03-10-2003 09:09									#1
	Culture And Climate: Great Britain Put an end to popups!

How much of British culture (attitudes, food, architecture, music, literature, etc.) is due to century upon century of perpetually dreary, depressing weather?

	03-10-2003 13:36									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Clearly it has rendered them apathetic regarding their own culture.

	03-10-2003 13:40									#3
	Remove this text

Why?

	03-10-2003 13:43									#4
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

The ancient question.

	03-10-2003 14:31									#5
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

We have a hell of a lot of words for rain, but that's about it.

	03-10-2003 14:37									#6
	Support Apolyton

Much like the Eskimos...

	03-10-2003 14:42									#7
	Inflate your Upload Space

Do Eskimos have a lot of words for rain?

	03-10-2003 14:45									#8
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Yes. Dare you challenge my extensive knowledge of Inuit vocabulary?

	03-10-2003 14:48									#9
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

No, but I do

Contrary to popular belief, the Eskimos do not have more words for snow than do speakers of English. They do not have four hundred words for snow, as it has been claimed in print, or two hundred, or one hundred, or forty-eight, or even nine. One dictionary puts the figure at two. Counting generously, experts can come up with about a dozen, but by such standards English would not be far behind with snow, sleet, slush, blizzard, avalanche, hail, hardpack, powder, flurry, dusting, and a coinage of Boston's WBZ-TV meteorologist Bruce Schwoegler, snizzling.
Where did this myth come from? Not from anyone who has actually studied the Yupik and Inuit-Inupiaq families of polysynthetic languages spoken from Siberia to Greenland. The anthropologist Laura Martin has documented how the story grew like an urban legend, exaggerated with each retelling. In 1911 Boas casually mentioned that Eskimos used four unrelated word roots for snow. Whorf embellished the count to seven and implied that there were more. His article was widely reprinted, then cited in textbooks and popular books on language, which led to successively inflated estimates in other textbooks, articles, and newspaper columns of Amazing Facts.

The linguist Geoffrey Pullum, who popularized Martin's article in his essay "The Great Eskimo Vocabularly Hoax," speculates about why the story got so out of control: "The alleged lexical extravagance of the Eskimos comports so well with the many other facts of their polysynthetic perversity: rubbing noses; lending their wives to strangers; eating raw seal blubber; throwing Grandma out to be eaten by polar bears." It is an ironic twist. Linguistic relativity came out of the Boas school, as part of a campaign to show that nonliterate cultures were as complex and sophisticated as European ones. But the supposedly mind-broadening anecdotes owe their appeal to a patronizing willingness to treat other cultures' psychologies as weird and exotic compared to our own. (p. 64)

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~hone...da/eskimos.html

	03-10-2003 14:50									#10
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

Damn you, Boshko!

	03-10-2003 16:10									#11
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

We don't have a culture and our climate is just weather. In 32 of the last 100 years, we've had a day in January warmer than the coolest day in July.

	03-10-2003 16:58									#12
	Inflate your Upload Space

quote: How much of British culture (attitudes, food, architecture, music, literature, etc.) is due to century upon century of perpetually dreary, depressing weather?

None.

	03-10-2003 17:10									#13
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

quote: Originally posted by Sandman None.

well, british architecture in general is rather depressing actually, but that's just how I perceive it. Of course, I always see Britain in all its glory (=> rain) and perhaps that rain accentuates that depressing feeling

	03-10-2003 17:35									#14
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

You only have to look to how brits act when they do get the sun on them, to understand that its probably a good job that the UK climate is as it is ..

To be fair .. I think weather does play a part in a nations culture, however I don't believe that it should be overstated. The main influence on the culture here has been immigration, over centuries, even millenia ..

The UK's favourite food for example, has everything to do with our colonial past and immigration.

Many of our traditions come from colonialism, and id say that had a much larger impact on the UK than the weather does.

Religion came from Roman influences.

Saying that, you could argue that the reason the UK was so desperate to have colonies, was because of the weather here in the first place .. but im sure it had more to do with wealth, power and beating the French.

Because we are so influenced by the influx of immigrants, I can see that the next 20 years holds many many more radical changes in the culture of these isles ..

	03-10-2003 17:43									#15
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

Britain doesn't have a culture and arguably never has had one, it just goes out and borrows bits of other cultures. The weather is an incentive to go and do something to cheer yourself up, like copy a good curry recipe, or drink a lot of alcohol - both things Britons are prone to doing.

Why anyone would want to move to this country is beyond me. I'm more interested in leaving.

	03-10-2003 17:54									#16
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

quote: Originally posted by CerberusIV Why anyone would want to move to this country is beyond me.

Well that would depend on where they're coming from, wouldn't it?

	03-10-2003 18:02									#17
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

quote: Originally posted by CerberusIV Britain doesn't have a culture and arguably never has had one, it just goes out and borrows bits of other cultures.

That is a culture. It's the culture of a society that grew from being invaded, colonised and absorbing the culture of the invaders. Terry Pratchett's Ankh Morpok is a reflection of the way we English (the Welsh and Scots are still mostly celts) absorb cultures.

	03-10-2003 18:04									#18
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

I like rain, personally.


But it gets really ****ing cold after it rains here, for some reason. It's bummin' me out.

It's been raining almost none stop for a week now... and it's turned into snow and hail the past couple of days.

	03-10-2003 19:09									#19
	Increase the size of your Attachments

i think our tendency to complain to everyone about a problem, except of course the person capable of doing something about it, is a result of our weather

	03-10-2003 19:25									#20
	Increase the size of your Attachments

In a thread on another forum (the thread I got this idea from), another poster wrote:

quote: a large part i would say as i mentioned earlier, the whole concept of cafe culture and the kind of beautiful people thing only exists in mediterranean european countries england (and the whole of Britain and Ireland really) has evolved with pub culture, places of warmth and light like beacons, with pub games like darts and snooker, things that do not need fine weather to enjoy. rugby and football are games that thrive in autumnal, wintery and spring conditons. Plenty of mud and blood and guts. The national sporting character is forged from games of football on sodden, uneven pitches in pouring rain, low on skill, high on effort.

I think that's very insightful.

	03-10-2003 19:31									#21
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

It's possible that weather might drive people to find better lands, hence colonization, but that wouldn't explain it's popularity to other European nations -- or would it?

	03-10-2003 19:36									#22
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

The reason it got invaded so often is that it was a rich island, full of tin, iron, gold, trees (not any more, they cut 'em all down), Fertile farmland, good fishing. Little hostile terrain - also makes it harder to defend.

	03-10-2003 19:46									#23
	Increase Your PM Length

quote: Originally posted by MikeH (the Welsh and Scots are still mostly celts)

The Scots and Irish both were colonized by Vikings as well as by the English. There's plenty of non Celtic genes floating around in that gene pool. The Welsh probably are more Celtic then the others though.

	03-10-2003 19:58									#24
	Put an end to popups!

quote: It's possible that weather might drive people to find better lands, hence colonization, but that wouldn't explain it's popularity to other European nations -- or would it?

the other nations/ or nationals - ie. like me are crazy



they all got lost on ships and later couldn't get off as the ships all sunk in the storms and they thought they can get to a better land on the other side of the new continent... and when they realised that they got trapped and this is all an island it was too late

Now the ones who were smart discovered the Tech of Whiskey and never tried to move on stayed in Scotland -your prerenial barbarrian...

the onese who were searching and got fed up once they figuread out they can't swim and that there was no trees on the island anymore (as all the forest have been cut by the ones before them making ships and fleeing from this non-stop rain island) and they settled settled in the south out of misery - english and the ones who got mad searching for an exit from the cursed place and got stuck in the mountains - welsh... and there you have it...

In the meantime the Romans came just for adventure... and they brought writing, planted trees again, lots of psychiatrists, and alchochol... it was only than the people finally wanted to stay here...

reason for numerous stone-age artifacts in UK - the failed attempts to dispel bad weather.

This was one of the latest to say **** off to the gods who cursed the land:

	03-10-2003 21:04									#25
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

Strange you should post that particular image. I watched a TV programme last night that concluded it was probably carved on the orders of a local landowner just after the English Civil War as a protest against efforts to promote Oliver Cromwell as a national hero.

Ironic really as Cromwell wasn't exactly nice to the Welsh or Scots and really not nice to the Irish. The seizure of Jamaica on his orders is also one of the key early episodes in the creation of the British Empire.

	04-10-2003 00:25									#26
	Tired of ads?

quote: Originally posted by Oerdin The Scots and Irish both were colonized by Vikings as well as by the English. There's plenty of non Celtic genes floating around in that gene pool. The Welsh probably are more Celtic then the others though.

You'd be surprised. The Irish genetic make-up has less Nordic input than the Scottish, and they're both way behind the English.

The Welsh do have even less Nordic input, but the most Celtic of the lot are the Cornish- now part of England. Not even the Romans got a look-in there.

	04-10-2003 00:28									#27
	Increase the size of your Attachments

quote: Originally posted by CerberusIV Strange you should post that particular image. I watched a TV programme last night that concluded it was probably carved on the orders of a local landowner just after the English Civil War as a protest against efforts to promote Oliver Cromwell as a national hero.

Outdated theory. The Cerne Abbas giant is reckoned to date back much earlier, possibly being as old as the Uffington White Horse.

	04-10-2003 00:29									#28
	Tired of ads?

And here I always pictured Great Britain as just one big Disneyland................

	04-10-2003 08:47									#29
	Get a bigger avatar today!

The biggest effect that the climate has had is that it causes the English to talk about the awful/wonderful weather in order to break a silence.

It probably also has the effect that the English are willing to knuckle down to some hard work as there is little outdoor fun to be had. Its no surprise that the temperate and cooler climates are often more economically vibrant than tropical and hotter climates.

	04-10-2003 09:11									#30
	Put an end to popups!

quote: Why anyone would want to move to this country is beyond me. I'm more interested in leaving.

I'd love to go at some point. Lots and lots of history.