From: mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.europe
Subject: Re: English Words and Behavior
Date: 14 Oct 92 08:55:06 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept, QMW, University of London, UK.

From: A.Bulogiorgos@bradford.ac.uk (A BULOGIORGOS)
>Some words and phrases that have a stupid meaning in English in
>another country than England.
>
>Do you know that English people use very strange the English language?
>For example when they want to say chips instead they say 'crisps'
>while 'chips' has the same meaning as 'french fries'!  So if you want
>to buy a pack of chips you must say: 'a pack of crisps please!...'
>
>In England people claim that they are the only people on the world
>that speak English while they believe that Americans don't speak
>English!

Language changes over time. As it happens, the variety of
English spoken in the USA has changed in one way, the variety
spoken in England has changed in another. I don't know enough
Greek to make stupid jokes about how the Greeks can't speak
Greek because their language has changed a bit since the days
of the ancient Greek philosophers, but if I were to go to
Greece and attempt to converse in perfect Ancient Greek, no-one
would understand me.

>        One "sunny" day in Bradford West Yorkshire I decided to go
>        shoping to the nearest supermarket. Because I was going there
>        for the first time I asked a lady in the street to show me
>        where it is. This was the dialog:
>       - "You will go straight and then you will turn left" while she
>        was pointing to the right!

Many people do get their right and left mixed up. It's a very
common problem. I don't think it is any more common in Engalnd
than anywhere else.

>In the North of England, for instance, in West Yorkshire, they can't
>pronounce the 'a'.  They say 'ou' instead of 'a' in words such as bus,
>much, cup, love and generally words which include an 'u'. They tend to
>pronounce these words as: bous, mouch, coup, louve and so on...  More
>or less lets say the gorila's dialect.

Actually, this is how English was originally pronounced. In
most other languages the sound 'u' is pronounced as 'ou'. Are
you going to say they are all gorillas? The fact that in the
USA the pronunciation of 'u' has changed so that it is closer
to 'a' does not make the Americans any more clever.

>Have you ever heard of the word "Eurosceptics". A word created in England
>from those oposing the Maastricht treaty. It is like saying "Computer-
>sceptics". Do we really require this technology or not?  (Thats the style
>of a questions they ask in England when they see something new). A Computer-
>sceptic will say:  "I thing we don't really need computers to do our job
>better. We managed pretty well all these years without these blody
>machines..."

Well, you seem to be a Euro-sceptic judging by the way you
suppose the American way of doing something is always the
correct and best way, and the way your fellow Europeans do it
is wrong and stupid. In fact there is opposition to the
Maastricht treaty from many who see faults in it, but are not
necessarily opposed to the concept of European co-ordination.
When you see the Greek economy wrecked because Germany decided
for its own reasons to raise European interest rates, when you
see Greek food prices rise because the European bureaucrats
have decided that every country must have a sales tax on food,
when you see various foodstuffs and ways of life enjoyed by
the Greeks banned because other European countries don't live
that way, perhaps you'll understand.

>And that's only a small taste of the strange behavior of English people
>who believe their standard of living and their methods are the best in
>the world!

Actually, I don't believe the British standard of living is
very good. It's very bad compared to the rest of western
Europe. Neither do I believe a lot of British methods of doing
things are good. Judging by the interminable arguments over
Macedonia in this newsgroup, it is hypocritical for a Greek to
accuse some other nation of being too proud.

Matthew Huntbach