Can we leave the gun control debates out of GQ? In response to the OP, the level of desire to keep guns for self-defense is unusual for a developed country, but probably not unique.
Steering back to the OP, how about All-way stops? I haven’t come across them elsewhere, albeit I’ve only visited a dozen or so other countries, and not driven in most of them. The UK does not have them as roundabouts achieve a similar objective, but better (IMO - oops, this is GQ).
No, it doesn’t. There is no English national anthem.
Back on the OP, I nominate wintergreen sweets (candy) and whitewall tyres (tires). Probably horribly out of date.
Wintergreen is still a viable flavor for candy; but whitewall tires started to disappear in the '60s.
That’s not correct. There are several patriotic songs associated with England but it doesn’t have an official national anthem. At sporting events where anthems are played, England most often uses the inappropriate God Save the Queen, at the last Commonwealth Games it used Land of Hope and Glory and at other times Jerusalem is used. None have any official status and they’re all criticised by different people for different reasons.
Please don’t tell me you think those things are uniquely American.
It is there for stool inspection, not water conservation. It’s for self-diagnosis of digestive problems etc. I’ve never seen it outside of Germany, however, but toilets that just flush the stuff away first time are certainly not uniquely American.
Skopo: I don’t know where Boppy is from, but the standard eating practice in Britain is not that different from what you’ve described. If you haven’t finished yet, you leave your cutlery balanced on the edge of the plate, with the handles positioned to make them easy to pick up again. If you’ve finished, you place them close together across the plate. The fact that the handles are probably picking up food residue from the plate demonstrates that you don’t intend to use them again. Wait staff usually ask before clearing away too.
lightingtool: “Sir” and “madam” are the standard forms of address to strangers in the UK, but they seem to be used with greater frequency by Americans, so maybe that’s what people here have picked up? I suppose you might be more likely to hear an affectionate word like “love” or “mate” from workmen, but it’s not that we don’t use “sir” at all (although “ma’am” is reserved for female members of the Royal Family).
Whether people know what New England means will depend on their general knowledge of geography. I’d have had no trouble listing the states myself, but I can’t speak for other Dopers living outside the US.
Oh, and as the equivalent of “sir” for use in the military, the police etc.
Driving on the right-hand side of the road: yeah, you’re right, that’s just yank-bashing.
Slavery: You had to fight a civil war to end it. Everyone else just passed an act of parliament.
“USA is number one!”: I don’t know of any country that says similar. In Australia we have the incredibly erudite “Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!”
Yank tanks: horrendously huge cars that guzzle petrol (remember the size of cars in the 50s?). What? SUV’s? People think they’re safer and gas is cheap. No biggie. Please tell me you forgot to put in a smilie.
Hollywood: the culture of economics controlling art to the point that 10 movies have to be made so that 1 can make a profit (because they’re using formulae to steer the creative process)
Governor Arnie: Nobody liked the current governor and his only real competitors were a guy who couldn’t get a campaign together soon enough to have a large impact (Bustamante) and the poor other Republican that kept getting overshadowed. Yeah, that’s my point. How can the Republicans NOT get a candidate together for one of the richest states in the country?
More:
One Yank was surprised to find that his USA currency wouldn’t have been accepted by the taxi driver from Sydney airport.
The “World” Series featuring one country.
KKK
U.S. govt. - I don’t think our federal system of government is unique. I think Canada, Germany, Australia etc. have similar federal systems. And the EU is taking this one step further. Australia uses the Westminster system for national government. Our states are run similarly to yours, though.
… and while Brutus is bringing up Ireland where it’s totally inappropriate to do so, Boofy Bloke is ignoring the place completely. Actually, no: the USA was a free colony of the Empire (pesky natives notwithstanding) but IIRC Ireland was an acquisition of war. As well as India, Kashmir, the Middle East, large parts of Africa; indeed a lot of places my forebears had their mucky fingers in… Did any of the have an actual war? I don’t know.
I’ve lived in California all my life, and I can’t figure this out either.
I’m Canadian and I recently travelled around the eastern USA and so I gathered a few.
Iced Tea in the US isn’t sweetened. I ordered iced tead at about 4 places before I realized that. I thought it was just incredibly watered down to save money. What’s up with that?
American small talk seems unique to me. Passing through airports and talking to people I found that they would give out tons of erronous information while seeming completely cold and uninterested.
ie: A lady I talked to in N.Carolina
Lady: “I’m really glad to get home, its my daughters birthday tommorow, shes thirteen.”
Me: “Oh thats nice.”
Lady: “…”
When I got into the Windsor airport to fly home, I knew I was back in Canada. It was 6:30 in the morning and the airport employees were all smiling and friendly, but not overly talkative.
The Nationalism mentality I also found a bit intimidating. I had talks with people and I found it was in my best interest to A.Not mention I’m not American and B. Not mention I’m not Christian. Unless I was in a tourist spot, in which case people did care.
Ah. Well, it would have been easier for us to realise that you were limiting your comments to “free colonies” if you had actually said so. Dopers are smart, but we ain’t psychic.
Ack! Unsweetened tea is definately a Yankee thing. (For those outside of the US, a Yankee is someone that lives in the northern United States, if you are from the southern US and you are called a Yank, it is slightly offensive. ) If you stayed much in the south, mid-virginia or below, then you would get sweet tea.
Bitter or sweet? Not much of a choice to me.
Another difference between America and European countries is that, while some of us take our sporting events quite seriously, we don’t go so far as to kill (accidentally or otherwise) each other in the stadiums.
And don’t dismiss (I started to type “diss”, then realized that is a colloquialism that might be misunderstood) baseball. I’m actually somewhat surprised that baseball hasn’t become more popular in European nations. In America, the national addiction to non-stop action has elevated basketball’s and football’s popularity above baseball’s. I would think that Europeans would appreciate the slower, more deliberate aspect of baseball. Perhaps baseball confuses too many Americans, due to the fact that it’s the only major team sport here that does not involve constantly rushing headlong from one end of the field to the other.
And finally, in America, “sport” is singular. In England, “sport” seems to be plural:
American: “I like to watch sports.”
Englishman: “I also enjoy watching sport.”
How can you describe (American) football as “non-stop”? It takes three hours to play a sixty minute game. And in basketball they have a little break every few minutes so the poor lambs can get their breath back ;).
and
Hmm, in New Zealand we are raised to place both our knife and fork at 12.00 to indicate we are finished with our meal. I found this to be normal in the UK and European countries, and guests we host from those countries do it the same way. Americans we host place them at “quarter to three”, which looks like they are still in use.
The only problem with the Americans doing it their way is that wait staff of other nationalities simply don’t know that the diner has had sufficient, and continue to leave the plate sitting there, rather than rudely interrupting conversation to enquire, while at the same time risk making an example of what simply may be a person who likes to eat slowly.
I’ve heard enough Americans criticise slow service at restaurants in my country to realise that this particular Americanism causes Americans themselves stress
The officially prefered version is “Ma’m”, with a short A.
No, you guys wait ’til you get outside. Wasn’t this thread supposed to be about things that are distinctly American? How about courts built into football stadiums to deal with rowdy fans? I haven’t heard of that anywhere else.
You’re right about the singular/plural sport thing, though, I think the word is generally plural for English speakers outside America. I quite enjoy baseball myself, but European countries already have a pretty full sporting calendar and it’s difficult to break any new sport that can’t be played in existing venues without interrupting their current use.
This is extremely simple: (a) Criminials vastly prefer unarmed prey. And (b) they tend to be rather well-armed themselves. In order to compete on equal footing (or gain an advantage), it helps to have a bit of hardware.
Speaking just for myself and my friends and family here, we are not so incredibly gullible and naive as to believe that a person who is willing to BREAK the existing laws forbidding the use of a gun to intimidate people or in the commission of a crime would nonetheless humbly OBEY any law forbidding the possession of a gun in the first place.
The real confusing question is why the judiciary is consistently so liberal as to return dangerous criminals to the streets, while keeping otherwise law-abiding citizens in jail for an eternity over possessing some cannabis. (Over 50% of prison inmates in the US are there on drug charges. We don’t need any more prisons. We need the right people to be in them.)
We now return to this rant about how confusing and obnoxious America and her people are, that is, until we are needed in the event of hurricane, earthquake, or some other catastrophe. (I propose that one might have a difficult time assembling a roomful of Iraqi citizens who sincerely believe they are worse off now under a growing democracy than they were under the thumb of a tyrannical crime family.)
My, some posters are getting a wee bit testy. In the spirit of the OP, I offer a couple of (hopefully non-controversial) American oddities:
Brownies–not quite cookies, not quite cake, but chocolatey and delicious. My sister-in-law was an au pair in France and the family she worked for was astounded that she could make brownies from scratch. (I have seen them a few places in the U.K., but, AFAIK, they’re of distinctly American origin.)
Biscuits (not the cookie kind)–quick breads (i.e., no yeast) that are a lot like dinner rolls. They serve as the basis for all kinds of snacks and meals. Sausage biscuits, jelly biscuits, cheese biscuits, biscuits and gravy, mmmm. While visiting a friend in Toronto, I made a batch of them for her friends (two Canadians and an Austrailian), who had never had them before.
I’ll just use two states that I know this happens in.
If you ask for TEA in New York, your going to get hot water and a tea bag. You must specify ICED tea if that’s what you want.
On the other hand, in Tennessee, if you ask for TEA, you’ll get Iced tea. You would have to specify hot tea to get the tea bag drink. (and you’ll get grits whether you want them or not)
Continuing the hijack briefly…
Yes, it does do that. Unfortunately, it does that at the expense of the equal protection all U.S. citizens are guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The electoral college means that a citizen from Wyoming has more say in who becomes President than does a citizen from California. This is manifestly unfair, no matter how you look at it.
Since my last post was a hijack, here’s one in keeping with the actual topic:
How about drinking glasses of (usually tap) water in restaurants? The last time I was in the U.K., if I asked for water in a restaurant, the response was always “Sparkling or still?” If I asked for a glass of plain old tap water with ice, the wait staff would look at me as though I’d spontaneously grown a second head.