International forums are fun.
I don’t just mean the “technically the entire internet is international” bit, but I mean forums where there are actually people from lots of countries.

I like to discuss business on US-American forums, where the other people are working off basically the same cultural framework, but politics is another matter. The two really do belong apart, too, despite the temptation to mix ‘em up: it interferes with doing business, to find oneself caring about whether the other guy likes [insert candidate here], or supports/decries “X” controversial policy.

Truly international political forums are like a window into the systems and psyches of other countries. Lots of other countries have a system where there’s a gajillion parties, all of which may gain a few seats apiece, and in order to get anything done, they have to form coalitions. To me this sounds like a horrendous tar pit of gridlock just waiting to happen!!! Yet, those under such systems will swear by them (instead of AT them like I would).

In fact, if one thing is in common amongst almost all the internationals I’ve run across online, it’s that no matter what system their government uses, they think it’s the best and that everyone else should wake up and adopt whatever they have! It’s actually pretty funny. There’s even been people from N. Korea on, saying that Dear Leader is the greatest thing on wheels, although they don’t stay long. It’s like they’re doing those posts as a temp job. I’d think they were just trolling, but they don’t stay around long enough to stir anything up.

Then there’s the differences in local customs when it comes to simple things. For some reason, the English don’t like to give away their locations. So if you see something like “Location: Earth” you can bet it’s England, provided the custom hasn’t spread throughout the entire board. And I don’t mean “the UK” I mean the English part. Wales, Scotland, and Ireland don’t seem to have that trait, and will put something like “Location: [Town] Scotland” right out there. Then there’s Australia, which is addicted to calling their place “Oz” and variations thereof. As for the USA, we’re the ones who put some state name and expect everyone to know where the F that is, even if the other people are 4000 miles away! I admit I did that too, at first, but I added “USA” after realizing that the rest of the place has probably never heard of Michigan. I didn’t bother on the US-centric forum I’m on, though. Any “furriners” who come there can just Google it :p

Then there’s the tipoffs in the use of English. UKers seem to be surprised when they get spotted, because they forget how obvious their speech/typing patterns are. As soon as someone tells you he thinks something is “bollocks” you can just get a big UK stamp and stamp him with it! And if they get a “flu jab” they didn’t get it in the US–we get “shots.” He’s either in the UK, Australia, or maybe even New Zealand.

The same countries also think of “f*ck off” as an actual command–an insulting way to say “go away”–while US people use it more as a generic insult. This leads to interesting verb tenses not seen here, too, like “he f*cked off” which could result from him being told to, or (depending on context) the phrase could be an angry way to say that someone ditched out when he shouldn’t have!

If someone calls us “USians” they’re usually in some Scandanavian country and think it’s oh-so-original to use that term even though it’s been done to death.

The only confounding factor is the fact that speech patterns tend to be contagious among those in a group. So eventually, a few terms will cross over. I’ve picked up quite a few UKisms that are always trying to sneak their way into my typing. For instance, I wanted to type, “amongst those in a group” back there. “Whilst” is another one. In US-English it sounds pretentious as all hell to add these “st”s, but in the UK that’s just the proper way to spell it.

Then there’s the altogether different Indian-English. Irritatingly, they will argue that they speak proper English (meaning, like in the UK)! But it’s as obvious as rocks. First, they type in text-speak, and mess up the capitalizations. u c this, u no it’s frm India right away. Then there’s the odd use of articles. “If u want the internet jobs, u hv 2 no how to type.” Errmmm…
Makes me wonder if the schools over there are actually telling them that that’s the way to type online?!? I see it far too often for it to just be a couple of jokers. The strange thing is, when they’ve been online for a few months, they’ll suddenly quit that and then write pretty much like anyone else!!! So maybe they’ve been told that the (actual) proper way is “too formal” or some rot, and then when they realize that it’s NOT “formal” they go ahead and use regular English spellings…Dunno.

Of course, a post such as this isn’t complete without a look in the mirror at the good ol’ US of A. It’s easy to spot Americans online, too. We’re the ones who assume that the rest of the world knows what we’re talking about when referencing local stuff. Also, we do not Francify words like “color” and “flavor” by adding a spurious “u” to them! Oh, and we love to get on the Internet.