What is English culture?

[Jonno]

drinking and taking the piss

 

[alan partridge]

oh yeah sure, walking around Norfolk English is the MINORITY language. And no I haven't looked at that link. Can't be arsed. It was a ridiculous statement.

 

[Pretty pink fairy]

drinking and taking the piss

go down to the local kebab shop and ask them

 

[Kuipers Supporters Club]

Running after a cheese on a steep hill

 

[Dandyman]

Well according to the One Show the other night the idea of frying them in batter came over with Italian immigrants in the 19th century.

Pah ! Fish & Chips is kosher. The first Fish & Chip shop was open in London in 1860 by Joseph Malin who combined "fish fried in the Jewish fashion" with chips. Yaweh knows where mushy peas came from, mind you.

 

[Seagull over Canaryland]

It seems that ignorance of, and discrimination towards the many English regional dialects is alive and kicking on NSC. Rather different to my original point about English seeming to be a minority language in many public places these days.

Work and leisure have recently taken me around Norfolk, Sussex, Essex, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, Kent, Hampshire, Surrey, Dorset and Cambridgeshire in the last couple of weeks and heard the wonderful range of local dialects. I can see that a genuine indigenous Norfolk or for example wonderful Suffolk, Somerset, Hampshire or traditional Sussex accent may sound quaint to, for example, public school educated or to chavvy estruarine types. But these people are often the salt of the earth - and very much what many would consider to be 'English'.

Apparent on my travels was just how prominent the range of foreign accents and / or languages that could be overheard - which indicates to me just how diverse the population of England is these days.

What exactly is the 'Queen's English'? After all The Windsor family are of German and Greek descent that have learnt to speak English with a cut glass public school accent?

Hence my question what exactly is 'being English' these days? Discuss....

 

[Sloe Joe]

Forget the sensationalist scribes of NSC who may not be what they seem anyway MK Seagull.
Sadly English ciulture these days is pretending to be a 'gangsta' type or scumbag cheapo tracksuit attired chav, wearing jeans with a crotch hanging down to your knees, wearing a baseball cap back to front, talking garbage which nobody understands, accepting Craig David and the Lighthouse family as musical icons, sitting on DFS sofas doing nothing but eat Dominoes pizzas and being afraid to decry anything which is non PC.
Nobody has the bottle to stand up to old established Engliish values and standards but tamely submitting to meaningless globalism which quite frankly is a gradually cultivated media con which the majority are now falling for.
Time to stand up for traditional values which for the untainted, know exactly what these are.
Oh, and Harvey's Best Bitter, G.O.S.B.T.S. BHA and SCCC are but a few.............

 

[CheeseRolls]

Any non-British cultures that regularly tuck into Baked beans ?
Also Mint sauce on Roast Lamb seems to really freak out the French

 

[BadFish]

People are people, there are more similarities across national boarders than differences so why don't we concentrate on them?

 

[HovaGirl]

People are people, there are more similarities across national boarders than differences so why don't we concentrate on them?

Boarders are people who live in lodgings. Of course people are fundamentally similar but this is a thread about English culture, not people.

 

[BadFish]

Boarders are people who live in lodgings. Of course people are fundamentally similar but this is a thread about English culture, not people.

Thanks for that. Surely culture is made of people?

 

[Falmer]

Eating shit food, complaining about the weather, not sharing amongst each other, paitriotic when abroad, old fashioned, bad teeth, over-weight women, pointless monarchy, awful public transport, untrustworthy Governments, disease ridden hospitals, authority abusing police and security forces, facebook, on-line dating, pretencious restuarantes serving microwave meals, an ostentacious way of fashion, an obbsession with non talented celebs, and last but not least...John Smiths!

 

[BadFish]

Eating shit food, complaining about the weather, not sharing amongst each other, paitriotic when abroad, old fashioned, bad teeth, over-weight women, pointless monarchy, awful public transport, untrustworthy Governments, disease ridden hospitals, authority abusing police and security forces, facebook, on-line dating, pretencious restuarantes serving microwave meals, an ostentacious way of fashion, an obbsession with non talented celebs, and last but not least...John Smiths!

Sounds like everywhere else in the western world

 

[HovaGirl]

Thanks for that. Surely culture is made of people?

Culture is what people do and enjoy. The English like fish and chips. Italians like pizza. The English admire Constable's rural English landscapes and use them as place mats. The Italians love Canaletto's panoramas of Venice and use them as false window scenes. The English queue everywhere. The Greeks will not. The Scots love their kilts where the English think they're some sort of funny skirt, but secretly want a tartan of their own. Culture, is by definition, the different things different groups of people do for a variety of reasons, often to do with the kind of weather they have, or their history. You cannot homogenize people, however hard McDonald's and Starbucks try.

 

[HovaGirl]

Eating shit food, complaining about the weather, not sharing amongst each other, paitriotic when abroad, old fashioned, bad teeth, over-weight women, pointless monarchy, awful public transport, untrustworthy Governments, disease ridden hospitals, authority abusing police and security forces, facebook, on-line dating, pretencious restuarantes serving microwave meals, an ostentacious way of fashion, an obbsession with non talented celebs, and last but not least...John Smiths!

Little of this is English culture, but modern, homogenised global culture. That a monarchy is pointless, is only your opinion. Others disagree. Bad teeth and overweight women occur the world over, thanks to fast-foods and overdoses of sugar.

 

[HovaGirl]

Any non-British cultures that regularly tuck into Baked beans ?
Also Mint sauce on Roast Lamb seems to really freak out the French

And the Greeks!