How difficult is it for an American to truly comprehend British things and vice versa

In My Humble Opinion
41

I’m not American, so I don’t completely understand the American Revolution either. But what I can’t entirely understand, and what perhaps Garius is referring to, is the triumph the Revolution represents and what it means to be a people that claimed their freedom in this manner. I comprehend why Americans would see this as such an important part of their history, but not being American, it’s not my revolution, and so I can’t truly identify with the way Americans see it.

That’s rather clumsily expressed - there’s a lot of subtext that I can’t put into words.

Another example I can think of is the place Saturday Night Live has in American culture. I was completely mystified the first time I saw Saturday Night Live, and even though I can watch it and even think its funny sometimes, I can’t watch it as an American does. Americans, whether they love or hate the show, seem to have an understanding of SNL which I find it very difficult to tap into - and I don’t mean the humor, but rather, just what the show is and how it fits into American culture. Americans may have no idea what I’m talking about with this, but believe me - there is something about SNL that you get, and I don’t, even though I have much of the same knowledge of the program that you do.

42

I’ve been TOTALLY immersing myself in “all things British” for about a year now. Practically abandoned American TV and exclusively watch BBC shows and British movies, and reading British fiction (er…I’ve been obsessing, OK??)

Even after all of this I still can’t understand:
Cricket
“Counties”
Royal Family/Dukes/Earls/etc pre-Elizabeth-the-current
The British school system

I am a LITTLE closer to understanding the school system having just read Stephen Fry’s “Moab is my Washpot” but still that was just one guy’s experience.

Re: whoever said that the English have a better grasp of the US Constitution than Americans do of the British government - that is perhaps true but we’ve only got less than 250 years of government. Your “empire” has been around since, what, 900AD?

Interesting to note: On the BBC program(me) “QI” the questions “who was the first English King?” and “who was the first British Prime Minister?” have been asked and no one knew. This was surprising to me, as everyone in America is pretty hip to who was our first president. Most of us even have a grip on the Mayflower-to-Constitution stuff. But it seems to me that British government and royalty are just as confusing to the British as they are to Americans :slight_smile:

43

“Pip Emma” is “PM” (as in afternoon) and “Ack Emma” is “AM” (as in morning). These are examples of the old British phonetic alphabet used up until about 1940 - I doubt if anyone has said them in actual conversation for fifty, if not sixty, years, but I may be wrong. I’ve certainly never heard them (other than in period dramas) myself, at least. (I have heard “Dim as a Toc H lamp”, but only from my grandfather). :slight_smile:

Not a question with a real answer - I assume that the “correct” one was Alfred, although he was only king of Wessex. And, after all, there are at least five candidates for the title “First President of the USA”.

44

Pretty much the same as US counties. They have County Government. They levy property taxes and run local education, police etc. They are made up of four flavours of Yorkshire, plus all the other ones that we don’t care about.

45

Ha! My county’s name is Cook and AFAIK, it has never changed boundaries, name or standing in my life. There was a GQ thread about English counties a while back–and I’m still confused–not from a postal standpoint, but what the name of any onw county evokes in a Brit. And even that is dependent on class, I would imagine.
Tevildo -thanks! Can you tell I read British Golden Age mysteries? That has bugged me for a loooong time. And for Agatha Christie to mention in one of her books, “the twins were to be called Pip and Emma, because they were born at noon” just confused me more, but no more. Thanks. I had never heard of Septics, but IMO, the snarky undertones just add complexity to the nickname. Probably serendiptously, I’m sure.
I’ll never understand cricket. Who is “up”? Is the purpose for the bowler (aka pitcher) to knock those lil things off the tops of the wicket(?)? or is it the man with the paddle’s job to bat the ball a distance, just prevent it from hitting the wicket(?) or what? And the scoring–Huh? It’s like tennis–it doesn’t make sense. What are the men in the outfield actually doing? Can there be female cricket players? I should probably start a thread for this, sorry.

Now, football (soccer) I get and like and understand–my kids play soccer. I wish the games were broadcast here in English. Rugby-also don’t get, but my exposure has been one game.

There are bound to be some inexplicable things in any culture–but that is not to say that natives to that culture understand them all too.

46

Sorry, forgot this bit. To me, the royal families etc get confusing about the time of the Georges. Then things seem to settle down a bit, and the post Victoria, forget it. His name is Bertie, but that’s not his royal title, and then someone abdicates and everyone loves the Queen Mum, no-one wants Charles as King and everyone thinks William is attractive.

I just nod my head and smile–makes no sense to me(well, the last bit I agree with). But as to just what the Royals and the Peerage mean to Brits, I can’t say. I doubt I could ever really get inside of it. Oprah had what’shisname, Diana’s brother on once–and it was so embarassing. She went all rural/village idiot on him, forgetting that she could buy 2 of his estates and have money and power left over. I half expected her to tug a forelock. So, maybe we DO have some understanding(of a fictional Britain 100 years ago), but it’s latent. Am wandering OT, so I’ll shut up.

As for Dukes and Earls etc–I find them fascinating. There was that one Duke (again, forgot his name, sorry-Portland!) that was eccentric to say the least and kept wigs in boxes and empty rooms and wouldn’t let anyone see him. Wealth +mental illness=eccentricity. Nice.

47

Here’s a very good site that explains the similarities and differences between cricket and baseball. To answer your specific question - “It depends what stage the game is at.” There are times when the bowling side will want to concentrate on getting the batsman out, there are times when stopping him from scoring runs is more important, there are times when a batsman will have to risk being dismissed in order to get lots of runs, there are times when he needs to stay at all costs in rather than advance the score.

Oh, and “up” isn’t a cricketing term - although you might, say, describe a team as being “2-1 up” in a series, that’s just a general term applicable to any sport.

48

I’m going to have to see how far I get with this one:

Caught out (obvious, surely)
Run out (the wicket you’re running to hit with the ball)
Stumped (your wicket hit with the ball by the wicket-keeper, while you’re stood beyond the crease)
LBW (see elsewhere :slight_smile: )
Caught & bowled (bowler catches the ball - I don’t know if this is actually treated as a separate one)
Retired (i.e. injured)
Handled the ball (the rarest of all)

Ten? My god, what are all of the others?

The role of counties in local government is mostly incidental. It’s about local (and often historical) identity - nobody would identify themselves as ‘South Yorkshiremen’, even though that’s where their council tax goes.

Yep, it’s about class! It’s also a very complex thing about local identities, which is hard to describe without being very opinionated.

Yes, there’s women’s cricket, but its status is even lower than women’s football.

I saw one American have a moment of realisation, when they said “Oh, it’s like football, but they just keep going”. (I’m paraphrasing!)

49

(Had to google it - you can also get out for: hit wicket, obstructing the field, hit the ball twice, and timed out…nothing you need to worry about in most games :wink: )

50

Oh, and bowled O_o (caught & bowled isn’t separate)

51

What about plain bowled? And I think another two may be obstructing a fieldsman and excessive delay on the part of the batsman.

I imagine one could write a PhD thesis on this one.

52

Yeah, but if QI were an American show the answer to question “who was the first president of the United States?” would be “Peyton Randolph” or something. The whole premise of QI is to ask questions to which the obvious answer is “wrong” on some technicality.

I think you’re right that Americans are better-versed in their recent history than the British, partly because all (non-Native) American history is comparatively recent, and partly because it seems to be more important to Americans to drum into their children an appreciation of a particular version of that history. Americans are more patriotic and more attached to their nation’s mythology.

53

I think you’ll find that’s pronounced “One could comission a BBC2 series on this one”

54

IMHO, rugby is what American football should be. Here we give them all kinds of padding etc–and slow the damned game down. I’ve seen glaciers move more quickly than football games…

The game I saw (years ago) involved a great deal of mud and a player losing his shorts entirely. IMS, his team made a kind of scrum around him, and he changed his shorts right on the field.

Now, that’s an interesting sport!

There is also the whole accent thing that we don’t share. Americans have maybe 5 stereotypical accents (I’m sure I’ll be corrected on this): Brooklyn/NY, South=hick/rural, West=cowboy/rustic, Valley Girl=brainless/shallow/female or gay guy, Midwest=nasal/narrowminded.(I kept this to whites to keep it simpler)
I just made those attributes up and am not willing to go to the wall for any of them, but in UK–my god! You have people with RP, people with RP who are not succeeding at RP and hence are mocked, those whose accents are as plummy as can be, but ape lower class accents as a type of rebellion against their own class, people with traces of Scots (Edinburgh), London and Liverpool (I made that up as well)…my point is that the accents are as complex as the counties–and I can’t tell one from another. I can tell that they sound different, sure–but I can’t identify them (except cockney and even that’s not as easy as one would think).

Mrs Doubtfire is a silly movie, but in it, Pierce Brosnan queries Robin Williams on his “muddied accent”. UNTIL he said that-I was thinking that Mrs D was doing a fairly good job at passing for British. :eek:

55

You’re very right to observe that accents are intertwined with both class and regional origin. Many many people genuinely have ‘muddied accents’. These can be from simply having lived in different places (I teach one kid with an Oldham/Suffolk mix, and it’s a strange thing to hear, at least to anyone who’s spent time with both in their pure form). There’s those who have a clear aspiration to be part of a particular class-based group, whom often revert to their natural accent when they’ve had a few drinks. Upper classes mostly have less regional differences, but have a different accent again which identifies their status. And everyone, from Tony Blair to yours truly, has an accent that varies dramatically and subconciously, depending on the people they’re speaking to.

56

How do you keep it all straight?

:slight_smile:
Again, this is something that you either must grow up immersed in or study for yonks.

But a linguist might say the same about the subtlies of American regional accents-and Canadian as well.
Isn’t it true that alot of the stronger accents are being diluted what with BBC-speak and RP?

57

Haha. My school library has a copy in the stacks. You just paid more than I have to.

58

As in “On BBC 2 now Episode 3 of “George I” the new 116 part serial about the famous English King who hasn’t been done yet.”?

59

There are ten ways of being dismissed:

Bowled
Timed Out
Caught
Handled the ball
Hit the ball twice
Hit wicket
Leg before wicket
Obstructing the field
Run out
Stumped

Additionally, there is another way of being out, dealt with under Law 2.9 ‘Batsman leaving the field or retiring’. If a batsman retires because of illness, injury or any other unavoidable cause, he can resume his innings on the fall of a wicket or the retirment of another batsman. If he doesn’t resume, his innings is recorded as Retired ‘not out’.

However, if a batsman retires for any reason other than those mantioned above (e.g. he feels very tired), he many only resume his innings with the consent of the opposing captain (which, unless the guy is too nice or too stupid, is very unlikely). If for any reason he does not resume his innings, it is to be recorded as Retired ‘out’.

Technically, he’s not ‘dismissed’ as such, but he is out. So, it’s generally considered that there are ten ways of being dismissed, but eleven ways of being out.

Just one other comment. As already noted, the law-makers have fiddled with the LBW law quite a bit over the years. The most recent change (of 2000) is still a cause of some confusion to players (and no doubt some umpires). Here’s the section, slightly edited for coherence:

“In assessing whether, but for the interception (by the ‘leg’), the ball would have hit the wicket, it is to be assumed that the path of the ball before interception would have continued after interception, irrespective of whether the ball might have pitched subsequently or not.”

This section was added to cover instances where, for example, Shane Warne was bowling, the ball hits the batsman on the full on the pad in front of middle stump when he’s pinned on the popping crease (i.e. just four feet in front of the stumps). In the past, most umpires who knew their cricket would be hesitant to give the batter out as he would be unsure whether the ball was going to spin a mile or not. Now, that decision has been taken out of the hands of the umpire in as much as he must assume that it would have continued on its line, in this case straight – but only so long as the bowler was bowling wicket-to-wicket. If he was bowling from the edge of the crease (up to around 4 feet from the line between the two middle stumps) then of course the umpire must take that into consideration.

Just on Sunday, a bowler who has represented Hong Kong asked me why I hadn’t sustained an LBW appeal he made, when the ball struck the batsman’s pad on the full (i.e. without having bounced on the pitch first) in front of the stumps. His understanding of the law change was that now, if the ball hits the striker’s pad in front of the stumps, the umpire is to assume that it will take a path directly from the point where it struck the pad to the wicket (stumps). Fortunately, the bowler was a pilot, and I was able to explain to him that, given he bowled from wide of the stumps and the ball invariably angled down towards the leg side, the ball would have needed to have changed direction in order to have hit the stumps, like a pilot making an approach to the old Kai Tak airport!

So, when you see umpires talking to players on the field, it’s not always about post-match entertainment. Sometimes we’re trying to explain the Laws in the hope that they will pass on the good news to their team mates, so that the number of appeals we have to turn down can be reduced a little!

For the Laws straight from the horse’s mouth, http://www.lords.org/laws-and-spirit/laws-of-cricket/

Best explanations, interpretation in the book Tom Smith’s Cricket Umpiring and Scoring.

60

How long you got? :smiley:

Everything from the tv shows we watch (sure we share the big ones but what proportion of tv do they actually make up?) to how sport fits into a school kids life is different.

As mentioned by others - its not a slur, just rhyming slang. No offense intended :slight_smile:

All of the above and more. It’s close to what Dora said. Again its not intended as a slur, but a comment on the fact that there is a pseudo-history to the events surrounding the independence that, to many americans, has become unquestionable fact. I’ve talked to people who literally could not get their minds around the idea that the whole country did not yearn for freedom, or that there may have been some external factors that helped bring about their independence. They can’t because they think (wrongly) that to do so would be to question the very nature of their country.

We have our equivalents of course, the Battle of Britain, Dunkirk and the Blitz spring to mind but none are on quite the same scale.

So again, its something i can understand, but will never truly “get.”