Anglosphere

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GUEST: "Are people of Germanic ethnicity in New England too?"

Of course there are, but the primary influence in New England is the UK and Ireland. It must be remembered, however, that New England is tiny compared to the rest of the US.

Apropos Irishmen, I've heard that there are more Irishmen in Boston than there are in Dublin. I don't know if this is true, but it makes a good story.

***Hmm. If the spy could make such a goof with the letter J, his English could not have been all that terrific. How on earth could he pass as a native English-speaker?***

Apparently he did have a virtually perfect English English accent, like most of the German spies who were sent over to England by various means - not an easy task in 1940 Britain. Some actually landed by dinghy on the more secluded spots of the Kent and Sussex coasts of South East England.

You must remember that surveillance measures were nothing like as well developed as they are today - the England of 1940 was pretty much a Museum place by today's standards in so many ways, but even so there were all sorts of organistions which had been set up to keep watch 24/7 on the skies and coasts of this country in thosae highly dangerous times - such as the newly established Observer Corps for example, and also the much mocked but surprisingly efficient Home Guard - the so called Dad's Army - consisting of men over the age of compulsory conscriptiuon to the armed forces.

Britain did have a great advantage over the Germans - the use of the newly developed detection facility - radar (radio detecting and ranging) which the Germans did not possess. This enabled the British to detect the presence of approaching aircraft well before they came into view in the overhead skies, thus enabling the RAF to scramble and intercept the enemy aircraft in good time. Radar was also useful in the sounding of the air raid siren warnings of imminent bombing/shelling/V1 and V2 rocket blitzes throughout WW2.

Spies did manage to land on the shores of England in the spring and early summer of 1940 - it was not easy at all to survey ever single stretch of the shores of South East England, and many came across under cover of darkness. One such pair of German spies landed on the shingly shore near Dymchurch, on the Kent coast.....off a dinghy manned by two other men who then disappeared back into the darkness of the English Channel again in a flash) - all such spies were especially selected because of their excellent command of the English Language, with accents perfected to almost flawless perfection. They were so convincing that the average British person would have taken them for English people. Anyway, espionage of this kind, however well organised and planned, does not really allow for even the simplet of slip-ups. Germans infiltrating England at that time really had to be made aware of every single aspect of ordinary English (British) life, but these two blokes did not take into account the local licensing laws (that is, the hours of opening for the sale of alcohol in pubs, inns and hotels). Daylight had dawned as these two men, seemingly as English as English could be, made their way up from the beach (the dinghy they arrived in had sailed away from the shore while it was still dark) and then walked along the lanes to the nearest village. By this time they felt peckish and thirsty, saw a jolly little pub and when they asked the landlord for food and a drink they were informed that such facilities were not available for sale until 10am - itbwas, in English English terminology "out of hours". They went on their merry way, while the suspiucious landlord immediately conracted the police, the Home Guard and the military authorities, and the two men were subsequently captured not too far away with such speed and skill they had no time to use their weapons in self defence.

Very often in those highly charged times many an innocent person anywhere in Britain was apprehended on suspicion of being a spy, even in areas well away from areas most at threat from invasion.

The spy who was trapped by the wrong use of the letter J on English soil may well have been very nervous for some reason (I think he was lost in a maze of Kentish lanes*) and simply forgot at a very crucial moment, and his perfect English English accent was of no use at all really.

*In the early summer of 1940, with the threat of German invasion in Britain at a peak of danger, every single roadsign in Britain was taken down - as were every single sign, noticeboard, nameplate, indicator boards, railway station nameplates - everything and anything which indicated the actual name of a place - be it city, town, village or hamlet - they were all taken down and stored away, if not destroyed. This was done to make it impossible, or at least extremely difficult, for any landing German forces - be it by parachute or off landing craft - to determine their location on British soil.

It was a double edged sword as it made life extremely difficult for any British person driving around in an area unfamiliar to them (those that still had petrol, that is, to drive along roads already blocked at regular intervals by all sorts of obstacles placed there to hinder any German land advances. With absolutely no road signs or railways station nameplates the British poipulation found normal travel by both road and rail either an absolute nightmare or just plain fun, depending on your mission at the time!

And at night of course it was even worse - the blackout was absolute! Without a moon many people walking home from the pub on a pitch dark night, with no light or torch permitted, on a road or a street they had known for years and normally knew like the back of their hands in daylight, became totally disorientated and often got hopelessly lost , even when the pub was literally just around the corner from their homes. Some even stumbled into the village pond or canal, or found themselves trying to unlock the door of other people's houses.

Try walking around your own house with every single light switched off on a night as dark as Dylan Thomas' Bible Black dark night and with no streets lights anywhere near outside........it isn't easy. I bet you put your foot in the dog's dinner or knock over something breakable.

<<Hmm. If the spy could make such a goof with the letter J, his English could not have been all that terrific. How on earth could he pass as a native English-speaker? And if he said he was a foreigner, couldn't the mistake be made just as easily by an immigrant from, Norway, or a half dozen other countries? >>

Is that some well known place or something? If I saw that word "Jarvis"in isolation and didn't know where it was, I would assume it was pronounced "Yarvis", because it doesn't look strikingly English and ENglish is like the only language that pronounced 'j' as it does.

But it was in England, for gosh sakes! How is there any ambigity there as to how it would be pronounced.

Damian, you have brought up an interesting topic.

I would like to hear an example of a joke that an Englishman would understand and think funny, but would elude the Americans and Germans...

Yes, since that still seems to be the main difference. To tell you the truth, the only difference that I've noticed was that they would keep a straight face while they told a joke, or occasionally told a mean joke that I did not think deserved any reaction whatsoever.

I can't really say with any confidence myself whether or not there is really a marked difference between the British sense of humour and that of the Americans or the Germans, except to say that most Brits believe that irony and a very dry sort of humour is lost on the Americans (maybe it is, maybe it isn't really!) and that the Germans seem to be born with a missing gene - that which develops humour in the first place (I really can't believe that is the case). It's not me personally saying all this, it's just a general opinion over here. It's obviously been a British perception for a very long time about the German lack of humour otherwise those people in Britain on the watch out for German spies in Britain during WW2 would not have said what they did about cracking jokes.

Anyway, take a butchers* at these jokes and make your own mind up, such as they are in this link. (*Londonspeak/Cockney rhyming slang for "look" (as in butchers hook = look!) - I tell you, I'm turning into a bloody Londoner! Oh noooooooooo!!!!

British Jokes and Humour:

http://thejokes.co.uk/british-humour.php

Simon Pegg thinks there is no difference between British and American humour:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2007/feb/10/comedy.television

Simon Pegg: Do you speak English?

Do YOU find the following clip funny?

It's typical Simon Pegg, as in the film "Hot Fuzz" in which he played a hardnosed metropolitain big city type London Metropolitan Police Officer who was transferred to a (not so) sleepy rural force in the depths of the West Country countryside - Somerset, actuallly. Police officers in the UK are never compulsorily transferred from one force to another - it only happens when they specifically request such a move, and some big city metro officers really do apply to be moved to less hectic, and safer, rural force areas.

British humour has changed enormously since the days of WW2, and what is broadcast widely on the BBC and other radio and TV channels today would never, ever have been passed for transmission by the "censors" back then - there are no two ways about that. That is very similar to the live stage perormances here - the Lord Chancellor's Department no longer exists, and in days long gone the Lord Chancellor would have said yay or nay to any planned stage performance to a live audience. Once the LC passed into oblivion all manner of performances were shown on the London stage and elsewhere in the UK - such as Oh! Calcutta and The Romans in Britain to name just two.

The Lord Chancellor had made an exception with regard to the non stop nude performances during the revues on the stage of the Windmill Theatre (just off Shaftesbury Avenue, behind Piccadilly Circus in London's West End) in the early days of WW2 on the grounds that it offered "comfort and entertainment to the troops at a time when they needed it badly", and when the air raids seriously commenced on London the Windmill Theatre was the only theatre in the West End that refused to close down during the bombing of the constant air raids, and those girls on the stage, posing nude and motionless before a packed audience of lascivious young servicemen barely flinched, hardly moved a muscle, as bombs crashed all around the theatre (always luckily missing a direct hit on the building!) and scenery collapsed and plaster off the celing showered down, while the audience ducked down between the rows of seats!

Because of this bravado the motto of the Windmill Theatre which never closed became "We Never Clothed!"

Typical WW2 humour from a radio show which was very popular in the UK during WW2 - ITMA - standing for It's That Man Again - a scathing reference to Adolf Hitler.

The star was Tommy Handley. During WW2 London and all other major towns and cities in the UK had huge barrage balloons suspended about 150m up in the air, all connected with wiring, the purpose being to prevent enemy aircraft flying low. During one of his shows Tommy Handley joked: "It's no use the Germans hanging about up there over London like that - we're not going to share our rations with them and that's that! They should have brought their own!"

On another occasion Tommy Handley had a dialogue with another, rather camp, comedian called Arthur Marshall (who had previously been a schoolmaster at a well known public school in Northamptonshire called Oundle).

Tommy: Tell me, Arthur, what would you do if the Germans landed by parachute in your back garden?"

Arthur: Well, I suppose I would give them a very nasty look!

All that was considered very funny in those days.

ITMA - WW2
http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/localhistory/journey/stars/tommy_handley/catchphrases.shtml

Maybe Americans were familar with later British shows, in similar vein:

The Goon Show (Radio)

Monty Python and the Flying Circus (TV)

Continentals liked some of the British comedy shows because of the visual effect I suppose, rather than the spoken word. There have been many of those.

The BBC in 1943 took great exception to a new British song of WW2 called:

"Thank you so much for that lovely weekend" -

- a British song banned from being broadcast on the BBC when it was first released in 1943 on the grounds that it featured an illicit sexual relationship. The BBC was not (semi mockingly) called "Auntie" for nothing in those far off days.

The BBC in its wisdom decided that the lyric was too suggestive to be broadcast to the British listening public in the 1940s. Now here it is, in the present day, being sung before the altar in a church near Swindon, in Wiltshire, England:

"I haven't said thanks for that lovely weekend!
Those two days of heaven you helped me to spend...
...then breakfast next morning...just we two alone!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cwWgxbqah0

In 1945 the film "Brief Encounter" was released, this time featuring an extra marital affair between a married woman and a married man who met by chance in the refreshments lounge of an ordinary English train station. It caused a huge moralistic stir in the Britain of the time, and it was actually filmed before WW2 had ended - in January 1945, with the action featuring the train station as a setting for part of the time, filmed at a remote station at Carnforth, Lancashire, up in the north west of England, location filming taking place in the wee small hours of the morning so as not to interfere with the train services many of which involved urgent wartime traffic, and official blackout restrictions had been considerably relaxed in that part of England just a short while before filming began as it was furthest away from any remaining potential enemy aerial attacks, and well away from the current V1 and V2 flying bomb/rocket attacks still devastating the south and east of England including London at that time, and in any case by that time much of Continental Europe had been liberated from the Germans by the Allied Forces.

The English English accents heard are so characteristic of the time, too - so very dated, so comically stiff and stilted and very old fashioned by today's standards. We can't even begin to imagine today just why people back then got so wound up and shocked by such a storyline - an extra marital affair! Now they are almost compulsory! (well, hardly - but you know what I mean!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il8B6E9FzSE

To me British humour is that of Benny Hill.

I cocked up the TY clips a wee bit.....here they are:

Simon Pegg in Do You Speak English?:

Do you find this funny?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cwWgxbqah0

"That Lovely Weekend":

The song banned by the BBC in 1943 - here sung in an English country church at Radbourne, near Swindon, Wiltshire:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avRXJjVZpEU

Benny Hill was very much visual humour - which is why it was so popular outside of the UK!

Mr Bean is popular abroad as well.

Damian: some of the jokes made me smile, being plays on words. But most of them I didn't "get" at all, for example, the very first one about Sherlock Holmes and "elm tree", and the one about peppermint (what was THAT all about?). And what the hay was the tip-a-rairy/rairy bird about?

The one about battered fish was cute.

Yuck. Those were some of the worst jokes I've ever read.

Jasper:

"Elm tree" - as you say, a play on words - this time from the Sherlock Holmes stories by a true son of Edinburgh - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In Doyle's stories about this famous detective Homes often used to chide his mate Dr Watson, with whom a shared a flat at 221b Baker Street, London, W1 with the words: "Elementary, my dear Watson!" - that is the matter is really quite easy to work out.

Regarding the others I suppose you have to be British to really appreciate their meanings.

Peppermint - the polo bit refers to a well known mint sweet (candy as you might say) - commonly called a polo mint - a small circular mint with a hole in the middle very popular here in Britain. I have used it as an aid to mental concentration - sucking gently on it and getting the tip of your tongue stuck in the hole. The strong mint flavours (there are several kinds) are used by some people to disguise alcohol on the breath, not always very successfully! ;-)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3073655

"Tip a rairy" - another play on words...you must know of the town in Ireland called Tipperary? Pronounce it as "tip a rairy!"

It's a Long Way to Tipperary - one of the most well known songs from WW1 was always being sung by the British troops fighting on the battlefields of France and Flanders (which I saw for the very first time last September - the areas of the Somme around Arras, Armentieres, Ieper (formely Ypres), Passchendael, Poperinghe, etc etc.... all around the French/Belgian border area.

The sight of SO many British War Commission maintained cemeteries scattered right across the flat countryside at regular intervals was a truly moving experienece - acres and acres of plain white headstones all so meticulously maintained.

There is hardly a cemetery in the UK that does not contain at least a few similar white BWC headstones, all immediately recognisable, containing the name, age, rank, service details including number, and date of death, from both World Wars.

What a shameful waste of so many young male lives in the most horrible of conditions - if anything is a sin against mankind then that is. In one cemetery we saw the grave of one young man of 21 from Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham, right next to that of his father aged 46 - both killed in the same battle on the very same day in 1915.

In another were the graves of four brothers from Norfolk, England, and in another cemetery was the grave of yet another brother. Can you imagine the pain of their poor mother?

It's a Long Way to Tipperary - always played by the Guards bands at the Remembrance Day Parade at Whitehall, London, each November, in the presence of the Queen who leads all the wreath layings at the Cenotaph.

This is a very old recording of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vKfxKtGLU8&feature=related

This evening I met four interesting fellow Scots of around my age in a great pub just along the road from where I am currently living called The Quill - they had been lucky enough to see another fellow Scot Andy Murray win his first match three miles away at Wimbledon earlier this evening....lucky devils! It was SO good to be chatting with guys who speak just like me again! It made me feel at home big time. They are going to Wimbledon again tomorrow, and we've arranged to meet up again tomorrow evening - they are all staying in nearby Roehampton.

Personally, I've never had much of a sense of humor. The only things that I find funny are Dilbert, Mr. Bean, and Foxtrot. Jokes on a page without a comic rarely ellicit even a chuckle. And I usually need to read at least 20 comics before I start laughing. Except for one or two, but I've forgotten them. But they were pretty good--I'll post them if I remember. One expression that I find absolutely hilarious, though is "I'll look into that." If someone says "Do X", then you say "I'll look into it." Or "I'll look into doing that right away." It makes it sound like you might not actually get around to doing it. I love that expression. Also "hertically sealed", as in "I'd be most hermetically sealed to close the window for you."

"that some well known place or something? If I saw that word "Jarvis"in isolation and didn't know where it was, I would assume it was pronounced "Yarvis", because it doesn't look strikingly English and ENglish is like the only language that pronounced 'j' as it does."

Jarvis is a common enough last name. You wouldn't call "Jasper"
"Yasper", would you?

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