美国人所不知道的关于英国的有趣事实2

2015年05月07日17:15 来源：小站整理

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British people have very different ideas about how long a drive is. A 100 mile drive would be a long way. I told my mother I was driving to a ski resort almost 100 miles away. She asked where we were staying, because there's no way that anyone would drive 100 miles in a day, and then just drive home the same day.

· England, Great Britain, the United Kingdom and the British Isles are all different things. If you call someone English, when they're not, they might be insulted. (But it's OK to call them British, or that they're a citizen of the United Kingdom.)
England(英格兰), GB(大不列颠岛), UK(英国) and the British Isles(不列颠群岛)是不同的事物。错误的称呼会被对方当成是一种冒犯。
他们从大到小排序为：大不列颠群岛>英国>不列颠岛(及英伦三岛)>英格兰

· No party ever gets a majority of the popular vote in parliamentary elections. In the 1997 election (the first Tony Blair won) the Labour Party won more seats than they had ever won before in a historic landslide victory . They got 43.7% of the popular vote (and 63% of the seats in Parliament). George W Bush squeaked a controversial victory in 2000 with 47.9% of the popular vote.
从来没有政党在国会选举中获得过超过半数的选票。

· British people are said to have bad teeth, until (relatively) recently, having bad teeth was a sign that they were your own teeth, not false teeth. A reason for pride.
直到最近，英国人还被说成牙齿不好。有一口坏牙是一口真牙的标志，没有假牙，所以是值得骄傲的。

· town / city names that end in -cester or -chester (Worcester, Leicester, Chichester, Winchester) were founded, or named, by the Romans and tend to the in the South. Towns that end -by (Derby, Corby, Whitby) were named or founded by the Vikings and tend to be further North.

·Most people drive manual (stick shift) cars. If you pass your driving test in an automatic car, you will get a licence that only allows you to drive automatics. This is very rare. If you rent a car, it's likely it will be manual, unless you specify that you want automatic.
大多数人驾驶手动挡轿车。如果你驾驶自动挡车通过驾驶考试，只能拿到自动挡车驾驶证。

·Postcodes are much more specific than zipcodes. A postcode only refers to a few houses, and some businesses will have their own postcode. If you put someone's name and their postcode on a letter, it will probably reach them. If you put their house number and postcode, it will definitely reach them. (E.g. I use to live at number 49, YO31 1BP. There's only one house with that number in that postcode.)
英国的邮政编码，相比较常见的区域代码，更加特定化。一个邮政编码可以仅指示若干房子，而有些企业会有自己的邮政编码。所以有时候，邮政编码比名字更靠谱。

·The best selling newspaper (The Sun) in the country prints a large, color picture of a topless woman (just to be clear, with breasts exposed), on page 3. Labour party politicians (equivalent of Democrats) are much more likely to want to do something about this than Conservative politicians (equivalent of Republicans).
销量最大的报纸（太阳报）会在第三页刊发答复彩色半裸美女照。共党的政治家们（等价于民主党）相比较于保守党（等价于共和党），更有可能希望拿这说事。
注：page 3 girl已经是一个英式英语的惯用语，足见它的深入人心。很多人认为太阳报的这种行为是在objectify（物化）和demean（贬抑）女性。

·Sometimes you'll see older houses with what appears to be a window which has been filled in with bricks. This is because houses were taxed according to the number of windows
有时候，你会看到一些老房子明明是窗户却被填上了砖块，那是应为房子是要根据窗户的数量征税的。

·The first time it reached 100F anywhere in England was in Kent (South East) in 2003. (I'm not sure if it's happened again.)
英国首达到华氏100度是在2003年的肯特（英国东南）。
注：华氏到摄氏的换算公式 C＝(F－32)×5／9，自己算算吧。