Here’s mine: I have trouble understanding an Irish accent. Do you ever have trouble understanding an American accent?
Dang. I’m going to play it up next time I head south!
I’ve been in the US 7 times and in about a dozen different states, mostly midwest and northeast, with VA being the only Southern state. Maybe twice while in the US I had trouble understanding a local. Funnily enough though, I have a good friend from Wisconsin, who immigrated here a few years back, and I find his accent hard to parse sometimes. Think it’s a combo of his accent and his way of speaking, that is he sort of mumbles. Typically though Irish people have far fewer problems with American accents because they’re more familiar to us through TV, cinema, general pop culture than most Irish accents would be to a typical American.
Depends on the chair and/or scooter. As a general rule the worse the impairment the bigger the chair.
Any supermarket where alleys are large enough for a cart will be large enough for a wheelchair, at least in Spain. But yes, I’ve seen someone go to a smaller store in a wheelchair which wouldn’t have fit, and the storekeeper went out to them.
Question for the English folk: In “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” Elton sings My sister looks cute in her braces and boots. Does he mean she’s wearing braces on her teeth or is braces some other thing, like suspenders or something. Some '70s fashion?
Not teeth braces, but the things that hold trousers up.
I get an immediate image of a skinhead.
Huh. I always thought he was saying “bracelets.”
ETA: And braces are called suspenders this side o’the pond.
This confusticated and bebothered me (too) many years ago when I came across the following:
This was well before the intermet (as my father [on whom be peace] always called it), and I had the devil’s own time with the image of respectable Mr. Baggins blowing smoke rings with his thumb planted firmly in his mouth.
And, as I just learned yesterday, what we call “garters” in the US, the Brits call “suspenders.”
OK. Try again. On the occasions I’ve been temporarily disabled (in the UK) in the UK I was issued crutches at the hospital. Initially I couldn’t walk more than a few yards with them. I was very happy (and grateful) that supermarkets provided both wheelchairs and electric scooters so that I was able to do my shopping. I am surprised that Spanish supermarkets don’t provide these and wonder how people cope.
On those occasions I have been temporarily disabled (arthroscopy) non weight bearing broken leg and knee replacement I found supermarkets one of the most challenging environments to get around in. It’s all the turning corners, stopping and starting and evading other people as opposed to walking in a (more or less) straight line, establishing a rhythm and just getting on with it. Hence it seems very helpful and useful for supermarkets to provide mobility aids for people who don’t otherwise need or use them.
I missed this before I replied to Nava on the same topic. Who the hell gets their own wheelchair or scooter for a temporary disability? At the hospital they give you crutches and encourage you to walk to recover your mobility. However, especially in the early stages of recovery a supermarket can be just too much to cope with. There aren’t massed ranks of 'em at UK supermarkets either but all the larger ones provide them. In my nearest shopping mall the local council provides a scooter lending service.
I can remember being loaned a wheelchair when I had both ankles broken. I wasn’t sick enough to need constant nursing and wanted to go home. The ortho didn’t want me gimping around on crutches so they popped me into a wheelchair, gave my mom the release paperwork and off we went.
And with permanent disabled, frequently we get our shopping done for us by friends, family or assigned home visit health aides depending.
Well, actually, you can rent a wheelchair (and all other sorts of equipment) where I live for temporary disabilities (or if you break both ankles , as someone I know once did) Most of the people I know who have used courtesy scooters in the amusement parks/warehouse stores are not disabled in the sense you are using. They can walk just fine without the scooter in their everyday lives- they just can’t handle the greater distances involved in warehouse stores or amusement parks. Like i said, other stores might have one or two tucked away, but only at warehouse stores or amusement parks haveI seen a fleet of them. And on preview, what aruvqan said about about friends or relatives doing the shopping applies to the temporarily disabled as well.
Growing up on the American side of the US/Canada border, granted a river crossing, we really didn’t cross that often. Even before 9-11, there were bridge delays, tolls, and the grilling you would get from CBSA and USBP. You didn’t cross unless you had a good reason. I found it was much easier to legally cross the US/Mexico border than the US/Canada border.
Restaurants: there were good old-school Chinese restaurants on the other side of the border, a few specialty ethnic restaurants that might not be on the US side (for example … oh, like Hungarian cuisine). Canada-only chains like Harvey’s didn’t have much appeal.
Shopping: not much. In the 1970s, for some reason, it was popular to cross the border to buy clogs. Cheese shops were popular on the Canadian side. Tylenol with codeine, and some other drugs that were OTC in Canada but required a prescription in the US. Some believed that Canadian beer sold in the US was watered down, and crossed the border for the “good stuff”, but that’s a local urban legend. Otherwise, there tends to be far more cross-border shopping in the other direction, from Canada to the US.
Entertainment: some college students cross to take advantage of the lower drinking age (19 in Ontario vs 21 in the US), but not so much now with stricter DUI enforcement. The Canadian Ballet is the biggest attraction. Old people cross for bingo. Some curling clubs have Stateside members that cross every few days to play. There was a popular amusement park catering mainly to Americans, but it closed in the 1980s.
The Canadian side feels like an “alternate US”. It was cleaner, but suburban areas were tackier and uglier, in a way. Road signs look similar, but with metric units. Houses looked sort of like what you might see in the northeastern US, but they were smaller, and had more brick. Canadian flags everywhere; far, far more than Stars and Stripes displays on the US side. Street and place names had a more British feel. Every town has a Queen Street, Dufferin Street, Royal Street, George Street, Victoria Street, etc; uncommon for street names in the US. The nasal Great Lakes accent is nonexistent on the Ontario side. Some US chains, some Canada-only chains - Canadian Tire, Shoppers Drug Mart, Mac’s, etc. Convenience stores are called “milk bars”, all with large Kit Kat signs on the facade. TL/DR - it was familiar, but different.
I grew up in a boarder town (Sarnia, ON / Port Huron MI) and used to go over frequently, especially to have a few drinks. It was much cheaper to dink in Port Huron than it was in Sarnia. This was back when driving with booze on your breath wasn’t really considered an issue.
Also, living an hour from Detroit I saw some awesome concerts at Cobo Hall and Joe Louis Stadium.
Like elmwood said, it was familiar, but different. In the early 1970s we didn’t have a McDonalds, so it was a huge treat to go to the McDonalds in Port Huron. The fast food culture hadn’t really reached Canada yet. Well, not my part of Canada anyway. Also, there was a great chicken restaurant and, AND I learned to ski in Michigan. There were no hills in Sarnia. I completely can’t recall the name of the ski hill now…
ETA: It was a crappy little hill with a tow rope, but it was skiing!
Are high school/college sports as big a deal in United States culture as the tv shows and movies we receive imply?
In any (more) bi- or multilingual society such as Quebec in Canada, Spain, India, etc. what’s the etiquette for deciding which language a business transaction will go ahead in, or any nontrivial encounter with a stranger? Obviously it’s going to be different from one place to another but I’d be happy to hear insights. I imagine in India the default among strangers is English but that’s just a guess so any insight would be great.
That probably depends on where exactly in the US you are talking about and how much access there is to professional sports. I live in NYC, and you might not even find many of the athletes’ parents at a high school game. Doesn’t mean it’s the same in a small town in Texas or Michigan.
Underlined what I think is the biggest difference.
Driving a scooter provided by the supermarket when you’re not used to it would be equally unhelpful; many of the older people in Spain do not know how to drive - most frequently the women, who are also the ones more likely to reach an age when they need help walking. Since manual chairs are provided by SS (both permanent and temporary ones) and rental or purchase of motorized chairs and scooters is available and subsidized, people are expected to bring their own chair/scooter if that’s what they’re using to move around; if you’re using a walker or crutches, that’s what you bring. If you need assistance (for example because you’re in a chair so there will be things you can’t reach), you ask for it.
Urban supermarkets in the UK can be very large and have large parking lots: in Spain a large supermarket that has a parking lot is a hiper and it will be either in a mall (and this only in the largest of cities) or outside of town. People usually walk to the supermarket: if you can walk, wobble or wheel yourself to the supermarket and it’s not one of the clogged ones, you’ll be able to move in it without running into or being run into by other people. If it’s one of the clogged ones, you’ll need assistance, but so would someone with a little kid.