Lost in culture

[Jamie (K)]

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.

[Conchita]

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!

[Jamie (K)]

[Fan Of Arabian Horses]

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

[Jamie (K)]

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.

[Fan Of Arabian Horses]

[Jamie (K)]

[Fan Of Arabian Horses]

[Jamie (K)]

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.

[Fan Of Arabian Horses]

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

[Jamie (K)]

[Fan Of Arabian Horses]

[Jamie (K)]

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

[Fan Of Arabian Horses]

[Jamie (K)]

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