Lost in culture

Yesterday I was at the home of a friend from the Middle East when an episode of the American comedy “The Nanny” came on TV. I’m sure this show has played in many other countries, so if you see the characters, you might recognize them: thenanny.com

The main character is played by an actress named Fran Drescher, and she wears clothes on the show that Americans find outrageously gaudy – very expensive, but in very bad taste. It’s part of the character, who is supposed to have a low level of education and be very unsophisticated. I mentioned to my Middle Eastern friend that the outfits the lady wears in the show are meant to be funny, and she looked at me very surprised. She just refused to believe it. “People from my country think her clothes are always very classy!” she told me.

It makes me wonder what else in our TV shows gets lost when it jumps across cultures.

This version of The Nanny is unknown to me, but she sounds fun! The one I’ve occasionally watched through an Arabic channel is ‘Supernanny’, her British counterpart. And this nanny’s outfit is lightyears away from that of her American colleague, it seems! In fact she wears an ‘authentic’, sensible and old-fashioned nanny’s uniform, complete with cape, hat and gloves!

Right. We have this same show in the US. There are also shows where angry kids with really bad behavior problems are sent to “boot camp”, which is very similar to tough military training, except that they get psychotherapy along with it. Most of the kids arrive thinking they’re really tough, but the screaming drill sergeants are much tougher than they are, and pretty soon the kids want their mommies. Some of the kids don’t get better, but other ones turn from angry devils in to nice kids again.

By the way, my best friend’s cousin has a show in the UK called The House Doctor, where she gives people advice as to how to fix their houses up for resale. Evidently, part of her appeal is that the British find her deliciously blunt and sarcastic, but when we Americans hear her, she just sounds like she’s talking normally. We don’t sense anything naughty or sarcastic.

Hi Jamie!

I think I know that comedy you refered to. The Nanny !! If there would be a sense at all, I think it can only be that to show how difficult it might be to overcome the bareers between different social descendants. And the clothes, the Nanny wears, are chosen to differ her from the upper class of her chief and his servant only. So although her boss is a single too he never would take in mind to marry her because she is a single off a deeper social descendant.

By the way, the sayings often seem to be very funny.

Michael

In the US it’s not so much where one’s ancestors came from as one’s present level of culture and education. The main character in The Nanny shows that she’s culturally mismatched to her boss (whom she wishes she could marry), not only by her clothing, but by the contrast in their speech, and her general way of addressing people. He’s well-educated, British, has a high level of cultural refinement, and is probably Protestant. She’s gaudy, coarse, obviously very Jewish, and probably had a poor education. The thing you don’t know for sure in the US is who their ancestors were, because people’s social level can change in less than a generation just by education and money (more by education than by money). So a man like this boss could very easily get hitched to a woman with the same ancestry as this nanny, but she’d be a different woman who had received a good education and had better social manners. Most of my close friends from university here are from families that moved from very poor parts of Appalachia or were from very blue-collar Polish families. The first generation of their families that was born in Michigan is more or less upper middle class, due to education, but people in some other families didn’t care for school and live in something like the same economic and social conditions their parents or grandparents did.

Hi Jamie!

Since coaching horses is my hobby I have lots of aquitances who certainly belong to the higher level of the society. I mean most of them don?t have a better education than I have. Surely there are dentists or medicine doctors or teachers. But most of them belong to the cream of the crop because they have more money than the common habitants. Whatever they got their money from (earned it themselves, got married ( not only women ), having inherited from their parents) the most interesting themes for them seem to be speaking about others and where they have got their money from. And the most rich man between them has little experience from education only. I?m really surprised that you claim that in the US you mostly can raise up in the social level by being educated, only.

Michael

There are certain groups of people at the very upper income levels that can’t be penetrated in just one generation with education OR with money. Actually, these are people who didn’t make money, but got it from their parents and don’t have to work. However, previous generations of even their families came from more humble origins. It’s just that the families have had that much money for so long that they consider themselves some kind of elite.

However, in the United States it is possible to go from dirt poor to upper middle class or higher in one lifetime, but education is the key to it. Naturally, if you’re educated you get a better job, and a better job will bring more money. In some neighborhoods you can see the difference in the outcome of various families based on whether the parents stressed education in the family or whether the kids made the effort on their own. I have also seen some families go lower because the drinking or drug-addicted parents caused so much chaos in the kids’ lives that they couldn’t study.

Jamie, what about Bill Gates?education? Was he as high educated as noone else? :shock: As I?ve been told Bill Gates had the right connections at right time only. I mean not Bill Gates developed the DOS-Drive System but some students did. Bill recognized the chance, as there were lots of Drive-Systems for computers, to insert one common system to make all computers able to communicate with another. Although it was a good idea there are other systems which are supposed to work much better. But Bill Gates accomplished the DOS-and Windows-system as the most used one. However, did that have to do with his high-classy education?

Michael

Bill Gates dropped out of college. The college was Harvard, of course, but nonetheless, he didn’t finish.

Mainly he got ahead through intelligence, hard work, salesmanship and luck. He got the operating system from another company for about $10,000, because the owner of the company (and possibly even Bill Gates himself) didn’t know the potential profits that could be made from it. The reason his DOS operating system became the standard was that after IBM signed the contract with him, IBM published the plans for its first personal computer in a magazine. In other words, they gave the plans for their personal computer away for free, so that other companies would clone it, and IBM’s system would become the standard. This meant that DOS became standard too, and because of the type of license Gates had the computer makers sign, other software companies couldn’t compete. Years later, that type of contract was ruled by the courts to be monopolistic, but they didn’t punish Microsoft, and had them change the contracts instead.

It’s been shown that most rich Americans did not get their money from their parents. They made it at a boring business that they work very hard at. Most of them were mediocre students, but they believe that education helped them get where they are.

Besides this, most Americans are not entrepreneurs. They just have jobs. If they are better educated and work well, they usually get better jobs. Kids who go to the inner city schools of Chicago, Detroit or Los Angeles usually come out at 18 reading at the level of a 12-year-old or even an 8-year-old, and they know only very basic math. They don’t get good jobs. Inner city parents who do whatever they have to, so that they can send their kids to Catholic schools in the city, or else go get an apartment in a city with better schools, benefit their kids. The ones who move to my neighborhood usually come out of high school with the equivalent of half a university education. They get good jobs. Education is the key to it.

Hi Jamie!

I read a nice idiom from Torsten that fits here: I?m on the same page like you. Despite all my fighting I?m used to admit that a good education will enable everybody to earn a good life and raise up in social range too. If there a bit good luck adds you can reach the upper class, but for that -that?s my honest opinion- the good luck is as absolutely neccessary as a good education.

Michael

Most self-made millionaires here say that the harder they work, the luckier they get.

Hi Jamie!

This is the point where our discussion becomes difficult. I think there is a difference between having good luck and being lucky!

Of course, if anyone works a lot he/she is capable having much success and in this sense being lucky. But not alone that is what counts, in my opinion you also must be able to recogniize chances. And possibly this ability is a gift which not everybody has. Please don?t understand me wrong. I do not want to complain about that, I only want to refer to the circumstance that to have such a gift makes some people more capable to earn lots of money than that people who don?t have this gift. And as that is supposed to be meant when we speak about having good luck at this topic, the good luck I meant, is to have that gift I wrote about here.

Michael

In English, having good luck and being lucky are the same thing.

So my imagination of being lucky would better fit to being happy?

Michael

The German word gl?cklich has two meanings in English: lucky (Gl?ck haben) and happy (froh zu sein).

Only when describing circumstances or situations the word gl?cklich can be translated as lucky. When we are talking about people gl?cklich has only one meaning: to be happy.[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC short conversations: Leaving a message on the phone[YSaerTTEW443543]

Hi Michael

Just a tip from my 16+ years of teaching English to Germans:

When speaking English, Germans use the word lucky incorrectly extremely often.:!: :!:

Amy

Hi Amy, Jamie and Torsten!

I can appreciate happy and I?m lucky having you all correcting my English. Since I?ve joined this site I?ve learned as much and am able to avoid the one or the other mistake. 8) I promise not longer to make this mistake.

Michael

Correction

Sorry, I think my recent post should be written as follows:

I can appreciate lucky and am happy having… :oops:

Michael

Hi Michael

You lucked out on your last two posts. (You got lucky). :lol:

You could have written your sentence both ways.
But the meanings are slightly different. :smiley:

Amy