Being British is about driving in a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, then travelling home, grabbing an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab on the way, to sit on Swedish furniture and watch American shows on a Japanese TV.

And the most British thing of all?
Suspicion of all things foreign!
Only in Britain can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance.
Only in Britain do supermarkets make sick people walk all the way to the back of the shop to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.
Only in Britain do people order double cheeseburgers,large fries and a DIET coke.
Only in Britain do banks leave both doors open and chain the pens to the counters.
Only in Britain do we leave cars worth thousands of pounds on the drive and lock our junk and cheap lawn mower in the garage.
Only in Britain do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place.
Only in Britain are there disabled parking places in front of a skating rink.

NOT TO MENTION..

3 Brits die each year testing if a 9v battery works on their tongue.
142 Brits were injured in 1999 by not removing all pins from new shirts.
58 Brits are injured each year by using sharp knives instead of screwdrivers.
31 Brits have died since 1996 by watering their Christmas tree while the fairy lights were plugged in.
19 Brits have died in the last 3 years believing that Christmas decorations were chocolate.
British Hospitals reported 4 broken arms last year after Xmas cracker-pulling accidents.
18 Brits had serious burns in 2000 trying on a new jumper with a lit cigarette in their mouth.
A massive 543 Brits were admitted to A&E in the last two years after trying to open bottles of beer with their teeth.
5 Brits were injured last year in accidents involving out-of-control Scalextric cars.

and finally...
In 2000 eight Brits were admitted to hospital with fractured skulls incurred whilst throwing up into the toilet.

English is essentially bad Dutch with outrageously pronounced French and Latin vocabulary.
--Eugene Holman

English is essentially Norse as spoken by a gang of French thugs.
--Benct Philip Jonsson

English is essentially a bizarre dialect of Chinese, pronounced entirely in the first tone.
--John Cowan

English is essentially any other language spoken with a very hot potato in one's mouth.
--Ivan Derzhanski (based on Alain LaBonté on Swiss French)

English is essentially the language you speak without moving your mouth.
--Marianne Cowan

English is essentially a language that uses vowels no other language would accept.
--Luís Henrique

English is essentially degenerate Welsh steeped in Latin, Dutch and Franco-Scandinavian Norman.
--Mike Taylor

English is essentially German spoken in the mouth rather than the throat.
--jmallett

English is essentially Low German plus even lower French minus any sense of culture.
--Danny Weir

English is essentially Anglo-Saxon with all the cool bits taken out.
--Thomas Leigh

English is essentially a dialect of French.
--Alain LaBonté

English is what you get from Normans trying to pick up Saxon girls.
--Bryan Maloney

Written English is essentially a variety of Old French invented by somebody who spoke only Saxon and read only Latin.
--Basilius

English is essentially an imprecise dialect of Java, without the object orientation.
--Julian Morrison

English is essentially a language that no one speaks in France.
--Dan Seriff

English is essentially French converted to 7-bit ASCII.
--Christophe Pierret [for Alain LaBonté]

English is essentially a whore.
--Lars Hendrik Mathiesen

English is essentially a French menu stuttered by a fish-and-chips dealer.
--Kala Tunu

English is essentially the Borg.
--Muke Tever

Men efter all Englisk äre basiklig Svensk förpoisonat of Frensk (ellor skould dat be Danisk?).
--Jonathan Knibb

English is essentially Dutch but it doesn't want to admit it.
--Danny Wier

English is essentially a West Germanic language that's trying very hard to look like a Romance one.
--Andreas Johansson

English is essentially language's equivalent to a transvestite.
--Andreas Johansson

Modern English read phonetically is essentially Middle English as no Middle Englishman would have spoken it.
--Jake X

According to generative linguists, all languages are essentially English.
--Arnt Richard Johansen

English is essentially the devil's attempt to reverse the curse of Babel by making a world language from the most difficult language in the world.
--qaya

English is essentially Pictish that was attacked out of nowhere by Angles cohabiting with Teutons who were done in by a drunk bunch of Vikings masquerading as Frenchmen who insisted they spoke Latin and Greek but lacked the Arabic in which to convey that.
--Bill Hammel

English is essentially Plattdeutsch as spoken by a Frisian pretending to be French.
--Andreas Johansson

English is essentially a stripped-down Germanic lang with Baroque-style Norman French ornamentation glued on at odd angles.
--Adam Walker

English is essentially a language that doesn't care where syllable boundaries are.
--Peter Bleackley

Inglish iz issenshali a langwidje dhat, wen rittun fonetkli, iz ilejibul tu netiv spikerz.
--Peter Bleackley

English is essentially the language of people who think that everybody else speaks their language. French is essentially the language of people who think that everybody else should speak theirs.
--Peter Bleackley

English is essentially bad Frisian, old French, Latin, and Greek, with a grammar that pretends to be like Latin but is really like Chinese or very dumbed-down Germanic (depending on how you look at it).
--Trebor Jung

English is essentially all exceptions and no rules.
--Jonathan Bettencourt

English is essentially the works of Joyce with the hard bits taken out.
--Jon Hanna

In English, all foreign languages are essentially French.
--Tristan Mc Leay

English is essentially Hindi (cot, jungle, shampoo), with a heck of a lot of loanwords from Anglo-Saxon, French, and Latin.
--Sean B. Palmer

English is essentially a Germanic language that has eaten far too many French dishes for its own good.
--John Cowan

English is a structurally Semiticized, lexically Romanized German dialect.
--Theo Venneman

English is essentially the noise made by people who don't believe you can use language but want your stuff handed over politely.
--John M. Ford

English is essentially what happens when you can't decide whether the Greeks or the Romans had the better civilization, so you ask everybody they ever beat up on to sort it out.
--John M. Ford

English is essentially a language in which up has forty-seven dictionary definitions, but antidisestablishmentarianism is considered a "hard word."
--John M. Ford

English is essentially a text parser's way of getting faster processors built.
--John M. Ford

English is essentially the inevitable result of repressing the gender of nouns.
--John M. Ford

English is essentially ideographic, but it's sneaky about it.
--John M. Ford

English was essentially created to be the language of international air traffic control, but it got bored waiting.
--John M. Ford

English is essentially the "universal Martian" used for interplanetary ditching instructions.
--John M. Ford

English is essentially a tale told by an extremely clever and inventive idiot.
--John M. Ford

English is a marriage between German and French.
--Brian

English is essentially l33t with the numbers replaced by letters.
--Shanth

English (Specific Varieties)

Cockney is essentially English while haggling over prices.
--Mike Taylor

Pig Latin is essentially eulological English as spoken by Latin professors with Tourette's syndrome.
--ilvi

Basic English is essentially Rapping, but censored and without the beat.
--Jay Bowks

Australian is essentially a dialect of English as spoken by hungry Europeans pursuing a kangaroo dinner.
--ilvi

Australian English is essentially Cockney without the refinement.
--Öjevind Lång

American English is essentially English after having been wiped off with a dirty sponge.
--J.R.R. Tolkien

American English is essentially a tool to keep a person from ever being able to speak another language.
--jmallett

American English is essentially British English without the redundancies, including the monarchy.
--Ivan C. Amaya

Today's British English is what today's American English would have become if Americans hadn't had any fun either.
--Glen Perkins

American English is essentially your Queen's English as bastardized by colonists, or is it as colonized by bastards?
--ilvi

American English is essentially British English without the funny accent. [Or is that Canadian English?]
--Aleks Dubh

American English is essentially Irish English as spoken by non-native speakers.
--Benct Philip Jonsson

The Queen's English is essentially Modern Anglo-Saxon as passed on by generation after generation of stiff necked Norman nobles with their noses in the air.
--ilvi

Texan English is essentially Spanish as spoken by drunken American rebels.
--Javier de la Rosa

Yankee is essentially 18th Century English as altered by the impure thoughts of Puritans with cabin fever.
--Jay Bowks

Jamaican is essentially an African dialect with enough mispronounced English to be able to buy ganja and sing reggae.
--Javier de la Rosa

Scots is essentially English, only funnier.
--Thomas Leigh

Scots is essentially English as spoken by Robert Burns.
--Zoe Mulford

Scots is essentially English spoken as Dutch by a Dane.
--Mark Odegard

South Philadelphian is essentially Italian with the final syllables dropped off.
--Zoe Mulford

Southern US English is essentially English without monophthongs.
--Danny Weir

Yo! Ebonics is essentially Welfarese processed through a grant-seeking processor akin to a guitarist's distortion box in the hands of the psychotropic educrats, homies.
--laser

Ebonics essentially is the speech of hoods in the 'hood.
--laser

King James English is essentially the language that many Americans think Jesus spoke. "If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!"
--Dan Seriff

Psycho-babble is essentially Minbari spoken by seekers of tax-funded grants, power-hungry psycho-totalitarians, counsellors or other unemployables while wearing a too-tight tiara.
--laser

Galach is essentially Anglo-Slavic run through Grimm's Law and baked on the desert of Arrakis until well-dune.
--laser

Governmentese is essentially a branch of spoken and written English designed to say nothing with as many words as possible hoping that the nothing is lost in the translation.
--laser

Old English is essentially mispronounced Modern English spoken while wearing armor and carrying a roundshield and sword.
--Dan Seriff

Middele English is essencially Moderne Lowe Duchish with a heevy Scottisshe broog yspoken and with ful many fetise Frensshe loon-wordes that been ful quayntly and straungely ywritten.
--Amittai Aviram

New York City Syrian Jewish English is essentially Arabic curses and bad Ebonics spoken with a Brooklyn accent.
--Steg Belsky

Yeshivish is essentially English spoken by people who think they're speaking Yiddish.
--Steg Belsky

1337Speak is essentially what happens when an AOLer's keyboard breaks.
--Andy Fox

American English essentially is not English and is not American either.
--Ivan C. Amaya

Southern US English is essentially Irish English spoken through moonshine and whiskey instead of stout and ale.
--Andrew Johnson

New York English is essentially New England English with a bagel in one's throat and being mugged.
--Andrew Johnson

Liverpool English is Irish English spoken by Irishmen and Welshmen trying to bash England.
--Andrew Johnson

Birmingham English is what the world would sound like if they also snorted coke laced with ants and drank gasoline every night for 30 years like Ozzy Osbourne.
--Andrew Johnson

Midwestern US English is essentially New England English with their sinuses filled with ice.
--Andrew Johnson

American English is essentially the language that everyone understands if you speak it loudly and slowly enough.
--Michael Alexander (via Daniel E. Huston)

Broken English is the language of international trade.
--John Naisbitt (via Daniel E. Huston)

Ebonics be Shakespeare playin' da urbon Oak-lan' (Calie-forn-ah) bluz, homie.
--Hanuman Zhang

American is essentially achieved by simplifying and complexifying English at once.
--Greg Johnston

Shetlandic is essentially English taught by Lowlanders to Norwegians.
--Alexander Ellis

Newyorkese is English with a Dutch accent and a grudge.
--Javier Candeira

American English is essentially an Irish tongue in a Dutch mouth.
--John Cowan

New Zealand English is essentially the English somebody forgot to take it out of their back pocket before putting their jeans through the laundry.
--Hamish Ritchie

Lancashire is essentially English spoken properly.
--Liv Bliss

Ebonics is basically Manding-Congo/Manding Cushi African languages with English words, ancient Egyptian parents and polyrhythmic presentation.
--Paul Barton

Gullah-Geechee is basically the remnants of the ancient Egyptian syntax found in Kru, Manding and Serer brought by the Africans to the Sea Islands/Georgia region and spoken with 'chopped' English words to replace the lost African ones.
--Paul Barton

Jamaican/Caribbean English is basically a combination of Yoruba, Tiv, Manding, Kongo placed in a saladbowl, mixed and fused and spoken with English words with a juju music, reggae and calypso rhythm.
--Paul Barton

Southern 'white' English is basically the Ebonics English created by Blacks and used by former speakers of Gaelic, Welsh, English jailbird descent, French Huguenot descent and other 'poor white' ancestry Southerners who worked on Southern plantations as 'indentured laborers' alongside African slaves.
--Paul Barton

Indian English is essentially late Victorian bureaucratese as spoken by Peter Sellers.
--Tommy Tyrberg

If you wake a Britisher up at five in the morning, he'll sound like a human being.
--Brian

American is essentially British with decent cooking.
--libcat

Very funny - I have ONE thing in defence of the British - at least we can laugh at ourselves ! If a similar thing had been written about Turks, I wonder what the reaction would be here....

For those who like to read language mistakes (made by Japanese mostly): www.engrish.com