Same with slavery
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
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No, not really.
1)The british did not invent slavery.
2)Americans did not adopt it from the british because they had been practising it since they emerged as a nation.
Sort of to both, but not really.
Slavery has existed for at least as long as states and kingdoms have, yes. But the specific form slavery took in the Americas (not just the US and North America) was unique. That being race-based chattel slavery. That form had not existed anywhere else in the world previously or since. The closest you could claim were the Helots in ancient Sparta, but even that was closer to serfdom than chattel slavery.
So, no, the British did not "invent slavery", but they (along with the Spanish and French) did pioneer a new form of slavery that was uniquely brutal and inhumane.
And while you're correct that America as a nation did not adopt slavery from the British after the formation of the US since the colonials had already been practicing race-based chattel slavery before the US existed. But where did those colonials get that slavery? From the British who were their overlords and ancestors, who formed the colonies, and who created the economic system that relied on race-based chattel slavery.
So while you might be technically right, it's only due to semantics. The Brits absolutely did create virtually everything about the American system of slavery, which we then continued to perpetrate for another ~century after independence.
But when that happened, the americans were not a group distinct from the british, they were a part of the state that did that, so it is not the case that they adopted slavery from the brits, like it is not the case they adopted english from the brits for example.
That's just semantics. Sure, I guess the more proper way to say it is that when the Americans founded the US they continued the practice of race-based chattel slavery which the British had instituted in the colonies prior to the formation of the US. Is that really substantively different than saying the Americans adopted slavery from the British?
Would you say the americans adopted the ebglish language from the british?
Like I said, while semantically imprecise, yes, we did get the English language from the English.
Did Northern Ireland adopt the Irish language from Ireland after the treaty then?
That's a different situation considering the Irish language was created before there even was a united Ireland. We can trace the history of how English came to America, and it came from the English people. We can't trace the history of how the Irish language spread across Ireland because it predates history.
Also, did you know aluminum is the original word for the metal? The aluminium spelling was invented by British people after the fact simply because they thought it sounded better. Now they act like we're illiterate for leaving out the second "i"
Because other metals have -nium not -num
it was called aluminum by the original discoverer, but a later physicist called it aluminium so that it would be the same as germanium etc.
Everyone involved in that was british iirc. The guy that named it spelled it like 4 or 5 different ways and eventually aluminum mostly stuck, but the other science guys wanted everything to end in 'ium'
Ium version also fits in UK accents better
Well, many Americans indeed are illiterate, and this is going to become even worse with Trump and DOGE destroying the education system. But the current system is shit as well, the level of education lacks behind compared to other western countries by far. And then there's the unregulated homeschooling in many states, which religious nut jobs, flat earthers and other conspiracy idiots love to do. Most Americans only speak one language and only learn about the US and it's history while skipping the rest of the world. Many don't even know where the UK is on a world map. Even your vice president didn't know where Greenland was, that it's close to the north pole and fucking cold. There are loads of videos of interviews with random people on the street where the average person can't even tell how many sides a triangle has.
In the movie Idiocracy they predict the world to be extremily dumb in the year 2505 but Americans probably thought this was a goal to work towards, and had trouble reading "2505" and thought it was 2025.
Holy shit dude touch grass
I love a rant as much as the next guy but this is a meme
It may be a meme, but the US is both a joke and a train wreck run by incompetent clowns and scam artists. The easiest way to describe a dystopia is the US because even though the country was already extremely fucked up, Americans continue to find ways to make it even worse beyond anyone's imagination. I wonder when Joe Exotic becomes president and by law everyone needs to have a pet tiger. It wasn't possible because he's in jail, but since recently convicted criminals are allowed to become president. Or maybe it will continue to head towards The Handmaid's Tale. Let's place bets!
Too close to home?
It's just kind of... Completely irrelevant to the post? And absolutely nothing I'm not already painfully aware of, not even a single sentence I haven't already read 100 times in slightly different wording?
I understand that nearly everyone is in a panicked state and that this stuff is at the top of their mind at all times here, but that mental state is representative of someone who is, more or less, already fully defeated. It is needless and actually harmful to bring politics into every context unprompted and the reason is actually plainly obvious if you take a step back.
Someone who spends all their time broiling in anxiety has no energy to put up an actual fight. Spreading ideas and calls to action is a valid form of resistance but this is the social media equivalent of hugging your knees and rocking back and forth while sobbing in a corner. People who care need to use their limited energy wisely in ways that will have appreciable impact. What this kind of posting does is reduce other people's capacity to engage.
My parents, for example, have chosen to completely disengage from politics because they see that their peers who are tapped in have become frantic and ineffectual.
Effective communication requires you to acknowledge that it isn't universally relevant in all contexts. It requires you to recognize that both you and your peers need to recharge sometimes.
They also get really mad if you tell them Soccer is a British word for Association Football. It's like they hate their own slang but don't want to admit that their slang is stupid.
Britain also invented Imperial measurement system that is still used in the USA while being extremely outdated and inconvenient.
The US just can't adopt changes. It will most probably die as an XVIII century country with a pile of juridical clutches and props.
18th century aka 1700s? Seems a bit unfair
When did their constitution was written? And only "juridical clutches and props" since then :)
Oh, I didn't entertain the notion that the country's remained essentially the same since the constitution was written.
The US just can’t adopt changes. It will most probably die as an XVIII century country with a pile of juridical clutches and props.
RIP
The US doesn’t use imperial measures. It uses US customary measures which often have the same names but are significantly different.
The US measures are based on an older Imperial system that Britain changed. There were different measures in different parts of the UK.
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The meme doesn't really work. The working-class people who played football the most always called it football. Upper-class people at public schools (don't confuse this with state schools - in the UK, public schools are even posher and more expensive than private schools, and the name comes from letting anyone who could afford the fees in, not from any intention to educate the general public) needed to distinguish it from Rugby Football so they could make a rule against playing it, and invented the name Association Football. There's a tradition at public schools to shorten names in a particular way (Rugby football to rugger, buggery to bugger etc.) and when applying that to association football, it becomes soccer. Soccer has always been a term used to mock poor people who play football instead of rugby, so of course it's badly-received when people say it.
Soccer is short for "Association Football" so either term is valid.
The Public Schools in the west of Britain were Army schools, they played Rugby, and used western prouniciation ie "castle = carsell" and "lieutenant=leftenant"
The Public Schools in the east of Britain were Navy schools, they played Association Football" and used eastern pronunciation "castle=kassel", and "lieutenant=lootenant".
Lieutenant is still pronounced differently in the Royal navy and army.
Reason why, most clubs founded in the 19th century onward, used football club in their names. Including Italian Spanish etc clubs founded by British immigrant
TIL
the name comes from letting anyone who could afford the fees in
Thank you for including that, too
That's a very diplomatic way of saying: just the rich
Soccer was a widespread term for it among all classes up until the mid-late 1970s, with books, magazines, newspaper columns, and so on using the term interchangeably with football. There appears to have been a switch to actively hating on the term, and it coincides with the rise of the hooligan in the 60s and 70s, and general xenophobia as demonstrated by the rise of the far right. It is at this point that “soccer” becomes a filthy American term among a certain type of “fan”.
That's why UK clubs called Liverpool F.C, Manchester United F.C. ,Chelsea F.C, Fulham F.C. and so on? F.C. Inter in Italy, Real Madrid F.C., FC Barcelona in Spain and so on?
I don’t really get your point. You’re expecting a nickname to make it to the club’s formal name?
A nickname? You just said it was a widespread term for football. The other person is asking you why, if it was so widespread, almost every single professional club throughout Europe went with football instead.
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