Dispelling British Myths: Interview with Rianne Part II

To get to know Rianne better, I asked her to share some of the highlights of her home country. I think we both came out of this section learning a lot about the other's country, both present and historically. Read on to learn about a side of England you may not have known about.

M: Since we're talking about England, I’ve actually never been there. I really hope to go one day. What’s something about your country that might surprise or intrigue people?

R: Now, this I looked up quite a few things and I learned a lot about my own country. I will reel off a few things that I found. The first thing I want to point out, and this isn't a fact, it's just something I want people to know about England. It doesn't rain all the time. It really doesn't. We haven't had rain for a long time, so I kind of want it to rain. That's the number one myth. It does rain. We do have that kind of climate where if it does rain, it's going to be a bit nonstop, but it's not all day every single day.

This is another thing that lots of people maybe think and assume about England because we're so small. A lot people I've met have asked me, "Have you met the Queen?" And I'm like, "No..." or they'll ask, "Oh, I have relatives in England. Do you know them?" And I say, "No, no I don't. Why would I?" We're not that small! We're small in size, but with the amount of people packed in, there's no chance I'm going to know them. That would be the craziest small world story if I did happen to know them.

M: But you know what's funny, I have a colleague who's from Australia, and he told me that he once got to perform ballroom dance for Princess Diana. But he's not even from England, he's from Australia!

R: That's something else that people think we're obsessed with - the royals. We're not. I feel like other countries are more obsessed with our royal family than we are.

M: There are definitely a lot of Americans who are obsessed with the royal family.

R: Yeah, and I don't know why. I like the younger generation of royals like Harry and Meghan, William and Kate; I love all of them. But not the older ones, I'm not such a big fan.

M: I think part of it is just the appeal. In America, we've never had anyone with the title of king or queen. If you look back at colonialism and how America as we know it today got started, a lot of people who disagreed with the policies that the king presented decided, "We're going to go and start our own country."

R: You know they never taught us anything like that in England in history. So I didn't know why Independence Day [in the US] was Independence Day. I didn't know it was being independent from Britain. They kind of sweeped that under the carpet here. Maybe it's like the big shame.

M: I'm honestly kind of shocked! I mean, England has colonized so many countries. Do you know about the colonization of India?

R: I know that we had colonization. Do we still have colonization? I don't even know. I know that we still have a Commonwealth with lots of countries, but I thought we were losing lots of colonies that we had. But one thing that I did read was that the Queen supposedly owns, well not owns, I don't know if that's the right word, 1/6th of the earth that she still rules over or has had some kind of power over at one point or another, which is crazy!

M: Yeah, there was the expression, "The sun never sets on the British Empire, " because they had so many colonies all over the world at one point that no matter where you were in the world, it would have been daylight somewhere.

The territories that were at one time or another part of the British Empire. The United Kingdom and its accompanying British Overseas Territories are underlined in red.

R: Yeah! I've got some more cool things. I don't think people realize how many different accents we have in England. I think a lot of people assume that it's just like Posh or Cockney. They seem to be the main two that are shown in the media or on TV. So you can travel 25 miles down the road, and it would be a completely different accent. I can often meet someone, hear their accent, and be like, "You are from Birmingham." Whereas maybe in America, I know you have different accents, but maybe you wouldn't know specifically, "You are from this city."

M: I think it depends because there are regional accents and within those that are more specific accents. So I think if you live in a certain region, you get really good at recognizing accents in that region. I can recognize, with those who have heavier accents, what a Boston accent sounds like versus New York or Connecticut. But if you went down south, a lot of Northerners have this conception of what a Southern accent sounds like, but if you went to individual Southern states, and even some cities, you would see that there was a huge difference. So I get that feeling of not realizing just how many accents there are in one place. It's kind of cool!

R: Yeah! That's something I really do like. Oh, another cool thing I found out is that here, in England, you're never more than 75 miles from the sea anywhere in the country. We [also] have over 100 islands in England, which maybe people didn't know. I didn't know that! I could think of maybe 5. We have over 1,500 castles if you like that kind of thing. We have so many of those! The whole of the UK is smaller than the state of Oregon. We are tiny!

M: That's crazy! I didn't realize that it was quite that small. When you say England, do you just mean England or are you including all of the UK?

R: For size, I mean all of the UK. The UK is made up England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, but Great Britain is just England, Wales, and Scotland. Oh, and the other thing that I think is interesting is our national dish. People would assume that it's fish and chips or a rice dinner, but it's actually curry.

M: Really? Curry? That probably stemmed from some Indian connections there.

M: Awesome, thanks for sharing that! I remember one of the things we chatted about was English slang. I think that many Americans’ understanding of British slang (especially that of millennials) comes from Harry Potter. Just for fun, what are some slang words and phrases you can share?

Rianne:

Cheeky - mischievous

Fit - hot, attractive

Minging - disgusting

Cheers - thanks

Taking the mick - making fun of someone

Mint - cool

Gutted - sad about something

Pants - rubbish

Bog - bathroom

Scrummy - yummy (scrumptious and yummy combined)

Nowt - nothing

Mug - gullible (You're a mug!)

Snog - make out

Skint - poor

Bagsy - calling dibs or shotgun

I know English has obviously originated here, but we just took the language and destroyed it ourselves [Laughs]. That's probably a bit harsh.

M: I don't think it's so much destroyed as it evolves. As with any language, as time goes on, new words develop, new ideas of how to communicate develop. There was English slang in the 1800s too, and it was pretty different but it was also slang! Slang has always existed as a way to make talking more fun, I think. That's a good list of words, thank you!

Map is composed from the following sources:

Stewart, John (1996) "Cyrenaica" The British Empire: an encyclopedia of the Crown's holdings, 1493 through 1995, McFarland & Co. ISBN: 0-7864-0177-X. 

Brown, Judith (1998) The Twentieth Century, The Oxford History of the British Empire Volume IV, Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199246793. 

Dalziel, Nigel (2006) The Penguin Historical Atlas of the British Empire, Penguin ISBN: 0141018445.

STAY TUNED FOR PART III OF THE INTERVIEW.