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

The Brits:

In US movies will either talk like David Niven or a cockney.

*Well I excuse AC/DC 'cos they've got a Geordie singer *

Walk around in flip-flops and muscle t-shirts thinking Earls Court is a neat place to live - and that's only the women

Oh yes - The British abroad!

The old stereotype - making no effort to integrate, nor bother to learn anything of the local language, persisting in:-

i) talking very loudly and slowly IN ENGLISH to make themseles understood;

ii) If in a Latin country, hopefully preceding every noun with "uno" and adding an "o" to the end as a kind of well-meaning attempt in the vague direction of Spanish - or as I saw a few weeks ago, Portuguese.

I thought both these were anecdotal and/or apochryphal, until I saw people still doing them - in 2003....

iii) drinking too much and chucking up everywhere and treating their hosts with xenophobic contempt (the Portuguese people I spoke to in the Algarve were very relieved that England's footie fans will not be in the south of the country next summer)

"The Brits:- In US movies will either talk like David Niven or a cockney."

I have a theory, that somewhere in los Angeles exists the Dick Van Dyke Academy of British Accents.

Up until quite recently, it made a tidy living teaching American actors and actresses to talk the hideous mockney accent emplyed by DvD in "Mary Poppins".

You know the one. The one that veers hopelessly between South Africa and Australia via the polar route, that very occassionally stops off in London to loosely anchor itself.

Recently it expanded - to cover English regions, as witnessed by the woman who plays Daphne Moon in "Frasier", who applys the Dick Van Dyke technique to the Manchester accent.

Oddly enough, when "Frasier" felt a need to introduce Daphne's family to the show, they didn't think to cast any British actors living in LA... they introduced a graduate of the DvD Academy who spoke almost perfect Mary Poppins Cockney, cast him as her brother, and left us wondering why her bro should be a Manchester man with a patently fake Cockney accent verging on Australian...

ah well, at least they tried, although Daphne should be tied to a chair in a soundproof room somewhere and force-fed "Coronation Street" until she gets the accent right!

AgProiv, Items

i) We know you can speak English. We sent you some missionaries a bit ago to teach you, did you not get them?

ii) Erm, isn;t that how it works then? Spanish is, like, 3rd on the list. Weirdo artsy types do french to GCSE (16 yr olds). Really weirdo artsy types do French and German. Rumours abound of people who's brains so so inextricably non-British that they do Spanish as well. All sounds a bit weirdo left liberal to me.

iii) not restricted to abroad I am afraid.

From experience.

Right wing brits will drift left and still loudly proclaim their rightwing ideals.

Time for the French, methinks.


Wears a beret.

Surrenders to anyone whenever war is declared.
Smells of garlic.
Doesn't wash *quite* as often as necessary.

Hates the English but quite likes New Zealanders (especially when they discover that they're not English)


(I must say that the response to listing English stereotypes was rather poor compared to the Aussie one, which got about 20 posts in the first 5 mins )

(Just fixing the title)

hell no one wants to know what the british are really like do they, but hey i am seeing 'the french coming up' hell thats a discussion, frog eating garlic worms, -ok i dont think that but thousands of people i meet do! Anyway about the english, i was suprised there wasnt a huge input on that becuase not only is there the english stereotypes there are certain subcultures which suffer from huge stereotypes, pour example, le essex folk

Anyone wanna bash at the Scots..? Not that it wont be something I have not heard before..
(writes checklist)

Yeah, but wait your turn We haven't finished the French yet

Cheese-eating surrender monkeys

All French films star Alain Delon.

The French....

... GOOD point (often interpreted as a Bad Thing about the French, but it depends where you're standing)is that they're a damn sight more militant about defending their national interest than we are.

OK, so you wonder if French farmers ever actually do any farming, or whether they do it as a sideline in between bouts of non-stop demonstrating, but the fact remains that France has a thriving car industry, a thriving shipbuilding industry, thriving coalmines, all the things we let "market forces" dictate to us we should scrap and get rid of in the Thatcher years. (Remember Thatcher, who if she'd been Prime Minister in WW2 would have received the Iron Cross for destroying more of British industry in the North of England than the Luftwaffe ever managed to do?)

The French fight like hell for things where we tamely give in (half-decent employment conditions, social security, student rights, et c), and see their country as being more than the 51st State of the Union.

OK, the downside is that they're perceived as stroppy militant Frogs, but sometimes I wonder if we couldn't use some of that militancy ourselves!

Pretend not to understand English, even when you speak very slowly and loudly and say "comprendez?" at the end.

Why finish with the brits so quickly? ..... and surely the scotish come under that name too .... so lets see ..... scots are horribly greedy and agrressive ...... welsh sing a lot and work in mines ..... And the english constantly refer to foreign currencies as funny money (while on holiday there), and, at every chance they get remind everyone about 1966 (and probably in another 38 years time will be going on about the rugby world cup)

Undermine international solidarity against terrorism by secretly handing wads of cash to Hezbollah to release French hostages, whilst British ones remain in captivity.