to a full blown terrorist threat, and it wont ever happen anyway.

The only people who sincerely believe we have a "Muslim problem" in our country are fuckwits like this guy and the organization he belongs to, the English Defence League. Unfortunately, people like that seem to be growing in number :/

 

[Xanian]

I've lived exactly half my life in the UK and half in North America and before you ask there is no preference when I'm in one I miss parts of the other.

so my question to North Americans:

what is with the lack of "pub culture" over here?!

It seems impossible for anyone to comprehend the idea of a quiet drink down the pub! or am I just asking the wrong people?

Depends where you live. Most "pubs" would be noisy bars where they play loud music to get as many customers in and out as possible. It's kinda hard to find a place where you can plop down and have a cool drink by yourself. I think most people who just want a quiet drink pick up a six pack and stay home.

Regardless, I know of quite a few reliable bars and restaurants that cater well to people who want to sit, eat, drink, and chat with friends.

Patio service is probably the best if you want a quiet, unmolested drink.

 

[Xanian]

I've got a few questions...

1. I have little to no British blood or culture in me...so the whole monarchy, pageantry and all that seems very exotic...do you think of any aspects of our culture as exotic, or has it all been drummed into you too much by Hollywood?

2. Do Americans who visit England and the like usually affect accents? I had a few British friends who said we do...and it wouldn't surprise me since anything British just sounds classy to a lot of us over here.

3. Is the Daily Mail as much of a rag as I think it is? Is it Fox News status over there? Seems to me they're pretty comparable...

 

[Xanian]

Also, a question for you americans, do you acknowledge that we are your ancestors?

In that way that I'm of Mexican/ Italian decent...

No.