141–150 of 474 posts
My first thought after reading is that I fear for the author's safety. From the outside, this does not appear to be a safe time to express nationalism or cultural pride in the UK. The Internet is not free in the UK and decreasingly so in the rest of the world.
From outside this dimension maybe.
Americans often don't twig how many random american terms we brits have to learn the double meaning of and don't pipe up about. I'm not talking the well-known ones like cookies, but even things like "the ER" meaning "A&E" Sometimes it's their turn to repay the favour
Sometimes Americans wonder why English characters start talking about a basic cable channel when they really should be seeking medical help.
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Historically many (predominantly muslim) places in near and middle east have been very diverse, though maybe not exactly the kind of diversity usually conceptualised in the west. If anything, the idea of homogeneous nation states is more like rooted in the enlightenment.
The seeds were planted during the enlightenment period but I believe the raise of nationalism is generally considered post-enlightenment
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Historically many (predominantly muslim) places in near and middle east have been very diverse, though maybe not exactly the kind of diversity usually conceptualised in the west. If anything, the idea of homogeneous nation states is more like rooted in the enlightenment.
Also I see the Islamic movement in recent years pushing for Islamic homogeneous countries and driving ethnic, religious, language and sexual minorities out of their homelands (mainly into Europe).
Compare to today (often secular) European counterparts Arabic nations are homogenous and root cause was Anti enlightenment ideologies.
I think idioms and cultural references are fine - the rest of the world has worked out what US baseball and football cliches likely mean, people can decode most references with context. But there are some interesting issues with UK US english, things like 'quite' which works in different ways in each locale. I was also very surprised to discover the difference in what we consider a frown - which makes a lot more sens…
I read several blogs that use British English, including this OP's blog. Some of my favourite blogs in my RSS reader are British English blogs, or at least they use British English spellings and grammar. I find their use of the English language very charming and funny in a unique way. It surprises me that anyone would feel entitled to ask a blogger to change the variety of English they use. American English is only o…
(OTOH I don't think you should suppress 'false friends' like biscuits, pants etc.)
I am the only Brit in the department I work in. No one gets the cultural references or British idioms I use, and I've found myself significantly changing the language I use to a very utilitarian and direct style to prevent the endless blank stares... reading this blog post just made me realise that this self-editing has made my interactions rather more 'flat' and unnatural, as they now lack spontaneity, with everythi…
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That may be true, but in practice, US english has no taken over as the de-facto English. All thanks to the Internet. I am glad someone is pushing back on this, though, and I want more multi lingual sites on the Internet in general.
By your logic, chinese english or indian english are the defacto as they massively outnumber american english You just mean that you visit more american sites than other non-US english speaking sites
My guess is US English, not UK English, not Indian English, not Chinese English. Sure, they may visit some of those sites, but I suspect that the most frequent will be US English.
It uses the dd-mm-yyyy date format like the rest of Europe, the start of the week is on Monday (vs Sunday in the US), the default paper size is A4 (vs US letter), measurement defaults are metric (indeed UK roads use imperial, but the default is otherwise metric), the time format uses 24hrs (vs AM/PM in the US).
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Sometimes Americans wonder why English characters start talking about a basic cable channel when they really should be seeking medical help.
As a non-American I don't know what "basic cable" is (or what the other tiers are), just that you don't have free-to-air TV