In message , Arfa Daily
writes


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

"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

I'm not Dutch but I do spend several weeks there every year and watch
some Dutch TV almost every day.

BBC1 and BBC2 are available on cable, but without teletext, apart from
subtitles, so many viewers are exposed to British attitudes and humour.
I imagine that that will continue after the digital switchover.

There are also a lot of UK programmes and films on their own channels.
Most keep the original soundtrack and are subtitled (not always
accurately). Documentaries such as David Attenborough's tend to have
Dutch speech when the presenter is off camera.

Dad's Army was very popular there, to my surprise as I thought it was
too British. Several other programmes have been made in Dutch versions,
but not always successfully. The Dutch version of East Enders flopped,
and their versions of Only Fools and Horses and The Kumars at No. 42
were simply dire. Their QI, HIGNFY and Who Do You Think You Are? have
turned out well.

In return for our sending them excellent programmes, they then sent us
The Generation Game and Big Brother.

Apart from having a basically different sense of humour, the Germans are
not exposed to British humour to the same extent because their foreign
programmes are almost always dubbed. I can't comment on how they
correspond to the original soundtracks as I have never watched any
British comedy on German TV, apart from the Monty Python German special
years ago.

Don't know about the French, but who cares about them anyway?
--
Peter

Ying tong iddle-i po!