Culture shock: US customs that puzzle new arrivals

[Snake Plissken]

Someone told me today that the reason 'Aluminium' is 'Aluminum' in the US and Canada (but nowhere else) is due to a spelling error in the telegram that announced its discovery. I haven't verified this but it sounds likely.

Not true.

The discoverer called it aluminum for a few years, before correcting his mistake and making it officially aluminium. This was even adopted by the US until the mid 1920s, when for some reason they went back to an old Websters and called it aluminum. In the early 1990s, the worldwide official name was aluminium.

As for the topic, the US misuse of "momentarily" drives me up the sodding wall.

[Flynnie]

College sports

Ironic that somebody with a favourite club of Oxford United would make this point, considering the Boat Race and the Varsity Match are a Thing. Pretty sure a fair number of the rowers and rugby players involved (especially in years gone by for rugby, when the Varsity Match was one of the highlights of the British season) were "studying" in the loosest sense.

[Ginger Yellow]

They're a Thing, but hardly a big one (not to mention one-offs, rather than a season). I'd be pretty surprised if the proportion of Oxbridge grads who watch them is as high as the typical college football game, and certainly the people in the towns don't give a shit.

[Satchmo Distel]

My students who are playing sports do get monitored academically and are likely to be disciplined if they skip lectures, don't submit work, etc. The Jock who does no work may be largely a myth.

[Flynnie]

They're a Thing, but hardly a big one (not to mention one-offs, rather than a season). I'd be pretty surprised if the proportion of Oxbridge grads who watch them is as high as the typical college football game, and certainly the people in the towns don't give a shit.

Somebody is watching them, since the Varsity Match gets a crowd of something like 40-50,000 on a Tuesday afternoon.

And the point isn't that Oxbridge sports is the British SEC, more that they are the most obvious and direct comparisons to American college sports, and have a substantial tradition.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Are we three pages in and no-one's mentioned they've all got fucking guns?

[Patrick Thistle]

Somebody is watching them, since the Varsity Match gets a crowd of something like 40-50,000 on a Tuesday afternoon.
.

Feasibly those could all be alumni. They are both very big universities.

If you weren't an alumnus you wouldn't know it was happening unless it got mentioned on the radio or something.

The boat race is a bit different because it's in London so it gets on the telly. But it's one of those things that people watch because it's a traditional thing, a bit like people tuning in for the Grand National or the FA Cup Final, or watching the Ashes. Most people watching those things don't really care about the sports involved. If the boat race suddenly stopped it would be missed by <0.01% of the population.

Anyway, some of the things that mystify me have been mentioned. Trying to order a cup of tea anywhere is always an experience. And drug advertising on TV. And what you can just buy off the shelf in a drugstore. And how the richest nation on earth can have so many homeless people with mental problems who look utterly destitute, like hobos in a movie. My abiding memory of San Francisco was the third world micronation at it's heart.

And on TV, having an ad break just before the credits roll on a sitcom. Then going back to roll the credits. Then another ad break. Then the beginning of another show. Then an ad break. Then the opening credits. Then an ad break. And none of the breaks are bookended by idents.

I do love being in America though.

[Fussbudget]

Being able to turn right on red.
Indeed, having pedestrians and cars being allowed to go at the same time at traffic lights.

Not limited to the US, that's also fairly common in France at intersections (though there is a separate arrow to indicate cars can turn right, rather than just being allowed to turn right at a red light.) It drives me up the wall because it means there is no way for pedestrians to safely cross the road at many intersections (I think cars are supposed to give way to pedestrians in that situation but that basically never happens.)

Since no one has mentioned it yet, one ever-puzzling thing about the US is the obsession so many (exclusively white, it would seem) Americans have with genealogy, and their peculiar affectation of referring to themselves as Irish/Scottish/German/Dutch/etc. when their family has been in the US for hundreds of years.

[Flynnie]

Australians and Canadians seem to do it too, although their roots tend to be more recent.

It's a useful identity for a lot of people, given that location-based identity doesn't work if you live in a suburb or something, and in many older cities (white) ethnic enclaves were a thing until the last 30-40 years.

[WOM]

Some people take 'great pride' in wherever it was their ancestors came from. I see it as a massive sign of insecurity.

[ursus arctos]

Such people generally know frighteningly little (if anything) about the actual circumstances of their forebearers' lives.

There was a reason they all left.

[Patrick Thistle]

The jokes about British teeth when a brief trip to poor America shows poor dental care is very common. Those whiter than white smiles are a middle class thing.

[ursus arctos]

So are the jokes

[sw2borshch]

Apparently the French just think British people have massive teeth.

[Tubby Isaacs]

My students who are playing sports do get monitored academically and are likely to be disciplined if they skip lectures, don't submit work, etc. The Jock who does no work may be largely a myth.

Has anyone told Tom Wolfe?

[San Bernardhinault]

Ironic that somebody with a favourite club of Oxford United would make this point, considering the Boat Race and the Varsity Match are a Thing. Pretty sure a fair number of the rowers and rugby players involved (especially in years gone by for rugby, when the Varsity Match was one of the highlights of the British season) were "studying" in the loosest sense.

Well, first - as you surely well know - the connection between Oxford United and the university is absolutely minimal.

But, secondly, the incomprehensibility of college sports covers many things:

- how bizarrely popular it is.
- that people who aren't associated with the university still care insanely about the games.
- the conference structures
- in football and basketball, the two major sports, how it is determined who gets to play in what part of the end of season jamborees to determine the seasons "winner"
- the insane amounts of money spent on sports infrastructure for sports that don't seem to bring in any money
- the way players are used as unpaid chattel
- the way most players are basically trashed as athletes by the time they leave, but the few who go in to pro-sports then just get told where to live and who to play for, regardless of any choice of their own

It's just an immense structure that makes no sense at all, and seems basically impenetrable to anyone who didn't grow up in it. Like religion, or dungeons and dragons, or something.

[San Bernardhinault]

Are we three pages in and no-one's mentioned they've all got fucking guns?

I actually think a lot of us transplants understand why gun culture is as it is here. We (mostly) aren't fans of it, and it's shit. But it's not all that puzzling.

US health care is absolutely unfathomable as well as terrible. Gun culture is just (mostly) terrible.

[Jah Womble]

Not true.

The discoverer called it aluminum for a few years, before correcting his mistake and making it officially aluminium. This was even adopted by the US until the mid 1920s, when for some reason they went back to an old Websters and called it aluminum. In the early 1990s, the worldwide official name was aluminium.

As for the topic, the US misuse of "momentarily" drives me up the sodding wall.

That bugs the hell out of me, as well - and it seems to be creeping in over here, too. ("We will be touching down momentarily in Los Angeles." What, so you plan on taking off again almost straight away?)

As for the 'aluminum/aluminium' thang, I despise that effing stupid car-rental commercial where the English guy corrects his US buddy by saying: "It's 'aluminium' - there's a U in it!" It's not the U that's missing, you moron, it's the I. (Besides which, there are two Us in 'aluminium'.)

Root beer is great, whoever it was thought that it qualified as a US anomaly.

[Incandenza]

I love right on red.

But, on a related note, I am frustrated like crazy at Americans inability to build roundabouts, and on the few that exist their inability to use them correctly.

Take a trip up to Long Beach. The Traffic Circle must be one of the biggest roundabouts in the country, and the city has added a lot of small roundabouts in residential neighborhoods and on smaller businesses streets as a way to control traffic and make cycling less stressful.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I don't understand the aversion to friendliness.

Do people in Britain greet everyone with "Oi, whadya you want?"

I don't think it's aversion, only slightly perplexed observation.

[Patrick Thistle]

I remember being very impressed with the university football stadium in Salt Lake City, which was miles better than most professional stadia in this country.

I went to watch Real Salt Lake play in the MLS. Which leads me on to another baffling thing. How can soccer be such a marginal sport and yet be so popular? There was a decent crowd there. The large stadium was pretty much full.

[WOM]

I went to watch Real Salt Lake play in the MLS. Which leads me on to another baffling thing. How can soccer be such a marginal sport and yet be so popular? There was a decent crowd there. The large stadium was pretty much full.

It's the same 30,000 people. They just travel from game to game, like Deadheads.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I remember being very impressed with the university football stadium in Salt Lake City, which was miles better than most professional stadia in this country.

I went to watch Real Salt Lake play in the MLS. Which leads me on to another baffling thing. How can soccer be such a marginal sport and yet be so popular? There was a decent crowd there. The large stadium was pretty much full.

Bleedin' immigrant init?

Not born here, neither are most of the players. Worse, other places are much better at than we are.

[San Bernardhinault]

Am I allowed to have the use of endless substitutes in sport as a custom that puzzles me?

And, in particular, the bull-pen, and how often those players pitch, and why they don't start, and what starting pitchers do on their days off (do they sometimes go into the bullpen)?

And, most of all, the designated hitter. Which seems to basically ruin the whole point of sport.

[Amor de Cosmos]

That there is a thread and half all by itself.