Sterotypes
 

Something a colleague said to me today at work made me think of how much we still stereotype people from other countries. For example, somebody from Holland is obviously a dope-smoking, clog-wearing tulip grower(!) What do people from other countries think of when they think of us Brits?

gay.

Rotten teeth.

Great trifle and Yorkshire pudding. <BR>Some say you lack humor, but I haven't found that to be true with the few Brits I know. <BR>Super at preserving your historical sites and buildings. <BR>Wonderful gardeners. <BR>Here's one American that likes you --- a lot

A Brit would have the e mail address yahoo.co.uk, you cannot have yahoo.com in the UK, so I think this is a troll written as usual to start an argument, best let it drop.

I am British! Born and bred in Luton. (Getting a .com address is easy if you've managed to follow a link to yahoo.com instead of yahoo.co.uk and registered for e-mail from there)

It can't be done "Alex"

Oh? I'm sure I've done it in the past. Ah, never mind. You are however, right really. My e-mail does end in .co.uk - I'm more used to my work one which does end .com and probably slapped the wrong ending on in my slipshod way!

You can open a Yahoo, Hotmail, Mailcity, etc. account from anywhere in the world.

In the spirit of scientific inquiry, I did the reverse - signing up for e-mail on Yahoo.co.uk from America. Works just fine! <BR>(Just what I need... another e-mail address!) <BR>Stereotype of English folks? Well, my beloved maternal grandfather was English (moved to the US at age 18), so I had nothing but warm and fuzzy stereotypes from the get-go. <BR>Currently, there's this weird dichotomy of somewhat prissy upper class types on one side and drunken football hooligans on the other. My grandfather was neither... a sincere, gentle, working class, salt-of-the-earth type.

Bill <BR>Alex is Welsh, he asked for stereotypes of British people, not English :-). British people - dry sense of humour, outwardly cold until you get to know them, dislike Americans and French (and are disliked by them in turn) and probably Germans.

How about stereotypes of the WELSH. In America, the average person would say "huh?". Cosmopolitan type that I am, I would say "live in towns with unpronounceable names."

When I think Welsh, I think Tom Jones.

Alex <BR> <BR>You are just asking for trouble here! There are some nasty people on this forum who delight in questions such as these. Along with the Americans and French, the Brits are probably the nationality they most love to insult - hence the 2 posts following yours! Expect more of the usual insulting posts about teeth and WWII. &lt;yawn&gt;

Waht's a "sterotype"?

good sense of humor; tendency to understate, a little tight with emotional expression; nice to their dogs; polite, always apologizing when someone else bumps into them <BR> <BR>The internet is the internet is the internet. Therefore you can get any web-based internet address (e.g., yahoo, hotmail) anywhere from a computer with internet access. You can choose to research yahoo through a country/language version, and get a country-specific e-mail, or not. Just for the hell of it i got myself an Italian hotmail e-mail address, from my computer at work in the USA.

Getting to know an Englishman is like climbing a tall mountain...it can be done but your tired as hell when you finally get there.

bloody americans......

But Al when you get to the top you never regret it and the tiredness soon wears off.

I was there visiting with some high end Londoners. My partner, whom they knew well and respected is a big wig, and knowing this a guy looked over and asked me how I get along in my STATION. As if I were of a lower class, that cracked me up to the point that I just couldn't open up that fresh can o' yankee whoop ass I brought along with me.

Ahhhhh... <BR>My "favorite" pet-peave...Stereo-types.

I suppose one stereotype is they have no sense of humor, but anybody who can come up with Monty Python blows that clean out of the water. <BR> <BR>And the infamous stiff upper lip - only way to explain how they took on the Nazis alone and withstood the blitzkrieg. Damned fine showing. <BR> <BR>Hey, let's not leave out Richard Burton when it comes to the Welsh. Do ALL of you have those incredible voices?

I suppose in that sense, Elvira, <BR>you're absolutely right... <BR> <BR>As you know. I'm a great Monty Python fam. (et al) In that fashion, stereo-types abound! <BR> <BR>I guess it's in the delivery. <BR> <BR> <BR>

Tea drinking. Obsessed with weather, soccer and pets. Euro hostile.

<BR>enough said!

Probably one of the best depictions of how some Americans see Brits sometimes was found in the sit-com "The Jeffersons" a number of years back. The script-writers and actors did a superb job with the interactions between George Jefferson and Mr. Bentley, the former being a successful American businessman who was black and the latter being a British man who happened to live in the same luxurious New York high-rise building. Of course, the entire show was really built around cultural stereo-types and it was fiction, but like it's predecessor, the controversial (at the time) "All in the Family", it had a message between all the laughs. And even though that is reaching back some time, stereo-types die very hard.

Oh dear don't you think that stereotypes are just lazy thinking. All human beings have a sense of humour, it's just that different people laugh at different things. Yes, I'm sure that if you look hard, you'll find some British people with bad teeth although I can only remember seeing one example, and I've lived in the US and have seen less than perfect teeth there too. <BR>And of course "all" Americans are grossly overweight, noisy and badly dressed. When you're in Europe you just don't notice the thousands of quiet, slim, nicely dressed and thoroughly delightful ones.

Brits are nicer to their pets than their children. <BR> <BR>Americans are badly dressed? This from a nation full of woman who figure once they hit 50, they are required by law to wear skirts and cardigans at all times. <BR> <BR>My husband's British boss (we were living in the UK at the time) told him to give me a baby, and that would settle me down (not quite sure why I needed to settle down). He also said that "You have to keep American women happy. English women are used to being miserable." <BR> <BR>

When I think of the Welsh I automatically think coal-mining and Richard Burton. My grandfather was 1/2 Welsh 1/2 French and grew up in the coal-mining region in West Virginia. So that's my stereotype. :-)

As a tourist, I think of Brits as the most polite people in the world. However, my friend lives there and complains that they are harder to work with than the Japanese! (He's Japanese, so he can say that.) Brits are, apparently, uptight about protocol and about wording things indirectly so as not to be too direct?

When I think of Brits, I think of other business men in french cuffs on their shirts and uncombed/unbrushed hair..and..why ,oh why, are their teeth so bad. I am gay and find the whole uncomfortable french cuff thing even too "gay" for me. I go there to various parts of the UK and to Wales especially for business. Welsh men are also better lovers than the Irish, Scots or relatives in the rest of the UK especially London. Oops, sorry London men. And why is everything "Cheers"? Although, I must say I was quite excited when a London guy told me that he would knock me up in the morning.

to the top..interesting thread

This is an amusing thread. What I've noticed about stereotypes is how they can sometimes be mutual. I've seen here about British people having no sense of humour. Well, that's exactly what British people say about Americans and especially that they need an irony transplant, BTW that thing about Englishwomen being used to being miserable was obviously irony. The Australians have the soap shy pommie, Britons have the Australian with sweaty armpits and corks round his hat. <BR> Don't you also think that we can reinforce our prejudices by seeing what we care to see. For example, a European will hardly notice a fat fellow European, but if they spot a big fat American it's aha all Americans are obese. An American will see a Briton with bad teeth and aha, all British people have bad teeth. I've lived in the USA and I've seen working class people there with bad teeth. <BR>Let's face it, we are all descended from a small number of ancestors, and all nations have a lot in common, we all worry about the job, the mortgage and the kids. Let's lighten up a bit. <BR>I must put in a word for skirts and cardies though. I'd rather see elderly women dressed like that than exposing their varicose veins in shorts and wearing white gym-shoes.

Hi Alex, a "very interesting" thread. <BR>Michael: In regards to London, I don't "get" the French cuff thing? But my husband did comment on the FULL windsor knot, many of the business men were wearing. I did not notice that either. I was probably trying to figure out the style of clothes that a lot of women were wearing in London. It was very diverse IMO. Judy