How do you define British culture?

[Brendan]

Surely launching an attack of someone else?s culture does not somehow validate yours? It does however expose some sense of insecurity or defensiveness that is perhaps quite common since the terms English and British ceased to be synonymous.

[Cassius]

But Brendan maybe we are the only ones who could actually INVENT such a game!

[Brendan]

Yeah but the ?we? you are referring would be to any people whose ancestors where living one this island in the 14/1500s when people started hurling balls at each other and making up hugely complex rules about the whole business. So therefore a large portion of the populations of the counties I mentioned and some others.

[red devil]

Ditto Wimbledon fortnight, which also encompasses Crona's 'art of queueing', not sure about the Cliff Richard impromptu gig thang though...;-)

Cassius Wrote:

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> I was going to say cricket; the love of a game

> that can last for 5 days and end in a draw, where

> you can have almost as much fun sitting under an

> umbrella during a rain break having a drink as you

> can watching the actual game, and actually wanting

> the best team, not necessarily your team to win;

> but maybe that's English and not British.

[Brendan]

A type of universal culture manifests on provincial high streets on Friday nights across Britain.

[Huguenot]

I wasn't attacking the cultures of Scotland or Wales, so much as suggesting that their individual national 'cultures' are not as differentiated from the English as they may claim. In fact to be more specific I was suggesting that the biggest difference in 'culture' was claiming not to be English - unlike the English, who are.

Edinburgh might be Bath, and Glasgow does a perfectly credible job of being Birmingham.

A Tam O'Shanter picture on top of a tin of shortbread doesn't give you a unique culture, neither does a well-known film star.

My angle was that most of their claims of independent cultural identity are no stronger than the claims made by Yorkshire, Liverpool or Clitheroe.

They may well have been their own nations back in the day, but then so were Wessex and Mercia.

Hence I was marginalising and belittling their independent cultural logic on the grounds that it makes no more sense than a bloke saying "I'm not English, I'm a Ripon man".

[red devil]

Are you referring to the architecture Hugs?..

Huguenot Wrote:

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Edinburgh might be Bath, and Glasgow does a

perfectly credible job of being Birmingham.

[Huguenot]

Architecture, people, sporting enthusiasms, crime rates, evening entertainment...

[Brendan]

Surely it is for the Scots to decide how they see themselves culturally?

[Ted Max]

I don't know where to start with that Huguenot.

Of course there are similarities between cultures that have now been joined legislatively for 300 years, and have shared a monarch for 400. And of course, in response to that union, the anyone-but-England theme runs deep, as does the shortbread tin "put a kilt on it and call it Scottish" motif.

But this Hence I was marginalising and belittling their independent cultural logic on the grounds that it makes no more sense than a bloke saying "I'm not English, I'm a Ripon man".

is surprisingly short-sighted of you.

So what are these signifiers of an "independent cultural logic" that were once and still are uniquely Scottish, and that are not purely about being "not English"?

Language, religion, music, architecture, trade, art, all the biggies.

Some of these, yes, have interacted with a greater British identity. How could they not? But they have not been so subsumed that you can no longer make a distinction between Engand, a region of England, and a separate country. Have they?

[Brendan]

Well they certainly don't speak English.

[Ted Max]

Well, you make a subtle point there. But I would argue that English as spoken by most Scots people reflects a divergence in the path of the language in both countries from a common base (Old English).

Scots was a sort of atrophied Old English, while English moved on into middle and then modern English. Of course in Scotland, people speak modern English, but they do so marked in a specifically Scots way, and they do this naturally, and as a result of a specific "cultural logic". Not merely to be and appear different.

[Huguenot]

"Language, religion, music, architecture, trade, art, all the biggies"

I'm offering that these signifiers are just as strong twixt Luton, Newcastle and Chelsea as they are between Scotland and England.

In order to differentiate culture nationally then you need cultural differences that are greater on either side of the border than they are within those borders.

[Brendan]

Ted Max Wrote:

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> Well, you make a subtle point there. But I would

> argue that English as spoken by most Scots people

> reflects a divergence in the path of the language

> in both countries from a common base (Old

> English).

Facetiousness aside it is interesting that Old Scots, a Germanic language coming from the same Germanic/Scandinavian roots as Old English, is more influential historically and culturally than any Celtic languages are in Scotland. Scots Gaelic is more of an Irish import than an endemic language.* I?m not saying that the Scots and English are the same just that they are different in a different way to the way say the Welsh and the English are different.

*I'm not saying that there haven't been celtic (or other) languages endemic to Scotland thought out history.

[Tony.London Suburbs]

Thought most Celts had red hair, weren't like that last time I visited (and escaped from) Brum...::o

[Ted Max]

I'm offering that these signifiers are just as strong twixt Luton, Newcastle and Chelsea as they are between Scotland and England.

Then we will have to disagree.

In order to differentiate culture nationally then you need cultural differences that are greater on either side of the border than they are within those borders.

See my language post - which address language, by the way, not merely accent. Or even dialect.

Let's take the Bath/ Edinburgh example on as well.

You refer of course to the simlarity between the Georgian neo-classical architecture of the two Cities. Yet the New Town of Edinburgh was built 1. To place Scotland within the neo-classical Enlightenment that was a European-wide feature and 2. As a statement of political and economic power of an elite that had profited from a Hanoverian military victory in the '45, and was now safe to cross the Nor Loch and build outside the Old Town defences.

In other words, if it looks homogeneously "British" - it's because it was damn well supposed to.

[Ted Max]

Tony, red hair = Viking invaders. Very successful genetically in Scotland, Ireland and North East England.

Celts = dark haired wiry types. Often found playing open-side flanker in 1970s Welsh rugby teams.

[Ted Max]

Brendan Wrote:

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> Ted Max Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> Facetiousness aside it is interesting that Old

> Scots, a Germanic language coming from the same

> Germanic/Scandinavian roots as Old English, is

> more influential historically and culturally than

> any Celtic languages are in Scotland. Scots Gaelic

> is more of an Irish import than an endemic

> language.* I?m not saying that the Scots and

> English are the same just that they are different

> in a different way to the way say the Welsh and

> the English are different.

>

> *I'm not saying that there haven't been celtic (or

> other) languages endemic to Scotland thought out

> history.

That is all true (apart from the Irish import thing, although I accept your qualification). But if you see Scotland as a nation state arising from a Pict/ Gael/ Lallans mish-mash, the military and economic victories came from those in the Lowland power base. Hence Old Scots wins. It doesn't make Scots more "British" though. Britain as a concept didn't exist at the time.

[Tony.London Suburbs]

Ted Max Wrote:

Celts = dark haired wiry types. Often found playing open-side flanker in 1970s Welsh rugby teams.

Ah! I know like JPR Williams, or was that JRR, or was that Tolkien who was "JRR"....

[Brendan]

Ted Max Wrote:

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> Tony, red hair = Viking invaders. Very successful

> genetically in Scotland, Ireland and North East

> England.

>

> Celts = dark haired wiry types. Often found

> playing open-side flanker in 1970s Welsh rugby

> teams.

Well the genetics behind things like red hair, height, penchants for alcohol and punch-ups were already very mixed up amongst the people of Western Europe millennia before the similarity between the different ?Celtic? peoples was first recognised by the Ancient Greeks.

It really refers to a set of diverse yet related languages with similarly related culture that were common from Southern France, Across the Iberian Peninsular and up the maritime trade routes to Cornwall, Ireland, Wales, Cumbria and Western Scotland.

Apart from their languages and culture they were probably as divers in appearance as the people from these areas are today.

[Ted Max]

You shoot down my frivolous generalisation without mercy. Battleships.

[Tony.London Suburbs]

Brendan Wrote:

Apart from their languages and culture they were probably as divers in appearance today.

Divers? Now I'm totally confused..they go around in white Drysuits?

[Brendan]

Although seriously. What's with the skirt thing?

[Brendan]

Pearl diving was a backbone of the economy in the ancient Celtic world Tony. Keep up.

[Ted Max]

I don't know. We might ask those trouser-wearing nations what was with the trouser thing? Most of the world wore skirts, no?