"Michael Kennedy" mike@com wrote in message
...

"Arfa Daily" wrote in message
...


"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...
I once got in a lot of trouble with my boss when I was young and worked
for
a U.S. based company. At that time, I didn't understand that there was
a
big
difference between British 'tongue-in-cheek' humour, and the much more
direct U.S. type. I was talking on the phone to one of the designers of
a
piece of equipment that we sold here in the UK, and asked the guy if he
could arrange to send me some screws for the cabinet, as they were a
thread
that we didn't readily get over here. He asked if I knew exactly what
size
they were so I replied, quick as a flash, thinking that I was being
funny,
"I guess that they are round about 3/16ths APF." "What's APF ?" the
guy
asked. "American **** Fit", said I ...

Stony silence on the phone. Half an hour later, I was summoned to the
boss's
office. Apparently, the guy had been really offended by this, thinking
that
it was a slur on what he considered to be good American engineering,
and
had
called my boss to complain about me. Just goes to show how easily
offence
can be caused between nations, even when they speak what's basically
the
same language ... :-)

It's hard /not/ to interpret such a description as an intentional
insult. I
can't imagine what it actually means -- in any innocuous sense, anyway.



There ya go then ! Anyone from the UK would see it as a quick-fire
throw-away line, and would laugh at it. It's sort of intended to be
'barbed', but not in a malicious way. It's a very hard to describe form
of humour that is quite prevalent over here.

Arfa


We have that kind of humor in the US too.. But only amongst friends or
people you know fairly well. If a stranger uses sharp humor with me (some
do) and It gives the feeling of you dont know me well enough to be poking
humor at me, and we also usually take the fact there is ususaly truth in
humor.. And honestly you probaly think the US standards are idioic and
stupid to still be using when the rest of the world is using the metric
system. Thats the feeling I get here in Japan at least. People cant
understand why the US uses the old system still.

Anyhow.. Just my $0.02


Yes. Knowing the U.S. and its people much better now, as I tend to visit
twice a year and have now for many years, I would say that was pretty much
spot on. Although I've found that American people are much more friendly in
general to strangers, than people over here are, I also find that they are
much more 'reserved' in actually getting to know them as a friend. Here in
the UK, if you are just in the same business as one another, you tend to
automatically think in terms of communicating with a 'kindred spirit'. So
even on a first contact with someone, if you appear within a few sentences
to be speaking the same language, it becomes quite acceptable to introduce a
degree of 'chuminess' into the conversation such as calling the person
'mate' and such-like. Barbed humour between you is then immediately
accepted, and is likely to get thrown back at you by the other person, and
often gets deflected onto the company that you, or the other person works
for. Having made the 'APF' comment to the guy, in my naivety, I was
expecting him to just throw back a similar comment like " so what, then ?
Your British threads are better than ours, are they ? :-) "

Like I say, easy to cause unintentional offence, if you are not familiar
with the country, and it's people and their cultural differences, even if
they appear to speak the same basic language. Many countries in Europe speak
English as a second language. If you speak it to a German for instance, in
general, he will not understand British humour. Not likely to be offended by
it. Just won't understand it. A Frenchman, will understand it, and be
offended - or at least pretend to be ... OTOH, a Dutchman will both
understand the humour, and give back as good as he gets. They seem to have a
very 'English' understanding of the English language. I don't know why that
should be, but I was once told by a Dutch guy that I had dealings with, that
it was because they easily received UK television over there, so tended to
watch a lot of British made drama and comedy programmes. I wonder if this
will change now analogue TV is almost now all gone. I bet that they don't
receive the digital multiplexes across the water, anything like as well as
they did the high power analongue transmissions. Any Dutch people reading
this care to comment ?

Arfa