You gave Rupert Murdoch citizenship, he belongs to you guys now. 
Just to keep things fair:
If they get to call us “Merkins,” we get to call them “Strines.”
That is all.
Hoisted by our own pitard! :smack:
And the number one reason for aversion against Americans:
The Jerry Springer show is also shown outside USA
The thought of a country with people like that having nuclear weapons is horrifying.
<snort> It’s long been my belief that the participants on the Jerry Springer show are plants. Americans are not all, or even majorly, like that!
No way! I thought you were all cross-dressing vampires who want to tell your moms you have a fish fetish!
[sub]Jerry does a UK version of the show too. We’re just as bad. But with rather less wooping by the audience.[/sub]
I’m sorry to tell you, but in some cases they are. I’ve never had trouble understanding British newscasters, although some of them are more Midlantic than Queen’s English. I get most British sitcoms, but not all: Patsy and Edina mumble enough to make me have to rewind. Don’t know if that’s peculiar to them or due to the fact that that show is from the '90s, while most others I’ve seen are '70s and '80s. Movies, OTOH…I once saw a movie called Riff-Raff that had subtitles for the US release, and I’m not ashamed to admit that they did help. Trainspotting could have used some too, especially for Begbie. Mike Leigh’s films are within my grasp, but that’s after I’d been exposed to cockney and East Anglian accents in numerous other movies. (I could name them, but this is not Cafe Society.)
And on the other end of the spectrum, British-produced films portraying the upper class can be similarly unintelligible. I mentioned in Cafe Society not long ago that when Mr. Rilch and I rented Chariots of Fire (something we don’t plan to do again), we had to use the closed-captioning to understand the more posh accents.
But not everything confounds me. All the Pythons except Gilliam had stage training before they joined forces, so they enunciate really well. Brideshead Revisited was just poetry (heck, I could listen to Jeremy Irons read the phone book and I’d swoon!). If you haven’t, check out a movie titled Truly Madly Deeply. Alan Rickman’s voice will unravel your knicker elastic. And no, this film is not a ripoff of Ghost; Ghost was ripped off from it.
Oops, forgot this isn’t Cafe Society! Getting back to the point, yes, we sometimes need subtitles. Can you fully understand a Boston or Alabama accent? If that’s a problem, we’ll gladly subtitle our films for you!
Reporting live from the country where everything is subtitled, this is The Gaspode.
I’ve spent… about 18 months in the U.S. total. 'Twas mainly in Chacago and Fla. I cannot answer for lobley, but I will try to answer for the Europeans who’re not native English speakers.
America is great. It’s a wonderful country, with fantastic, hospitable & generous people. It has nature that is truly breathtaking (I’ve hiked in the Rockies and visited a number of national parks).
America has given us some of the best art & culture & popular culture ever made. NY is probably the culture capital of the world. Hollywood, while creating oodleplexes of crappy movies, has made about have of the all-time greatest movies on my list, the rest being divided by Italy, England, Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, Japan, Spain.
The talk about not having history or culture is bogus. The oldest university in the US, is older than quite a few European universities. The oldest city is older than… Gothenburg in Sweden, which American visitors find quaint and historic. I can argue that the US is the oldest democracy in the world.
And yet - The Ugly American Tourist TM, when visiting Europe, acts as if it’s all a quaint antique shoppe. TUAT will gladly eat at “ethnic” restaurants at home, but will always seek out McD/BK/KFC in Europe.
TUAT is also invariably loud - he talks in CAPS all the time. He also gets frustrated that hotels are not the same standard as in the US. (Not worse, just diferent).
TUAT is one reason people find Americans and America to be obnoxious. I was cured from this by visiting America, but they still annoy me, when they’re here.
English- speakers are generally terrible with forreign languages. This goes for Aussies, Brits and Canucks (not from Quebec) as well.
Your love for wall-to-wall carpeting (padded to be bouncy and soft) is totally weird. W2W in bathrooms is disgusting.
I’ve had great food in restaurants in the US, but it’s also surprising that I never had good pasta. It was always overcooked.
Mel Gibson was dubbed in the first Mad Max, for the American market.
I find many Americans to be totally geocentric. Many have very poor knowledge about the outside world. They even have poor knowledge about the US.
The way you can sue and take anything to court, is disgusting.
The overly patriotic gets to be a bit tiresome from time to time.
As for exporting culture: check out The United States Information Agency which, paid by tax-$, does just that.
Thank you. I’ve never had the opportunity to go to Sweden, but I’ve made Swedish friends through mailing lists, and I’m very impressed with their humor and intelligence.
Hell, they annoy me! 
I live in a state very popular among tourists and retirees, the vast majority of whom come here and complain endlessly that it’s not like ‘back home.’ (Native and near-native Arizonans instinctively snarl whenever Minnesota and Michigan are mentioned and one popular bumper sticker reads, “If it’s snowbird season, why can’t we shoot them?”)
Yes, and it’s very embarrassing. I believe that elementary school students should start learning at least one foreign language in the first grade (six years old).
YES! To me, W2W carpeting is dirty and disgusting. If/when I own a home of my own, I won’t have the filthy stuff in my house!
Oh, and about the hotels? I worked for years booking hotel reservations, and could not believe the number of people who were aghast at the idea of having to have a double bed in a European hotel. “How do you expect two people to sleep in a double bed?” Well, my parents shared a double bed comfortably, and so do my tall, big-boned boyfriend and I. :rolleyes:
Would you believe that when I was in school in the 1960s and 1970s, that world geography was an elective, and even then, only offered at the high school level? Un-fucking-believable!
Things I don’t like about my country?
- The overemphasis on sports
- The overemphasis on material wealth and ‘success’ as a measure of personal worth
- Our horrible education system
- The fact that college is so expensive. I hear that in Sweden, university tuition is free, you just have to pay for your books. Sigh.
- No national health care system. We’re talking about people’s lives here.
- Finally, the regrettable fact that Americans tend to form their opinions from sound bites and the Rush Limbaugh show and never pick up a few books to fully understand the subject(s).
Thanks for the answer squish.
Been to AZ, briefly. Painted dessert and Ptrified forrest? This was in -85, and we drove Chicago-Colorado- Arizona - Nevada - California (with stops in LA, driving Highway 1 and stopping in SF) and then back to Chicago in 8 days. Some things are a little blury after 17 years…
In return - things I don’t like about my country:
- A holier-than-thou attitude. We often look down on other countries and people for not being so clean/well-organized/good on social services. Guess what? That was 35 years ago. Most European countries have bypassed us by now.
- It is well organized. Problem is - you can’t get anything done unless you work thru an organization.
- A refusal to face our own serious problems with immigrants and segregation.
- A tendency to look too much on how things are done in the U.S. and them importing the worst of it.
Yes, tuition is free on the state-owned universities, but there are a few private and they’re as expensive as the Americans. Then again - we pay through our taxes. Income tax is high, but not terible. Around 30% for most people. But salestax is a world record - 25%. Gas is expensive too, but is in all of Europe: about $3.50 -4.00 a gallon.
Helthcare is semi-free. There is a roof on how much you have to pay during one year (roughly $100 for medical care and $200 for medication.) But then, it comes out of our taxes, and the system is in trouble and going broke. More and more people are getting private health-insurance, basically because waiting lines can be really bad. My dad waited for 18 months for a hernia operation.
If you decide to visit - don’t worry about languages. Most people will speak enough English to help you guys around. But come May - September. The rest of the year, Scandinavia is like Alaska (north) or Seattle (south).
I would like to add that most Americans I’ve met, and my few remaining friends, since my time in college, are all well-read, well-educated, know a forreign language (albiet with a heavy accent) and have all spent time abroad.
25% sales tax…?!
Sweet God! That’s extortionate!
AND Weakest Link AND American Idol . . . you Brits have been slacking of late with your exports - come now, do we really have to go back to coming up with our own shows ? Has anyone seen Wolf Lake ??
The Gaspode, well, at least you get something for your money. Seriously, have you ever read P.J. O’Rourke’s book, Eat the Rich? It ponders the economic policies of several nations, one of which is Sweden. It’s been a while since I’ve read it, so I can explicate his findings, but I recall the crux being what you said: that Sweden takes good care of its citizens, but that the price is high.
I’ve already pointed out that Americans get little to no education in world geography, but there’s another contributing factor to our lack of cosmopolitanism: we have oceans on two sides, and the cost of travelling to countries beyond those oceans is very high. The countries we can easily get to, Canada and Mexico, provide quite a contrast in their cultures, policies, and standards of living. Mexico is appalling to most Americans, and Canada is, regrettably, viewed by many as the “51st State” <wince> because the differences in culture are subtle and easily overlooked.
eeep. I wrote, “so I can explicate his findings” when I meant “so I can’t expound on his findings.”
Squish Yes, I’ve read it. And I find the parts about Sweden to be true, giving room for normal journalistic liberties.
Nurses at Swedish Hospitals earn about $1.200 a month after tax. They’re quitting their jobs and getting re-hired by companies who do outsourcing (Manpower) and coming back to their old positions, making an extra $500, becuase the hospitals can’t find anyone willing to work.
I make about $1.800 a month after tax. It’s OK, but would I get a better paying job, making an additional $500 before tax, I’d get to keep about $180 of that. $180 is not to be sneerad at, but it’s not an incentive to really go look for another job, unless the job itself is very much more fun and carries a lot of untaxed benefits.
No trouble at all. Face it, a surprising number of you people (as you amply illustrate) have an amazing inability to understand accents that vary from your own.
There are some accents in the U.S. I can’t understand. I saw a documentary about some isolated Appalachian towns that had, and needed, subtitles. One of my college roomates Cajun accented Grandfather called to wish him happy birthday, and I couldn’t understand a word. Farmer Fran from Waterboy was only a slight exageration over this guy. Any isolated group of people develops a very unique way of speaking English, and if you arn’t use to it you will have alot of problems understanding it.
BinaryDome I have had a bit to drink (I have to say that to excuse any silly mistakes in my posts) but I don’t think it’s the drink talking when I say…
I believe that the majority of non-Americans actually love American culture. Some (perhaps too many) may claim to dislike it (maybe to inflate their patriotic ego) but the world would be a far more backward and boring place without the imported American culture that has saturated it.
Since I’ve thought about it more - I think life would not be worth living if we didn’t have ‘American culture’.
I may go into specifics and more detail when I am 100% sober.
whoops. I replied there thinking binarydome’s post was the most recent. I forgot about the multiple pages thing.
Anyway, the post still stands.
There is wall-to-wall carpeting in one of the bathrooms of my house here in Ireland. I’d never seen it in my 29.5 years of living in the States.