PP here. It's more that Americans don't expect to be wound up, because we don't have that sort of interaction here. Has nothing to do with taking yourself "so seriously." I stand by my contention that my Brit and Aussie relatives use flowery insults because that's more socially acceptable than letting your emotions out with "I'm mad at you" or "I'm jealous of you" or "you suck." |
Americans aren't very good at expressing emotions using those words. They use sarcasm and insults but most just Eff U because they have limited words to choose from. |
Nah, ya tosser. |
I’m British and can confidently state that I am no god at cussing or insults.
Many other British people, I find when I go home, like to insult or goad their friends in the name of sarcasm. I hate it and find it extremely unkind. |
Huh? Don’t Americans say “tosser” or is that British too? Means the same thing. I’m sure there are several others too. |
Yes it does literally mean masturbator! Look up the definition of both wanker and literally. |
That is very much untrue. It is also an awful word to call someone in Britain. |
I agree there is definitely a cultural difference on this. Aussies definitely use insults to take people down a peg or two. Rightly or wrongly, they probably perceive people who take themselves seriously as projecting a sense of superiority or self-importance and that is cultural anathema. Are they more emotionally constipated? Not sure about that one. I think it's just a different way of expressing emotion. There have been many times I would like to use a few colorful insults with humorless US immigration officials which would obviously be suicidal. I once commented to an Aussie immigration official how nice it was to see a friendly face after going through US immigration and their response was "yeah, mate, you can take your job seriously without being a tool about it". |
They've had 1000 years to work on it together. USA keeps getting new language speakers mixed in. |
It's just different connotation. British people faint at the word "fanny" |
Because of Shakespeare, king of awesome insults. |
OP, you need to check out the "britishproblems" subreddit. It's hilarious. |
Google Cockney slang |
Yup. I'm amazed at the levels people will go for their love of all things white. |
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7YCVSePryPo&pp=ygUXYmVuaWduaSBmaWxtIGJlc3RlbW1pYSA%3D |