Your ancedotal evidence reflects only, to quote, your own “limited experience” and potential confirmation bias. Further, it’s simply nonsense to contend that there is a “European norm” in humour. Do you actually believe there is a sense of humour common to, say, Brits, Germans, Greeks, Estonians, Czechs and the Portugese? A subtle, witty grasp of humour somehow shared by these disparite cultures - despite language and cultural barriers! - that simply escapes Americans and Australians?
If we’re playing anecdotes, consider this: I spent over 20 years in Australia, a year in the US and six years in the UK - including my current stint reading at Cambridge with colleagues from 47 nations. The Australians and Americans I have dealt with do not in general lack that magical European ability to detect “understated wit”.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that well educated Americans understand irony as well as anyone.
However, I share MOL’s experience that some Americans just don’t get it. More to the point, when you explain some instance of it to them they either look completely blank or uncertain as to whether or not they’ve just been insulted.
The first thing that came to mind was “yankee”, or more commonly “yank”, but I see that more as shorthand that can also double as an epithet depending on the delivery and the words surrounding it, just like “pom” for British people. I’m in Australia.
I’ve read someplace that an old Germanism for an American was Erdnussbutterfresser = peanut butter eater. Apparently Germans once considered it odd to eat peanut butter.
I’ve hesitated to refer to Americans as “Yanks” before for that very reason… and then inadvertently caused more potential offence by using “USer” as a short / lazy typing term.
(I often use “NZer” so “USer” was just a logical extension – didn’t know that some people used it pejoratively). :smack:
Mine too, in the UK, but it’s not intended to offend. It’s more an approximation of the way some US accents pronounce ‘American,’ which happens to sound like a mildly humourous word.
I do occasionally hear septic and seppo, generally not intended in an offensive way even though the origin is.
Paddy is definitely a pejorative term, though - an Irish website using it is just reclamation. The term itself isn’t on a par with n*gger, and you might hear some non-Irish people using it to their Irish friends, but those are the kind of friendships where you might equally hear them greet each other with ‘how’s it going, you old cunt?’ Do the same to a complete stranger and it’s a different story.
IME, people who work on construction sites and in similar trades tend to move from ‘stranger’ to ‘mate you can use insult words against’ very quickly. They’re still insult words - that’s kinda one of the reasons you use them, to show that you’re mates and don’t need to worry about taking offence.
Mind you, hardly anyone uses the word Paddy these days, and Taff and Jock are so outdated that any offence would be overtaken by surprise.
Being called a codeword for shit idoesn’t need a lot of context.
And usually septic is used in a group setting with one or a small group of unsuspecting Americans that don’t know the secret code. Somehow it becomes the height of pisstaking fun to drop the word septic in a deadpan voice into conversation. And if not picked up the first time then repeated in more obviously outrageous fashion with sniggers, knowing smiles, trying to hold back belly laugyhs and not spit out their drink. I’ve witnessed it from Oxbridge grads, Sandhurst alumni, real cockney hard lads, run of the mill twits. It goes way beyond obnoxious with adults acting like playground bullies ‘all in good fun.’
And in my experience that is the context when pomsey bastards use septic.
Dude, the rest of your post is fine by me , but the winky bit would work a lot better if you hadn’t said pomsey instead of pommy; even then, pommy only works from Australians anyway, and only Begbie from Trainspotting would find it offensive.
I heard me, myself, and mine referred to as “Amis” in a snide French covert attitude and snootieness many times in central Europe. It’s a very subtle platitude and sometimes insult.
Err, it’s not. It’s codeword for “American”. That’s how rhyming slang works.
The words themselves don’t matter as long as it’s confusing to people who don’t get it. Another word for “yank” is wooden - wooden plank, yank. Are you offended by that ? 'course not. Now, if your mates called you a Berkshire or a Swiss, well, that’d be mildly offensive. But not on account of the actual words used.
