At the climax of this competitive laudation, the younger civil servant drops his trousers to reveal stars and stripes boxer shorts, while crying out orgasmically: "Oh! My America! My New Found Land! The laughter of the s audience, I think, bore uneasy witness to the complexity of Stoppard's farcical vision. On the one hand, he was ridiculing a certain sort of British stuffiness that delights in putting down all things American as cheap, brash and overly sexualised. On the other hand, he was satirising the tendency for those self-same Brits to be politically in thrall to Uncle Sam, overshadowed by his mighty global reach.
Almost 40 years on, not a lot has altered in our relationship with God's own country. The same ambivalence shapes our response to almost everything that comes across the pond. This ambivalence would be just comprehensible were it to follow some sort of regular pattern, with - following Stoppard - the cultural repulsion of British conservatives neatly offset by their political attraction and the British left responding contrarily by loving to rock 'n' roll, while decrying the depredations of what is now the sole global superpower.
But in fact the British conception of America remains hopelessly confused. Love and hate are intimately co-mingled, and there is no single cultural artefact or presidential utterance that doesn't set off a dissonant chain reaction in the heart and mind of the average Briton, whatever his or her political standpoint. We've only to look back over at the way in which we have responded to events across the pond to appreciate quite how messed-up this relationship is.
For a start there was the long run-in to the November re-election of President Obama. The spectacle of US democracy in action is at once ridiculed and revered over here.
Looked at one way it is an unholy combination of demagoguery and plutocracy, what with its pork-barrelling politicians soliciting corporate donations for prime time television advertising. Looked at another, it has the folksy honesty of a town hall meeting writ very large indeed. Aspirants to public office in the US may well dissimulate, but in a wide-open cultural landscape, with only the occasional ironic outcropping, there's hardly anywhere for them to hide. Whatever the systemic failures of the US electoral process - and these are legion - and despite the fickleness, apathy and bigotry the electorate demonstrates, the view from the UK is that every presidential run-off has an epochal character.
Programs See everything we do. Offices Find an office near you. About EF Who we are. Careers Join the team. The latest on travel, languages and culture by EF Education First. Back Topics. British English is more like French French has influenced English in more ways than English speakers would care to admit. American English likes to drop words completely Sometimes there are differences in American English that make no sense to speakers of British English — like when Americans remove entire verbs from a sentence.
Share this article. Latest articles from Language learning. How to improve your written English: 7 tips. Subscriber Account active since. When I emigrated to the UK in October , I was excited to finally make my long-distance relationship something of the past and see what England had to offer. Having lived in the UK for two six-month stints previously, I thought I had a fairly good idea of what to expect when I obtained a spousal visa and moved there permanently.
While Americans have a reputation for being brash, direct, and not shy about sharing their feelings, the opposite can be said for the majority of Brits. My partner is a perfect example of this; she tends to bottle up her emotions rather than talking about them because she prefers to just get on with things without complaining. Rather than processing events in depth, many Brits would rather just brush things under the carpet and keep their opinions largely to themselves.
The first few times, such questioning didn't bother me — it still doesn't, really — but it is a constant reminder of what I consider the sad state of affairs in my home country, which is more than a little depressing. After 9 p.
The future in England seems just as uncertain as it is in the US. While you can certainly get automatic cars, cars with manual transmissions are widespread in the UK, although The Sun reported that this could change in coming years.
It took me three tries to pass the driving test, but I felt accomplished when I finally did. While every bank has its own policies when it comes to opening new accounts, it took at least a month after arriving in the UK for me to actually get one.
I ended up going with Lloyds, which allowed me to open an account with a copy of my passport and residency permit. Instead, I stick to hanging out at coffee shops and chilling at home kind of like I did back in the US. This likely differs in major UK cities, but for the most part it seems to hold true.
While I do think retail workers deserve to be able to do things during the daylight hours, this has come as somewhat of a shock to me coming from New York City, where businesses are open late or even 24 hours.
0コメント