To my UK friends: don't lump all us americans together.

[Jenova65]

Frankly I get insulted when people say I'm from England or saying I'm Irish.

I'm from NORTHERN IRELAND, there's some huge differences and just because Ireland happens to be on the same bit of landmass doesn't mean it's the same thing.

For an American analogy it's like comparing North and South Dakota.

But anyway, I've grown up with a strange mix of a Strong country and strong City accent and it sounds almost American some say, but oddly enough I don't feel as insulted being called American than English or Irish... I mean being called English feels like being dropped in the same box as ASBO Chavs, and that's unacceptable.

If anyone says to me they're from America I just take it as such, I don't have some general stereotype, just "Ok you're from America, fair enough, lets get to know what type of person you are rather than judging you from where you're from and stick a big label on your head"

Now you just did it too! :-S I am English live in the south and am not anything like an 'ASBO', chav, nor are my teenage kids, my husband or anyone else in my family, neither is MOST of England. So you are stereotyping a nation for one very small insubstantial part of it!
Don't get me wrong you are what you are and I understand you being offended because you aren't English, but am annoyed that you seem to assume we are all chavs!
This kind of double standard is what perpetuates stereotyping.

Apologies, I didn't explain myself properly, I was referring to how other people see me, the general stereotype for English (or people they think are English) Teenagers tends to be the drunken chav with an ASBO hanging around the council flats. I know that doesn't apply to many people and those that it applies too are the equivalent of leeches or mosquito's. Personally I don't go around assuming people are the stereotype their country provides. But what I meant was I am insulted by what other people assume I am.

That makes more sense, apology accepted (you put it way better that time)

 

[Camembert]

Doubtful if they knew any military history. Canada has proven itself quite competent at war if somewhat less eager to take part in it than certain of it's neighbours... although they did show up for both World Wars on time.

Hm. That's probably it then... that they don't feel like going to war at the drop of a hat like every other fucking country. Can you believe countries get derided for not going to war? It is utterly preposterous.

They should be admired, if anything.

 

[ace_of_something]

EDIT: I in no way am claiming Americans don't do this. They do the Hell out of it. I'm also aware of all the irony in this entire post. Don't bother pointing it out

If your aware Americans are just as guilty of this as the English are and the irony of it, why not ask for it to be locked rather than let it rub people up the wrong way?

Because I wanted to discuss it on a forum? Calling my friends who live on the isles is terribly expensive. So I figured an internet forum was fine choice. I am admittedly not a very good writer and not that good a debater so I didn't know how to phrase all this without the irony bursting out of it's every puncuation mark.

Fair doo's - I was about to rant about the hypocrisy of your post until I saw your edit. What would you think would be a way to get away from stereo typing and generalisation as a person who both hates it and does it.

It's human nature, you can't. I just wanted to jumpstart another thread on human behavior. It's more that I like discussing it and pretty much anything revolving around large groups and their social behaviors.
This may or may not have something to do with the [a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.177017-Ask-a-detective-undercover-cop?page=1]degree[/a] that is mentioned in this post.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Cockney Rhyming Slang is so ingrained in our language that a lot of peopel don't even realise that's where words have come from.

As an aside, I always get a laugh when an American realises the origins of 'seppo' and kind of, well, explodes.

 

[Vitor Goncalves]

[/quote]

I forgot to mention that in visiting other european countries and china. I was not met with nearly the same amount of assumptions as I was with the UK. Maybe it's because american TV is translated into their native tongue so some of the social values are lost. I really don't know.

You may be right, I am portuguese and we dont voice translate American TV shows or movies (except animation movies and ironically someone had the awful idea to do it with first Friends Season, didnt work well at all). But despite the subtitles most portuguese know enough about American history and society and understand enough of english language to catch the real meaning of what is said even when its impossible to translate that full meaning. And we do stereotype a lot Americans into several categories (the hollywood star wannabie, the geek, the redneck, the melodramatic talk show fan, the crazy adventure seeker that goes fishing 10 miles off the coast despite the hurricane warning, and the worst of all, the republican). But we wont voice it because actually we are very proud of considering ourselves the worst, most retarded scam bags in the world who keep shooting as their own foot over and over and over. And actually we stereotype somehow ourselves into the same categories.

Hollywood star wannabie: Ok I understand big countries with at least 40 million people can run several shows for several seasons to get new talents, but a fucking small country like portugal? Do we realise in our small population we cant have those many talents, and even if we do we have a small market, and even if they sell they wont sell much as we consider ourselves retarded and we rather be buying ABBA classics covered by a choir of 90 year old ladies?! We do realise but we are proud to be retarded and we still go for it.

The geek: Ok thats a concept that doesnt fit much portuguese, as annoying the neighbors and strangers is a local tradition so you cant do that and be locked in a basement playing games, reading comics and reading movie reviews, can you?! WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!! Portugal proudly got the highest ratio of mobile phones in the world that still allow you to do that and spam your neighbor message inbox with pointless texts. And thank god there is Youtube and facebook. I am yet to know any other nation with such high ratio of trolls then portuguese, with brazilian coming pretty close and when both nations join together in a thread there are more violent threats running then in the whole middle east, the hard part is find a non troll poster. So we almost dont have geeks, we instead have no-life freaks, and we also are proud of it.

the redneck: We have our own version of country culture and no matter How embarassed I feel about this one, apparently 90% of the population are very proud of it and if not a total redneck at least a part-time one.

The melodramatic talk show fan: Not only we have loads of them (how the hell do they manage to get public in the studio for aLL of them, let alone audience to make all these shows reliable, wait, didnt that old lady was in the other channel show, oh and she is on this channel too, oh and I think I have seen that fat man before, and the guy with the funny haircut, ah so thats how they can fill the studios in all the shows, courtesy of the last two governments putting our country in the vanguard of unemployment rates) we still import british, american, brazilian, french and spanish shows. We are proud of it, the high usefulness and reliability on the scientific sources to explain situations of every day low and mediocre classes of society are probably the big secret for our so refined retardness. We had to be proud of this one.

The crazy adventure seeker: This one puzzles me and think all portuguese. We defenitly have them too, we just dont have the chance to advertise them as heroes when they survive the foolish quests they undertake. How did we manage to cast 30 melodramatic talk shows per day and we cant convince anybody to open a local production department of national geographic, BBC wild or Discovery?! We are defenitly not proud of this one as it spoils our almost perfect retarded culture, but somewhere someone probably is allready working on it.

So basicly if you didnt have any idea how to stereotype portuguese because in many cases, and I dont blame you for that, you didnt even know our country existed or thought it was a spanish province (that one is a major insult to me or any portuguese as we cant allow our retardness to be tainted by superior, more advanced alien civilizations, not even the only one that borders with us), I hope my post was of help.

PS. We dont have republicans, instead we have monarchists wich are pretty much the same stereotype. And besides that all other parties are from right wing nationalist/fascist/neo nazis to the left wing ultracommunists/anatchists/radicals have their one section of conservatives/ultra religious fanatics, wich corresponds to the stereotype portuguese have of north american republican party supporters.

Ps2. Obsviously all these american stereotypes have no fundament at all and I have been in New York already and not only didnt find anybody falling in any of them but enjoyed everybody I had the chance to meet. As for the portuguese stereotype versions, I can proudly affirm its scientifically proven and I rarely meet anyone in portugal who dont fall into any of the categories, if not into more then one in many cases. I even know some proud members of all of them.

 

[foodmaniac]

Hi I'm Australian and I ride a kangaroo to school.

>______>

The one stereotype that would be completely awesome.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Kangaroos exist to be shot, eaten, and occasionally fuck up the front of your car when you hit them.

 

[ace_of_something]

Doubtful if they knew any military history. Canada has proven itself quite competent at war if somewhat less eager to take part in it than certain of it's neighbours... although they did show up for both World Wars on time.

Hm. That's probably it then... that they don't feel like going to war at the drop of a hat like every other fucking country. Can you believe countries get derided for not going to war? It is utterly preposterous.

They should be admired, if anything.

See? I thought it was a military joke too but the two points against that being: Canadians fought in all kinds of wars and did well. The other that this guy didn't seem the type (especially after spending half an evening with him) to know anything about military history. My guess is either he got in a fight with a canadian and stomped him. Or he was referancing the fact that I was about 4-6 inches taller than everyone in the place. If anyone knows a guy named Cameron in Aberdeen ask him to explain an offhand joke he made in a pub in like 2003 or 2004.

 

[Danzaivar]

Doubtful if they knew any military history. Canada has proven itself quite competent at war if somewhat less eager to take part in it than certain of it's neighbours... although they did show up for both World Wars on time.

Hm. That's probably it then... that they don't feel like going to war at the drop of a hat like every other fucking country. Can you believe countries get derided for not going to war? It is utterly preposterous.

They should be admired, if anything.

America doesn't "admire".

 

[OpiateChicken]

In my eyes, everyone is ignorant of accent changes in any other country.

I myself am English and I wouldn't be able to differentiate American accents even though I have friends from about 20 states.

I don't know about your statement there. I can accurately tell differences between regional American/Canadian accents, and can basically tell the difference between England's south and midlands, although I get northern England/Scotland mixed up. I'm not really good for Australian accents but can sort of tell whether the person is from an Eastern city or Perth (if there even is a difference). In French, it's definitely not hard to tell the difference between France French and Quebec French.

I don't claim to know a ton about any of these places, since I've lived in Canada most of my life, and Britain for only about half a year. But I would say I can tell accents/know other countries' culture better than the average person on the street, although that doesn't really apply to the people on this site because you guys are all very smart about most things.

fuck, this post sounded really pretentious. Well, I'm not. Just pointing out that you can't generalize people's nonability to tell apart accents and further generalize.

:3

 

[the idiot computer]

Stereotypes i've dealt with them. EXAMPLES:

-American"You should learn to speak proper English." But i am English
-Canadian."You wouldn't insult me if i were American." Yes i would insult someone if they start being racist to everyone else in this lobby.

Not everyone is innocent when it comes to this.Your age, gender, nationality and religion don't save you from the "almighty" stereotype.

I could give you more examples but the list would be too long.

 

[Vitor Goncalves]

Sorry matey but the English language has been evolving in England for about a thousand years or so, something that it is continuing to do today. That means that however it evolves in England is correct.

I'm not trying to be confrontational or arrogant but america wasn't our only colony, it's just the biggest and one of the youngest, the only one that won't accept second place for anything.

I respectfully disagree, I fail to see words like ''Innit' that as an 'evolution' ;-)

I also disagree as I disagree with any country speaking a language spoken by other countries. At the moment you spawn a diferent country the language there evolves independently but the language in the mother country also evolves. So if u track down english to the late 18th century the english by then was neither the same as present day british english, or american, australian, canadian, new zealander, south african, caribbean, indian, etc. So u cant really point one as the original, is like in biology, u can say they had a common ancestor, but u cant say that one came from the other anymore.

 

[Sparrow]

I only counter-stereotype. Say someone goes "Heh, you're British. Can I have some tea?", I would respond, "Well, you're American, so can I have a burger?"

[sup]...it actually doesn't end there, but my usual response is ban-worthy so I'll let the rest of you figure that one out for yourselves.[/sup]

I in no way am claiming Americans don't do this. They do the Hell out of it. I'm also aware of all the irony in this entire post. Don't bother pointing it out

Sort of a bit unfair though, isn't it? You've just almost accused the entirity of the "UK", which I'm sure you didn't mean as the UK (I'm quite sure you were just refering to England and nowhere else) as being anti-American.

Because you see, for every English person that's anti-American, there will be ten more Americans in that person's place being anti-English. I'm not saying that more Americans are anti-English, oh no. I'm saying there's alot more of you, obviously, so you'd be better off aiming this at Americans instead.

/rant

American"You should learn to speak proper English." But i am English

Oh, and also, this. As much as I never say "England speaks English the proper way!", there's not any debates on the fact that America definately does NOT speak it the proper way either.

Also, we're English. We speak English. You are American. You speak American. There is no overlap.

Yeah, this also makes it alot easier for me in some ways. Like I said, as much as I never say "In England, we speak English correctly", in America, they definately do not speak English correctly either. Therefore I find it easier to seperate the two, saying that Americans speak American-English and that English people speak English.

[sup]Though, Microsoft Word does that anyway, so meh.[/sup]

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

So if u track down english to the late 18th century the english by then was neither the same as present day british english, or american, australian, canadian, new zealander, south african, caribbean, indian, etc.

Australians speak Strine.

 

[Volafortis]

I live in VERY NORTHERN MINNESOTA. Only about an hour long drive to the Canadian border, and let me tell you, the Minnesota accent is pretty much bullshit. You only hear it from the extremely elderly, who either were immigrants or second generation. I've only met about 2 people that are around my age that speak in any stereotypical "Scandahoovian" accent. It's primarily a rather neutral American accent.

Although honestly, I can say from experience, there is your fair share of bible waving, conservative, racist, republican nutjob diehards to be found in the rural U.S.

 

[ZydrateDealer]

The problem with saying that England is the UK is that it isn't I know it may hurt you a little bit for people to make assumptions about you based on your nationality but ignoring Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland isn't the same thing. Telling us we are English is like walking up to a Native American and saying 'Hey you're one of them white people who came over on the ships' in which case yeah southern and northern americans are the same, just as Canadians and People from The USA are both North Americans! Wonder how that made YOU feel. Don't take this the wrong way I don't hate the English I'd just like my nationality taken into account then you can stereotype the fuck out of it and make me laugh my arse off at how wrong you are, stereotypes should be laughed at my point is stereotypes aren't worth crying over but a retarded sense of geographical insults backed up by a loose knowledge of the history of a confusing language is worth floods of tears.

EDIT: sorry for any offence caused in making my point! I must mean that because it's the internet what the feck can you do

Remember Kids: Normal Person + Anomity + Audience = Total Fuckwad
(this formula should be taken into account when responding to this post!)

 

[Boba Frag]

Well, I've never really stereotyped Americans (apart from some good natured ribbing), so I guess I'm exempt. However, you can't deny that Americans do it to. The amount of shit I got in America for being Irish, every single person thought it was funny to mention wife-beating. I don't exactly know why, but for some reason, everyone I met in America who I didn't know seemed to be under the impression that all Irish were brain-dead, bigoted drunks, and treated me as such. This wasn't in the middle of nowhere either, this was in Seattle. So, Americans can't be completely absolved.

Hi, I'm Irish too (Cork)
I was actually in America (Oklahoma) in February but thankfully I didn't get any of that. If anything I thought they were extremely polite and even when I was in a liquor store and the cashier asked me where I was from, we had a very civilised conversation.
Not one single jibe about alcohol, wife beating, hating British people or anything to do with stereotypes. He actually said he was hoping to visit Ireland on the way to see his brother in Edinburgh of all places...

 

[savandicus]

Actually, no, Americans use some different words for things but it is English and tbh English people are far more guilty of 'bastardising', the language than Americans do.
It is like saying that people in Yorkshire speak a different language to people in London, we all speak English but idiom is responsible for many of the differences.

The thing is though that people using slang or regional versions of english in yorkshire is expected. Evolution of language is a constant thing, all langauges change over time. If yorkshire people have enough people saying words that have accepted meanings it becomes part of English. The problem being that if an American person were to do that it wouldnt become part of english it would become part of the american language. I'm not saying we speak COMPLETELY different languages, but right now American and English are different languages that share 99% of the same words.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I'm German; can I stereo-type Americans? What about republicans, then?

No. No challenge in it. Try something harder, like stereotyping Fijians.