Why USA will rejoin the British Empire

[Hosakawa Tito]

Believe us, you will thank us for the tip about tongue use. Down there, you will no longer have to look at English women who hit every branch of the ugly tree on the way down

I about wet myself when I read that.

[Reverend Joe]

12. Snails are tasty. You will learn to like them. They do not require suet to be tasty. Nothing requires suet.

I have to disagree with your petition there. Invertebrates are not meant for human consumption.

[Pannonian]

I have to disagree with your petition there. Invertebrates are not meant for human consumption.

We're not meant to eat prawns, crabs, lobsters, oysters, mussels, et al?

[PowerWizard]

I wasn't able to find it again on the intertubes, but a friend still had a version saved.

His Most Christian Majesty, Francis I of France, does hereby announce the revocation of the latitude allowed to the Duchy of Normandie et Angleterre (popularly known as England). Since the common people of that land have seen fit to overthrow their French lords and instate some random Welshman onto their 'throne", it is the noble duty of His Christian Majesty to reassert tight control lest their madness put at risk the valuable wool trade.

His Most Christian Majesty therefore requires:

1. That the English look up the word "révocation" in the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française. You will find you have been pronouncing it wrong. This is true of most of your gutteral croakings. Please speak more seductively.

2. Stop stealing words from other people. You will find French is quite enough for anyone's use and you only confuse the Germans. Learn French properly and stop shouting. "Paris vaut bien une messe" is a devastating quip on the Reformation, not a comment on the amount of dog turd fouling the capital.

3. You will be required to accept that you will never win the World Cup again. Ever. Getting your hopes up only to be dashed by the second game, whilst endlessly amusing to the Continent is, nonetheless, counter-productive to good morale and productivity. Just inventing a sport does not give you any further right to win at it. If this was your aim, you should have done what the Americans did and invent sports that no-one else plays whilst still calling it a world championship.

4. There is no such thing as English wine. The stuff you label thus is actually window cleaner. Get over it.

5. You are ordered to control the common soldiery. As the Queen would note, a man's tongue should be put to better use. Sticking it out to insult piles of French knights lying in the mud like pincushions is not the correct usage at all. If you continue to permit such disorderly behaviour, you will end up being ruled by girls, red-headed step-children and ugly men with warts who hate dancing. Possibly even Germans. Be warned.

6. Believe us, you will thank us for the tip about tongue use. Down there, you will no longer have to look at English women who hit every branch of the ugly tree on the way down. No wonder you all get bladdered every Saturday night. Honestly, Welsh sheep were the wrong answer.

7. You are no longer allowed to portray your French masters as effeminate. It wasn't us who had the gayest war in history and called it the War of the Roses.

8. Warm beer is wrong on so many levels. Quantity does not trump quality, though we understand why you are trying to wash the taste away.

9. Your second Welsh "king" appears to have converted to Islam. If you really want a polygamous ruler, we can arrange to sell you to the Ottomans.

10. By the way, you can have America. You have no idea how much trouble it is going to be.

11. Chivalry. You're doing it wrong. The correct form when outnumbered by the flower of French nobility is to roll over and die in good order. Hiding behind a bog filled with pointy sticks and shooting at us is just not cricket.

12. Snails are tasty. You will learn to like them. They do not require suet to be tasty. Nothing requires suet.

13. Really, you don't need to work so hard. No-one really cares. Your boss thinks you're an idiot. The Anglo-Saxon work ethic is merely a device to ensure you don't spend even more time senseless with drink.

14. Whatever the Tudors tell you, five sheep tethered to a pole do not make a leisure centre.

15. We understand that with the quality of the women available, why you make love only once per year for fifteen seconds and the light out. We have no desire to be excessively cruel, so you can continue.

16. It is our regal duty to remind you that your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

A very poor attempt for a riposte by the French. Besides, it's very old.

[Sarmatian]

Dear Citizens of America,



1. You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up “aluminium,” and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘colour’, ‘favour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix “ize” will be replaced by the suffix “ise.”

3. You will learn that the suffix ‘burgh’ is pronounced ‘burra’; you may elect to spell Pittsburgh as ‘Pittsberg’ if you find you simply can’t cope with correct pronunciation.

4. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels (look up “vocabulary”). Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.

5. There is no such thing as “US English.” We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of “-ize.”

When it comes to British/US English (and languages in general), I think Eddie said it all...

[Husar]

Ich bin kein Englander.

Neither are you german, since your keyboard is missing the ä.

She looks like she's about to smack him in the face for touching her...

Him??!

[PowerWizard]

Neither are you german, since your keyboard is missing the ä.

Whät äre you tälking äbout?

Jesus, why so serious? I posted a funny letter, and you attack me as if I actually thought it was serious? You need to calm down, dude.

[Proletariat]

You might think that MRD's post was serious, or a ham handed over reaction. But you were just killed by one thousand paper cuts. Anyone who read that letter and thinks it was Cleese just cough up your comedy licenses now and dump them in this here trash can.

:canoftrash:

[Husar]

Whät äre you tälking äbout?

It's Engländer, not Englander.

And you probably looked up the ASCII code...

[Furunculus]

i like the french riposte.

[Beskar]

The French riposte is full of errors. Number 1, Britain has never been under French Control. Normandy was it's own power in it's own right. France was a different nation.

[Louis VI the Fat]

I've seen a formal response as written by the French

guaranteed to wind up the English.

The response is obviously an English product. Under the guise of taking stabs at Britain, it confirms the British in their view of the world. Very funny though.


Speaking of winding up, let's have a go at it:

17 - We know that English history books describe the Hundred Years War as a string of consecutive, devastating victories over the French. Which was so tedious to the enterprising English national character that they decided one day to pack up and go fight elsewhere in search of real challenges.
In reality, you suffered devastating defeat. To a peasant woman. After which England never dared to challenge 'the continent' again.

18 - Instead, English troops were from then on send all over the world in search of peaceful, rock-and-stick armed natives against which the English could pretend to be phenomenally great soldiers.

19 - If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. If French-speaking, Catholic Frenchmen, from France, under the leadership of a man listening to the name Guillaume le Bâtard, consider themselves French and pay hommage to the King of France, they are French. No matter how much it hurts English pride that it took a mere handful of Frenchmen from the duchy of Normandie only two weeks to subdue the whole of England. If the Normans are 'Vikings', then the English are Germans and Barack Obama is Irish.

20 - The Swiss Celts, the Italians, the Germans, the Norwegians, the Danes, the French - pretty much everyone - has at one point or another conquered Britian.
An invasion of Britain having thus come to be considered as challenging a conquest as 'easy Émilie' from the rue de Paradis, nobody has bothered invasion anymore for fear of being thought gay.

21 - France had a reformation over the philosophical debate over the nature of free will, praedestination, and divine providence. England had a reformation to make it possible for a man to fornicate with eight women.

21 - Napoleon posed a huge threat to the existing order of Europe. Not even the combined armies of Prussians, Russians, Spanish, Italians, Austrians could stop him. That is, until the one realm Napoleon could never conquer joined up with the continental allies and defeated him in a closely contested battle, after which he was send into exile. Honour to whom honour is due: the gods of the Russian winter are undefeatable.

Oh, and Napoleon later briefly returned from exile for three months. Marching a ragtag, untrained army of teenagers and crippled veterans north, he was quickly stopped at the insignificant battle of Waterloo and returned into exile.

22 - Wellington was a military genius, second only to Napoleon! Think about it, how many generals can make it their distinct goal to avoid open battle at all costs? And then manage to succeed in this despite the whole of Europe being one big battlefield for a quarter of a century? It is amazing to think how he consistently managed to find the exact few spots were he was safe from the French troops.

23 - French and British imperialism both set about to conquer the world. albeit in a very different manner. France send ideas and freedom, Britain shipped its undesirables abroad.
As a consequence, the French Code Civil rules Latin America, French liberty and equality rules in north America, French language invigorates Africa, French human rights and democracy are spread in the EU.
Whereas the entire British imperial legacy consists of a few Britons toasting under the Australian sun or freezing in the Canadian plain.

[Husar]

That was great Louis!

[Furunculus]

23 - French and British imperialism both set about to conquer the world. albeit in a very different manner. France send ideas and freedom, Britain shipped its undesirables abroad.
As a consequence, the French Code Civil rules Latin America, French liberty and equality rules in north America, French language invigorates Africa, French human rights and democracy are spread in the EU.
Whereas the entire British imperial legacy consists of a few Britons toasting under the Australian sun or freezing in the Canadian plain.

i'm fairly sure their is evidence that demonstrates that ex-colonies governed by British Common Law have had better outcomes than ex-colonies governed by French Roman Law.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Marvelous Louis!

CR

[Reverend Joe]

Not to beat a dead horse, but...

We're not meant to eat prawns, crabs, lobsters, oysters, mussels, et al?

my mistake... I meant any animal without a skeleton. And yes, that does include mussels, oysters and clams. Unless you want worms to infect your eyes until they burst out of their sockets and dangle like two horribly swollen golfballs on tethers.

[Reverend Joe]

Also, two things:

1. You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up “aluminium,” and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘colour’, ‘favour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix “ize” will be replaced by the suffix “ise.”

"Aluminium" is spelled incorrectly in the letter. The correct spelling is "Aluminum."

"Color," "favor" and "neighbor" are not pronounced with a "u" becuase otherwise they would be pronounced "colawr", "favawr" and "neighbawr." Terribly Incorrect, aka. British, pronunciation.

[miotas]

aluminium

[Major Robert Dump]

I'm sorry. I am a bad, terrible person.

[Furunculus]

another french view of britain:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/p...ens-Bruno.html

[Husar]

aluminium

Yeah, seriously, it's aluminium, not aluminimum or aluminum, those colonials always invent new spellings and then claim they're right, oh and while I'm at it, they use a completely outdated measurement system as well, about thime that they join Britain and then both join france so they can be enlightened about the modern world by our frog-eating friends.

[PowerWizard]

It's Engländer, not Englander.

And you probably looked up the ASCII code...

I knew it is Engländer, and I do have an umlaut on my keyboard, it's alt+A. And I knew you should write it as Engländer, but wasn't sure it's not displayed as gibberish character for other people.

[Pannonian]

I knew it is Engländer, and I do have an umlaut on my keyboard, it's alt+A. And I knew you should write it as Engländer, but wasn't sure it's not displayed as gibberish character for other people.

A common alternative way of indicating the umlaut is to follow the vowel with an e.

[Jolt]

Britain has never been under French Control. Normandy was it's own power in it's own right. France was a different nation.

Normandy was ruled by a man which had pledged an oath of fealty to the French King. He was French. He was knighted by the French king himself. He only spoke French. He eliminated all other English noblemen and replaced them with French noblemen. He is buried in France.

[Meneldil]

It is clear that the supposed french response is actually the work of a true englishman.

I prefer Louis's response by far

[miotas]

Yeah, seriously, it's aluminium, not aluminimum or aluminum, those colonials always invent new spellings and then claim they're right, oh and while I'm at it, they use a completely outdated measurement system as well, about thime that they join Britain and then both join france so they can be enlightened about the modern world by our frog-eating friends.

Hey, I'm a colonial myself

It's just that we decided to stick with the crown. If it ain't broke don't fix it right? (some things however, like that outdated, inefficient measuring system clearly are broken)

[Reverend Joe]

Yeah, seriously, it's aluminium, not aluminimum or aluminum, those colonials always invent new spellings and then claim they're right, oh and while I'm at it, they use a completely outdated measurement system as well, about thime that they join Britain and then both join france so they can be enlightened about the modern world by our frog-eating friends.

Aluminum etymology

The earliest citation given in the Oxford English Dictionary for any word used as a name for this element is alumium, which British chemist and inventor Humphry Davy employed in 1808 for the metal he was trying to isolate electrolytically from the mineral alumina.

By 1812, Davy had settled on aluminum. He wrote in the journal Chemical Philosophy: "As yet Aluminum has not been obtained in a perfectly free state." But the same year, an anonymous contributor to the Quarterly Review, a British political-literary journal, objected to aluminum and proposed the name aluminium, "for so we shall take the liberty of writing the word, in preference to aluminum, which has a less classical sound."

The correct spelling is "Aluminum." It was biased British literacy pundits who gave it the incorrect spelling in a misguided attempt to make British sound like a noble language. We only realized our mistake decades later and have since corrected the spelling.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Culture wars are fun!

[Brenus]

I did like this one after the 1st W Bush elections:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38646

From UN in Serbia, of course

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

The French riposte is full of errors. Number 1, Britain has never been under French Control. Normandy was it's own power in it's own right. France was a different nation.

Epic Fail

The response is obviously an English product. Under the guise of taking stabs at Britain, it confirms the British in their view of the world. Very funny though.

Quite right, and specifically an English product, rather than Welsh or Scots.

[Beskar]

Epic Fail

Nope. Normandy was a Fiefdom, not part of France. It had it's own empire spanding Sciliy, Southern Italy, Antioch, etc.

The arguments such as "they speak french" would mean Canada/America/etc are "England".