介绍:
Heyang: 欢迎来到这周的Round Table英语词汇小百科，我是赫扬，今天我和马克要来聊一聊英美文化的差异。So today we are gonna talk about more than just vocabulary difference between British English and American English. Today we are gonna talk about the cultural differences too.
Mark: Well, that’s right, and some of those things that British people like myself know about America, but we don’t quite understand why they like it.
Heyang: Yes, the first one comes to my mind is Americans love Disney prince and princess.
Mark: You’ve lived in both countries, haven’t you, so you may have a better insight into these than me. But I mean, I’m not a Disney person. I can’t stand any of it. I found the whole lot just horribly, sickly oversweet and sanitized.
Heyang: Well, for people who grow up watching Disney movies is the first thing they know about love, about relationships, and yes, maybe it’s a bit too bubble gummy, after you grow up you realize that. But at the moment when you are a little kid, it is the fairy tale for all.
Mark: I suppose not. Ok.
Heyang: What about extreme snacking? Do you think that’s very American?
Mark: What is it? Is that like eating more of what we all eat when we are watching a film or something, do you think?
Heyang: Well, the thing about America is everything is super-size, and I think they love that and when you see these super-size Snicker bars, they are like as big as your hand. It’s kind of great to snack on that actually.
Mark: Yes, the other thing is that when I was working for another radio station, I used to do travel reports on cruise ships. You should see the size of those plates that they have on cruise ships, because many cruise ship passengers are American, and I thought the plate that I took in the serve-yourself buffet, I assumed that it’s for me and the 5 people standing behind me. I thought we were going to share, but no, that massive plate was just for me.
Heyang: What about putting food stuffs inside other food stuffs?
Mark: I love this whole concept. I know this is supposed to be one of the criticisms that British people have about Americans. What do you mean first of all?
Heyang: Take pizza for example. It’s putting pizza inside hamburgers, so it’s gonna be gigantic, and you can have a hamburger and a pizza at the same time.
Mark: Wait a minute, cause a hamburger itself is one food inside another food, isn’t it? It’s the burger inside the bread. So really, if you got a food inside of food inside of good.
Heyang: Yes, and for example, that pizza burger we are talking about is made for sharing.
Mark: I love the whole idea of it really, but then you are talking to someone that really likes the old British tradition of a crisp sandwich, you know, when we take what Americans call the potato chip, just put it between two pieces of bread. You can put anything between two pieces of bread and make a nice snack out of it.
Heyang: That just sounds like too much calories at one go. That’s definitely a no-no for me. What about when Americans go “Bros”, or “Hi, bro”, what do you think of that?
Mark: Bro is short for brother, isn’t it, I think.
Heyang: Yes.
Mark: It’s alright I suppose. I think it’s really quite an affectionate term of endearment I suppose, isn’t it? In fact, in Britain, we are kind of a bit stuck for the right word, cause in America, they’ve got the word guy, and it’s used to just mean man, you know, the lads, but now it can be used for girls as well over the last maybe ten or fifteen years that can be used for everybody, and that’s also a classless word. I think the problem in Britain is that there are class connotations without versions of that kind of word. For example, if say bloke, which now sounds rather old-fashioned. It’s a bit of a down-market word really I suppose bloke is. Chap, on the other hand, is a bit of an up-market saying. Geezer, definitely kind of very east London, originally very down-market, but now you might find someone like David Cameron, the prime minister pretending not to be as posh as he is using the word geezer possibly, I can’t really imagine it myself, but this is all coming with something is called Estuary English, which is middle class people trying to sound like they are not middle class, because there’s a kind of a stigma attached to being too middle class, it’s an insane country with all these things going on. I wish we had a word like “Guys”. I don’t like it personally when it’s used by British people, cause it’s an American word, that’s how I think of it. I don’t like it and it’s a bit of fake when British people say it.
Heyang: That’s so very interesting. I didn’t know that such a simple concept can have so many variations and shown in languages. We’ve talked a lot about what British people don’t understand about Americans, but what about those things that the British people don’t realize are offensive to Americans. For example, friendly offensive banter, apparently a lot of Americans don’t really take the offensive bit very well.
Mark: So I’ve heard, I mean, it’s not my experience. My American friends that I know here in China are all for some sort of banter where we might poke fun at an aspect of each other’s country or culture or something like that. It’s all done in a very good-natured way, so I gotta disagree with that actually.
Heyang: Apparently on the list, there’s criticizing American food, saying Americans are unsophisticated and mocking their heritage. I think for Americans or for anybody when it’s not your fellow compatriot saying these things, it could be a bit offensive.
Mark: I can criticize their food and mock their heritage all in one sentence.
Heyang: What is that?
Mark: There is no such thing is American food.
Heyang: That’s all the time we have for this week’s Word of the Week. We’ll see you next week.
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