h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Can't remember where I heard this (and I apologise if it was this thread ) but this is one of those probably apocryphal exchanges that you hear about:

Young Londoner is going to New York. His parents, who have relatives "in the USA", ring them up and ask if they could possibly meet him at the airport. The relatives, who live in LA, reply "Why don't YOU go meet him? You're closer than we are...".

Which when it comes down to it isn't *strictly* accurate, but it's not far out.

SoRB

I think it was this thread!

Ah, but SoRB never reads my posts...

Interesting.

The stereotype Bumbling Yank is, of course, rubbish. It's rubbish in the same way that the American stereotype of the Snobbish Euro (who does nothing but listen to Opera, drink wine and complain bitterly about the world's ignorance while at the same time doing nothing about it) is rubbish.

Instead of asking yourself how this lamentable situation of the geographically challenged Yank came to be and how we remedy it, ask yourself where this idea came from and who is perpetuating it.

And ask why you are being told to believe it.

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How long have you known my grandparents?

Many moons past, outside the Tower of London, a fat man with a backpack and an enormous camera talks on his mobile phone:
"They don't have urinals, they have, like, a peeing wall!"

In Edinburgh last year... tall, overweight black guy wearing a gaudy Tam O' Shanter and loudly saying to his companions in what sounded like a Texan accent "I think I'm really blending in now!"

I can only hope he was being ironic.

The Queen as head of state in Canada? Yes absolutely.

When my mother became a Canadian citizen a few years back, she had to attend a ceremony to be sworn in as a new citizen. A part of that process was swearing an oath of allegiance to the Queen.

I tell you, that wasn't something she was ever asked to do when she was English!

"I can only hope he was being ironic."

- yes, he was. Or rather, he was demonstrating his sense of the ridiculous and probably having fun.

Unlike those Brits who persist in strapping on blank firing six-guns and a stetson and playing at being cowboys (and then saying stuff like "you all" in a broad west country accent which really and truely doesn't work).

Actually, I've remembered a better one...

The year is 1997, the place is Portree on the Isle of Skye. An American woman in a horrible yellow anorak nudges a man in a matching yellow anorak (presumably her husband) and points to a road sign while asking "D'you think the non-English words on the signs are Welsh or Garlic or something?"

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Pah, bunch of girls...

Ehh, and what's wrong with doing that Dreadful?

Err, well 'garlic' = food stuff the French are overfond of.

'Gaelic' = languages spoken in some parts of Scotland and Ireland. Equally, signs in Scotland are not, as a rule, in Welsh.

What Kerr said...

The 'Gaylic', 'Gallic' confusion is forgivable, but people calling the language 'Garlic'? Pur-lease...

Yeah, how could they be so ignorant...

Couldn't that just be a pronunciation thing?

Well, okay, Welsh/Gaelic might be a forgivable sin, given that on the wide scall of things the two are relatively close together. I would've thought, however, that an American would know that 'garlic' is a foodstuff.

Yes and Turkey is a bird, not a country. I don't see why it would seem unlikely that was in the name of a vegetable in one language is the name of a language in another.

Yes well unless she wrote it down as 'garlic' then that is one thing - she might just not know how to pronounce 'ae'.

You're also missing the accent out of the equation.

Regional accents in the USA can alter the pronounciation of a familiar word resulting in unintentional comedy.

Look at how the Americans mangle capital of Scotland.

or Hertfordshire. I grew up pronouncing it "Hartfodsheer" but any given American is going to say Hurt Ford Shy-er.
That doesn't make our hypothetical American stupid, it just makes him foreign.

Regional US accents can seriously alter the pronunciation of a word too. The woman who said "garlic" may have been from Massachussetts... where they regularly add an "r" sound to the end of syllables that end in "a".

Where I live in Pennsylvania, the words "root" and "roof" sound more like "rut" and "ruff". The words "radio" and "radiator" are pronounced with short "a" sounds, rather than the long "a" sound...I can't bring myself to say those words like that... so I will forever be branded "not from around here".