It is probably safer to use the generic word ‘Asian’ rather than ‘Paki’.
The Birmingham accent is quite unique and a little hard to understand.
If you search for ‘Peaky Blinders’ on Netflix, this historical drama is set in Birmingham and may help you to become familiar with the accent.
You might also get acquainted with some common American words that mean something totally different in the UK. Helpful to avoid those awful moments when everyone around you starts smiling and breaking into nervous laughter because of something you said.
I think 'Asian Food sold here’, like say Asian Art, is rather too far-flung a term to encompass a takeaway restaurant’s select cuisine.
I know that. I said “Pak” without the “I.” It’s a term I see used in South Asian businesses here in Chicago. (For example.) I originally was going to say “South Asian,” but “South Asian” isn’t really a universally understood term in the US, from what I can tell. I guess I should have gone “Indian-Pakistani.” I didn’t realize “Indo-Pak,” too, has negative connotations abroad.
I’d never heard the term “paki” until I met the boyfriend (raised in Penkridge) and had no idea it was considered derogatory until I read it here. I have to say most of my British acquaintances use the term but now I would feel bad doing so.
I moved from the US to the UK twenty years ago. I’m not familiar with the Birmingham area, but a few general points:
Manage your expectations down on housing to avoid disappointment. In general, UK houses are much smaller than comparably “nice” US homes. They also tend to have fewer bathrooms: many UK 3/4 bedroom houses will only have 1 or 1.5 baths. You may be able to get a house that’s been around longer than the US, though, which is entertaining!
Similarly, UK water pressure is sometimes a bit weak and weedy, so showers can be a disappointing experience. Garbage disposals are basically unheard of.
Except in newly-renovated high-end kitchens, American fridge freezers are also very unusual. The typical British fridge is much smaller, so more frequent shopping required (or a chest freezer in the garage.)
Air conditioning is also virtually unheard of in private homes, but it’s rarely hot enough to need it so that’s not a big problem. Heating is generally through radiators rather than forced air.
I love living in Britain and I wouldn’t go back - but I’d pay a lot of money for an American sized and specced house if one were available!
English “Indo-Pak” restaurants are all but invariably Bangladeshi.
In my part of town, the curry houses are mainly Bangladeshi and Punjabi - generally we just call it “curry” and that covers all possibilities.
QuizCustodet is right on the housing front - we live much closer together than you might be used to, and our streets are narrower so often there is stiff competition for a parking space unless you have off-street parking. American-style fridge-freezers are becoming more common but it’s not that common to find a kitchn big enough to fit one in. I’d love to have one but we barely have room to swing the proverbial cat…
In Brick Lane in London, certainly, but not so much in Birmingham. Many of the south Asian restaurants are Pakistani in origin. Although the cuisine found is pretty much ‘Asian British’ - the most famous local dish being the ‘Balti’ - a curry invented in Birmingham, but Pakistani restaurant owners.
Indeed an are of the city is now known as the ‘Balti triangle’, where you can find dozens of ‘Balti houses’ - low cost curry cafes run mostly by people of Pakistani origin.
A visit to Birmingham isn’t complete without a trip to a Balti House.
Maybe. I’ve had this discussion a few times including in quite number of English Asian restaurants (which is where the topic tends to come up). Every single time my meal companions have alleged this, I have asked the waiter where in Pakistan his family are from and the answer has been “well we are from Bangladesh, actually”.
No matter how certain my meal companions are they are from Pakistan.
But you could be right I guess. My meal companions last time I ate a curry in Manchester were just as sure as you though…
It really does vary a lot by area; check out this demographic map, which is from 2011 census data.
It’s a pretty interesting map to play around with. Might be handy to get some statistics info about different areas for Sunny Daze as well.
I have noticed how many of the houses are attached or semi-detached. There are some that are detached, but I suspect that are away from town. I have seen a fair number of remodeled kitchens that include larger fridges. I notice many have a washer unit in the kitchen, which is different than the US. I don’t see a dryer. I’m not sure how that works.
Might be a combined washer dryer.
They’re pretty common over here; a bit more prone to breaking down, perhaps, but great when you’re low on space. I’ve never lived in a house with a separate dryer- we either dried stuff outside on the line on the rare days when it was fine, on an airer in the house by a radiator when it wasn’t, or had a combined washer dryer.
It looks, given the map linked to above, that the area I was living in (Wolverhampton) was primarily Indian and Pakistani, with hardly any Bangladeshi. At any rate, let’s pretend I just said “South Asian.”
I’m not sure where you live, but homes in England are much smaller than in North America.
One of my parents grew up outside Birmingham and I still have family living in the same house.
The place is so tiny you wonder how a family of six lived there, but all of England is like that: Tiny homes, tiny yards, small cars, narrow streets.
A few years back they gave me an Audi A6 at the rental agency; the car was so wide that on country lanes I was either in the bushes or across the centre line.
Washing machines are typically in the kitchen. You may find a place that has toilets with pull chains and overhead tanks.
I haven’t seen a pull-chain for decades; and on the other hand at least British toilets just flush the first time without the necessity for extensive training in plunger use.
Yup. I live out West in the US, where we tend to have more room. I lived in the UK for university, but I imagine that’s entirely different. I lived in France for a while. Things were definitely smaller. My husband lived in Mexico growing up, but otherwise the family doesn’t have much experience with life outside of the US. We’ll just have to see what there is that we can adjust to.
I certainly welcome the OP, but yes, British stuff is too small — and this is due to severe overpopulation, as is worse in the Netherlands. And there are far, far too many cars.
According to the late ecologist Teddy Goldsmith, member of a rather odd famous family, the optimum population for the British Isles is about 20 million — something we hit in the mid 19th century ( Napoleonic Wars = 12 million +; WWI = 40 million + ); and it’s not like Kipling didn’t notice our mean and squalid tiny tendencies:
*Me that 'ave been what I’ve been –
Me that 'ave gone where I’ve gone –
Me that ‘ave seen what I’ve seen –
‘Ow can I ever take on
With awful old England again,
An’ ‘ouses both sides of the street,
And ‘edges two sides of the lane,
And the parson an’ gentry between,
An’ touchin’ my 'at when we meet –
Me that 'ave been what I’ve been ?
*
I am doin’ my Sunday-school best,
By the ‘elp of the Squire an’ ‘is wife
( Not to mention the ‘ousemaid an’ cook ),
To come in an’ ‘ands up an’ be still,
An’ honestly work for my bread,
My livin’ in that state of life
To which it shall please God to call
Me !
Well no because it’s not a question of the demographics of which South Asians live in an area. It’s (as I understand it) a question of which ones run restaurants. I first learned about this from a guy who had worked for 50 years in the UK and South Asian shipowning/operating business. He says that the first “Indian” restaurants in the UK were run by Bangladeshi ship’s cooks who regularly “jumped ship” in Liverpool and other places and set up restaurants. They called them “Indian” restaurants because that’s what English people knew.
And then they got their relatives in from Bangladesh on family visas and the tradition continued.
Well that’s what he said anyway. I will now cease this hijack.
Inner city areas and small towns will have a mix of housing, you’ll see a lot of terraced housing with semi-detached and detached ones being a bit further away from the city/town centre. Some of them can be quite deceptive from the outside - there was a house up for sale a couple of streets away from me that turned out to have about six bedroom. You’d never have guessed it from looking at the front of it.
If the owners have remodelled the kitchen, it would probably be to increase the size and you might find that leads to the inclusion of larger fridges. A popular thing has been to combine the kitchen and dining area to make a larger space, and have one other downstairs room for everything else.
As for washers etc, a lot of people actually won’t have a dryer at all. We have a washing machine in the kitchen but no room for a dryer so we just do without. Some people have a utility room that would take washers, dryers and and extra fridge/freezer, and some folks put all that in the garage. It really depends on the size and layout of the house.