Re: I'm British

[NormanH]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkF_XpA5P48

[Christine Animal]

Well,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asJAbkR459Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij3r-k-DSGM

 

[Mr Ceour de Lion II]

Well, I haven't lost my accent in New Jersey!

[woolybanana]

Well, I am English and I do not apologize for most of that.

[NormanH]

[quote user="Mr Ceour de Lion II"]Well, I haven't lost my accent in New Jersey!

[/quote]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYmrg3owTRE

[Rabbie]

[quote user="woolybanana"]Well, I am English and I do not apologize for most of that.[/quote] Which bits do you apologise for?

BTW why do most British people - myself included - very rarely describe themselves as British but English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish? Just another national idiosyncracy Isuppose   

[woolybanana]

Because my family is English, going way back to the Beaker people of Derbyshire, on one side. The other lot are Anglo-Saxon, but also English.

I would apologize for certain individuals who went too far under Empire, being sometimes unnecessarily cruel and thoughtless, eg Colonel Dyer.

[Hoddy]

I thought I was good at family history, but I can't claim to get back to the Beakers. I did manage to get to the early 1500s on one side and every ancestor I found on both sides was born within twenty miles of where I was born. So I can claim to come from a long line of English stick-in-the-muds.

Do you have a personal connection to Dyer, Wooly ?

I don't feel like apologising for my great-uncle who was buried in the British Military Cemetery in Baghdad in 1916.

My OH insists that he is English and gets cross if he's called British. I don't mind that much.

Hoddy

[woolybanana]

No, but he went too far.

I found an old family tree a few months ago so my friend who is mad about these things and we went racing back many generations. Interesting to see how families rise and fall.

The Beaker bit was found by my cousins.

And I feel quite strongly that the peoples of the UK should distinguish themselves by their national origins bacause it would make us closer in the end. And I always use Anglais on paperwork when I can.

I also feel that the English identity has been suppressed for centuries in order to accommodate, particularly the Scots and Welsh, and more recently the newer waves of immigrants. It should be reasserted, excluding the extremists, of course.

 

[Araucaria]

I find it irritating to hear that a person's accent is "British". That's surely an impossibility. It might be English, or Scottish, or Welsh, or even (depending on your point of view) Irish. And yes of course within the larger groups there are almost endless subdivisions - a Black Country accent, anyone? Mine's probably London, but neither cockney nor "received pronunciation" (as posh accents are now described). A careful ear might detect South London, at that.

If you are referring to an individual, as opposed to a group, in my view if you know where he (or she) comes from, it's sensible to say: he's English, Scottish, etc... But when people outside the UK use the term "British" they are quite often not referring to a group that might be made up of people from all over the British Isles - it's often because they don't know that these distinctions exist.

And under UK law, I believe (I am not a lawyer) you need to be careful with words like "domicile". You cannot be domiciled in the UK, or in Britain: it's either England and Wales, or Scotland, or Northern Ireland.

Oh, it's all a minefield!

[Mr Ceour de Lion II]

It's a generalisation to say a person's accent is British. As you say there are so many dialects and variations. But it's the same in every English speaking country too. North Australia vs South Australia. Northern US vs Southern US. What is an Australian accent? What is an American accent? It would get too difficult to trace down to a particular region. Over here, people say to me that I have an English accent, others say it sounds more Australian.But they would really struggle to tell exactly where it exactly originates from, so in most cases a generalisation is the best bet.

[DraytonBoy]

I see myself as an English Anglo-Saxon without an accent despite being Norfolk born and bred.

[Mr Ceour de Lion II]

That's how I feel. Everyone around me has an accent.

[Gardengirl]

[quote user="DraytonBoy"]I see myself as an English Anglo-Saxon without an accent despite being Norfolk born and bred.[/quote]

Oh, that Drayton - I assumed it was Market Drayton.

French people I know generally regard anybody who speaks English as Britanique. I regard myself as English, despite quite a bit of Scots background; I think it might date back to seeing 'English go home!' spray painted just north of the border - I remember being very shocked at the time.

[nomoss]

Beats me why people spend so much time researching their family history. Good money for the ancestry-tracing companies, but after all, it's a wise child ......

 

 

[Mr Ceour de Lion II]

I guess because it's their hobby?

[Rabbie]

[quote user="Araucaria"]

And under UK law, I believe (I am not a lawyer) you need to be careful with words like "domicile". You cannot be domiciled in the UK, or in Britain: it's either England and Wales, or Scotland, or Northern Ireland.

Oh, it's all a minefield!

[/quote]This page on the HMRC website would appear to contradict this as it talks about being domiciled in the UK. But I am also not a lawyer so what do I know[:)]

[nomoss]

[quote user="Mr Ceour de Lion II"]I guess because it's their hobby?
[/quote]

Maybe, but really most just want to prove their ancestry contains someone notable[:)]

 

 

[Mr Ceour de Lion II]

My ex wife was a lot like that. She spent years tracing hers, and came up with no one notable. She spent a few months tracing mine and apparently found links to George Orwell, Jane Austen and JFK. I couldn't care less, and she was gutted.

[Hoddy]

“most just want to prove their ancestry contains someone notable”

I’d like to see your evidence for this Nomoss. I spend quite a lot of my spare time in England in County Record Offices and have done my family tree while I’ve been waiting for the papers for the ‘real’ historical research I’m doing which is my genuine hobby.

In that time I’ve helped quite a few people with ideas of where to look for the information they want. It’s true that some people have rather romantic ideas about their forebears. I remember Graham Norton on the TV programme “Who do you think you are” being terribly disappointed that he wasn’t part of the suppressed people he thought was descended from and worse still that he was in fact descended from the people he thought of as the oppressors. Most of the people I’ve met are just genuinely interested in their ancestors, what their occupations were and where they lived.

Most of our English ancestors were agricultural labourers.

Hoddy

[nomoss]

I don't need evidence, it's an opinion [:D]

 

 

[DraytonBoy]

Through family tree research I found three cousins of my mother's (who she'd never met) who were living only five miles away and who are now in regular contact.

On the flip side I also found out that my late father's favourite uncle had an affair during WWII which produced a son that he (the uncle) never knew about.

[YCCMB]

As the child of a Scot and an Englishwoman, I guess I have to be "British", although in the event that Mr Salmond gets his way, I wonder what I should be then? My family history on my maternal side was traced back for me by a relative, and my mother's "family" (by name) have their own genealogical website, allowing me with no personal effort to trace my ancestry back to the 15th century. They very thoughtfully all stayed in a fairly small geographical area, although later generations have moved to all corners of the globe.

What should my children do, and how can they describe themselves, with two English grandparents, one Scot, one Dutchman, and one parent born in England and the other in South Africa (and himself a British Citizen by naturalisation rather than birth?). Added to all that, we have a German name, courtesy of my husband's paternal grandfather. If nothing else, it gives us a much wider range of options (and get-outs) when deciding where to place our allegiances for the World Cup or the Olympics.[:D]

Although I don't have a huge interest in genealogy, I'm sad to know so little about my father's family.

[idun]

 Family history? We cannot even find a record of my grandmother, at all. So that is a bit of a dead end isn't it and she was probably from the Newcastle area.

What has got to us recently are all the photos that my husband's mother had. No names on the back of any of them and some are very old. And to add to the complication a couple which say 'to MIL, with all my love' and no signature. We know who she is, and she knew who she was, it is the bloke on the photo we don't know and neither does anyone else.

One day I will go through all my photos and put names on the back of them.

Me I'm english. One day I would rather like one of those DNA tests that show where my ancestors came from, I would think some links with northern Germany southern Denmark, and who knows maybe further afield.  I do know one thing, my mother loathed forreners, so I'll be curious as to what 'links' her side of the family gave me.

I said I'm english. I was never ever called britannique in France, didn't seem to matter where anyone came from in the UK, all anglais, until it was explained that they were from other parts of the UK. Also on french news, we found that if something 'bad' was going on it was usually l'angleterre, but something 'good' and it was more often than not, grande-bretagne.

[Pommier]

I've really enjoyed tracing the family tree. It's cost almost nothing and as I had no expectation of finding anyone famous, I wasn't disappointed! It's surprising to realise that information on certificates isn't necessarily true as people lied to cover up illegitimacy, and it was definately a hazardous occupation to be a household servant.

I've also got loads of photos with no names on the backs - very sad that they may as well be thrown away as there's no-one to identify them.