VERY British BIL and SIL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP at 23:04, it's naive to say that cultural differences aren't valid unless they're extreme. There are no shades of grey in your world. As someone with lots of real-world experience, I've found that sometimes the most tricky cultural differences are the most subtle.

Again I ask you - where are the institutions devoted to preserving and handing down these tricky, subtle cultural differences? Where are the keepers of the British culture in the US?

I guess you've never been to the British embassy or participated in any of their events, or joined an alumni club or looked into the British schools. They are absolutely there and there is a thriving ex pat community if that's what you are interested in. You can also arrange to have British food stuffs shipped here and many people do.

[Anonymous]

Not to worry, OP. Once your BIL starts with the buggery, all the Brit stuff will come to an end.

[Anonymous]

I know someone raised like this many, many years ago.

His accent now is a funny cross between British and southern. I actually think he had speech issues land had to have speech therapy.

However, he is a really successful person. Multilingual now,travels, was high up in a govt contractor (lol, I’d say at least 40% of you would call that successful).

[Anonymous]

PP who claims that the US and UK are culturally indistinguishable is very wrong. I thought that too when I moved to the US from Britain about twenty years ago and it was a massive culture shock.

Some examples:

Despite not being a religious country (admitting you are religious, esp Christian, in the UK will lead to ridicule and is an electoral liability) Easter is a national holiday, with a four day weekend. There is no Easter bunny. The shops are full of chocolate eggs. Not like the ones sold here. Large hollow ones, filled with candy or chocolate. On Good Friday, you eat hot cross buns.

Christmas is all about drinking. Brits drink heavily and binge drinking is encouraged.

British people are culturally unable to brag. If you get a promotion you should down play it, if you mention it at all.

We play football. With a round ball. This is a predominantly male game and always has been. Girls play net ball. We don't play baseball or American football.

We are easily embarrassed and apologize if we bump into you or have to complain in any way.

We speak a different language that you may not understand.

British people wait to be introduced. It would be very unusual for a British person to walk up to you and introduce themselves.

We have a very different education system which involves specializing at 16. We think multiple choice tests are a joke. 60 percent in an exam is a very good mark. 70 percent is excellent or amazing/unheard of depending on the subject. Our degrees take three years and are more specialized than yours, but less broad. Many young people stop studying maths at 16, for example, yet are successful at university.

We have very broad food differences from tea to bangers and mash. Cottage pie, steak and kidney pie, Cornish pasties, fish pie, Sunday roast, Yorkshire pudding, treacle pudding, Marmite, beans on toast, jacket potatoes, shepherd's pie, fish and chips, mushy peas, scones and clotted cream.

We also have a different culture and national views re. guns, the government and its role, the welfare state, health care, police, etc.

Despite the allegedly common language, the differences are stark.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

WTF are "British table manners"?!

British person

My question exactly. I am a Brit, my husband is American. There are certain table manners that I prefer and that he is lax on. Didn't occur to me that it was actually a cultural difference. There are a couple of cultural differences around food/eating that I can think of -- we don't cut food with the fork; we don't leave hot food on the table while we eat a salad course; in general, we prefer food hotter and are less tolerant of food which has cooled off ... but that seems to be all I can think of.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP at 23:04, it's naive to say that cultural differences aren't valid unless they're extreme. There are no shades of grey in your world. As someone with lots of real-world experience, I've found that sometimes the most tricky cultural differences are the most subtle.

Again I ask you - where are the institutions devoted to preserving and handing down these tricky, subtle cultural differences? Where are the keepers of the British culture in the US?

I guess you've never been to the British embassy or participated in any of their events, or joined an alumni club or looked into the British schools. They are absolutely there and there is a thriving ex pat community if that's what you are interested in. You can also arrange to have British food stuffs shipped here and many people do.

British schools in DC market themselves as international institutions, not bastions of Britishness. Compared to, say, Persian or Chinese community in DC, the British landscape is barren.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP at 23:04, it's naive to say that cultural differences aren't valid unless they're extreme. There are no shades of grey in your world. As someone with lots of real-world experience, I've found that sometimes the most tricky cultural differences are the most subtle.

Again I ask you - where are the institutions devoted to preserving and handing down these tricky, subtle cultural differences? Where are the keepers of the British culture in the US?

I guess you've never been to the British embassy or participated in any of their events, or joined an alumni club or looked into the British schools. They are absolutely there and there is a thriving ex pat community if that's what you are interested in. You can also arrange to have British food stuffs shipped here and many people do.

British schools in DC market themselves as international institutions, not bastions of Britishness. Compared to, say, Persian or Chinese community in DC, the British landscape is barren.

For British people the appeal of a British school is that it is British and uses the British educational model. That other expat nationalities also like British schools is neither here nor there. This is no different in African or Asian countries, for example, (British ex pats seek out British schools) which I'm sure you'd agree are substantially different to the U.K.

[Anonymous]

Haha, this is awesome.

I think it’s hilarious you are so bothered by this

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

WTF are "British table manners"?!

British person

My question exactly. I am a Brit, my husband is American. There are certain table manners that I prefer and that he is lax on. Didn't occur to me that it was actually a cultural difference. There are a couple of cultural differences around food/eating that I can think of -- we don't cut food with the fork; we don't leave hot food on the table while we eat a salad course; in general, we prefer food hotter and are less tolerant of food which has cooled off ... but that seems to be all I can think of.

I have one for you....

Brits flip the fork over, tines pointed down, and keep the knife in the other hand, stabbing the meat or larger veg with the tines and cutting off a piece. Then they eat it, the knife still poised to cut the next piece. Stab, cut, eat upside down on turned-over fork, repeat. We were raised to cut several pieces of food, lay down the knife, turn the fork over so the "right" side was up (because why are the tines curved up anyway? To hold food) and then eat. I'm sure there are places in the US where the British fork-and-knife style is also done, but where I was raised, it actually was considered bad manners to eat that way, with the fork upside down and the knife always in the other hand. My grandmother once saw my brother doing it and told him that it was how people ate if they were in a huge hurry to get back to their job and didn't have time to cut a few pieces and lay down the knife. I never saw anyone eat like that at people's houses, school or when I got to college....Call it snobby if you will, but I never lost the feeling that it seemed rushed.

I'm married to an Englishman. We go to England at least annually, sometimes more often. And it still nags at me when everyone's eating with the fork flipped over. I know! It's nothing! But it's a cultural difference to me. Now it's just funny to me. But I cannot bring myself to eat like that even after all these years!

[Anonymous]

Is the husband even wealthy? Sounds like a peasant-class lad overcompensating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
As an international family, who knows lot of other international families, I hope you understand that we have to be VERY protective of our native countries' cultures and habits. We take it very seriously. It has nothing to do with bias against the USA.

This is because the host country will be PREDOMINANT in our children's lives. The host culture will seep in without any kind of effort, while the language, manners and cultures of the countries of origin have to be force-fed in order to be integrated completely.

I lived in foreign countries as a child (foreign to my parents' origins), and absorbed my host countries' cultures so easily! Meanwhile my mother had a terrible time trying to teach me her language and culture. My father abandoned any efforts to teach me his language, although he cooked his country's foods.

So now my children live in the USA, despite the fact that neither myself nor my husband are originally from this country, and we listen to our country's news in the language, we pay for a weekend school for our kids where they can get one of our native languages taught by teachers with a diploma from our country, and generally expose them to all kinds of cultural things from our countries.

I'm not saying these people you know aren't going a little too far. Maybe they are. But it's better to start out this way, because Americanisms will quickly engulf all their efforts once their child starts school, even if they find an international or British school.

This. As a french person raising my kids in the US with my American husband I am very protective of my kids french culture and invest a lot of time and efforts to make this side of them as strong and ingrained as possible. Not at all because I have anything against the American culture but because I want my ykids to be real dual citizens and the American culture is already the dominant one, with school crushing almost all my efforts. Goliath versus David...And I think a dual culture is wonderful and maybe one day our job will move us to Europe and it will be the other way around...

I also haven't asked for American,citizenship yet. Again not because I feel too good for it but because 1/ I am not ready, I put a high value on citizenship and still feel like a foreigner inside, one day I will be ready; 2/ if I happen to leave before I am ready (divorce? Work change?) I don't want to have to deal with the crazy IRS rules that make you owe us taxes wherever you live even if you pay taxes in another country (seriously that's crazy?? And I am not an anti tax republican)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP who claims that the US and UK are culturally indistinguishable is very wrong. I thought that too when I moved to the US from Britain about twenty years ago and it was a massive culture shock.

Some examples:

Despite not being a religious country (admitting you are religious, esp Christian, in the UK will lead to ridicule and is an electoral liability) Easter is a national holiday, with a four day weekend. There is no Easter bunny. The shops are full of chocolate eggs. Not like the ones sold here. Large hollow ones, filled with candy or chocolate. On Good Friday, you eat hot cross buns.

Christmas is all about drinking. Brits drink heavily and binge drinking is encouraged.

British people are culturally unable to brag. If you get a promotion you should down play it, if you mention it at all.

We play football. With a round ball. This is a predominantly male game and always has been. Girls play net ball. We don't play baseball or American football.

We are easily embarrassed and apologize if we bump into you or have to complain in any way.

We speak a different language that you may not understand.

British people wait to be introduced. It would be very unusual for a British person to walk up to you and introduce themselves.

We have a very different education system which involves specializing at 16. We think multiple choice tests are a joke. 60 percent in an exam is a very good mark. 70 percent is excellent or amazing/unheard of depending on the subject. Our degrees take three years and are more specialized than yours, but less broad. Many young people stop studying maths at 16, for example, yet are successful at university.

We have very broad food differences from tea to bangers and mash. Cottage pie, steak and kidney pie, Cornish pasties, fish pie, Sunday roast, Yorkshire pudding, treacle pudding, Marmite, beans on toast, jacket potatoes, shepherd's pie, fish and chips, mushy peas, scones and clotted cream.

We also have a different culture and national views re. guns, the government and its role, the welfare state, health care, police, etc.

Despite the allegedly common language, the differences are stark.

All true, PP. My husband is British. I'll also add that the British are excellent at self organizing an orderly queue. Humor typically involves a combination of self deprecation, sarcasm, and great delight at "taking the piss" out of someone. I lived in England for 7 years and found "sorry" is used when I would say "excuse me." "Sorry, do you have the time?" and food is described as nice, rather than tasty or delicious. How's your dinner? Oh, it's really nice. The other one that always threw me is describing someone's house/flat as homely, a compliment meaning warm or cozy. Homely is not a compliment to Americans.

My impression as well was that many people over rely on the NHS at the first sign of minor illnesses and ailments like canker sores or a cough rather than going to a pharmacist first. Americans generally go to the doctor as a last resort only after they've tried self treating it with Anbesol, NyQuil or whatever.