Sorry, Jackie, but to get back to the point of this area of discussion, I should have said “but hey!

get used to it, Jackie; 3rd in the world behind two nations with mega-huge populations feels good!” (We are not meant to be talking about Brits and expats, really, it is all meant to be about hey!.)

She sums up much of what I have grumbled about in the past, and I agree with everything I have just read from her

– I didn’t think you were criticising me for being British; we may have our disagreements, but I know you’re not that bad. Of course all of us indulge in attacking each other’s arguments, but I think it’s a bit of a slippery slope if we start directly attacking the language that other people use in their comments. Call me old fashioned, but I find that rather bad manners. A few people on the opposite side to me in these debates use what I consider pretty pompous and over-formal language, but I’d never dream of calling it ‘horrible’. I did say somewhere else about an expression you used, that I wouldn’t personally use it, but I admitted it was quite correct and I certainly didn’t use this sort of emotive language. Sorry if I’m over-reacting.

I very much hope they will continue to stay in business long enough to be there for my next visit

As for Brits, it’s just a bit of shorthand. I don’t see the connection with Yanks and Frogs as these are not normally used by the inhabitants of those countries. I regularly read and occasionally comment on ‘Separated by a ‘common language’, an excellent website run by an American linguist working in Britain on the differences between American and British English, where the word Brits is regularly used as a form of shorthand. Just because Americans don’t like being called Yanks and French don’t like being called Frogs, doesn’t mean we Brits have to reject such a useful word.

And as for expat, it doesn’t simply mean foreigner or foreign (it’s also an adjective). I live and work in Warsaw. Saying I’m an expat is rather shorter than saying I’m a foreigner living and working here. What’s more, there are certain pubs that are popular with British and Americans living and working here, and so they are known as expat pubs. As well as being longer, calling them pubs that foreigners go to wouldn’t have the same meaning; they could just be for tourists. Expat has a very precise meaning, presumably just as farang has.

W. Will, I apologise if I have offended you by quoting your use of forms of English which I have then said are not to my liking, and I take aboard the gentle way in which you have phrased your rebuke. Okay, I wince every time I hear “Brit” or “expat” and feel that just because they are increasingly widely used (which is exactly what I am moaning about) does not mean I should just roll over and say “whatever” or “fair enough, live with it then”. British and Briton are handy enough words without needing to drop another syllable, and there have been American bars and English pubs and Irish bars and pubs across the world for a very long time, and I have extensive experience of very many of them across three continents. In Bangkok, for example, I recommend Molly Malone’s in soi Convent, close by Silom, as a fine Irish bar, well liked by the better sort of farang. But I did not intend to offend you, as I have said before, only to rail against the dreadful debasement of the English language as so eloquently described elsewhere by Jackie from France.