18 ms·
This blog is written in en-GB
- sejje 3mo ago> [Twinkies] seemed like an unappealing foodstuff which, nevertheless, were inexplicably popular. Well, there's the counterpoint to the whole post. You don't know what Twinkies are.
- ChrisRR 3mo agoBrit here. I spent decades hearing about twinkies from US TV so I had to finally try one. It was the blandest, most solid chunk of cake with a flavourless blob of sugar in the middle.
- sejje 3mo agoI more-or-less agree. And it's inexplicable why it's popular? Describe a chicken nugget next, I bet people hate those too. (For the record, a proper Twinkie would be fluffy, not a solid chunk.)
- nozzlegear 3mo agoTwinkies haven't been good for decades, you need a time machine for the real experience.
- huflungdung 3mo ago[dead]
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- walthamstow 3mo ago> Accrington Stanley! Who are they?!
- ndsipa_pomu 3mo agoExactly
- oneeyedpigeon 3mo agoExactly.
- seanhunter 3mo agoFor people who don't get the reference, it's a classic advert for the milk marketing board. It's quite topical at the moment given the Fifa world cup https://youtu.be/zPFrTBppRfw?si=BaHHYnP52UfWd6Fs https://youtu.be/zPFrTBppRfw?si=BaHHYnP52UfWd6Fs Ian Rush (referenced in the ad) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Rush https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Rush
- pasc1878 3mo agoThe generated subtitles show that the translator doesn't know English
- tialaramex 3mo agoThere's a surprisingly big cultural chasm here. Acrington Stanley are a football club, that's not so weird - the US has plenty of professional sports teams and distinguishes "major" leagues, but AIUI the US doesn't have anything like the "Football Pyramid": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_football_league_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_football_league_system If the Green Bay Packers lose every game, I think they're just back next year anyway like nothing happened? If Manchester United lost every game they're relegated and cease to be in the Premier League, some team you've never heard of which won the EFL Championship become a Premier League team next season [subject to various extra rules they can probably meet] and Man U take their place in the EFL Championship.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- ndsipa_pomu 3mo agosips tea
- dukeyukey 3mo agoIf I (a Brit) moves to the US, I'd absolutely get a Yorkshire-branded tea caddy filled with teabags on my desk. Sometimes you need to live up to the stereotypes.
- mghackerlady 3mo agoI've always wondered, do that many brits actually like tea or is it more of a cultural thing? I've very rarely had a tea I like (though, I've never had one I actively disliked), and I can't imagine that's the case for most people but it makes me wonder
- cyberpunk 3mo agoNothing in this world beats a good sheng brewed in a gaiwan…
- jowsie 3mo agoThe majority like it, though there's always a debate about the correct preparation method. I've always felt like a bit of an outsider whenever a brew is offered and I ask if they have coffee, and I've lived here all mi life.
- cyberpunk 3mo agoMay be decorative only —- Isn’t it due due to their wimpy electricity that it takes forever to boil a kettle and that’s why everyone gets coffee externally? Or, absolute horror, they microwave teacups…. Or has the situation improved? :)
- mghackerlady 3mo agoSo, about the electricity bit. We absolutely can do 240v, we just don't make tea enough for it to be worth it. Also, I've never understood the disdain for microwave boiling. It's just easier 90% of the time
- yde_java 3mo agoBeing proud of your culture including your language and exercising it, at the risk of readers not understanding everything immediately, is not racism. In the worst case, a non-British gets curious about one expression or the other and looks it up. That's engagement.
- gilrain 3mo agoNobody said it was.
- graemep 3mo agoThe article strongly implies it is a response to a comment complaining the blog is not inclusive because it uses British English. There is a constant American assumption that their language and culture is the norm and we should all adjust our language to fit their definitions and culture. I intend to keep eating faggots, having a master branch in git, etc.
- jakobnissen 3mo agoBut being non-inclusive by speaking to a particular cultural reference frame is not the same as being racist.
- graemep 3mo agoI agree, but some people seem to think it is, which i think what the article is a response to: just just in the comment, but in the wider push to use certain language.
- TFNA 3mo ago"There is a constant American assumption that their language and culture is the norm" This is now far more than an American assumption. I have seen younger continental Europeans bristle at UK English because they grew up in a world of social media that is converging on usage that is closer to US English.
- jaffa2 3mo ago> Accrington Stanley I've never heard of this depite being from the UK. It seems to be some ad from 1989. Although I do remember many classic ads from the 1980's I don't recall this. Is it an English / Scottish thing ? Who knows. Why is Accrington Stanley so famous? Ian Rush reflects on famous milk advert ahead of Liverpool v ... Accrington Stanley achieved worldwide fame primarily due to a legendary 1989 television advert for the Milk Marketing Board. In the iconic commercial, two young Liverpool fans debate whether to drink milk. One claims that football star Ian Rush told him, "If you don't drink lots of milk, you'll only be good enough to play for Accrington Stanley". The other boy questions, "Accrington Stanley? Who are they?", prompting the reply, "Exactly". The slogan became a massive pop-culture catchphrase in the UK, turning a then-obscure non-league team into the most famous minnows in football.
- roryirvine 3mo agoI suspect it was England and Wales only. It was never shown in NI, which had its own Milk Marketing Board. Scotland had a separate one too, so probably didn't get them either.
- jaffa2 3mo agothe irony of an Englishman complaining about Americans assuming cultural expectations, whilst simultaneously doing the same thing to fellows from outwith England and Wales. Yes I did say 'outwith'.
- dijit 3mo ago> Here's the thing. No. Hahaha I decided to have a bit of fun with the Accept-Lang header, if you're british it shows a totally different version of my blog including changing my name to a more british variant, a background including tea, phone booths, kings guards, busses, bulldogs and flags... and the colour scheme changes to RWB. https://blog.dijit.sh https://blog.dijit.sh The original plan was actually to write two variants of every blog post, one where I write using dry wit, banter and colloquialisms, and the other with a more to the point and professional tone. The reason I chose not to was because I thought it might be confusing when discussing the content on link aggregators (like HN)- I'm not so arrogant as to believe I write anything worth discussing, but it would violate the principle of least surprise... so I chose not to do it. I'm curious to hear other peoples opinions, since this is the exact right subject to ask the question to relevant crowd..
- egwor 3mo agoGlad that you got the colour scheme changes
- shawabawa3 3mo agoI'm very disappointed it didn't translate the $1m story to £747,000 I found it completely unrelatable and couldn't follow it at all, not having any frame of reference for how much a dollar might be worth in real money Luckily the background reminded me i could go and make myself a cup of tea to feel better
- jt2190 3mo ago
- egwor 3mo agoI think that by exploring how different cultures and languages communicate about things opens the mind. There are concepts that can't be easily/succinctly explained in English but can in other languages. I think that we should be encouraging such breadth of thought because it allows us to appreciate new aspects of the world we live in.
- card_zero 3mo agoNobody's ever been able to explain to me what those concepts are, so I don't believe it.
- john_strinlai 3mo agoits the subject of dozens of listacles. waldeinsamkeit, saudade, ya’aburnee, etc.
- dofm 3mo agoHiraeth
- drcongo 3mo agoThat one only works when the homeland is that beautiful.
- dofm 3mo agoI don't know. I mean it's not a longing for just a place, as I understand it. I am not even sure that hiraeth is necessarily longing for the beauty of a place or time. Hiraeth, it seems to me, could equally be a longing for the wordless Welsh expressions of emotion, or for rainy days, or damp, or a time that has passed, depending on where the bearer of the emotion is currently feeling it. (I am not Welsh, but it has been described to me as an ever tightening elastic emotional rope that is anchored in a place and time that it might not be possible to go back to)
- SadErn 3mo agoMy first thought after reading is that I fear for the author's safety. From the outside, this does not appear to be a safe time to express nationalism or cultural pride in the UK. The Internet is not free in the UK and decreasingly so in the rest of the world.
- dofm 3mo agoYou fear for his safety!? > From the outside You should try visiting the inside. More generally, we Brits draw a measure of distinction between cultural pride and nationalism: the former is good, and we have plenty of it; the latter is viewed with suspicion, for good reason. (Edited for clarity)
- SadErn 3mo ago[dead]
- jowsie 3mo agoTheir comment is even funnier considering the sudden rise of Farage and Friends. Their attempts to claim culture is governed by strong borders is also hilarious when an hour's drive in any direction from London would expose them to people they probably wouldn't even realise are speaking English. I've always wondered why people who so proudly claim to not be from here speak with such authority about how it is to live here. It's Fox news claimed no-go zones and Sharia law cities all over again. Utter bullshit.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- BigTTYGothGF 3mo ago> From the outside, this does not appear to be a safe time to express nationalism or cultural pride in the UK. From outside this dimension maybe.
- edent 3mo agoOP here. Fuck off. Yours etc,
- Cthulhu_ 3mo agoThere's two dimensions here, one is US-American readers, the other is how a lot of the rest of the (non-English) world is mostly exposed to US culture through (social) media. But that's more of a thing for millennials, I would've thought younger generations get exposed to more diverse cultures / languages / etc. Anyway, for British-English full of cultural references, watch some of these compilations https://www.youtube.com/@OneGazillionEccentricGoldfish https://www.youtube.com/@OneGazillionEccentricGoldfish, Scouse is nearly incomprehensible (to my ESL ears). For difficult US-English full of cultural references, watch The Wire or Treme. Try both without subtitles.
- ifwinterco 3mo agoThe funny thing is for younger British people this tends to be highly asymmetric - we can (sort of!) understand Scouse or Glaswegian due to growing up here, but also almost everyone under the age of 50 grew up on a steady diet of American TV shows, hip hop etc. I can understand The Wire fine without subtitles because most of the actors just speak relatively generic African American English instead of a proper Baltimore dialect, and that's no problem at all for someone who spent their formative years consuming Nas and Biggie and all the rest of it. On the other hand Snoop who is the only main character with an actual Baltimore street accent is pretty much unintelligible to me, but I suspect she would be for a lot of middle class americans as well
- CrzyLngPwd 3mo agoIt should be just "en", since we invented and it's the one true version:-)
- sgt 3mo agoThat may be true, but in practice, US english has no taken over as the de-facto English. All thanks to the Internet. I am glad someone is pushing back on this, though, and I want more multi lingual sites on the Internet in general.
- mghackerlady 3mo agoNo, no I don't think it has. Americans are vastly outnumbered by commonwealth states using and teaching standard English
- sgt 3mo agoSee my other comment, the world follows the US. It's about where the influence is primarily coming from, and that is currently America. And in terms of English it has a distinct advantage in that it is full of native speakers. Many Indians are proficient in English but they're not native speakers.
- ChrisRR 3mo agoBy your logic, chinese english or indian english are the defacto as they massively outnumber american english You just mean that you visit more american sites than other non-US english speaking sites
- AnimalMuppet 3mo agoGo to France, or Japan, or Hungary, or somewhere like that. Someone there is visiting a web site that is in English. Now, what English is it most likely to be? My guess is US English, not UK English, not Indian English, not Chinese English. Sure, they may visit some of those sites, but I suspect that the most frequent will be US English.
- trentor 3mo agoI have to admit I have every device running some sort of voice assistant on en_GB or Australian the American voices always sound like parodies or the Walmart greeter. The intonation is perpetually trying to please me, as if programmed for relentless customer service. It's hard to explain, but there's something exhausting about a voice that's always smiling.
- mghackerlady 3mo agoWhen I still used siri I had it be a british woman solely because it made me feel like I was in a James Bond movie
- kps 3mo ago> American voices always sound like parodies or the Walmart greeter. Timer set for “thirdy minnids”. Unfortunately the others also sound like parodies in their own way — the Californian's idea of en_GB, “Oi, you go' a loicense for that thir'y minute timah?”
- cjs_ac 3mo agoTBF, some Australian accents put a rising intonation at the end of sentences, as though the speaker is always asking their interlocutor for approval. Just another thing that's reminiscent of Clive James' remark that too many Australians are descended from prison officers.
- KaiserPro 3mo agoBy eck lad, Accrington Stanley? I would love to be able to write in proper narfuck, and have which ever screen reader read it out in the authentic accent for that area (central norfolk, not norwich, broadlands or the wierdos in the fens.) There is something deeply joyful (to me) about a thick regional accent.
- amiga386 3mo agoRemember the scene in Hot Fuzz where the accents are so thick they need 3 layers of translation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs-rgvkRfwc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs-rgvkRfwc
- xg15 3mo ago[flagged]
- gertrunde 3mo agoThis reminds me of the time when I removed en-US from windows, leaving just en-GB, and it blue screened. It's both surprising and irritating how many US-centric things are just assumed. (Don't even get me started on paper sizes...! ;) )
- pjmlp 3mo agoAs someone that changes the default as well, yep a pain.
- kunley 3mo agoI discovered just this week that the numbering of weeks within the year is different between US and Europe, thus, cal -w can show different numbers for some years depending on the locale. Outlook can probably also show different things depending on the system settings. Europe uses the algo according to the ISO 8601 standard, where the week no.1 is the one with January 1st occuring between Monday and Thursday, inclusive. If the 1st happens on Friday or later within a week, it's considered a week no.52 or 53 of the previous year. US does not use this scheme and [EDITED] I am not sure what method is applied there. Some companies use week numbers in business talks, planning and scheduling, so be aware who is speaking about which weeks!
- PaulKeeble 3mo agoThe amount of times that darn keyboard selector appears for no reason in Windows because its once again added en-US as a language, which it then switches to randomly for seemingly no reason and all of a sudden my symbols are all in the wrong places. One day someone at Microsoft is going to look at that bug and fix it....
- biofox 3mo agoI am the only Brit in the department I work in. No one gets the cultural references or British idioms I use, and I've found myself significantly changing the language I use to a very utilitarian and direct style to prevent the endless blank stares... reading this blog post just made me realise that this self-editing has made my interactions rather more 'flat' and unnatural, as they now lack spontaneity, with everything passing through a secondary filter before leaving my brain.
- fredley 3mo ago> "Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller."
- basilgohar 3mo agoI wish you worked with me, in that case. I've had the pleasure of working with many different people from different backgrounds, including many Brits. I've always found the dry, understated humor from them to be endearing, making casual conversation more interesting. My parents are both from the Middle East, my wife is from Southeast Asia, and I have many Middle Eastern, Desi, African American as well as African (as in continental) friends, so I may not be a "typical" American in that regard. That being said, don't underestimate the value you bring by sharing your cultural insights. I don't think I told anyone to their face that appreciated their cultural value, but I hoped that my engagement and cheerfulness in dealing with them at least communicated that I was happy with their presence. It might be that your engagement with someone opens them up to a part of the world they've yet to experience or know much about. Granted, there are lots of places with more gaps than the US and the UK, but there's still value in that and I started with those examples but mentioned it comes from all sides.
- ifwinterco 3mo agoCultural insights are one thing but the issue is if you slip into full flow of Britishisms and let your accent loose people who only speak English as a second language can't understand what you're saying. There's nothing unique about this though, it's the same for every language - it's one thing knowing Spanish well enough to hold a conversation where the other person is speaking slowly and making it easy for you, it's quite another to be able to slot into a group of native Chilean Spanish speakers in full flow. I travel a lot so I'm used to adapting my use of English depending on who I'm talking to. I find there's a way to express things and still enjoy using the language without making it hard for non-native speakers to understand. But also, when you do end up in a group of entirely Brits it is fun to be able to just let loose
- curtisblaine 3mo agoMaybe I'm stating the obvious, but nobody has any moral obligation to be inclusive in content they share on their personal blog, for free, and nobody should reasonably expect it.
- jerf 3mo ago"This blog is written in en-GB" Excuse me, but I believe you meant to say this bloug is written in en-GB. More seriously... you know, 30 or 40 years ago, I can sort of understand this attitude. Today, in the amount of time it takes you to complain, you could have popped the word into Google or something instead and learned what it was instead. Probably in less than the amount of time it took you to complain for an online blog. And you might learn something interesting. When I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a thing called the "generation gap". It originally referred to something closer to the difference between the Hippies and their Greatest Generation parents, but it was smoothly repurposed into the differences between GenX and the Boomers, and the way we could have slang that was not decodeable by our parents. I haven't heard the term in a while. The "generation gap" isn't what it used to be and there is less need for a term for it. I'm not entirely certain but I probably heard about "6-7" before my kids did. Urban Dictionary may not be the most reliable source in an academic sense but you can get a very fast sense of what something means from its entries, especially if you read them with a postmodern analysis eye and not just for the plain text. I also find it a bit weird when people my age or the boomer generation complain about the kid's slang, because it's so easy to decode. You can't possible have a national-level kid's slang without an internet explainer 15 seconds away. It's not that hard anymore.
- robin_reala 3mo agoBlog, from web log, from log (written), from log (wood), from Middle English logge. No French involved, which is where the `ou` phoneme is from.
- jerf 3mo agoI've had a weblog since 1999. I know where the word comes from. Try rereading in light of that; if you need more hint consider why the author's spellchecker might put a red wiggly underline under the letters "color".
- mattlondon 3mo agoNo, it's always been blog in en-GB. Try reading in light of basic facts, if you need more hint consider if a spell checker might put a wiggly underline under the letters "loug".
- ChrisMarshallNY 3mo agoI was raised by an English mum[0] (scouse, to be precise -actually, her mum was scouse, me mum was posh). I've traveled all over the world, and the one place that I've had the most difficulty understanding, was London. Cockney is hard. It's not just the patois. It's the cultural references and slang. [0] https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/SheilaMarshall.htm https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/SheilaMarshall.htm
- physicsguy 3mo agoNot many Cockneys in London these days, they're all in Essex
- ChrisMarshallNY 3mo agoThere were reasons that I was hanging with a crowd that was heavily informed by cockneys. I tend to hang with … interesting … people.
- wowczarek 3mo agoJust set the page's theme to "Drunk". It'll be OK.
- JimDabell 3mo ago> OK, accents are a whole can of worms. Regional English is varied. I'm not sure if there are any BCP-style tags for intra-country accents. This comment is written in en-GB-Brummie.
- blenderob 3mo agoI read several blogs that use British English, including this OP's blog. Some of my favourite blogs in my RSS reader are British English blogs, or at least they use British English spellings and grammar. I find their use of the English language very charming and funny in a unique way. It surprises me that anyone would feel entitled to ask a blogger to change the variety of English they use. American English is only one of many forms of English. The world is richer for its many varieties of English, and languages, and that diversity makes it more interesting, not less.
- vitally3643 3mo agoCertain cultures teach that diversity is a bad thing to be feared and extinguished. Diversity is only a good thing when your mind has been poisoned by "education" and "experience". It requires an open mind to see diverse experiences as a good thing, and certain cultures think having citizens with open minds is an unprofitable way to run a society.
- umeshunni 3mo ago[flagged]
- frereubu 3mo agoYou look around the world, including the rise of far-right parties across the Western world who talk about the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, and the first example you reach for is Islamic cultures?
- umeshunni 3mo agoConsidered that there are organizations like the Taliban and Boko Haram that rule entire countries and regions and have anti-education as a principle, yes it's those cultures that I reach for.
- ChrisRR 3mo agoI'm fairly sure they were referring to the americans that this post is about
- plummychiseling 3mo ago[dead]
- kurtis_reed 3mo agoThe French didn't like it when the Lingua Franca switched from French to English and the Brits still whine that British English is no longer the dominant variety. It's a trade-off: you can write in your regional dialect or you can write in a more widely understood global style.
- card_zero 3mo agoLingua Franca, an Italian phrase, referred to a form of Spanish.
- dofm 3mo agoOr more generally: either everyone uses it or it stays the same. Nobody speaks the One True English. That is its power.
- ifwinterco 3mo agoIt's not really comparable, almost every native English speaker can understand most British English fine, it's only when people use excessive slang or regional accents that people have issues (and that's an issue with any language - it can easily be an issue among native speakers within the UK!). It doesn't really matter if you natively speak British English instead of American English, whereas French and English are obviously completely different languages and the switch made French a lot less useful and English a lot more useful
- mghackerlady 3mo ago[flagged]
- kurtis_reed 3mo ago"The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own."
- mghackerlady 3mo ago? I just think british spelling looks better and am a whore for internationalism
- umeshunni 3mo agoInternalized self loathing is a thing
- bbg2401 3mo agoIt's a thing, yes. It's entirely irrelevant to the topic though.
- roryirvine 3mo agoOxford spelling, en-GB-oxendict, is a nice halfway house - it uses the same -ize spellings (where etymologically correct) as American English, but doesn't have the simplifications (eg. colour->color). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling
- Symbiote 3mo agoIt's often preferred by academic journals, which might be why the original commenter sees it as "academic". It's also the official spelling used by the United Nations.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- zzzeek 3mo agoFun post but sort of ironic to end with a lecture on "cultural hegemony" from....a Brit!
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- liotier 3mo agoThis French person has taken to writing in en-GB, as a token of protest against current USAian politics. I thank the USA for this step in French-British rapprochement ! Also, in the late 90's, The Register made me love British English... Local accents are great branding.
- dgellow 3mo agoI really want to see a local Euro English[0] develop as an actual, recognized variant of English. Both because it would be really funny, but also as a way for Continental Europe to develop a common language we can shape our own way 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English (we don't have to take the examples in this page as-is, we can definitely make better local oddities!)
- Vinnl 3mo agoI think it's a bit quick to want that variant to be actual already, but eventual we might be able to make it work.
- rvnx 3mo agoIt's a weird broken import of French (could be because the EU Parliament) is in Brussels so highly French-speaking. It's also still very incoherent, it mixes up billion and trillion, and it mixes up milliard (the French equivalent) with billion. You absolutely do not want ambiguity there when you work professionally as a politician. deadline supposed to come from delay but it is incorrect use in French. cabinet is toilet. etc It's an artificial invented variant, like a kid would invent its own language to speak to other kids, not something that was born out of habit and unified. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto shares a similar issue but at least it's cute and more logical though. AI would be good at creating an international language
- Vinnl 2mo agoI don't think it's just French. The million-billion distinction is different from English in many European languages - [1] lists basically every language other than English in the EU. And in my example, "actual" to mean "current" and "eventual" to mean "possibly" are at least also present in Dutch and sometimes used in that way in the EU. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales#Current_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales#Current_...
- pjmlp 3mo agoFully agree with the author, just like I write Portuguese in European Portuguese, not Brazilian Portuguese, African Portuguese or any other variation, just because our population is smaller. Incidently I always change automatic language correction tools to English GB, I live in this side of the Atlantic, and that is variant I learnt while growing up.
- toolslive 3mo agoI always put my locale in Ireland: I want - "proper English" - metric system - Euro It's amazing how many web applications give me a broken experience because of it.
- dgellow 3mo agoI'm using custom en-CH locales, because I want numbers to use the Swiss format for decimal and thousands, € instead of CHF, standard units, and some version of English :p
- hibbelig 3mo agoHow's that going with the numbers? Microsoft had this page where they explained that monetary amounts are formatted one way whereas other numbers are formatted another way. I found that most fascinating, but I don't know whether it matches reality. Also, how does software cope? (Back in the eighties,) I had a teacher who taught both French and geography (I think), and he used the apostrophe as the thousands separator. With a twist. For example, he would write three million as 3'000'000, and then he would abbreviate that to 3''. Very fascinating. I wonder if that was somehow inspired by Swiss conventions.
- dgellow 3mo ago1'234'567.890 :) One billion, two-hundred thirty-four million, five-hundred sixty-seven (the rest are the decimals) I've never seen 3'' but that's a nice shorthand I now live in Germany where the format is confusing to me: 1.234.567,890. It's pretty much the opposite of English format!
- ChrisRR 3mo agoAmericans often don't twig how many random american terms we brits have to learn the double meaning of and don't pipe up about. I'm not talking the well-known ones like cookies, but even things like "the ER" meaning "A&E" Sometimes it's their turn to repay the favour
- onionisafruit 3mo agoSometimes Americans wonder why English characters start talking about a basic cable channel when they really should be seeking medical help.
- dkdbejwi383 3mo agoAs a non-American I don't know what "basic cable" is (or what the other tiers are), just that you don't have free-to-air TV
- ChrisRR 3mo agoAs far as I'm aware the US does have free OTA TV. A quick google tells me that basic cable means the cheapest tier of cable. So maybe equivalent to a sky/cable entertainment package?
- dhosek 3mo agoYep, we do have free OTA television. Basic Cable generally comprises the local free OTA channels plus a number of mostly ad-supported channels. The basic cable A&E began its life as “Arts & Entertainment” and was originally a mix of British import shows and high culture presentations (e.g., televised orchestra concerts). But much like carcinisation in aquatic invertebrates, for basic cable, apparently channels tend to evolve towards mostly showing Law & Order reruns.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- irishcoffee 3mo ago
- Dwedit 3mo agoReader View button is your friend here.
- strenholme 3mo agoI’ve seen a lot of blog entries using typography so horrible, I had to use reader view to read the page—there was a trend in the mid-2010s to use pencil-thin fonts and there is now and then still a blog out there using one of those unreadable pencil-thin fonts. However, this blog uses a very readable font called “Atkinson Hyperlegible” and I had no problem reading it. If the color scheme bothers you, click on “eInk” in the theme switcher on the top. Disclaimers: No relationship to the owner of this blog. No AI used in this posting; I have the em-dash (—) in my custom keyboard layout.
- abanana 3mo agoIndeed, unreadable typography (and the need for Reader View) is one of my most common annoyances with sites posted to HN - but I don't see how it's applicable to this site in any way?
- ddmf 3mo ago"My mum said that if I didn't drink enough milk then I'd only be good enough to play for Accrington Stanley." "Accrington Stanley!, Who are they?" "Exaaaccttlyyy...."
- ngriffiths 3mo agoBut they should just stop reading. It's actually not ok that it's unfamiliar, because makes you reread and get confused and distracted, all for some silly reference that doesn't make a big difference. Life is short! You can read the hard stuff when it's worth it, and just skip the rest. Surely that's the most common thing to do. The answer is definitely still a big no, but for me the reasoning is because it will make it worse. And you apparently aren't the target audience anyway, so why should I care if you stick around. (Whereas in the case of harry potter, the goal was to sell books, not just to produce something good).
- mort96 3mo agoDo you hear yourself now? "Life is too short to read texts which reference a culture you're unfamiliar with"? Seriously?
- cmiles8 3mo agoThe ultimate irony is that many folks asking for things to be “more inclusive” are asking for someone else to modify their behavior to fit the requester’s preference and definition of the “right” way, which is the literal opposite of being inclusive. This blog calls that out brilliantly.
- gib444 3mo ago[flagged]
- smallnix 3mo agoOnly outdone by the silent majority
- smallnix 3mo agoI agree this blog is highlighting the irony in that. But I think you are overreaching and injecting your agenda when claiming that it says that "many folks asking for things to be “more inclusive” are asking for someone else to modify their behavior".
- hitekker 3mo agoIt’s ironic to say the GP overreached and then accuse him of injecting an agenda. Particularly on a blogpost that leans towards the GPs understanding, not yours.
- fortran77 3mo agoHe wants us to be exposed to different ways of speaking, yet he’s afraid to mention a book’s author by name.
- byte_0 3mo agoAs a speaker of English as a second language and being educated using American English, I find British English richer in a cultural and expressive manner. It also conveys more properness.
- seanplusplus 3mo agoThis was a great read and it reminded me of Bill Bryson's book, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way. Such an awesome overview o how diverse and quirky and globally distributed English has become today. With the web and now the bots herding us into a more homogenized language, I'm a huuuuge fan of what this dude is doing here!!
- TFNA 3mo agoBill Bryson The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way was written by a journalist with no actual training in the subject matter, and there is a factual error or urban myth on virtually every single page of the book. In fact, among shoddy pop-sci books, this one is particularly notorious. You might want to read about this and see why this is a book that deserves to be forgotten.
- hennell 3mo agoI think idioms and cultural references are fine - the rest of the world has worked out what US baseball and football cliches likely mean, people can decode most references with context. But there are some interesting issues with UK <> US english, things like 'quite' which works in different ways in each locale. I was also very surprised to discover the difference in what we consider a frown - which makes a lot more sense of the US 'turn that frown upside down'. Interestingly my uncle who'd lived in the US ~20 years had never uncovered that difference till I asked him about it. So it's good to know differences - especially when you want communication to be clear.
- drcongo 3mo agoWhat's the "quite" difference?
- Deebster 3mo agoRoughly: British "quite" means somewhat. American "quite" means very. A Brit saying a suggestion is "quite good" is actually saying it's not good enough, whereas a US listener will think they've been told the opposite.
- drcongo 3mo agoGood lord. I just three finger tapped on the word quite to see what the macOS dictionary says - "to the utmost or most absolute extent or degree; absolutely; completely", although it does offer a second definition "to a certain or fairly significant extent or degree; fairly: it's quite warm outside". For context, I'm British though I have spent a fair amount of time in the states over the years and somehow never picked up this difference.
- phpnode 3mo agoThis is interesting because I assume it has suffered the same linguistic degradation as the word "fine" which in some cases means "of the highest quality" but mostly means "meh". I suspect it comes down to the dialect and social rank of the person saying the sentence. Compare how you would perceive: "You did a fine job" or "It is quite impossible" depending on who was saying it.
- prima-facie 3mo agoIf you are from Europe, even if you're not living in the UK, the en-GB locale will feel a lot more familiar to you than the en-US one. It uses the dd-mm-yyyy date format like the rest of Europe, the start of the week is on Monday (vs Sunday in the US), the default paper size is A4 (vs US letter), measurement defaults are metric (indeed UK roads use imperial, but the default is otherwise metric), the time format uses 24hrs (vs AM/PM in the US).
- anotherevan 3mo agoAustralian's use mostly the same, except for the time format where AM/PM is still predominant. Also Celsius for temperature and 1,000.0 for number formatting.
- delta_p_delta_x 3mo agoNot to mention the fact that English basically everywhere else but the US is essentially en-GB with a few choice changes and anachronisms. Consider en-IN, en-IE, en-SG, en-MY, en-AU, en-NZ, etc.
- chrismorgan 3mo agoI started writing something a while ago with preliminary title “Do en and en-US, not en and en-GB”. If you cluster English dialects by various characteristics, you’ll end up with en-US as a clear outlier. I believe that, if you’re going to divide English into two camps, the best is “English (International)” and “English (US)”. Canadian English is the one that’s closest to US English, but even it works at least as well based on International English as regards spelling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_s... is an interesting read). But there’s a lot more to it than spelling, and here the distinction is even clearer: the US has its own length, area, volume, weight and temperature units that no one else uses; its own stupid date format that everyone else loathes; its own paper sizes that no one else knows what to do with. Not everyone else agrees on which date format to use, but we do all agree that any of our formats (DD/MM/YY, DD-MM-YYYY, YYYY-MM-DD, &c.) are better than the US’s middle-endian monstrosity. Though if we see the likes of DD/MM/YYYY we may mistrust whether it’s actually MM/DD/YYYY. I also believe that you should default to English (International) for all users geolocated outside the USA. Once you’ve get this divide right, adding further dialects also probably becomes quite a bit easier. But I do wish for diamond inheritance of locales: so you can mix in -ise/-ize, -yse/-yze, -re/-er, -ence/-ense, program/programme, and thereby deduplicate a fair bit across locales. (There are still plenty of differences: such as time formats; decimal/grouping separators though I believe all places where English is a main language use . for decimal and , for grouping; even number grouping varies: en-IN does 1,23,45,678 rather than 12,345,678; keyboard layout; word choices; and lots more.) (One last point: the naming is a bit fiddly. “Spanish (International)” means Spanish as used outside Spain. “English (International)” means the broad international/non-US consensus of what English is, generally following what England does but probably with kilometres instead of miles for long distances.)
- SuperNinKenDo 3mo agoSomebody once went through one of my Stack* answers and changed (unilaterally edited) every Commonwealth spelling to American spelling...
- r3trohack3r 3mo agoI can’t say I understand this new current of culture/writing. It’s something like: get angry, turn small acts into grand acts of social defiance, and signal your social ingroup by referencing other things we are angry about. “Do you remember that JK Rowling lady we all hate because she’s an evil witch? Haha, yeah. Anyways, I’m British and I’m going to keep writing like I’m British.” Edit: I agree with the thesis. You have a culture; don’t filter it. Differences are beautiful. I’d rather live in a melting pot. Etc. Separately this new communication style is hard to stomach. Ive seen it growing in popularity in the U.S. - seems like there too?
- draw_down 3mo ago[dead]
- My_Name 3mo agoYou seem to be unaware of one of the British idioms used in language, it's called "A joke". Calling her 'the wicked with of the terfs' was one of those. I found it quite funny personally. I can find the joke funny despite my opinion of Rowling as a person or her statements on particular topics. Sometimes, here in the UK, we make jokes featuring people because the joke is funny, not just to virtue signal. Here in the UK, there is a significant section of the population whose base state is mildly dissatisfied and the external manifestation of that is low level grumbling about minor things. It's not a virtue signal, it's not a statement, it is just how they are. You may do better understanding if you take off your glasses of American Exceptionalism and view things more objectively. Ironically, your post could very easily be read that you were upset by the article, wanted to express that to strangers, and signalled your social ingroup by referencing other things you were upset about, like the joke. This post contains more than one joke also. Some people will get them, some will not. And that's OK.
- GaryBluto 3mo agoI've lived in the UK all my life and have the same thoughts as GP.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- adolph 3mo agoI think that "en-GB" is not sufficiently descriptive. There are 160 dialects of English [0]. Within the island of Great Britain there are three historic countries with distinctive usages of language: England, Wales, and Scotland. There might be more mutual unintelligibility within GB than across North America. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_English
- fmajid 3mo agoHis post inspired me to change form <html lang=en> to <html lang=en-US>, to make it clear I do not write in the British's quaint dialect of American.
- Vinnl 3mo agoI declared my blog to be `en-GB` as well, but I'm fairly sure it's neither that, nor any other pre-catalogued locale. There's just no way I'm able to know where any of the references I use came from, let alone which weird contortions I came up with by myself. There are probably a few in this short comment alone.
- graypegg 3mo agoHave you ever played runescape? As a kid, I was obviously a little confused initially by NPCs referring to "the first floor" of a castle/shop/etc meaning "the floor above the entry level", but it wasn't THAT hard for a 12 year old to contextualize "ah yes, this is a British game so it's a little different". (Admittedly growing up with british parents in Canada probably helped with understanding a bit, but I still don't think simply being aware of a few cultural differences to be impressive for anyone.) If english speaking adult-aged people, with a wealth of opportunities to meet people and explore the world, are genuinely befuddled by en-GB to the point where they have to ask you to "translate" it, that's immensely embarrassing for them.
- Telaneo 3mo agoLanguage is very personal. It's very reasonable to want to write in a way that feels natural to you, without constantly having to rephrase or simplify. Surely most turns of phrase and references are easily googleable these days anyway, so it's not like it's even that hard to figure out. And if it is, you can do this amazing thing called 'asking'. I doubt the author will be mad that you want to know exactly what they meant when they wrote what they wrote.
- PeterWhittaker 3mo agoTFA mentions s/Philosopher/Sorcerer/ in HP, which I confess to having confused me greatly (are Americans THAT ignorant that they are unaware of the concept?) and pleased me, since the Canadian publishing house stuck with en-GB throughout, AFAICT. As a multilingual Canadian capable of understanding most English and French accents, I'm grateful for those who preserve and persevere with their home patois. Funnily enough, I had a hard time with Bradley's accent the first time viewing Hot Fuzz but many hours of BritBox and Acorn and a few hours of HarbourCustoms later, no problems at all!
- mghackerlady 3mo agoIt reminds me of the game localisations of the 90s, where all too often they decided a game was just too Japanese for our small American brains to comprehend
- blitzar 3mo agoHere we just call it en
- stasomatic 3mo agoI have one personal example where the inches, pounds, centimeters and stones don't matter - the archery community. "This bow was measured to produce 50 pounds of force at 28" draw length." Nobody argues about it, or takes it personally or tries convert to joules. It's a convention. Everyone uses it, from English Long Bow makers to the Koreans and the Chinese, et al. Similar with the firearms, American enthusiast don't insist on converting 9mm Luger to 0.354" and many of us know what Kurtz means. I'll die on the Fahrenheit hill though. A 100F is 100% torture. 70% (70F) is tolerable. 35.3C tells me nothing on a scale.
- tempodox 3mo agoYes, please!
- deoopalf 3mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]