Casual anti-Americanism (1 Viewer)

[Lord Damian]

i think the whole "american accent" is funny - there is more variation between different regional accents in america than a lot of other places in the world, i'd wager.

ie New York accent vs. Alabama accent.

 

[Squiggle]

i think the whole "american accent" is funny - there is more variation between different regional accents in america than a lot of other places in the world, i'd wager.

ie New York accent vs. Alabama accent.

The Alabama drawl is great...

I used to know this guy called "Maaaat, Maaaat frawm Alebaaahmaah"

All us girlies loved him.

 

[Squiggle]

i think the whole "american accent" is funny - there is more variation between different regional accents in america than a lot of other places in the world, i'd wager.

ie New York accent vs. Alabama accent.

I think one could argue the same for "Irish Accent" and we've got a much smaller country.

Take Belfast, Cork, Inner city Dublin and say Kerry for starters...

 

[snakybus]

New York is as far from Alabama as France is from Lapland (or something)

when you consider the geography and population of the US, it's quite homogenous, I reckon, in comparison to first world areas of the same size or population

Ireland, for example, has just as many variations in accent, I would say, if not more. You can go from one town to another just a few miles away and they'll have different accents.

 

[jane]

i think the whole "american accent" is funny - there is more variation between different regional accents in america than a lot of other places in the world, i'd wager.

ie New York accent vs. Alabama accent.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the town where I grew up, and was jokingly talking in the local dialect. There were still remnants of it in my speech until I came back to Dublin the other day. DANGER ZONE. It was a bit like that thing where if someone slaps you on the back when you're making a funny face, it's going to stick like that. Only it was real and no one *needed* to slap me.

 

[Squiggle]

New York is as far from Alabama as France is from Lapland (or something)

when you consider the geography and population of the US, it's quite homogenous, I reckon, in comparison to first world areas of the same size or population

Ireland, for example, has just as many variations in accent, I would say, if not more. You can go from one town to another just a few miles away and they'll have different accents.

You nearly beat me to it

 

[Unicron]

Everything I say can be assumed to be a marriage proposal.

A friend of mine married an Australian girl recently and they're now back in Ireland after he spent a year or so over there. She won't be granted a work permit until he gets a job and can demonstrate that he can support her financially.

 

[Lord Damian]

i didn't say anything about Irish accents being non-regional, they totally are, but just wanted to point out that there is no such thing as a general American accent.

Toronto vs. Montreal - now THERE's a real man's difference in accent.

 

[jane]

Ireland, for example, has just as many variations in accent, I would say, if not more. You can go from one town to another just a few miles away and they'll have different accents.

But it all depends how you define homogeneity, and how pronounced the differences in speech need to be before they are classified as a different accent. For example, people from Massachusetts might sound similar to people from outside the state, but within the state, the type of Massachusetts/Boston accent people have varies very widely. Which is why the urban Boston accent rubs off on me less than the more specific South Shore accent that I grew up with, which took effect on my speech pretty quickly. But to someone else, it might not sound any different from a standard 'Boston' accent.

As far as homogeneity, how could a country made up of so many different nationalities be anything but extremely varied?

 

[Squiggle]

i didn't say anything about Irish accents being non-regional, they totally are, but just wanted to point out that there is no such thing as a general American accent.

Toronto vs. Montreal - now THERE's a real man's difference in accent.

I guess that snakybus and I were trying to point out that the famed "Irish" accent is as much a thing of myth and folklore

 

[Lord Damian]

I guess that snakybus and I were trying to point out that the famed "Irish" accent is as much a thing of myth and folklore

i see. and what is your stance on leprechauns, the Blarney Stone and the colour green?

 

[jane]

A friend of mine married an Australian girl recently and they're now back in Ireland after he spent a year or so over there. She won't be granted a work permit until he gets a job and can demonstrate that he can support her financially.

I've tried to explain to people recently how bullshit the new marriage regulations are (which took effect 30 November 2005), which actually did put the final nail in the coffin on my ability to stay here. The thing is, the new regulations never made the news, so I'm not sure people realise how much impact they actually have on a lot of people's lives.

It's not that I woudl ever use marriage as a ticket to staying -- because I actually just wouldn't do it -- it's that if I wanted to get married, it would work against me. I can get residency more easily as a single person. The fact isn't that I would ever be 'forced' to marry in order to remain in IReland, it actually means that I'm not really free to get hitched until I'm resident, even if I want to.

But even to work toward getting residency myself would mean that by the time I was in a legal/financial position to have children, I may actually be too old to bear them.

I'm sure there is a way to stay here, but I'm not willing to live in a country where you can't get by without lying. I also don't want to end up in a shit job where someone else holds my work permit -- it's a really unsettling prospect after so many years here, to give someone that much power over my life. And the thing is, it's not like I came here naively, not knowing all of this, it's that the system was MUCH more lenient a few years ago, and it would have been possible.

 

[Doctor Muscles]

I've tried to explain to people recently how bullshit the new marriage regulations are (which took effect 30 November 2005), which actually did put the final nail in the coffin on my ability to stay here. The thing is, the new regulations never made the news, so I'm not sure people realise how much impact they actually have on a lot of people's lives.

It's not that I woudl ever use marriage as a ticket to staying -- because I actually just wouldn't do it -- it's that if I wanted to get married, it would work against me. I can get residency more easily as a single person. The fact isn't that I would ever be 'forced' to marry in order to remain in IReland, it actually means that I'm not really free to get hitched until I'm resident, even if I want to.

But even to work toward getting residency myself would mean that by the time I was in a legal/financial position to have children, I may actually be too old to bear them.

I'm sure there is a way to stay here, but I'm not willing to live in a country where you can't get by without lying. I also don't want to end up in a shit job where someone else holds my work permit -- it's a really unsettling prospect after so many years here, to give someone that much power over my life. And the thing is, it's not like I came here naively, not knowing all of this, it's that the system was MUCH more lenient a few years ago, and it would have been possible.

How hard is it to become a citizen of this kip?

 

[Squiggle]

i see. and what is your stance on leprechauns, the Blarney Stone and the colour green?

Can't speak for snakeybus but:
very short little men = scary

blarney stone = well, a complete load of blarney (and as my sister said when she was taken there by some US citizens "I'm not kissing it after those punks" - she was about 6 at the time)

colour green - mixed feelings. Like it in nature/natural shades - not that fond of this shade for example

 

[Lord Damian]

But even to work toward getting residency myself would mean that by the time I was in a legal/financial position to have children, I may actually be too old to bear them.

i point you towards this thread. http://www.thumped.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=35583

for support.

 

[jane]

How hard is it to become a citizen of this kip?

A few years ago, it was pretty easy to at least get residency, and I know one American woman who pretty much breezed through the process and had a passport within two years of arriving here. You used to get residency as soon as you got married to an Irish person, and now you have to wait three years to even work freely.

Now it's almost totally impossible unless you work for a multinational and make more than 55 grand a year. If you've been recruited for a biotech job, they give you a green card and you can bring your family, all of whom get instant residency and are fast-tracked for citizenship if you want it. If you're, say, a Filipino nurse, you get squat.

If you've just finished a PhD, you have exactly zero months to get settled and find a job. This is in contrast to the situation of foreign students in the US, who have a year of leeway to look for jobs and settle. Also, if you are foreign and you move to the US with your American spouse, you pretty much HAVE to work.

I'm not saying that the American system isn't shit (because it's fucking appallingly shit), but it's shit in a different way, and at least there are a few policies in place that make a bit of sense.


Oh! And I should also point out that if you are a person with one Irish grandparent, who has never set foot on the island of Ireland, you get automatic citizenship. If you're, like, the child of a Filipina nurse, born and living in Dublin, you are nothing. They've also changed the thing with years as a student here, and by the time I finish, they are unlikely to even acknowledge that I've ever been here, though I like to think that I've contributed both financially and in other ways to Irish society more than Joe O'Soap from Indiana who's never so much as experienced the shitness of Aer Lingus firsthand. But I'll get nothing at all.

 

[Doctor Muscles]

Sounds rather stringent alright. Do you suppose they tightened restrictions on non EU citizens because of the flow of immigrants from the new EU member states?

 

[jane]

Sounds rather stringent alright. Do you suppose they tightened restrictions on non EU citizens because of the flow of immigrants from the new EU member states?

They tightened restrictions because the media feeds people's xenophobia, and they eat it up without challenging it. See, if you tighten your immigration restrictions, the anti-immigrant people are happy, and they vote for you again. Passing legislation that treats immigrants nicely doesn't really do much because, duh, immigrants can't vote -- so why do anything for us at all?

 

[St. Fechin]

i didn't say anything about Irish accents being non-regional, they totally are, but just wanted to point out that there is no such thing as a general American accent.

Well, there is, sorta: http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American, but we all know how fluffy sociolinguistics is.

 

[TenRabbits]

If you're, say, a Filipino nurse, you get squat.

Is there anyone else who thinks this is a bit short-sighted? I can just hear poor Connor from D4 now, when there's no-one to make his latte and parma ham bagel, and no-one to look after him when he gets the shit kicked out of him by knackers in the city centre, cos the guards are too stretched trying to man the borders against all the people who are the infrastructure of the country.