A perennially popular collection of colour cartoon illustrations,
with accompanying texts, on the endearing oddities of our British
life and character. Drawing on their many years' experience of
teaching English as a Foreign Language the authors also offer the
wider world a tongue-in-cheek guide on how to get around in English
and at the same time make sense of our 'funny ways'. It's a gentle
brand of satire, and although there's the occasional barbed arrow
for bland food, fashion disasters or dubious standards of hygiene,
the tone of The "How To Be British Collection" is more nostalgic
than scornful, and the pet-loving, royal-watching, tea drinking
characters that populate its pages are viewed with wry affection.
Cartoons like "How to be Polite" and "How to Complain" have been
reproduced in publications all over the world, perhaps because they
put a finger on that peculiar tentativeness that foreigners find so
puzzling (and so funny) about us. In order to be British, or at any
rate to pass unnoticed in British society, the visitor must learn
not to 'make a fuss'. A fuss is something that the true Brit cannot
stand. It is nearly as bad as a 'scene', and in the same category
as 'drawing attention to yourself'. In the first frame of How To Be
Polite, a man -- presumably an uninitiated foreign visitor -- has
fallen into a river. He's clearly in trouble and is shouting HELP!
-- at the top of his voice, judging by the speech bubble. An
English gentleman is walking his dog along the river bank. There's
a lifebelt prominently displayed beside them, but the gent and his
dog are walking away from the emergency with disapproving
expressions. In the next frame, the man in the river has changed
his strategy and is calling out: "Excuse me, Sir. I'm terribly
sorry to bother you, but I wonder if you would mind helping me a
moment, as long as it's no trouble, of course...". And this time,
naturally, the English gent is rushing to his aid, throwing the
lifebelt into the water. Even the dog is smiling. Much of the
material in The "How to be British Collection" is about how
cultural differences can prove a minefield for the unwary. To that
extent its appeal - in an age where so many of us travel and even
set up home overseas - is universal. Every visitor to Britain comes
knowing that our favourite conversational gambit is the weather.
But how many can successfully do it at 1) Elementary 2)
Intermediate and 3) Advanced levels? The book's enduring popularity
comes from the recognition factor -- how exposed we can be once we
stray away from the comfort zone of our own native language. A
hapless visitor, phrase book in hand, stops to ask an old lady in
the street for directions. He looks pleased with himself for
phrasing the question so nicely, but then is utterly at a loss to
understand her long, rambling, minutely detailed reply. We've all
been there. To help the poor innocent abroad around these cultural
and linguistic booby-traps, the book includes on most pages
collectible Expressions to learn and (of course) Expressions to
avoid. Thus, under the entry for Real English, which negotiates the
difficult area of colloquial speech including "idioms, slang and
even the occasional taboo word, as used by flesh and blood native
speakers" we find -- Expressions to learn:"'E nicked it off of a
lorry and now the coppers 'ave done 'im for it." Expressions to
avoid: "That's not correct English, Mrs. Jones -- it says so here
in my grammar book".
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