Oh yes, almost all the Americans I've talked to here hate Bush, and often are quite willing to criticise their country, but still, we go too far and they feel beleaguered and I think, sometimes, they realise a sort of new patriotism in reaction to our condescension.
Quite a few Americans come here to do one-year MAs or something of the kind, but you want your protagonist to be more rootless than that, do you?
Well, he could find temporary work here easily enough. 50% of bar staff are a mixed bag of foreigners, and 99% of newsagent staff are Chinese. (Seriously. And ten years ago, I'd probably never seen an Asian in the flesh. God, but this place has changed.)
Words - oh, everything. Bill instead of note. Check instead of bill. School instead of university. Jello instead of jelly, jelly instead of jam. Fries instead of chips and chips instead of crisps. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of Americanisms that send us into fits of laughter.
You see, we who use British English are religiously convinced that American English is an inferior dialect which should be trained out of the unfortunate Americans at the earliest opportunity.
And we yell at them for mixing us up with the Northern Irish or with the Brits and yet we still persist in calling every US citizen a Yankee, even when we've been repeatedly informed that that's very, very incorrect.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2004-06-18 05:29 pm (UTC)Quite a few Americans come here to do one-year MAs or something of the kind, but you want your protagonist to be more rootless than that, do you?
Well, he could find temporary work here easily enough. 50% of bar staff are a mixed bag of foreigners, and 99% of newsagent staff are Chinese. (Seriously. And ten years ago, I'd probably never seen an Asian in the flesh. God, but this place has changed.)
Words - oh, everything. Bill instead of note. Check instead of bill. School instead of university. Jello instead of jelly, jelly instead of jam. Fries instead of chips and chips instead of crisps. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of Americanisms that send us into fits of laughter.
You see, we who use British English are religiously convinced that American English is an inferior dialect which should be trained out of the unfortunate Americans at the earliest opportunity.
And we yell at them for mixing us up with the Northern Irish or with the Brits and yet we still persist in calling every US citizen a Yankee, even when we've been repeatedly informed that that's very, very incorrect.