All about Britain

BBC America has a website or pages called All About Britain.
(Via Language Log and Wordlab, both of which lack a comments function, and at Language Log, don’t forget to select ‘Open in new window’).

There is a Food Slang Quiz that looks to me like a food quiz. Pease pudding and black pudding can’t be slang, nor Marmite; perhaps they mean butty and fry-up? Ah well, it’s for Americans, not British.

3 thoughts on “All about Britain

  1. Margaret,

    Thanks for letting me comment here, in response to the gentle criticism of Wordlab in your post.

    Wordlab is a community website that has included commmentary and participation by readers since long before “comment spam” was invented.

    The Wordboard forum is the heart and soul of Wordlab, some think. In Wordlab’s threaded discussion, readers actively participate in the community. Readers are free to comment there about anything relevant to Wordlab, including our blog posts, or naming and branding, or wordplay generally. One of the nice things about the Wordboard is that it allows visitors to start their own threaded discussions, not just comment.

    From time to time, readers of the Wordlab blog respond to a post by starting a thread in the Wordboard. That doesn’t reward much those who just want to add their two cents worth to a blog post, but it does provide a forum for worthwhile discussion and inclusion of the readership in active participation.

    Often, though, the best comments are those which bloggers make on their own blogs, because those comments are in the context of the expertise and interests, or the unique perspectives, of that blogger. In that regard, we appreciate the added value you bring to our posts whenever you comment on them in Transblawg. You bring not only your insightful opinions and unique viewpoint, but also your readership, to the consideration of our posts.

    By the way, I think Language Log is much better, too, for not having commnets on. It’s a community blog of a different sort, which involves many different specialist bloggers. Language Log bloggers are responsive to email commentary, and are generous to credit those who comment via email, and to reference bloggers who comment about Language Log posts on their own blogs. The writers at Language Log are also adept at carrying on “blog to blog” conversations, which is another way to share commentary in the blogosphere.

    Comments under each post work for some blogs, I suppose, but they can facilitate many new problems. Every blogger should carefully consider how comments can help or hinder communication with their readership.

    If anyone is still reading this, we can be thankful you have comments at Transblawg. By the way, we love getting personal email from Margaret Marks.

    Abnu

  2. Sorry, Abnu. I didn’t know about Wordboard. I mentioned your lack of a comments function in connection with an ongoing discussion (mainly with Trevor at kaleboel) about Language Log, and it’s really the latter I would like to have a comments function. I realize the risk of spam, but I would prefer to comment online than by email, since my comments are not just to one person but to other readers. But as you say, you can continue a topic in your own blog, cf. the discussion on Catalan. I haven’t really felt the lack with Wordlab, but I mentioned it in order to be fair (as I thought) to LL.

  3. Agreed about the food quiz. Little of it’s slang, and it falls into the usual American trap of stereotyping British food. It focuses on Northern food that’s generally considered a bit quaint (akin to assuming Americans live on sow belly and turnip greens). And does the compiler think we use the term “oleo” for margarine?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.