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    #26
    I go along with hearing ex pat English accents , I try and ignore and avoid. But I am a nosey bugger, and will earwig conversations to further cement my (probably very false) image in my head of what those English speakers are really like.

    Years ago at a French language immersion course, we were getting on very well with an English guy, when we were all speaking very bad broken French. It was one of those courses you had to speak French all the time.
    Then on the final evening when everyone was so tired of speaking so slowly and being unable to articulate anything very well, we all started to yabber in English, so i was horrified to hear he was a toffee nosed prat, who made Rees Mogg seem like a reasonable man of the people. He was lucky to get a lift back from the bar by anyone.

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      #27
      Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post
      How do you establish this without entering into conversation?
      You can just tell.

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        #28
        When walking down the street with my girlfriend, if I overhear any British accent my instinct response will be to switch to talking in Spanish if we weren't already. No idea why, as it's not as if they're going to want to strike up a conversation. If someone wants to chat to me in a bar though I'm not really bothered where they're from, as long as they're not a twat.

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          #29
          Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
          And as for being a Chelsea fan, no point in mentioning Notts County...

          If only there was something unique about Notts County that might impress someone....

          I can't imagine not talking to someone based on where in ireland they're from. there are nice people, and dickheads from every part of the country.
          Notts County is the oldest professional football club in the world. It ain't much Berbs and would impress no one but it's what we got. Means absolutely nothing to Americans so I don't bother.

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            #30
            Originally posted by Sam View Post
            When walking down the street with my girlfriend, if I overhear any British accent my instinct response will be to switch to talking in Spanish if we weren't already. No idea why
            That'll be your Welsh blood kicking-in...

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              #31
              Originally posted by adams house cat View Post
              Notts County is the oldest professional football club in the world. It ain't much Berbs and would impress no one but it's what we got. Means absolutely nothing to Americans so I don't bother.
              Surely even Americans are impressed by something being the Oldest in the world? Particularly when it's a huge global thing we're talking about.
              Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 28-11-2018, 16:42.

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                #32
                Originally posted by Sam View Post
                When walking down the street with my girlfriend, if I overhear any British accent my instinct response will be to switch to talking in Spanish if we weren't already. No idea why, as it's not as if they're going to want to strike up a conversation. If someone wants to chat to me in a bar though I'm not really bothered where they're from, as long as they're not a twat.
                I've got to say, that's just weird. you know it's weird right?

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                  #33
                  Oh I kind of get that, I always try to hide my French accent if I hear French people in London (not so much a problem around these parts.) I think it's because I instinctively assume that they're going to be the absolute worst and I want to make sure they don't spot me.

                  On a few separate occasions I've had Spanish and Turkish people insistently trying to talk to me in their respective languages as they thought I was a compatriot (I look Mediterranean, apparently), which was pretty weird.

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                    #34
                    Know what you mean Berbs but it doesn't.

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                      #35
                      Originally posted by Fussbudget View Post
                      Oh I kind of get that, I always try to hide my French accent if I hear French people in London (not so much a problem around these parts.) I think it's because I instinctively assume that they're going to be the absolute worst and I want to make sure they don't spot me.

                      On a few separate occasions I've had Spanish and Turkish people insistently trying to talk to me in their respective languages as they thought I was a compatriot (I look Mediterranean, apparently), which was pretty weird.
                      hah. Can I ask what accent you adopt? Please tell me you reach for your Dick Van Dyke.


                      My neighbours just across the cul de sac are a lovely couple, where the mother proudly describes herself as a "chip shop cypriot from Devon", and the father is from kildare, but his father was french/north african, so they're both quite dark skinned, and they have two daughters who could only be described as eastern Mediterranean in appearance. They look like they just walked out of one of the crowd scenes in Corleone in the Godfather, or more unnervingly like they're getting off a dinghy on the shore of Greece. which can cause a lot of confusion when they speak to each other in Irish. I think they do it see the look on people's faces. The dad showed me a video of them down in Killarney and the younger one trots up to musicians on the stage in the pub that they are in, and she asks can she sing and they're delighted for the break, but can barely hear her and just assume that she's one of the billion or so foreign tourists who comes to Killarney every year, so they give her the microphone. the look of shock on their faces when she starts belting out a song in irish that simply isn't suitable for an 8 year old to be singing, is utterly priceless.

                      This is the english language version of that song. The irish language version is longer, and more gradual, but doesn't stop where this song ends.
                      Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 28-11-2018, 18:37.

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                        #36
                        Unfortunately I can only do a bad Northern Irish accent that makes me sound Austrian or a bad Geordie accent that makes me sound Jamaican, and I can't really use these in public without causing a minor diplomatic incident, so I just try to ham up the Teesside drawl or stay quiet (to everyone's relief I'm sure.)

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                          #37
                          Originally posted by Fussbudget View Post
                          Oh I kind of get that, I always try to hide my French accent if I hear French people in London (not so much a problem around these parts.) I think it's because I instinctively assume that they're going to be the absolute worst and I want to make sure they don't spot me.

                          On a few separate occasions I've had Spanish and Turkish people insistently trying to talk to me in their respective languages as they thought I was a compatriot (I look Mediterranean, apparently), which was pretty weird.
                          That seems odd, because the French Abroad don't seem to be half as obnoxious as the English Abroad. I've never noticed the French Abroad ganging together to try and recreate some artifcial ersatz-1920s clubby France, nostalgically hosting whatever the French equivalent of tea parties is. Avoiding the English Abroad seems like a deeply obvious choice.

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                            #38
                            When I moved to Germany in 1999, I got a job for a big company in a small town, with lots of other university leavers from the UK and US, all of whom were doing pretty much the same kind of translation work. We were all earning money for the first time: first thoughts were not "oh I must pay off my loans" but "YES! Beer. Now." (or words to that effect) and the group of translators pretty much instantly turned into a big, drunken and fairly incestuous group of friends. We went out together, met up for lunch in the canteen, played football together, watched PL matches in the Irish pubs around Heidelberg, didn't really mingle outside that group, all the stereotypes for young Brits abroad. It took me a couple of years to get to know any Germans to the point where acquaintance became friendship. The attraction of the ex-pat group dynamic started to fade a while after that, for me at least: I met the future Mrs. VL via an English mate who had married a German lady, and once things got serious with her, the inward-looking nature of the ex-pat thing became fairly clear and the often unpleasant attitude towards her primarily (and also towards me for going out with 'one of them') became pretty hard to tolerate, so I drifted away from the group and life in Germany became all the better for it. Watching it from the outside, it's clear that the predominantly negative attitude towards a lot of ex-pats exists for a reason. I won't go out of my way to avoid people (that'd be difficult here as there are a lot of tourists in town for half the year) but people do still think sometimes 'oh you're sure to get on well with xyz, he's from Wolverhampton [or name of any British town I have never visited]'. Maybe, maybe not, but I'm not particularly bothered about trying just based on that one fact.

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                              #39
                              The expat group turned on you for falling in love with a local? That seems harsh.

                              Originally posted by Gangster Octopus View Post
                              That'll be your Welsh blood kicking-in...
                              The one country of the UK I don't in fact have any blood from, as it happens.

                              Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
                              I've got to say, that's just weird. you know it's weird right?
                              What's weird? Being happy to talk to people unless they're twats? Or finding slightly-too-loud British accents in the street in a non-English-speaking city a bit cringeworthy and hoping people won't associate me with them? Just to be clear, I only mean in Buenos Aires. I don't avoid people with British accents when I'm in Britain. I'm quite happy to admit that would be a weird thing to do.

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                                #40
                                Originally posted by JVL View Post
                                When I moved to Germany in 1999, I got a job for a big company in a small town, with lots of other university leavers from the UK and US, all of whom were doing pretty much the same kind of translation work. We were all earning money for the first time: first thoughts were not "oh I must pay off my loans" but "YES! Beer. Now." (or words to that effect) and the group of translators pretty much instantly turned into a big, drunken and fairly incestuous group of friends. We went out together, met up for lunch in the canteen, played football together, watched PL matches in the Irish pubs around Heidelberg, didn't really mingle outside that group, all the stereotypes for young Brits abroad. It took me a couple of years to get to know any Germans to the point where acquaintance became friendship. The attraction of the ex-pat group dynamic started to fade a while after that, for me at least: I met the future Mrs. VL via an English mate who had married a German lady, and once things got serious with her, the inward-looking nature of the ex-pat thing became fairly clear and the often unpleasant attitude towards her primarily (and also towards me for going out with 'one of them') became pretty hard to tolerate, so I drifted away from the group and life in Germany became all the better for it. Watching it from the outside, it's clear that the predominantly negative attitude towards a lot of ex-pats exists for a reason. I won't go out of my way to avoid people (that'd be difficult here as there are a lot of tourists in town for half the year) but people do still think sometimes 'oh you're sure to get on well with xyz, he's from Wolverhampton [or name of any British town I have never visited]'. Maybe, maybe not, but I'm not particularly bothered about trying just based on that one fact.
                                This is very similar to my experience of living in Turkey. There are groups of white immigrants who have no Turkish friends and the only Turkish they speak is to order a beer. They look down on Turkey and its people and feel they are so superior because of coming from the west and are best avoided. After a while the only time I'd meet them was when I went to watch rugby as there were only a handful of places that showed it.

                                I completely understand why Sam would want to avoid them in Buenos Aires and would switch languages, I've done that too.

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                                  #41
                                  It also rather characterizes the Anglophone expat community in Milano.

                                  We were considered eccentric for living in the centre and having primarily Italian friends. In part that was due to the fact that a significant part of the expat community (especially the East Asians and those working in the oil industry) were generally there for only three years, but it still struck us as strange. Once the US military presence in Frankfurt was reduced, the expat community there was less isolationist in its habits, perhaps because it was primarily Continental European and because the vast majority of the Germans we encountered had themselves moved to FFM from elsewhere in the country.

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                                    #42
                                    In my experience having lived in a few countries the ones in which this phenomenon is worst are ones where the cultural gap is widest, which I guess is understandable. In the gulf for example, in which there is a large anglophone expat community and a big gap, this phenomenon is very prevalent. Looking back at my time in Abu Dhabi there was a large group of snooty expats who sat by the pool complaining about their maids. However to be totally honest my own social circle tended to consist of younger single expats drinking and complaining about the other group of expats just mentioned.

                                    I get the feeling that something similar happens in China though there is more in the way of foreign men marrying local women there which helps slightly.

                                    In Europe it doesn't seem to be as prevalent at all (at least in the low paid job world I inhabited) sure I had a number of British friends but I also had loads of local friends too. Where I live now if I only mixed with foreigners I'd be sitting entirely on my own all day long.

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                                      #43
                                      I think that is generally the case, but that there is also a different phenomenon that can have the opposite effect. Large culturally cities like New York can be relatively easy for other first world urban types to navigate, but it can also be the case that individual national communities are so large that one can disappear within them to an extent that just isn't possible in other places.

                                      Distance is also a factor. European centres are now generally so well connected that one can go back and forth quite easily, which can also lead to one being less involved in the local community.
                                      Last edited by ursus arctos; 29-11-2018, 14:06.

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                                        #44
                                        I work on the assumption that anyone who refers to themselves as an "expat" rather than an immigrant is basically a wanker and best avoided. It's certainly true of French people in the UK in my experience.

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                                          #45
                                          Originally posted by Fussbudget View Post
                                          I work on the assumption that anyone who refers to themselves as an "expat" rather than an immigrant is basically a wanker and best avoided. It's certainly true of French people in the UK in my experience.
                                          Your syllogism is probably true but I don’t think I’ve ever met a French/EU27 national in the UK who called him/herself an "expat" and I’ve met/known loads of them since I’ve lived here*. But there’s defo a pre and post Brexit dividing line here.

                                          Pre-Brexit, with FoM, very few EU27 citizens would have considered themselves to be "immigrants". Nothing demeaning about calling yourself an immigrant pre Brexit of course but the very nature of the FoM arrangements sort of precluded that. I’ve known/met many EU27 citizens here since I’ve lived in the UK and I never heard anyone call him/herself an immigrant or even "an ex-pat" pre Brexit. People, if they felt the need at all to label themselves, would simply have said that they were a Spanish/Romanian/Dutch etc. citizen living in the UK; some I met just said they were "European" first and foremost, then German/French etc. However, in our post-Brexit era, it’s more common of course to meet EU27 citizens who call themselves immigrants given that this Home Office terminology is being rammed down people’s throats as FoM is fading away.

                                          The term "ex-pat" was far more common in the UAE where I lived for 2 years, mostly from Westerners of course, the many citizens of the sub-Continent, the Iranians etc. called themselves immigrants or any other term but never ex-pats.

                                          I say mostly because it wasn’t just geographical, it was also a class thing. I knew a few well-off or financially-sorted Indians, Egyptians, Sri Lankans in Dubai, who hung around with Westerners in general (some were also married to them) when they went out and they didn’t call themselves immigrants, but ex-pats. I had a few Moroccan and Yemeni acquaintances/friends there who had started at the bottom of the ladder (waiters in bars/discos, working in hotels, that sort of thing, on very low wages, like $100-$150 a month), they’d done well and eventually got decent jobs and I'd say most of them didn’t call themselves immigrants anymore either but ex-pats. However, they did call poorer people from their own community immigrants. So I’d say the distinction "ex-pat" vs "immigrant" there was made more along social class lines, or perceived social class lines anyway or where you thought you were on the pecking order, than geographical, traditional "Westerners" "non Westerners" lines.



                                          [*That said, I’ve certainly met a few unpleasant French people in the UK, but as I’ve known/met lots of them here that’s inevitable, law of averages and all that. In any "community", there are always the very arrogant types who really think they’re something extra special. As we say in French, people qui ne se prennent pas pour la moitié d’une épluchure. I’ve noticed that it’s often those who’ve actually done little in life or who have elevated themselves to a high-ish position purely thanks to their connections, the pistonnés and parvenus of this world that display most acutely those unbearably smug expat traits. I’ve met quite a few of those, they seem to be spending an inordinate amount of energy licking other people’s backsides to curry favours while simultaneously telling others, the "ordinary" members of the community shall we say, how great they are and how well they’ve done for themselves, and so effortlessly darling. You sniff them out them a country mile away, subtle they ain’t. Some can be very obnoxious but others are very entertaining. I have found myself more than once seeking out their company to avail myself of their natural buffoonish drollery, they were my court jester for the evening, putty in my perverse hands. Winding them up is an option but a rather vulgar one, best to play with them and deliver little jolts in the course of the conversation. Or not.

                                          One of the last French deplorables I met in the UK even said to me that he would have voted Leave had he been bothered to vote (he had a British passport too). This Frenchman, who’s now moved back to France permanently, owned a nice French café in Newcastle city centre, which sort of served as the unofficial meeting place for Tyneside Francophones from the mid-2000s to July 2016 when it shut down. I met plenty of pleasant Francophones in there, Algerians, Canadians, French, Belgians etc. (and the odd prat of course), all sorts of people from all kinds of backgrounds. Plenty of Francophile Brits & foreigners would go to his café to speak French and exchange. I didn’t go tons but every time I went there were Brits practising their French with Francophones or with the French owner, sometimes mature Open University students, there was a great atmosphere in that place, I used to take them French newspapers/mags and books for them to put on their magazine racks.

                                          The French owner, the one who voted Leave, stayed about 15 yrs in England. I must confess I’m probably not entirely fair about him, I neither liked or disliked him before Brexit TBH, he was reasonably friendly but we had very little in common kind of thing, but I got on fine with him. Nothing problematic in having little in common with people in this context anyway, sometimes we would sit down and chew the rag in French together, usually with other people. However, when he almost proudly said to me a few days after that horrid 23.06.2016 that he would have voted Leave had he been bothered enough to vote, and proceeded to explain why as I sat down to have a drink to recover from the shock of hearing that, I must confess that I instantly started to dislike him. He buggered off to France shortly after. He didn’t manage to sell his café, he found a prospective buyer he told me but I think it fell through as it stayed empty for over a year (I think it's a beauty salon nw). You don't half get all sorts these days...]
                                          Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 29-11-2018, 21:38.

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                                            #46
                                            My accent is now best characterized as British University Generic. I've not lost it despite all my years in the US. I was advised to keep it anyway as "it makes you distinctive in Court'.

                                            I tried to demonstrate to someone a little while ago a Nottingham accent as it was the accent I grew up with. Don't know what it sounded like but it wasn't Nottingham.

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                                              #47
                                              Originally posted by Pérou Flaquettes View Post
                                              The term "ex-pat" was far more common in the UAE where I lived for 2 years, mostly from Westerners of course, the many citizens of the sub-Continent, the Iranians etc. called themselves immigrants or any other term but never ex-pats.
                                              Oh, you lived in the UAE? Maybe you know my friend...

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                                                #48
                                                My feeling - perhaps unfairly - is that an immigrant is someone who has moved permanently, who has no intention of leaving, so therefore has to engage (at least to some extent) with their new native country. An ex-pat is someone who's abroad for a bit as a job but will go home, so connections to the local community will only be temporary, and making an effort might seem pointless. Particularly if you have a clubby group of your countrymen creating an ersatz-country for you to live in. And that's why immigrants are generally less obnoxious than ex-pats.

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                                                  #49
                                                  Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
                                                  My feeling - perhaps unfairly - is that an immigrant is someone who has moved permanently, who has no intention of leaving, so therefore has to engage (at least to some extent) with their new native country. An ex-pat is someone who's abroad for a bit as a job but will go home, so connections to the local community will only be temporary, and making an effort might seem pointless. Particularly if you have a clubby group of your countrymen creating an ersatz-country for you to live in. And that's why immigrants are generally less obnoxious than ex-pats.
                                                  This is all true - from the definition to the analysis.

                                                  I'm never entirely sure what to self define as. When I too lived in the UAE in the late 80s I suspect I will have used the term expat. Since then I've been immigrant, migrant, and most often foreigner, and now I have started using May's "Citizen of nowhere" (but that only really works if people get the reference)

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                                                    #50
                                                    Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
                                                    My feeling - perhaps unfairly - is that an immigrant is someone who has moved permanently, who has no intention of leaving, so therefore has to engage (at least to some extent) with their new native country. An ex-pat is someone who's abroad for a bit as a job but will go home, so connections to the local community will only be temporary, and making an effort might seem pointless. Particularly if you have a clubby group of your countrymen creating an ersatz-country for you to live in. And that's why immigrants are generally less obnoxious than ex-pats.
                                                    Lot of truth in that SB.

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