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narcasseI was going to have a rant about that strange British attitude that tabloids seem to like to promote which suggests that we have nothing what so ever to do with Europe. The one where they try to tell you that British culture is actually identical to American because we speak a variant of the same language.
In fact, scrub the ‘was going to have a rant’ part there because this is something that irritates me no end. Just because two countries speak a different dialect of a certain root language does not make them some amalgamated territory.
Germany and Austria speak variants of the same root language but they are not and have never actually been the same damn country. The same thing works for England and America. Granted I’m using England and Britain interchangeably and should probably say the UK really, since Great Britain doesn’t include Northern Ireland, which is still under British rule but anyway.
I usually try to sit on this rant to avoid being unintentionally offensive but reading over a couple of BBC News summaries of Cabinet papers from 1975 that have been released by the National Archives at last and in particular two of them (1975 economic fears are laid bare and How Wilson handled his Euro split.) I got as far as political fears about the establishment of a European Common Market and suddenly discovered that all the vitriol that built up while writing my dissertation had never actually been forgotten.
Mainly my issue is with the strange attitude that somehow it’s a case of ‘us versus them’ when it comes to Britain and Europe. As if all of continental Europe is one homogenised mass just waiting to dictate terms to an isolated Albion. This sort of view presumes, erroneously, that Europe is one entire nation, in solidarity of culture, language, national and international attitude and so on.
It’s not. Europe is a land-mass. A series of political and geographical boarders. Nation states under the Westphalian system. It was never homogenised.
But by denying the individuality of the European states it allows people to hide behind stereotypes and complain that Britain has no place in Europe because of perceived linguistic and cultural differences with a make-believe super-state.
Not that I’m against the idea of a federalised Europe. Far from it. A federal Europe with greater cohesion and a better flow of information between member states is the way forward as far as my personal idealistic considerations go. Heck, it worked for the German states for years so there’s no reason to believe that a federal system would be terribly problematic at all but that’s an aside really.
What tends to happen, when people fall back on the idea that Britain is pitched against this imagined super-state is that there’ll invariably be false comparisons drawn with America. Simply because of perceived language similarity.
British English and American English are similar of course but not the same. The terminology used, the semantic differences, the grammatical and spelling differences are enough to show a marked difference.
The culture is also quite different on many levels.
To use a basic example involving food produce, a biscuit in the UK is not the same thing as a biscuit in America. In America I believe the term that would be applied is ‘cookie’ anyway. Over here that’s a novelty word more than anything else.
And keeping on the topic of food produce because it’s one I’ve been talking about of late, you can’t even buy the same items half the time. If I wanted to get something that wasn’t an ‘oreo’ which seem to have become something of a fad at the moment, I’d have to go to a specialist import shop or some such. I can go into my local supermarket and buy the right ingredients for Italian, French, Chinese and now also certain Japanese dishes but if I wanted something specifically American it would take much more work to find.
I’ve never had a Hershey bar but I can get my hands on as much Kinder, Milka, Lindt and other such chocolate as I like, all without having to go to a specialist shop. Granted these brands are international these days but I can get European chocolate without paying terribly extortionate prices for it.
I buy a particular brand of Dutch cheese because it’s milder than other cheeses and I get that from the local supermarket. And on the other side of that isle in that same supermarket I can get haslet slices and German peppered salami and pancetta and so on. There’s also American pastrami there in packets but it’s labelled as a specialist American food item. My cheese isn’t specifically labelled beyond its brand.
But what I’m trying to say, in what’s turned into a really roundabout fashion, is that there are differences enough between countries, even ones that seem to speak the same language. And that the perceived similarities are simply that. They make Britain no more closer to America and distant from the rest of Europe than we already are.
To use such imagined similarities as a reason to foster isolationist sentiment is a very strange and defeatist attitude and is really an insult to the greater Europe of which Britain has always been part.
Every nation is different, in varying ways. Pointing to language and other supposed indicators won’t negate that. Which is why I fail to understand why there is this whisper, almost, that Britain should be scared of Europe and Europeans. We are European, it’s a geographical matter and culturally and linguistically there are similarities. We’re no more similar or different to a good portion of the continent than we are to America or English-speaking Canada or Australia.
And for all that we speak a Germanic language we’re not Alzac-Loringe, so could we please for once start acting like a nation-state, instead of an insult to the Westphalian system and the Thirty Years War that spawned it.
That subject line paraphrases Will Kymlica, doesn’t it? o_O
In fact, scrub the ‘was going to have a rant’ part there because this is something that irritates me no end. Just because two countries speak a different dialect of a certain root language does not make them some amalgamated territory.
Germany and Austria speak variants of the same root language but they are not and have never actually been the same damn country. The same thing works for England and America. Granted I’m using England and Britain interchangeably and should probably say the UK really, since Great Britain doesn’t include Northern Ireland, which is still under British rule but anyway.
I usually try to sit on this rant to avoid being unintentionally offensive but reading over a couple of BBC News summaries of Cabinet papers from 1975 that have been released by the National Archives at last and in particular two of them (1975 economic fears are laid bare and How Wilson handled his Euro split.) I got as far as political fears about the establishment of a European Common Market and suddenly discovered that all the vitriol that built up while writing my dissertation had never actually been forgotten.
Mainly my issue is with the strange attitude that somehow it’s a case of ‘us versus them’ when it comes to Britain and Europe. As if all of continental Europe is one homogenised mass just waiting to dictate terms to an isolated Albion. This sort of view presumes, erroneously, that Europe is one entire nation, in solidarity of culture, language, national and international attitude and so on.
It’s not. Europe is a land-mass. A series of political and geographical boarders. Nation states under the Westphalian system. It was never homogenised.
But by denying the individuality of the European states it allows people to hide behind stereotypes and complain that Britain has no place in Europe because of perceived linguistic and cultural differences with a make-believe super-state.
Not that I’m against the idea of a federalised Europe. Far from it. A federal Europe with greater cohesion and a better flow of information between member states is the way forward as far as my personal idealistic considerations go. Heck, it worked for the German states for years so there’s no reason to believe that a federal system would be terribly problematic at all but that’s an aside really.
What tends to happen, when people fall back on the idea that Britain is pitched against this imagined super-state is that there’ll invariably be false comparisons drawn with America. Simply because of perceived language similarity.
British English and American English are similar of course but not the same. The terminology used, the semantic differences, the grammatical and spelling differences are enough to show a marked difference.
The culture is also quite different on many levels.
To use a basic example involving food produce, a biscuit in the UK is not the same thing as a biscuit in America. In America I believe the term that would be applied is ‘cookie’ anyway. Over here that’s a novelty word more than anything else.
And keeping on the topic of food produce because it’s one I’ve been talking about of late, you can’t even buy the same items half the time. If I wanted to get something that wasn’t an ‘oreo’ which seem to have become something of a fad at the moment, I’d have to go to a specialist import shop or some such. I can go into my local supermarket and buy the right ingredients for Italian, French, Chinese and now also certain Japanese dishes but if I wanted something specifically American it would take much more work to find.
I’ve never had a Hershey bar but I can get my hands on as much Kinder, Milka, Lindt and other such chocolate as I like, all without having to go to a specialist shop. Granted these brands are international these days but I can get European chocolate without paying terribly extortionate prices for it.
I buy a particular brand of Dutch cheese because it’s milder than other cheeses and I get that from the local supermarket. And on the other side of that isle in that same supermarket I can get haslet slices and German peppered salami and pancetta and so on. There’s also American pastrami there in packets but it’s labelled as a specialist American food item. My cheese isn’t specifically labelled beyond its brand.
But what I’m trying to say, in what’s turned into a really roundabout fashion, is that there are differences enough between countries, even ones that seem to speak the same language. And that the perceived similarities are simply that. They make Britain no more closer to America and distant from the rest of Europe than we already are.
To use such imagined similarities as a reason to foster isolationist sentiment is a very strange and defeatist attitude and is really an insult to the greater Europe of which Britain has always been part.
Every nation is different, in varying ways. Pointing to language and other supposed indicators won’t negate that. Which is why I fail to understand why there is this whisper, almost, that Britain should be scared of Europe and Europeans. We are European, it’s a geographical matter and culturally and linguistically there are similarities. We’re no more similar or different to a good portion of the continent than we are to America or English-speaking Canada or Australia.
And for all that we speak a Germanic language we’re not Alzac-Loringe, so could we please for once start acting like a nation-state, instead of an insult to the Westphalian system and the Thirty Years War that spawned it.
That subject line paraphrases Will Kymlica, doesn’t it? o_O
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-30 05:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-30 06:19 pm (UTC)And the "imagined similarities" that aren't so similar have emerged in a small area I've been working on - I'm translating bits of a Japanese sewing magazine into English for a friend, and am finding that American and British sewing terms are almost as different as Japanese and American sewing terms. It's all very well translating ハトロン紙 (hatoron kami) as "kraft paper", but the latter is an equally foreign brand name in this country.
Most likely, nobody on either side of the Atlantic would think twice - or even once - about such differences in terms unless they were suddenly forced to deal with them.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 11:58 pm (UTC)You’ve got a point there. I suppose it’s human-mechanism or whatnot to presume that everything everywhere is the way that you know it in your town or country or continent. It’s down right annoying when you’re trying to translate something that doesn’t have an equivalent though.