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Old 07-15-2008, 04:59 AM   #27
DanaC
We have to go back, Kate!
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Yorkshire
Posts: 25,964
I definitely think of the Cellar as a primarily 'American' place. By that I mean it is primarily American in culture and tone.....not that it has borders and gates and passport checks on the way in.

This, to me, is a good thing. I actually don't post on English forums much. I am a member of one, a Politics forum. It is not as entertaining as this place is. When I was into massively multiplayer games, I played on the American servers wherever possible, even though it often meant the game ran sluggishly and I had to become virtually nocturnal whenever I wanted to play in a large group.

I loved being a brit amongst the Americans in those games. Like here, there were many different nationalities involved, and like here there was no sense of exclusivity based on nationality. The differences between us are sometimes startling, other times mere hints. They can be frustrating but more often they're intriguing.

monster I think has an interesting point about how much more exposure we (Brits) generally have to American language patterns and cultural references than you (Americans) have to the British equivalent. We may be more conscious of the differences because of that exposure. In my lifetime, I have seen the language of my country change and adopt aspects of American English. Gaol has become Jail, for example. Gotten.....not used much here, but I find myself using it from time to time. Gas station instead of petrol station, I hear from time to time also. Okay, hi, yeah (instead of the more English yeh) are all common now. Not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but its definitely happening.

Even so, most British contact with American language and culture is passive in nature. It is television and movies and books. What's marvellous about the Cellar is it is not passive. The American language and culture is being actively expressed and meeting up with the British culture as that is actively expressed (and Australia and New Zealand etc). It's in that meeting of two actively expressed languages and cultures that we can see how distinct they really are; a fact, as monster says, which is often hidden by the shared basic language. I have often found myself arguing the toss in here only to realise that we are using the same words to mean different things, or that a word which is purely functional here is culturally loaded there, and vice versa.

Sky, chill babe, nobody's attackin anybody or complaining about the cellar. Sundae picked up on something from another thread and decided to examine the question in its own right. Is it an American board? Yeah, I'd say so. Not exclusively so, but culturally and demographically, it is primarily American. Mind you, there's an argument to suggest that the internet is much the same ;P
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