Rozhovor s Britem Joem o všem britském. Milují všichni fotbal, čaj, královskou rodinu, puby? Jak je to s tím jejich pověstným břitkým humorem? A jak to mají Britové se studiem cizích jazyků?
Rozhovor s Britem Joem o všem britském. Milují všichni fotbal, čaj, královskou rodinu, puby? Jak je to s tím jejich pověstným břitkým humorem? A jak to mají Britové se studiem cizích jazyků?
Welcome to the English-speaking group with Kudrunat Holko. My name is Pavlina and every week I will talk to my parents from all over the English-speaking world about various interesting topics. I would also like to mention one thing. If you really want to practice and improve your English, on my page on patreonpatrioncom you will find a complete list of the following conversations, with meanings, phrases and everything else that is worth knowing.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody and welcome to today's episode. Here with me today is my dear friend, joe Heckman, who comes from Milton Keynes, hello, which is a town in Buckinghamshire. I googled this, joe. Oh wow, it's about 80 kilometres north-west of London, or I should probably say 50 miles. Is it 50 miles, so that you understand?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that's more geography than I know in the area.
Speaker 2:So but would you understand if I say 80 kilometres Roughly.
Speaker 3:Like when I was I spent a year in Canada and did like a. So whenever I would hear people say 100 kilometres an hour, I'd be like, okay, right, that's roughly 60. I'd sort of judge it. So you can kind of judge it if you know a little bit about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, cool, well, but today we will be speaking about an amazing topic, I think, and that is stereotypes about British people. And well, you are British, your parents are British, your grandparents are British, so you're fully British, heart and soul.
Speaker 3:Yeah, to my knowledge anyway.
Speaker 2:Well, yes that's true.
Speaker 2:Well, but what I wanted to say yes, so like a stereotype, I think can be defined as a common belief about certain group of people that is usually very over-generalised or simplified but is sometimes quite funny. So I thought it would be quite cool to have you here with us. And I mean, there are quite a few going around about British people that have built up. You know, I'm going to tell you those, those, and you're just going to tell me if you think they're true. True, just a tiny bit, or like complete nonsense. What do you think?
Speaker 3:That's fine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Okay cool. So let's start. British people have a very particular sense of humour.
Speaker 3:Yes, I very much agree with that. Yeah, there's this. You know there's the big thing of the British humour is very dry, very quite. Yeah, quite quite dry, quite deadpan, and also quite awkward as well. I think we all enjoy like a good sort of cringe. You know, for example, like David Brent or you know someone a character like that. But I think it's yeah for sure, it is very true, we're very protective of it as well.
Speaker 2:I think it's also quite dark, I don't know. What do you think?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's very, very, quite like nihilistic and self deprecating, especially because we're very self deprecating people, you know. We don't really handle compliments very well. So I think, rather than laughing, rather than laughing with a character, you kind of feel like you have to laugh at a character and you have to kind of like think, oh God, what an awful situation they've gotten themselves into, you know you kind of love it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, because we see ourselves in that we, we identify with the embarrassment and the kind of awkwardness because, yeah, we're very awkward, we're very like, quite close, we don't like a lot of you know, very self deprecating. So I think it's, it's, it's very much a case of your, your, your thinking oh my God, I've been there, I know what this is like. This is horrible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Okay. So next one British people love football.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that's very true. I mean, I'm not particularly a fan, but I have found that when I was a kid, I used to think that everyone loved football and it was just a universal thing and I thought it was literally only me who didn't like football. But now I've now grown up and everything I've seen that there are more people who just aren't really fans really, but it is still a massive part of culture. I think it is a big you know, saying that we can rally behind really.
Speaker 2:I mean, I know nothing about football and I could still tell you probably maybe like five English teams, yeah.
Speaker 3:Got on him.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so is it Chelsea? Yeah, chelsea, chelsea. Do you know the goalkeeper?
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:He's a very. He's a very famous Czech, peter Czech. His name is actually Czech, like Czech yeah.
Speaker 3:In.
Speaker 2:Czech.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, then I know Arsenal.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Arsenal, then I would know.
Speaker 3:There's a couple from Manchester.
Speaker 2:United. Yeah, that's David Beckham, right. And then city, manchester city.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2:I think I'm done.
Speaker 3:Well, I think that's two more than I could at least name anyone.
Speaker 2:Okay, good, okay, then British people love to drink. I mean alcohol. I should probably add yes, yeah, that's again.
Speaker 3:That's very true. We do love to binge. I'm not sure like how, if you, if you guys have it in Czech, but we pre-drinking it's it's definitely a thing in America and England anyway, like pre-drinking before you go out, you get together, you just have a few drinks and get drunk, so you don't have to spend a lot of money when you're out.
Speaker 2:I think it's because it's so expensive to get drunk in London, for example, so you just like get drunk ahead.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, do you guys see that? Not really, cause it's quite like cheap to get drunk in the Czech Republic, like you know you pay one beer would be like a pound.
Speaker 1:Good Lord.
Speaker 2:You should come and the situation obviously in the world is it better? Well, yeah, so British people love their pops.
Speaker 3:That's another, another very true one. It's a again, it's a kind of big part of our culture of having, like the pub, the kind of big it's, it's our social group, it's like there's so so many things can be done with the pub, I think because it's so vague, you know you can have all sorts like. You can have things like pool, you can have quiz nights, you know it's you can have DJs come. It's so versatile, but it's so like universal, I think. For us anyway, yeah, it's just kind of woven in. We've got one in my village. That's definitely very stereotypical pub, like what you'd see in in a movie, in like an American movie, you know it's it's not very welcoming place that you sort of walk in. It stinks of cigarettes and like there's usually about three old men in there just sitting on their own separated ones got massive sailors, beard or something you know, missing a few teeth, so like that. So sometimes we have a friend gone in and we thought, oh God, right, yeah, this is literally all we have in our village.
Speaker 2:Okay, next one. So British people love to complain.
Speaker 3:I mean, I think, I think well, I certainly love to complain, I certainly love to yeah, I think that's everyone really loves to complain. Everyone sort of loves to have a good vent, I think. But no, I'm not sure. I mean I've not particularly noticed that that's something British people do. I guess it's just because I do it all the time, which I assume that everyone else loves to.
Speaker 2:You complain to yourself or like to other people? Are you just like that type that would just like go and talk to yourself, being like oh, damn, yeah.
Speaker 3:but it bites, bit of bites. Really I'll mainly be complaining to other people which I feel bad for, like all the time oh, another bad day or something, and I just oh, yeah, yeah, another bad day. But no, I think that's something that more everyone does really, or it's more of an individual thing, but I mean, there could be that stereotype, it could be a real thing. I'm not really sure.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, next one. This one is like an obvious one I had to use. British people love to drink tea.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, again, it's such a big part of our culture. It's such a big sort of thing of like it was one of our biggest sort of industries. And then it's also a very relaxing thing. It's like I've said this to people that you can say so much to someone with by just saying do you want a cup of tea? There's something just very British and very loving about it. It's very sweet. It's like do you want a cup of tea? It's like I can see that you've had a bad day. I love you, I want to give you, I want to make you feel better. Here's a nice little gesture, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2:What's your favorite type, Like how do you drink it?
Speaker 3:I don't drink a lot of tea or hot drinks. In general I'm quite weird like that. I don't drink tea or coffee or hot chocolate. But I'll do drink tea occasionally, Probably just like a normal breakfast tea a little bit of milk, a lot of sugar.
Speaker 2:So dash of milk. I was very like I just didn't know what to do, because in my first job in London I had to cater people and they would be like, oh, I want a builder's tea. And I was like what is that? Or they would be like just a dash of milk and I was like what's a dash of milk? And then they told me that, like I'm really bad at preparing tea, so I was just like okay.
Speaker 3:Well, I remember you told me that I did a bad tea as well. Oh, really Did I. Yeah, you did or tea or coffee or something. I think it was a coffee. I was like I was trying to show my worth or something or try and be good in the office and I'd say, oh, do you want a cup of tea, bab? Or do you want to? Or I'd go around doing coffees and you would say Joe, I remember it so clearly. You're like Joe, I love you, but you don't worry about making teas because they're not that good.
Speaker 2:Oh God, yeah, I should say that we work together in this catering job. So oh God, oh wow.
Speaker 3:Well, I've since.
Speaker 2:You're telling me only just now, like you know years later you said it, but no, it's fine.
Speaker 3:Like I realized, yeah, I am useless at it. If I drank it, I think I'd get a bit more practice in.
Speaker 2:But Okay, next one. It always rains in Britain.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's an unfortunate one, I mean, it doesn't, I think it rains for longer in the year, I think, and we have quite odd summers.
Speaker 2:But it doesn't always rain. Yeah, it doesn't always rain.
Speaker 3:Like this summer we had a particularly hot kind of summer period, but yeah, I think it just rains generally more in the other months, you know. So, for example, summer it'll be fine. It'll either be like torrential rain or really hot, whereas like most of the other year it'll be kind of cold weather or leading into cold weather. But yeah, like springtime we get quite a lot of nice weather, you know, I think. Yeah, I think it's just that there's that stereotype with the gray, cloudy weather, but yeah, it is definitely a truth, it does rain here a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, so next one. Everyone always talks about weather.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that for sure is true. I've thought about this a lot actually recently. You know I've tried to spark up conversations with people, but then you try to think of something and then literally all you can think about. You're just kind of looking around, looking for things and then you see, ah, outside it's cloudy.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's so weird, so weird to be cloudy. The weather's really really odd at the moment. Yeah, really odd, but no, it is definitely a. It's like a crutch to fall back on like if there's nothing to speak about. Because, again, we're very awkward. We're very like we don't know how to approach things a lot of the time, like we don't know how to, kind of when we just thrown in a deep end of a conversation we think you know. So you kind of have to try and come in there with something prepared.
Speaker 3:So it's always the weather, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Okay. So next one British cuisine is not something that can be defined as well. How to put it in a nice way? Sophisticated.
Speaker 3:No, it's not. It really isn't. We have some horrendous things, like my flatmates Australian, and she's heard some of the things that we eat and she's like wow, really, you know like chip butties, if you're familiar with the chip butty.
Speaker 2:Nope.
Speaker 3:So chip butty is basically a chip sandwich, but it's chips like French fries. So, but not French fries like thick chips with a bit of ketchup and butter in the sandwich.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, that's shocking.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's one thing. What else do we do? We deep fry Mars bars as well. That's the. That's a Scottish thing. Oh wow, yeah, they deep fry a lot of things. Deep fried sausages yeah, that's really nice though. That's the thing. It's not very sophisticated, but it sounds horrible, but it is delicious, but it's very, very fatty and very filling though.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Deep fries so good.
Speaker 2:I think I'm going to pass, but thank you.
Speaker 3:No, next time you're in England, go to like a really nice chip shop and ask for a deep fried banger. Banger is a banger and slang for sausage.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, next one. British people only speak English.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is an unfortunate one, I think. I think a lot of people do just tend to forget their manners a bit when they go into another country. You know, in that they, you know it's just a bit of laziness, like. You do get some people, though, who do speak other languages and stuff and do try. I try, whenever I go like to France or something, I think French is the only language, that it's the closest language I think we speak, because obviously we're very close neighbors and everything, and so a lot of people English people, I think speak French or speak a little bit of French. But generally, I think that's true that people don't really make much of an effort, which is quite sad and it's quite ignorant, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's also I mean, in my point of view at least it's tiny bit understandable, because you speak the language that we all have to study. So you know, for us, like you know I speak Czech and like I do have to study a different language, it's just if I want to travel or, you know, work someplace else, whereas you can just like go with your mother tongue and it's fine, yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, I think I think it stems from like an arrogance really from British people, but because so many other countries speak it as, sometimes even as a first language, it's kind of like oh okay, I don't have to speak this foreign tongue, you know, it's it. Yeah, it's quite a, it's quite a sad one. I think that because we're not really taught it as much in school like we can, we can opt out of it. I mean, I only learn, I think, two years of French and one year of German and Spanish.
Speaker 2:So you could.
Speaker 3:You could choose between or German or Well, the way, the way we did it, we had we had a subject in school modern foreign languages, and we would we sort of each term we'd have a different language. So for the first time we had French, but we did that for like the longest time we had that. I think we did that for two years, and then one year we just had two terms with one one term doing Spanish, one term doing German, and then after a certain age, you can just opt out of it and you can either choose to do it for your exams or you can just drop it completely and never have to do it again.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you're not very yeah, you're like not very challenged in that sense.
Speaker 3:Yeah, um. I think because of that fact, because of, like so many other countries do speak it as a first language or are trained um or not trained, taught um, taught it from a very young age, I think Like, how, how young do you start in in CHEP?
Speaker 2:So I was in fourth grade, which is like elementary school. So I, I must no, I must have been like 10, I think, and that's when you start, and then obviously you go on until university, really.
Speaker 3:Oh, do you study all the way through?
Speaker 2:Yeah, english. But then I went. I went to like specific Spanish high school so I did all my subjects in Spanish, but that's a bit different. That's like a different thing.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:So, but we still, but we still had English as, like you know, at least I would say three hours a week.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow, three hours, yeah, yeah, yeah, see, there's no, there's no kind of um hard teaching um in the UK, which I think is is the reason because, um, you know, we only where you say you did three hours, we did, we only did one, I think, one hour a week or two hours a week or something, and then you can drop it as soon as you want. You know we, we start later, we end sooner. You know, um, yeah, but some people, some people do choose to do it and there are a few, like, for example, my cousin um is currently living in France. She knows, I think, you know she's so fluent, she has no problem with it, you know. So there are, there are a few people who do learn languages, but I think in general yeah, I think that's right that a lot of people, british people, don't bother to um learn the language or even try and communicate in in another foreign language, which is quite sad.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, thank you for your honesty.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no.
Speaker 2:of course, okay. Next one British men wear top hats, plate coats, have folded newspapers and umbrella under the arm and smoke cigars.
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, yeah, All of us do that Um.
Speaker 2:You specifically.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, um, I mean, can't you see my top hat? No, um, yeah, no, I think I mean I like to dress up a little bit, but yeah, no, it's top hats are top. Hats are gone. I don't think I've ever seen anyone wearing a top hat unless they were in costume. Um, yeah, no, I think I think the the I think we dress kind of normally, how everyone else dresses, really Um the norm. I think that I've seen, anyway, in the more recent years, is is gone backwards. I think, um, I think a lot of a lot of guys will wear, like, snapbacks and tracksuits and which is which is fine, you know, but yeah, no more, no more top hats.
Speaker 3:I mean, I think this, this is like obviously coming from like Trillac Homes and Weston Churchill, and yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's a good look, to be honest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, next one. British people love to queue for anything.
Speaker 3:I think you know we don't really love it but we do, but we are very polite in queues. Um, we will just like wait our turn and it's very politely, you know. But even sometimes, like if someone pushes in front of us, we won't say anything, We'll just be like, oh, and then that'll be it. That'll be, I think, the angriest you'll see a British person in public.
Speaker 2:If you have a scene going, oh, and last one British people live in small brick houses like we see in the movies, like the holiday or Harry Potter.
Speaker 3:Oh, as wonderful as that would be, unfortunately no we don't we don't live all living castles either.
Speaker 2:We've um, but I mean, there are many like brick houses in England.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that comes from, I think, the aesthetic of like the little village, you know, and the very nice little towns that you can get, which are, which do still there are a lot of them out there, but they're more in the countryside and I think, like cityscapes, you know it's it's not so much prevalent anymore, but you'd have to go out in the country to kind of see those kind of nice little brick cottages and everything.
Speaker 2:But, there are a lot of them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean we have, we have things that we could like model villages. Have you ever heard of those? Nope, um. So, model villages, so they'll, they'll be like villages that are in the country. They're very much the stereotypical British thing of lovely, like people, like farmers wearing tweed jackets and going out shooting pheasants and, you know, eating tea, teas and cakes and everything, and they're very kind of like nice, idyllic countryside um cottages, like. If you've ever seen the movie Hot Fuzz, you know, if anyone listening has ever seen Hot Fuzz, that's a very stereotypical British village, you know it's a very funny movie, but is it like a tourist attraction or you like, people actually lived there.
Speaker 3:Um yeah, no, so people live there but it's okay. But it'll get a lot of tourist attention so a lot of the time we get like they'll have their own kind of big economies because tourists will want to come and see this very British, nice little town, um yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, so that's all I have. So well, joe, thank you so much, like this has been very educational.
Speaker 3:No problems, my pleasure.
Speaker 2:Thank you, yeah, thank you for having me. No, thank you so much and thank you to everyone who's listened to this episode as well, and I hope to see you next week.
Speaker 1:Bye.