English for Americans

I wanted to talk about relationships. A British guy I knew went out on a date with an American girl and she told him every terrible thing that ever happened to her and all of her issues and hang-ups. And he said to her, "Can't we just flirt? And talk about the weather? Why do I need to know all this?"

Americans feel they need to communicate by talking. We think that you have to exchange a confidence for a confidence and an intimacy for an intimacy and that is how we bond. We think the other person really needs to know our whole back history and everything about us and where we're coming from and then they can understand us.

And if I reveal my faults you'll feel more comfortable revealing yours.

And not only that, but if I reveal my weaknesses, you can reveal one of yours, and then we will love each other. And also forgive each other for any of our deficiencies.

The first thing you need to know about the Brits is that they have the most heightened sense of personal embarrassment of any national group in the world. We are embarrassed to do anything because we're British.

Americans might stereotype them as uptight for this reason.

But they're not really uptight because sexually they're probably a lot less inhibited than Americans. They don't see sex with the same significance as Americans do. They can take it with a more relaxed attitude.

Does the embarrassment have to do with a different sense of privacy?

Yes. They would be happy to do almost anything of that nature that's intimate but they just somehow think that revealing anything about yourself or taking the risk of doing something gauche is just the most miserable thing that they can think of. Americans are much more relaxed about what others might think of them. The Brits are constantly thinking about how others might perceive what they do.

That's sort of surprising coming from a one-time empire.

But they've always protected themselves with tradition and rules. Britain has a code of rules, partly because it has a class system that really governs every move that they make. One of the things they think is so odd about Americans is that Americans are constantly violating these tiny rules they don't even know about. It was as if you were in India and didn't understand the caste system. Britain has an equally complex set of behaviors. Americans just go crashing through life and don't really think about that stuff.

Like how Americans show off their children with such pride. Brits want to shove them in the closet.

What's the worst thing that can happen to a Brit? Being embarrassed. So you say about your child, "We had terrible problems even getting him through third grade level but nevertheless he's a charming child." That child is probably terrific. But they need others to make that discovery. To foist that information on anyone else is showing off and therefore embarrassing. The idea is that if you talk yourself down all the time, you can't be called out.

And Americans?

Americans are all about self-promotion. Just in case somebody doesn't know how wonderful you are, you want to tell them because they might miss it.

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