Multiple Post Day! #3: You Americans get off my soil!

[I don't think it's just me, but I'll point out that YMMV anyways.]

Why is it that British people think mocking Americans for not being as 'good' as they are will be okay with said Americans that they do it in front of?

Yes, we understand. Yours is the land of Sheep Everywhere, of Earl Grey and teatime and biscuits and chips, of Eternal Fog and Seldom Sunshine. Yours is the accent we turn to in America to make our advertising sound more intelligent. Yours are the cities that shut down after six PM and aren't even open on Sundays. Yours is the culture that holds a certain amount of charm to everyone in the world.

But really. Belittling 'those Americans' who 'can't even speak the Queen's English', who don't run on your National Health System, who in short don't follow your customs? Is an exercise in futility.

You see, America is DIFFERENT from this country for a reason. A rather large reason, in fact, that ran from 1775 to 1783. We didn't like your monarchy, your silly teas, and your reality, and so we substituted our oligarchy, our silly coffee chains, and our own. We've had two hundred odd years to contemplate our differences and to separate ourselves even further.

It's not simply a case of 'our standards will never match up to one another's'. It's comparing a fruit with a vegetable. At this point, some of the few things we have in common is the same language, and sometimes we don't even have that. (Extra 'u's, calling 'zee' 'zed', substituting an 's' for said 'z', the difference between single and double quotes, and 'brackets' instead of 'parentheses' come to mind immediately.)

What makes me angry is when British people think they have the right to bring 'you Americans' 'round to their way of thinking. We're not British. We don't want to be British. (If we did want to be British, we'd move to Canada and still be part of the Commonwealth, but even the US hates Canada.) And frankly, we're insulted when you speak of yourselves as inherently better instead of taking into account that nouns (people, places, and things) from America or of American origin are just as legitimate as your culture.

A few examples of people who do this come immediately to mind. I actually read a passage in a book I'm quite enjoying right now, Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island, telling how the American-born, lived-in-England-for-a-while author was being benignly insulted by an elderly couple who just did this without thinking. (He pointed out that the word 'moron' was actually invented by Americans. Good day, sir, indeed!) This isn't something that just I have noticed.

And in fact, it's something that American students are even subjected to. It seems that our tutors tend to assume that we're not so bright until we prove otherwise. And when we do prove that not only are we competent, but we far exceed expectations, they seem flabbergasted. Although I never quite got what a friend of mine got from her tutor. He was talking about having an article published in an 'inferior' American chemistry quarterly publication, when in fact this is not an inferior group by any stretch of the imagination. (I applaud her response, which was somewhere along the line of 'frak you', only at eight in the morning and with significantly less tolerance.)

We're not going to take this laying down. (And I hate your food anyways.) So, you Brits get off MY lawn instead!

- Jen -