As an American who has read CSL closely, you would certainly appreciate better than most the great efforts that must be made by foreign readers if they wish to understand allusions and the countless little things that together make up the flavour of a work - indeed, to an extent, of a writer. Whether it is ever entirely possible to enter into the mindset of people from other cultures, I’m not so sure. For certain, I’ve never met anyone who has managed this, and even Walter Hooper makes no claim to have done so, in spite of living in England for much of the past 40 odd years.
Of course, this is an entirely separate issue as to whether an American - or anyone else, for that matter - can make valuable and insightful commentaries on and criticisms of foreign affairs. That they may, often to advantage, can be seen in the work of historians - foreign historians sometimes have the advantage of being free from cultural and especially nationalistic baggage - and even contemporary popular cultural critics, such as Clive James (an Australian in England) and Robert Hughes(an Australian in the US).
Garius, we need to actually get together sometime.
As an American, who enjoys British things, (movies, Lit, music, television, manners) I think one of the things that Americans don’t get about Britian is the idea of class. (social classes that is) Yes we do have some people here who fawn over the royals and I know there are people there who don’t. But I know ‘class’ goes much deeper than that, or at least it used to go deeper, back when the Conservatives ran things.
Class in the Potter books and I’ve heard people on this board who don’t understand why the house elves don’t just rebel or something. It’s because they are a servent class and they know their place. Heck they like it.
We do have ‘classes’ here in the USof A but it is run far differently.
We share a lot more in common with Britian then we do with other nations. We share a common literary tradition and the Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare, and King Arthur are commonly studied in high school and college. In history we cover the Crusades where we spend more time on the British side of that then Europe in general, the Magna Carta, the Battle of Agincourt, the rise of British naval power following the destruction of the Spanish Armada, the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, and that damn Hanover king who wouldn’t give us a break. The number one ethnic group in the United States in German but we still share much more in common with Britian than we do with Germany.
Still, I won’t claim to completely understand Britians because there are plenty of differences. For example, I don’t understand why many of them refer to Americans as “tanks” or “septics.” I’m aware of the rhyming with “yank” but I don’t understand the origins of this clever little slur or the reason it’s used. From my point of view it’s no different then calling someone a limey, wop, kraut, towl head, or mick but maybe there’s an acceptable practice of such slurs in Britian that I’m unaware of.
I am curious, garius, what myth of the American Revolution are you talking about? I’m aware that a lot of people think that all Americans wanted to rebel, and the assistance from France is dimly remembered while the Netherlands and Spain are completely forgotten, and let’s not forget the myth of the American Minuteman, but what myth in particular do you speak of?
The bit you seem to be not understanding is that it just isn’t a slur; the objects replaced by rhymes in cockney do not inherit the properties of the rhyming word. They just don’t - there’s no implied fruitiness when a staircase(‘stairs’) is called ‘apples’[and pears]. There’s no implied meatiness when speech(‘talk’) is called ‘rabbit’[and pork]. So there’s no implied poopyness when an American is called a ‘septic’
But… but… I’ve seen the baseball threads, and the rules of cricket are transparent by comparison! F’rinstance, there’s no doubt about when a batsman’s bowled out, but three strikes isn’t an out if the catcher fumbles it, unless there’s an R in the month, or something?
I obtained a copy of a wonderful bookm at a used book store. It’s Coping with America, and is a very dry piece of humor about a Briton’s impressions of America – a land filled with poisonous reptiles and temperatures far more extreme than they need to be. It was a British edition, and I don’t think the book has ever been published on this side of the Atlantic. It needs to be.
Well, to be fair, being bowled out is only one of about 10 ways to get out in cricket. Try explainng the LBW rule and how it works. (I’m amazed that the umpire can make the fine judgement calls that it requires).
But I suspect that the reason why people from baseball-loving countries find cricket hard to understand is becaue the game lasts for up to 5 days, and for most of the time it can be hard to work out which team is ahead. With baseball in the US, you spin the short game out by having lots of entertainment between the occasional bits of action. Cricket just spins itself out, and there’s not much side entertainment to divert the audience.
This is one thing that puzzles me, because I am not aware of any particular class system at work in Britain. The Harry Potter books are set in a sort of nostalgic 1950’s and have little bearing on contemporary Britain. How are British social classes, such as they are, supposed to work differently from those in the US or anywhere else?
And re “septic”, in my experience Brits on this board use the term far more than people do in real life. It’s literally years since I remember actually hearing anybody use the term. In fact I associate it with the SDMB.
Heh. A guy called Giles talks about cricket spinning itself out.
LBW? Easy. Read on:
"Background: The idea of the game is that you should defend the wicket with your bat, not your body. Since the batsman’s legs are padded to prevent injury, it’s a natural temptation to use them as an impregnable obstacle to protect the wicket. That’s not allowed. (Nor is the use of any other part of the body, but the legs are the usual impediment, hence the name of the Law.)
"History: Originally the umpire was required to judge if the batsman had deliberately impeded the ball with his person. Not being telepathic, umpires struggled to give consistent interpretations, so it was made less subjective. The Law has been revised several times, mainly to make it harder for the batsman to use his body as a second line of defence.
"The Law: You, the batsman, are out LBW if you intercept the ball with any part of your body, subject to the following escape clauses, all in the umpire’s opinion:
a) the ball would not have hit the wicket
b) the ball pitched outside the line of leg stump (as drawn to the corresponding stump at the other end)
c) the point of interception was outside the line of off stump; but if you were making no attempt to play the ball with the bat, this clause does not apply.
"Your hand, while it is holding the bat handle, is considered part of the bat. (There is a seperate mode of dismissal if you play the ball with the hand.)
“Clause a is obvious. Clause b is to prevent bowlers firing everything at the batsman’s legs from a wide angle, which would make for a dull and unbalanced game. Clause c, as modified, covers wide-angle bowling from the other end, aiming to make the balance between bat and ball a fair one.”
Agreed that you need skill and judgement to assess who is winning a game of cricket while it is in progress. Playing conditions vary greatly, though less than they used to. Sometimes a first-innings total of 200 runs is good; sometimes 450 is barely adequate. But that’s part of the charm of the game, like the time Hampshire were all out for 15 and when they batted again, made 521.
> As an American who has read CSL closely, you would certainly appreciate better
> than most the great efforts that must be made by foreign readers if they wish
> to understand allusions and the countless little things that together make up
> the flavour of a work - indeed, to an extent, of a writer.
I disagree. Understanding the allusions in a work is not that hard. Much of it allusions to other literary works, and a foreigner might very well know the literature that influenced an author better than most natives of the country. Much of it is about the history of the author’s country, and a foreigner might very well know the country’s history better than most natives of the country. In so far as there is anything difficult, it’s the references to the country’s unstated habits, the things that I indicated by:
> . . . what topics could be brought up in a conversation and in what order, or
> how to ask for a date, or how one orders drinks in a pub, or how one dresses
> in any given social situation, or how and when one complains, or how one
> avoids coming across as a show-off, or how the social class system works . . .
There’s nothing mystical about this kind of knowledge. It’s just that it’s the kind of knowledge that a native learns unconsciously in childhood, and it’s generally never talked about. Indeed, it’s the sort of thing that it’s hard to get a native to talk about. Even this can be learned though. There are anthropologists who study this sort of thing. A recent book about exactly this sort of unstated knowledge for the English is Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour by Kate Fox (only a British edition at the moment, I believe).
I have never lived in UK, but I find that I share this trait. It’s not like I go around shouting “I’m an American!”,but I find myself starting to use my great aunt’s Kentucky accent when I am in UK and Europe. I think I do this because I am susceptible to accents in general, and I am trying so hard to NOT ape the accents I hear around me. So, doing my Auntie’s accent (she has been dead for 20 years) is my way of being more American, I suppose. Please don’t burn the Whitehouse–it’s liable to get you into trouble, on both sides of the Pond!
I am going to UK in March, and want to stop at the National Gallery again-there is a painting of the Founding Fathers–but the caption says nothing about Revolution. It mentions the whole breaking with England thing in that damned by faint praise English way that is so biting. Every time I go, I look at it and chuckle, but I can never remember what it says.
IMO, the difficulties do lie in the social settings: I can discusss history and current events with little difficulty, but I learned the hard way that you don’t ask a Brit what he does for a living. Temperature of the room went down about 50 degrees Celsius! I don’t understand things like “Mr X is aiding the police with their inquiries” rather than “the cops are questioning him”–but apparently it’s some legal issue. That is the kind of thing, (well, that and slang–what the hell IS Pip? Ackemma? huh?) that I don’t get.
I would think that we (USA) would have MORE in common with Canada and Australia than UK. Canada due to the settling of the prairies, the pioneers etc and Australia due to the same, but also the ragtag folks who carved out a life Down Under. Britain is so very old-and so much is entrenched in tradition etc–it’s no wonder to me that at times we pragmatic Americans are flabbergasted.
Code-switching:
I knew a young woman from North Carolina, whose Dad came from England and often took her back there, so when in Europe she identified as English. She spoke American with me but in a group used a Mid-Atlantic accent. In a crowded Paris Metro station, an elderly British couple grew exasperated and shouted, “Doesn’t anyone speak English here?” So she put on her full Estuary accent and walked up, “I’m English…”
As they say in Wicca, “We are between the worlds.”
Code-sticking (as a linguist, I just made up this term as an antonym to the above)
You know, eleanor, I noticed the same thing when I went to college in St. Louis. When surrounded by the hybrid midwestern-southern accents heard in Missouri, I became conscious for the first time how Northeastern my native accent from Cleveland sounded. My accent seemed to grow even harder, tougher, and more Northeastern, almost approaching Rosie Perez level. Just because I was resisting the Southern influence in the Missouri accent.
Glad to hear I’m not the only who does this! I do it because I cannot help but take on the accent of whom I’m with. I can spend an evening with this Scottish guy I know–he’s been here 20 years-and I’ll start getting a burr. I don’t want the people to think 1. I’m pretentious as hell and think I’m British and 2. or that I’m mocking them. Hence, Lexington KY comes out (overlayed with normal Midwest which is tempered by some New England as well.)
Maybe I should be a mime.
As to getting into the heads of another country–I don’t know. I know I’m not a typical American (whatever that may be), but doubt that I could be become fully “British” if I lived there. Maybe I’m Canadian.
I think it would be easier to societally empathize (new phrase, just made it up) with a country with British roots. Then, European would be next (speaking as a white, WASP-there might be a Frenchie in there somewhere).
I doubt I could ever comprehend Eastern, African or Middle Eastern thought. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate them or value them–but I find them quite alien. I remember reading a book of translated Chinese folk tales as a teen–they made no sense. Western ones tend to have a moral–either the Chinese moral was too subtle for me or it was missing entirely. There was one about a bird in a cage. And then it died. And that was it. Remains obscure to me to this day–but that’s my limitation.
I suppose another question is: why is it neccessary to climb into another culture’s skin? Cannot understanding and accord occur without that?
