WHATEVER HAPPENED TO "MIND THE GAP?"

"We would like to remind our American tourist friends that you are
almost certainly talking too loudly."

(Thanks to GungaDan and jon harris)

Comments

[AmerInParis]

No, no Dave. The Mind the Gap recorded by the woman always said "Mind the gap, please. It was the version recorded by the man that rudely omitted the "please".

[AmerInParis]

Oh, and first again. Not many of us seem to be awake and functioning yet. Still having your morning coffee over there in the U.S.?

[Fearless Leader]

The truth hurts you ugly, sweaty, fat horny, Yanks.

[AmerInParis]

Well, as a patriotic American living among the French, I do have to say that some of us are just a wee bit loud once we leave the country! ;-))

[orcel]

Its not our fault though, its those stupid after school specials and hallmark channel movies...that we've all seen way more times then any of us should, or are willing to admit...

They all star the handsome American male on a vacation in Europe who meets and falls in love with some obscure Princess or Duchess. After a series of mishaps involving goofy Russians, bumbling secret agents and microfilm hidden in a hairbrush the American almost looses said Princess until he loudly and romantically proclaims his affection for her in an overly public place while accidentally capturing the goofy Russians at the same time. Us Americans have been brainwashed to think loud is romantic.

Of course I never watched this crap, I like football.

[Meanie the Blue]

[Whispering] Please mind the employed.

[gjd]

THAT'S BECAUSE EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT TALKING LOUDER WILL HELP SOMEONE WHO SPEAKS ANOTHER LANGUAGE UNDERSTAND YOU BETTER.

[AmerInParis]

So then why do Americans talk so loudly when in the UK, WHERE EVERYBODY SPEAKS ENGLISH OF A SORT???

;-)))

[Jeff Meyerson]

Whatever happened to the British sense of humor?

I guess it went the way of the British sense of style.

Do NOT look at the picture before eating, IYKWIM.

[gjd]

You mean, I don't need a translator when I go to the UK? Who knew? ;-)

[Siouxie]

That's not English. That's British. And pretty hard to understand most of the time. ;-P

[Punkin Poo]

Pip pip cheerios, y'all!

Morning, my loud American friends!

[blurk]

MORNIN'!!

[GreatCircle]

I don't understand what you mean when you say British English is hard to understand. I mean, say I'm from Cockney. If I say,

"Old Uncle Jeff fell down the apples last week and nearly split 'is Jethro straight open. Thank goodness the godfers found 'im and got 'im to hospital. I was down at the rubadub having a few Britneys and the Trouble and Strife was out at shopping at 'arrod's!"

what's so difficult to understand about that?

Also, I find disturbing this new trend of banning humor in the workplace. I think that hearing one of those jokes while on the subway would be hilarious. There's just no pleasing some people, I guess.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's a bit taters, and I must get me weasel.

[Meanie the Blue]

BTW, my comment above was, in the style of the now-fired announcer, a joke. I think she ought to be commended for giving her own prim and proper formality a harmless poke in the ribs. That she chose to particularly knock Americans for their demeanor was probably unwise, as it apparently alarmed her paranoid, tourist-dependent management. But I'll bet she was only voicing a stereotyped opinion held by many Britons and citizens of other countries about American visitors.

Oh, and mind the BOOGER!

[Meanie the Blue]

Bloomin' snorker, that Circular bloke.

(Er, not even close, right?

[gjd]

Cheerios? I don't need any cheerios, thanks, Punkin. We had croissants a few posts back. ;-)

[gjd]

BTW, Great Circle, I missed most of what you said, but did catch that bit about shopping at Harrod's. Was anything else important?

[Steve Haller]

I didn't even know they had The Gap in England. Do they have Old Navy too??

[Mahatma Kane Jeeves]

SH: Every other store in London is a Gap.

[Not My Usual Alias]

Other stories indicate that the spoof announcements were fine. It was her statement that she doesn't take The Tube to work because she thinks the prospect of getting stuck in close proximity to a large number of strangers and hearing her own voice to announce how long the delay will be that got her sacked. Err, knocked up. Err, wallyshipped.

Whatever the British call getting fired is what happened to her.

[Meanie the Blue]

Babelfish does not have a Cockney-to-English translation option, so I had it translate GreatCircle's text from English to Korean and back. This is how it came out:

The Jeff the last week long the uncle who becomes lower part of the apple it falls and it splits nearly and ' the Jethro which is being opened is exactly rightly. The godfers which 'im is discovered a virtue it thanked and 'im it got in the hospital. Me in lower part there was being a Britneys to some and rubadub and the trouble and the fight 'arrod's the thing to fraud were at the outside,!

So now you know.

[Jeff Meyerson]

Hi - thanks for stopping by. Unfortunately, my site is currently overwhelmed by the sheer number of people wanting to download MP3s of my spoof Tube announcements. Please check back in a day or so.

Thanks, Emma.

I blame MI6... or Al Gore.

[Siouxie]

GreatCircle?? you can have all the Britneys you want. We'll even give you our American Twitney. I'm assuming you'll be sleeping on the rubadubdub for callin' the wife "Trouble and Strife", eh???

[padraig]

I could have used her help when mrs. padraig and I were riding the Tube. She was wearing a skirt and the young perv across from her was blatantly attempting to inspect her knickers. I stood up and stood where I'd block his view and he LEANED OVER 45 DEGREES to see AROUND me.

Young Englishmen are definitely not getting enough sex.

[Siouxie]

Those Yobs! or Asbos.

[padraig]

"Old Uncle Jeff fell down the apples last week and nearly split 'is Jethro straight open. Thank goodness the godfers found 'im and got 'im to hospital. I was down at the rubadub having a few Britneys and the Trouble and Strife was out at shopping at 'arrod's!"

Thanks to GC for reminding us that there is a worse perversion of English than gangsta rap, and its name is "rhyming slang." As near as I can guess, Jeff fell down the stairs (rhymes with pears, hence apples) and split his skull (Jethro Tull) while you were at the pub (rubadub) and your wife (trouble & strife, you're getting obvious now) was maxing your credit card by simply walking into Harrod's. (Americans, you can visualize Harrod's as a Neiman-Marcus run by Margaret Thatcher.)

No clue on where "godfers" came from. Godfersaken?

So am I spot on? Top marks?

[AmerInParis]

"Other stories indicate that the spoof announcements were fine. It was her statement that she doesn't take The Tube to work because she thinks the prospect of getting stuck in close proximity to a large number of strangers and hearing her own voice to announce how long the delay will be that got her sacked. Err, knocked up. Err, wallyshipped.

Whatever the British call getting fired is what happened to her."

It's called getting sacked.

The BBC video says the mistake she made was putting the recordings on her own website. She's a voiceover artist with a contract with London Underground, who wrote to her to say that there would be some serious delays before using her voiceovers again (they do have a sense of humor).

And finally, some types of English:

British English
English English
Scots English
Welsh English
Irish English
American English
Canadian English
etc...

[ellie]

"London Underground is sorry to have to announce that further contracts for Miss Clarke are experiencing severe delays,"

Bastards, but funny bastards.

Frankly, I don't know what all the fuss was about. These days people need to be reminded of their manners. Why not do it in a place where you have a captive audience?

[Siouxie]

pad, I think godfers are old golfers, in as they're older than god.

[GreatCircle]

Padraig is indeed spot on. Good job!
"godfers" are "godforbids," or kids.

[padraig]

"The persons responsible for sacking the persons who should have been sacked for not sacking the persons who ought to have been sacked... have been sacked."

[daisymae]

More types of English:

Aussie English
Jamaican English
Cayman English
New Zealand English
Bahamian English
(more islands in the Caribbean - U.S. West Indies, etc.)

Remember when the sun never set on the British empire.

[blurk]

pad, that just made my eyes cross.

[gjd]

How many different types of American English are there? We can divvy up by age, culture, geography...

[Kathybear]

The British Empire is more difficult to understand the further you get from the center (not that I've ever been there, but I have certainly noted a lot of excuses to go in this blog). Do not forget Indian English, which all of us have certainly been exposed to if needing assistance over the telephone IYKWIM.

[Siouxie]

daisy, you forgot my favorite...Spanglish.

[padraig]

blurk, you're sacked.

[The Dread Pirate Chris]

Does Engrish count?

[ellie]

Lol padraig!

Here is the Monty Python quote padraig mentioned.

[ellie]

Siouxie, don't forget Engrish

[GungaDan]

A merkin English

[Annie Where-but-here]

*smacks the sacked blurkie*
Hey, that sounds a smidge grinky.

[WayneHere]

Thank you, folks. I was too slow researching the Monty Python 'sacked' routine. Hazelnut coffee doesn't have enough caffiene, grumblegrumble.

[WayneHere]

I was on a videoconference with our coworkers in the UK a while back. When he described equipment that died as going "t!ts-up", we fell over in laughter and snorked all manner of liquids through all manner of orifices (orifi?). Then he went into the Python Dead Parrot routine, and so much for that meeting.

[ellie]

*hands WayneHere (not related to Annie) a cup of coffee made from coffee beans instead of hazelnuts*

Hope that helps! ;-)

[WayneHere]

mmmm...real coffee. There's some real coffee in this hazelnut stuff. Just not enough.

[Josh]

This is funny, and they should not have sacked the announcer. As an avowed Anglophile, this kind of stuff cracks me right up. The British sense of humor is quite amazing in its subtlety.

As for people from the UK that might actually think this, remember that people speak loudly when they feel they will not be understood, and it's a natural reaction. Realizing this is a doddle, actually, but there are Brits I've met who actually think the average American in general is less educated and less considerate than the average Brit. Well, I can assure you that simply isn't the case.

We're the same. We have a lot of really, really dumb people in the US. We have some halfway smart people and very few intelligent people. Same as in the UK. And if it's speaking loudly when you think someone doesn't understand you, try spending the day with someone from Newcastle, Glasgow or Belfast. That will hurt your brain.

[ellie]

Josh, I have a few Scottish friends and they yell when they talk. It used to scare me because they not only yell, they gesture wildly too.

[Bill Hudgins]

She could have a future at Southwest Airlines. The conditions inside the planes are pretty much the same as in the "carriages."

[Estelle Chauvelin]

Monty Python: teaching British slang to America for approximately forty years.

I didn't even have to leave the U.S. to figure out that most of us talk too loud. I can't even begin to count the number of times I've gone over to check outside the window at work because I'm hearing voices at a level that I normally associate with a fistfight about to start, thinking I might have to warn security to watch the front door, and found people having what they apparently think is a normal conversation.

[padraig]

Ellie? The Scots I know also spit.

Watch out for the Glaswegians. They do all that and then repeat themselves because nobody understood them the first time.

[azred]

add teen-age english to the list - I have no clue what mine are saying most of the time.