Can British people pretend to speak like Americans?

Rene   Fri Oct 05, 2007 5:14 pm GMT
I read five of the Patrick O'Brian novels. I could tell that he has really done his research, and the history was fascinating, but the plots did not hold my interest. It is sort of hard to imagine that America helped Napolean Bonaparte, but that is exactly what we did in the War of 1812.
Guest   Fri Oct 05, 2007 6:27 pm GMT
<<Why they changed it I have no idea -- personally, I would have found it more interesting with the original plot!>>

Think back to what was going on at the time the movie came out.

"Master and Commander" was released in theaters in November 2003. Earlier that year (March-April), the US & UK led an invasion of Iraq. Around this time, anti-French sentiment in the Anglosphere was at its zenith. So naturally, our heroes' enemies just **HAD** to be French...and not just any Frenchman, but swarthy Mediterranean-type Frenchmen, Levantines and North Africans wearing fez hats!
Pub Lunch   Fri Oct 05, 2007 7:57 pm GMT
<< If Mandela is a terrorist then where we would rank Geroge Bush the Great, the great saviour of the world>>

Guest - mate, what planet are you from??? Where have I said George Bush is the saviour of the world, I have not even remotely implied such a notion. As I said before, actually READ my post before coming to such wild conclusions
Pub Lunch   Fri Oct 05, 2007 7:58 pm GMT
See Travis that is where our opinions differ, for me the killing of innocent people can never be justified, regardless of motive. You ask whether being a "terrorist" is morally wrong. That is an interesting point and I can see how many would see the motives of the ANC as justifiable. I mean, the freedom of black people from the injustices of apartheid is a cause almost every unbiased person of this planet would support, me included.

But the line is crossed when people were killed who had nothing to do with any of it - and in many cases these innocents were knowingly targeted. No matter how good the intentions were that the ANC started out with, they are guilty of horrendous crimes not only towards ordinary 'white' citizens but they also killed many ‘black’ people as well who did not join in their boycotts and such like.

This was all premeditated; they knowingly went out of their way to kill innocent people. When the ANC put a bomb in a shopping centre in Amanzimoti with the sole intention of killing as many white people as possible, was this justified?? Surely government institutions are a more viable target at least??

I do not think the ANC are/were a rag tag mob of bandits, I realise it was a highly organised group with a very specific agenda. I am also quite aware of the injustices and maiming of black civilians that were perpetrated by the apartheid so I suppose it is a question of which is the lesser or greater evil.

Is the killing of innocent people justified in order to further a cause concerned with the freeing of an oppressed people? Many would say yes, I'd have to say no. But then if you ask me what other methods could be used to effect change, well I'd say something like "peaceful protesting" at which point you'd probably laugh (it has worked for many, mind). It is easy for me to say this because I was not subject to the appalling treatment of black people in South Africa and so I can't really say whether such drastic action is qualified due to the drastic circumstances - I never have experienced the desperateness of the situation, so I suppose I can never really know.

Where do you draw the line Travis, between what can be termed a justifiable motive by a terrorist organisation (or freedom fighters) and a non-justifiable one?? Do you think Bin Laden and his ilk's actions are justified by their motive?? If you don’t then I would have to ask “what would separate what Al Qaeda is doing to what the ANC did??”

Going by the modern definition of what is a terrorist organisation “Acts of murder and destruction deliberately directed against civilians or military in non-military situation” then the ANC qualify as such. And as I have said, terrorism is wrong.

As for state terrorism, with the case of Iraq, yeah, I can see how the actions of the Allied forces can be deemed terrorism. Personally though I think that is rubbish. The allied forces do kill innocent civilians but a distinction can be made with a terrorist organisation by way of intent. Allied forces do not purposefully go out to kill innocent people but sadly as a result of perhaps bad intelligence, human shields, dirty tricks (such as standing outside of a school with a rocket launcher, shoot at a Helicopter, which then retaliates and consequently the school and those in it perish) or old fashioned cross-fire, innocent people do die.

This is a very complex issue we are talking about here and it is easy to sound hypocritical.

When UN forces came to the aid of the Muslims, Catholics and Croats who were being extinguished by the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, were they wrong??? Where did you stand on this issue Travis?? Was the force, led by America (thankfully – while Europe was talking and innocents were dying the Americans were the ones that did something about the genocide) wrong in coming to the aid of these people, was the UN force the terrorists or a liberating force of good overthrowing a tyranny of evil?? People were being massacred, was the world supposed to stand by and watch???

See, I said earlier that the killing of people is wrong for purposes of furthering a cause, no matter how good the intentions are. But by me backing the UN’s action I have basically said that innocent people will die but it is for a good cause. So, what separates what the UN force did against the Serbs to free the people being ethnically cleansed to what the ANC did to free their people??

Hmmnn…To answer that I think I’d have to go back to the point I made earlier about intent. The ANC often targeted innocent people for no reason, with no specific target; just kill white people to make a statement. The UN forces had a target and went about hitting this target with no intention of harming innocent civilians.

With Iraq you have a reversal of roles in that it was the stronger party which liberated an oppressed people from the weaker party (Saddam and his Bath party). My view on this particular war is muddled. I work with a girl who is married to an Iraqi and if you could hear the stories this man has to tell about the things he witnessed your blood will run cold. Hearing such things makes it hard for me to say that the overthrowing of this dictator and his evil regime by the Allied forces was nothing short of a god send.

Again the liberating of Iraqis from Saddam can be likened to the ANC against the Apartheid but again, like I said, the ANC intended and did kill many innocent people. The killing of innocent people wasn’t and still isn’t part of the objective of the Allied forces.

The Iraq war freed a country from an evil regime, this is a fact, but one of the problem’s with this war is the reasons behind the motives. It seems clear that there were serious errors made regarding the notion that Iraq was carrying WMD and it is still up for debate whether it was about oil anyway. These reasons were the reason I was against the war and still am. It was and is an unjustifiable war - but a hell of a lot of good has come out it, this cannot be denied.

It is a hard one but I’d say still that we should never have invaded Iraq, to liberate or otherwise. More people have died with the attack of Iraq than would have died if Saddam was still in power. But then this begs the question what is worth more - one life or a hundred?? Maybe, like I said, it is a question of what is the lesser evil.

I think the overthrow of Saddam or at least change in Iraq could have been instigated by peaceful regime change. That is another topic and I am not getting into that one.

Anyway, I have been writing for 40 mins and my hands hurt. I’ll leave it there.

Oh, apologies for grammar and spelling mistakes – I don’t think I could bear reading all that, so I am not even going to attempt correcting any of it.
Travis   Fri Oct 05, 2007 11:25 pm GMT
>>See Travis that is where our opinions differ, for me the killing of innocent people can never be justified, regardless of motive. You ask whether being a "terrorist" is morally wrong. That is an interesting point and I can see how many would see the motives of the ANC as justifiable. I mean, the freedom of black people from the injustices of apartheid is a cause almost every unbiased person of this planet would support, me included.<<

Somehow I see the word "injustices" as quite an understatement here. The actions of the South African state were not all too different from the more oppressive sorts of fascist or conservative dictatorships except that it had a nominal parliamentarian gov't with limited franchise (aside from the fact that its security state within a state operated more like the former despite the officially parliamentarian civilian gov't). It made, say, the American South during the Jim Crow era look downright mild in comparison, considering the actions of the South African security state.

>>But the line is crossed when people were killed who had nothing to do with any of it - and in many cases these innocents were knowingly targeted. No matter how good the intentions were that the ANC started out with, they are guilty of horrendous crimes not only towards ordinary 'white' citizens but they also killed many ‘black’ people as well who did not join in their boycotts and such like.<<

Yes, the ANC did commit many excesses during its campaign. Such was largely a result of its military ineffectiveness (compared to, say, SWAPO) which pushed them towards targeting non-state civilians who sided with the South African state rather than the South African state and military themselves. The matter, though, is that simply pointing such out in isolation whitewashes the actions of the South African state by making it sound as if they were simply fighting against terrorists who threatened civilians, which most definitely was not the case.

>>This was all premeditated; they knowingly went out of their way to kill innocent people. When the ANC put a bomb in a shopping centre in Amanzimoti with the sole intention of killing as many white people as possible, was this justified?? Surely government institutions are a more viable target at least??<<

I agree that much of what they did was questionable, even though in the context of the low level civil war in South Africa and the greater conflict in southern Africa as a whole (i.e. also South West Africa, Angola, Rhodesia, and Mozambique), such was not particularly remarkable in its dirtiness. It was not that the ANC was just a bunch of evil terrorists targeting innocent civilians but just a general dirty war to begin with on all sides, even though some sides were definitely much more justified in their goals than others. As for government targets, the matter is that such would definitely have been far less distasteful, but at the same time the ANC was not in much of a position to actually directly target the South African state to begin with.

>>I do not think the ANC are/were a rag tag mob of bandits, I realise it was a highly organised group with a very specific agenda. I am also quite aware of the injustices and maiming of black civilians that were perpetrated by the apartheid so I suppose it is a question of which is the lesser or greater evil.<<

Again, what you say here seems to make apartheid sound as if it were merely unjust with the occasional atrocity, akin to the situation in the American South up through the 1960s, when in reality it was not only the systematic oppression of a large portion of the populace by the state but also the widespread systematic repression and violence committed by the South African security state (which was not merely antiterrorist in nature at all but rather targeted all individuals opposed to apartheid including even individuals outside South Africa, except for the token white parliamentarian opposition i.e. Helen Suzman). You make it sound as if it were the ANC which was "dirty" in its actions, and that things would have just been peaceful if unjust without them.

>>Is the killing of innocent people justified in order to further a cause concerned with the freeing of an oppressed people? Many would say yes, I'd have to say no. But then if you ask me what other methods could be used to effect change, well I'd say something like "peaceful protesting" at which point you'd probably laugh (it has worked for many, mind). It is easy for me to say this because I was not subject to the appalling treatment of black people in South Africa and so I can't really say whether such drastic action is qualified due to the drastic circumstances - I never have experienced the desperateness of the situation, so I suppose I can never really know.<<

The peaceful protesters didn't end apartheid; they just got shot at (and frequently arrested and beaten to death in custody) by South African security forces. Mere martyrdom (e.g. Steven Biko) may make one sound morally superior, but it does not force the likes of apartheid South Africa to give the people actual freedom. The methods of the ANC were most definitely dirty, but they did succeed at putting the necessary pressure on the state to end apartheid; while there was the effective embargo of South Africa by much of the rest of the world, that did not end apartheid by itself without the pressure at home from the ANC and like. One can easily speak about how what they did was morally wrong and whatnot, but if it was not for them apartheid and everything associated with it would not have ended..

>>Where do you draw the line Travis, between what can be termed a justifiable motive by a terrorist organisation (or freedom fighters) and a non-justifiable one?? Do you think Bin Laden and his ilk's actions are justified by their motive?? If you don’t then I would have to ask “what would separate what Al Qaeda is doing to what the ANC did??”<<

Bin Laden seeks to impose a theocracy over the entire Middle East, and while many of the states there are already very oppressive (e.g. Syria, Saudi Arabia), such a theocracy would be no less oppressive. Somehow I imagine that such a theocracy would not be instituting moderate Islam either but rather would institute the very worst of fundamentalist Islam. In comparison, the ANC's goals were quite just even if their methods were questionable, as they simply seeked to end the oppression associated with apartheid and to bring about real representative democracy, as they call it, to South Africa (I have my own issues with "representative democracy" itself, but that is a whole nother matter). As for the line to draw, I would say that the goals are the key thing to take into consideration, even though I cannot give an exact criterion for whether such are just or not; two groups can use the same exact methods and yet their goals can be completely diametrically opposed in their consequences.

>>Going by the modern definition of what is a terrorist organisation “Acts of murder and destruction deliberately directed against civilians or military in non-military situation” then the ANC qualify as such. And as I have said, terrorism is wrong.<<

Pretty much all war in one way or another counts as terrorism from a strict perspective no matter how justified or unjustified the combatants may be. It is just that the label "terrorist" is almost exclusively applied to "illegal" non-state belligerent entities.

>>As for state terrorism, with the case of Iraq, yeah, I can see how the actions of the Allied forces can be deemed terrorism. Personally though I think that is rubbish. The allied forces do kill innocent civilians but a distinction can be made with a terrorist organisation by way of intent. Allied forces do not purposefully go out to kill innocent people but sadly as a result of perhaps bad intelligence, human shields, dirty tricks (such as standing outside of a school with a rocket launcher, shoot at a Helicopter, which then retaliates and consequently the school and those in it perish) or old fashioned cross-fire, innocent people do die.<<

The thing is that the line between inadvertant civilian casualties and terror is not necessarily that easy to define. Consider the initial aerial assault upon Baghdad - such did not specifically target non-state civilians, but dropping bombs into any urban area on a large scale will cause significant non-state civilian casualties which can be very easily forseen (and the whole "shock and awe" thing seems to imply that they were seeking terror as opposed to the mere destruction of state, military, and military-associated industrial targets). Is it terror when one kills non-state civilians on a large scale in a fashion that is avoidable militarily even though one's specific goal may not be to kill non-state civilians?

>>This is a very complex issue we are talking about here and it is easy to sound hypocritical.<<

Of course; this is why I tend to avoid simplistic moralizing on these kinds of matters.

>>When UN forces came to the aid of the Muslims, Catholics and Croats who were being extinguished by the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, were they wrong??? Where did you stand on this issue Travis?? Was the force, led by America (thankfully – while Europe was talking and innocents were dying the Americans were the ones that did something about the genocide) wrong in coming to the aid of these people, was the UN force the terrorists or a liberating force of good overthrowing a tyranny of evil?? People were being massacred, was the world supposed to stand by and watch???<<

I tend to not support military interventionism, but at the same time I do not believe much in the notion of "sovereignty" either, so in these kinds of cases I would say that having *not* done so would have been even more morally unjustifiable as it would be willingly permitting genocide to be committed whether or not such intervention would be technically legal from the standpoint of international law. If anything, what I have to say on this kind of thing is why *didn't* the UN intervene in, say, Rwanda, and that the UN has blood on its hands through its inaction there, as it could have easily prevented many deaths had it the political will to actually intervene there. Inaction can be just as wrong as action, you must remember.

>>See, I said earlier that the killing of people is wrong for purposes of furthering a cause, no matter how good the intentions are. But by me backing the UN’s action I have basically said that innocent people will die but it is for a good cause. So, what separates what the UN force did against the Serbs to free the people being ethnically cleansed to what the ANC did to free their people??

Hmmnn…To answer that I think I’d have to go back to the point I made earlier about intent. The ANC often targeted innocent people for no reason, with no specific target; just kill white people to make a statement. The UN forces had a target and went about hitting this target with no intention of harming innocent civilians.<<

You must also remember that the UN forces and the ANC were not very comparable. The UN is a supranational entity with actual troops capable of fighting regular military forces at its disposal, whereas the ANC was a group of irregular civilians who happened to be arm rather than a regular military force. It is much easier to fight a "clean" war when one can actually directly fight other military forces than when the only feasible targets are "soft" ones.

>>With Iraq you have a reversal of roles in that it was the stronger party which liberated an oppressed people from the weaker party (Saddam and his Bath party). My view on this particular war is muddled. I work with a girl who is married to an Iraqi and if you could hear the stories this man has to tell about the things he witnessed your blood will run cold. Hearing such things makes it hard for me to say that the overthrowing of this dictator and his evil regime by the Allied forces was nothing short of a god send.

Again the liberating of Iraqis from Saddam can be likened to the ANC against the Apartheid but again, like I said, the ANC intended and did kill many innocent people. The killing of innocent people wasn’t and still isn’t part of the objective of the Allied forces.

The Iraq war freed a country from an evil regime, this is a fact, but one of the problem’s with this war is the reasons behind the motives. It seems clear that there were serious errors made regarding the notion that Iraq was carrying WMD and it is still up for debate whether it was about oil anyway. These reasons were the reason I was against the war and still am. It was and is an unjustifiable war - but a hell of a lot of good has come out it, this cannot be denied.<<

That is one of my biggest problems with the Iraq War itself as well; it's not that it was a war but rather that its goals were not truly just even if the results of it could have been an improvement had they not been horribly botched as they have been. The United States military was not truly invading Iraq as a liberator, and rather the whole "liberator" business was more just propaganda than their true goal there. This is as opposed to the ANC, whose goals were truly just even if their methods may have been dirtier than necessary.

>>It is a hard one but I’d say still that we should never have invaded Iraq, to liberate or otherwise. More people have died with the attack of Iraq than would have died if Saddam was still in power. But then this begs the question what is worth more - one life or a hundred?? Maybe, like I said, it is a question of what is the lesser evil.<<

With that, the thing is that such was largely due to gross, practically criminal miscalculation and mismanagement on the part of the US gov't as opposed to the direct results of deliberate actions by the US military. The US gov't had no real plan on how to actually cleanly transition Iraq to a stable form of government and relied on purely the hopes that it would be welcomed as a liberator and that everything would magically be all good and happy. It never realized that there would be many who would not see it as a liberator, on one hand, and that it would allow those oppressed by Saddam's regime (particularly Shiite Arabs) to seek revenge upon those who were not (particularly Sunni Arabs). And, of course, as their plans went horribly wrong in ways that were easily forseeable, they are largely responsible for the situation there even if they really have not directly carried out much of the killing there.
Uriel   Sun Oct 07, 2007 8:36 pm GMT
<<I read five of the Patrick O'Brian novels. I could tell that he has really done his research, and the history was fascinating, but the plots did not hold my interest. It is sort of hard to imagine that America helped Napolean Bonaparte, but that is exactly what we did in the War of 1812.>>

Why is that hard to believe? He had just set us up with the greatest land deal in history (the Louisiana Purchase, sold off to the US to fund his military ventures in Europe) and the British were pissing us off no end at the time -- I imagine it amused us to play one European superpower off of another. Much as third world countries did during the Cold War -- weaker countries always seem to use the same passive-aggressive tactics on stronger ones. We were no exception back then.
Rene   Sun Oct 07, 2007 10:50 pm GMT
It is just that now the U.S. and Britain are so tight. Of course, then they hated each other and the fact that British Naval vessel were impressing men from American merchant ships was only irritating the matter. Still, Napolean was trying to take over the world and probably planned on taking back the Lousiana Purchase (undoubtedly the best land deal in history) by force later on. I guess I'm just thinking that it would be very risky helping someone who wants to build an Empire for himself out of the world after you have just kicked out another empire-crazed nation and are still a weakling.
Uriel   Mon Oct 08, 2007 12:08 am GMT
Distance was a better buffer back then. And the French weren't terribly numerous in North America. Hell, we had miffed British Loyalists sitting right above us in Canada and they didn't scare us much, either.
Rene   Mon Oct 08, 2007 11:39 pm GMT
Yeah, and not just the loyalists sitting up in Canada, but the ones in forts up and down the frontier borders near the Appalachian Mountains who would stir up the Native Americans who would, in their turn, come in and have their revenge on the settlers. Messy history.
Kuzy Aimee   Wed Oct 10, 2007 9:31 am GMT
Why do English people try to speak like American ones? They have their own style, England in fact the original country of English. They don't need to change anyway.
Damian in London E14   Wed Oct 10, 2007 3:44 pm GMT
Kuzy Aimee:

What proof do you have that English people try to *speak* like Americans? That's news to me! Let's have some definitive evidence please.

It's certainly true that the American style takes over the lyrics of songs when performed by British singers (not just English!) as it makes the whole effect sound more universally acceptable.

As for ordinary speech - no way do English (British) people try to speak like Americans - absolutely not. No way. We may use the occasional American word or expression but that's about it.

Other nationals (non native English speakers) may well adopt the American accent purely as a preference when learning English (it's their choice) but there's absolutely no reason at all for Brits to do so. None at all, unless they have a vested interest in doing so.

You are, of course, spot on when you say that the English Language first saw the light of day here - in England. Now it has spread right across the globe and has diversified so deliciously, and some versions are almost separate languages in their own right. :-)
Uriel   Sat Nov 10, 2007 7:04 pm GMT
Okay, back to the subject of faking accents -- I saw The Last kiss recently, in which Australianactress Jacinda Barrett plays an American, and I thought she did a pretty passable job. The only real flub I heard was in one scene where she was yelling at her boyfriend, and you could really hear her Aussie accent in one or two words, especially where she dropped an R -- "You have her numbah programmed into your phone?" But I imagine it's difficult to yell and be angry and maintain an accent all at the same time, so I'll cut her some slack. She did mention that she did have to loop some of the dialogue here and there to fix it up, so there may have been other lines she messed up, too, that they happened to catch.
Milton   Sat Nov 10, 2007 7:50 pm GMT
British people usually have a mixed WestCoast-EastCoast US accent no one in US has. It sound a bit off, imagine mixing Geordie and Cockney - an impossible accent...
Kate Winslet is really great at trying to sound Californian...I guess, it's because of Cameron Diaz - her best friend, with whom she spends many of her US days.
Vanessa   Sun Nov 11, 2007 2:59 am GMT
Pub Lunch Sat Aug 18, 2007 9:22 am GMT
<<Sorry - I didn't know that sounds geeky!!!!!!!!!!!! That's what we call it here though...That's a Seattleite term! All the politians and public officials call it that. Again, the difference between American English and British English! :) >>

Oh sorry Vanessa!! I suppose because I'm used to "public transport" that when I heard "public transportation system" it seemed very 'high brow' and a tad 'long winded'!!!

Yep, the differences between our languages are funny, I mean, I can't believe that I only have just cottoned on to the fact that a subway in the US refers to your underground system where as here it refers to a pedestrian walk way that goes under a road (what are these called in the US I wonder?).

*****
Been a while since I've been on here..........no offense taken, Pub Lunch. J :)

I am not sure what the pedestrian walk way is called that is under a road? Hmm........never thought about it. If I find out, I'll post!
Uriel   Sun Nov 11, 2007 4:08 pm GMT
Pedestrian walkways usually go OVER the road, not under.