{"id":79,"date":"2003-05-16T11:46:02","date_gmt":"2003-05-16T15:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2003\/05\/16\/to-see-oursels-as-ithers-see-us\/"},"modified":"2003-05-16T11:46:02","modified_gmt":"2003-05-16T15:46:02","slug":"to-see-oursels-as-ithers-see-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2003\/05\/16\/to-see-oursels-as-ithers-see-us\/","title":{"rendered":"To see oursels as ithers see us"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a49'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Raccoons led me googlewise to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stithians.cornwall.sch.uk\/ongoingwork\/america\/america.htm\">this<\/a> a few days ago.  A bunch of Cornish kids&#8217; impressions of America.  They must&#8217;ve studied Rockville (Maryland?) right before writing &#8211; their impressions are too homogeneous to lack an immediate influence of that sort, and one of them makes reference to films.  Fun repeated themes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Buildings in the U.S. (tentatively including the White House) are white to keep out the heat.<\/li>\n<li>Lots of cars and pollution.<\/li>\n<li>Hot in winter, cold in summer.<\/li>\n<li>Income disparity.<\/li>\n<li>On-street mailboxes.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Grisly bears&#8221; and raccoons always scattering trash around in town.<\/li>\n<li>Fat, strict teachers in the schools; burgers and chips in the cafeteria.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8220;How much crime happens every day? We have a lot of crime but apparently not as much as you, is that why you have Jay walking.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There are typhoons hurricanes tornadoes earthquakes and poverty and the cost of living is high .But I would not mind a holiday there.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The use of &#8220;I reckon&#8221; by three of these kids is interesting.  Is this current in Cornwall?  Or are they picking up on an Americanism, perhaps used in the movie they saw?<\/p>\n<p>And I dig this: &#8220;What are your school diners like, are&#x2019; grotty&#x2019; like ours ?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Check out the scarequotes, distancing the author from a word which must&#8217;ve felt too English.  Is there some Englishy word for words which are too Englishy?  Seems like there oughta be.  It&#8217;s hard to find definitions for some of these words &#8211; many aren&#8217;t in the OED, and Google glossary doesn&#8217;t have many of them either.  &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=swotty+twee&amp;safe=off\">Swotty twee<\/a>&#8221; is currently a googlewhack.  From that interesting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lordpineapple.com\/diary26.html\">lone page<\/a>: &#8220;Quite twee. (put that word in cos most yanks don&#8217;t know the meaning!)&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.peevish.co.uk\/slang\/search.htm\">dictionary<\/a> which at least passes the swotty grotty test.  Fun to browse!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Raccoons led me googlewise to this a few days ago. A bunch of Cornish kids&#8217; impressions of America. They must&#8217;ve studied Rockville (Maryland?) right before writing &#8211; their impressions are too homogeneous to lack an immediate influence of that sort, and one of them makes reference to films. Fun repeated themes: Buildings in the U.S. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}