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The national character of the English and of the Russians.
Hello! I’m writing my master diploma now and I need some help. I’m doing the research that needs the participation of English people... So if you have just a couple of free minutes - please help me a little ;) Just some very simple questions, it won't take long but you'll help very much!!:)
So...
- first, preferable, please write your name, age and occupation
- then some questions about your associations
1. Please, write five words you think about when the case is Russia and Russian people
2. Please, write five words you think about, when the case is England and English people
3. Give your associations for these words:
-Russian
-English
-culture
-language
-communication
-character
4. Write five features of the Russian national character (in order of importance)
5. Write five features of the English national character (in order of importance)
Great-great-great thanks to you in advance!!! :))
Age: old
Occupation: computer programmer
1 - Sputnik, Krushchev, Siberia, Red Army, SS-18
2 - Fog, Churchill, Wimbledon, Industrial Revolution, Queen
1. Gogol Bordello, Vodka, Lenin, Caviar, Venedikt Erofeyev
2. John Cleese, BBC, Lady DI, Mahatma Gandhi, Basra
Damian
Age: I was 26 yesterday 07/04/08
Journalist
UK (Scotland) - strictly speaking I assume it's only the English that concern you?
1: Revolutions * Vodka * Cold * Steppes * Ballet
2: Greenness * Cricket * Pubs * Morris dancing (ok ok - two words!) *
Skittles
3: Russian: winters, drunks, troikas, fur hats, gloom, epic novels,
stirring music, loudness; language - difficult;
communication - seemingly difficult
English: weather (instead of climate), drunks, piers, driving on
the left, pantomime, punch and judy, village fetes,
language - delightfully expressive; communication -
can be difficult, depending on the accent you are
confronted with.
Russian character: Heavy * Rousing * Inscrutable * Revolutionary *
Confusing
English character: Tolerant * Traditional * Humourous * Stoical *
Reserved *
age - over 50
1. vodka, snow, KGB, Stalin, Putin.
2. Manchester United, buck teeth, Beatles, Queen, pound.
3. Not clear
4. Romantic, sentimental, daring, rude, unwise.
5. Reserved, indifferent, polite, boring, honest
Thank you for your help, it's really very important!
Mika, 27, Photographer
1. Tolstoy, Sakharov, herrings, uncut, totalitarianism
2. Princess Diana, Harry Potter, banking, accents, pets
3. ?
4. Stubborn, ignorant, proud, generous, kind
5. Cold-blooded, reserved, fashionable, snobbish, gregarious
In the third question I ask you to give one association for each word, something like f. e. blue - a sea, white - a snow...
I'm not clear on your last point, Darina.
Some outdated notions about the English in here! I have plenty of English friends and not one of them can even remotely be described as "snobbish"! Nor can all those members of their families I have met. Absolutely no way! If you think the English are generally snobbish then you are stuck in a time warp - all that sort of divisive crap went out with the days of Hudson and Mrs Bridges representing the "Downstairs" lot, and the Hon.Lord Bellamy MP and Lady Prudence doing the "Upstairs" stuff. The vast majority of English people have absolutely no reason to be "snobbish" these days - and that includes the two Royal Princes William and Harry who woulkd rather stick needles into their eyeballs than be classed as snobs. Which they simply are not. There is a chain of stores right across the UK called Times Past.....snobbery belongs just there - on its shelves along with all those picture books displaying all those old sepia coloured photographs of a now defunct class conscious England.
Someone mentioned Fog......incredible as it may seem, but that, too, has largely been dispersed with the advent of modern life. Sure enough, fog does occur as part of the English (British) climate scene - it reflectes the damp nature of this country's atmosphere resulting from its maritime location in a relatively high latitude, but so does San Francisco - in a big way! I reckon people outside of Britain still think of all those nasty, choking, toxic, smoke laden smoggy fogs of Dickensian times when largescale industrialisation, first pioneeered in this country in the 18th century and then greatly developed in all the industrial urban areas, relentlessly emitted huge quantities of smoke pollution into the atmosphere, and which combined with the naturally high moisture contenbt to produce all those dense fogs which literally reduced visibility to little more than the length of your arm. Romantic notions of those eerie streets of late Victorian London, shrouded in dense fog late at night, while some maniac by the name of Jack the Ripper stalked the Whitechapel area looking for his latest hapless prostitute still plying her trade in all that filth.
The last such fog in London, or indeed anywhere in England, or indeed anywhere in the UK, occurred in December 1962. Since then legislation and huge changes in industrial and commercial practices, and the nature of industry, mean the air is now clean and free of all the former kinds of pollution.
England's fogs now are much rarer and much cleaner, much less dense and rarely last all day as they once did. Freezing fogs in winter still occur from time to time but they can be very pretty, leaving beautiful displays of rime and hoar - not good if you have to drive through them though. But at least they are free from all that former pollution.
But those old time fogs still have their appeal when you are watching some creepy, Gothic type film set in Past Times.
btw - the "buck teeth" bit puzzled me - none of my English mates have anything resembling "buck teeth". What's that all about, then? And while we're at it - "cold blooded"? Maybe you mean something on the lines of "sang froid" rather than some vile, nasty, evil, heartless murderous intent? :-)
"Please, write five words you think about..."
Damian. We're all victims of mass media.
You could be well accused of "being stuck in a time warp" yourself. Was it 1928 when last revolution in Russia has occurred? When was the last Russian epic novel written and when did you last see a troika?
1. VODKA - ABRAMOVIC - SNOW - 5th ARMY - COLD
2. EXPENSIVE - HOME - FOOTBALL - PG TIPS - ROAST DINNERS (sorry if 4 and 5 are more than one word)
3 - ?
4 - I don't know enough about Russian people to comment here
5 - Honest, cheerful, drunkards, light hearted, determined
Your lecturer must be very affable to allow this to be considered research, I wish mine were that easily pleased!
It isn't so easy as it seems to be )
Let's continue the theme here....I find it interesting. Comparing a tiny country like England (let's confine this to England as that's what Darina specifically requested) with the huge vastness of Mother Russia does seem to be a wee bit of a tall order....England is covered by one single time zone....the same one as Ireland, Portugal and Iceland, one hour behind Continental Western Europe, two hours behind Eastern Europe, but between three and eleven hours behind all the Russian component parts.....to quote the words of a weird little song: When it's night-time in Vladivostock it's Wednesday over here. The Russians are made up of a whole array of cultures and ethnic origins, but for argument's sake I shall refer to just European Russia.
Guest: I know the date of the Russian Revolution of the early 20th century (1917) when they ditched the Tsars in favour of Communism - our world history syllabus at school covered it, albeit briefly. But there was the other Revolution c.1990 when they ditched Communism in favour of the Free Market, but in a way the "revolution" seems to be continuing in some of the Russian states - that's why I automatically thought of the word "Revolution". I have no idea whether Russians still ride in troikas - maybe not, but they still get oodles of snow, don't they? Maybe not - they're not immune to global warming are they?
Russia: Cyrillic * Furs * Babushkas * Cossacks * Samovars
England: Curries * Constables * Pasties * Wimbledon * Lords
* Scones (special offer - six for the price of five)
Russians: Puzzling * Proud * Conformist * Sombre * Devout
English: Patriotic (deeply so but only when absolutely driven to
display it, or when nissed as pewt!) * Lax * Stubborn
(especially when they feel strongly enough about anything)
* Pugilistic (but only when absolutely driven to be so, or
when under the affluence of incohol or when their team
plays against their "sworn enemy team" in football)
* Xenophobic (they may well deny this but many of them
really are to varying degrees. Maybe it's all to do with an
in-built "Island Mentality" which seems to affect the English
consciousness more noticeably than that of the Scots,
Welsh or Irish. Resistance to complete and total European
integration is noticeably stronger in England than anywhere
else in the UK, as is the aversion to the Euro and the EU
generally. The saying "Little Englander" once applied
to those people who opposed any extension of the British
Empire, back in history. Now it can be applied to those
who do not want any further "interference" (as they see it)
in British national affairs by the European Union mammoth,
or who desire the complete UK withdrawal from the EU.
Damian, your analysis is really impressive and detailed to a question that shouldn't be posted here. I'm looking forward to one about the "Chinese" lol - again, they are an awfully populous people and very hard to compare if at all lol.
Revolution was the one in 1917 (and not '28; my mistake, in a haste) and 1990 goes down in history as Transition.
But i really don't want to argue about anything here, because the topic is NOT about objective but about subjective; whatever comes to ones mind is fine.
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