advised and actually having the money to do such things are two entirely different things. you’re very fortunate to have the insurance, in all the jobs I held none ever had dental coverage or vision coverage of any kind.
I think (hope) that it’s still like that in more rural areas. I live in Chicago, a very large city. People are afraid to let their kids walk outside alone to go to the corner store, much less wander unsupervised. I’m not so afraid of that, honestly, as I am afraid that I might have a neighbor or other passerby who is afraid, and will call the police or Child Protective Services on me.
when the westside of Indianapolis started becoming “little Mexico” with immigrants there was a huge dust up (and it’s still going on) because the mexicans actively would not attempt to use English, learn English or have anything to do with it, they even demanded the local newspaper start printing a Spanish version and the schools hire Spanish speaking teachers and have special classes and that Spanish become a required course. IN INDIANA, of all the crazy places. Since westside of Indy also tended to be mostly redneck as well, it really was ugly.
Frankly, if I moved to another country where my language was not the norm, I would think the logical process would be I learn the language there. More job opportunities, much easier to get around, etc. I would not expect everyone where I had moved to to learn English. Seems like craziness to me. Just to confuse things when someone started pressuring me to speak Spanish (though I had taken it in high school and could follow it to a degree) I’d insist on speaking to them in Sign Language. I had a friend who insisted in speaking to them in Klingon, which was epic and priceless to behold.
I’ve always wondered about the variety of British accents. I get why America has so many, being settled by immigrants from various regions plus the local native people and it being settled in stages…north east, then midwest, etc…but why does Britain have so many and how many are there?
I watched Gordon Ramsey do a series where he he’s just in his own kitchen talking to the camera instead of screaming at other people (and it was such a lovely change) but I just had to twitch at his pronunciation of some words. Aluminum and tomato and some other words don’t usually phase me so much in the different pronunciation, but taco…come on, TACO? It’s an import word, why pronounce that one so wierd? (He kept saying it like ‘tack-o’ which in the US is actually a yellow plastic like sticky stuff you hang posters on walls with, everyone here and in Mexico, where tacos are from, says it “tah-co”. I honestly didn’t know what he was going to cook until he pulled out the ingredients.) “filet” which in the US is “fill-ay” he kept saying “fill it” Is that the common british pronunciation? I know I’ve heard other Brits say it the same way we do here.
Most of the time such a thing does not phase me, but there were just so many words that I know very well I’ve heard British people pronounce the same way it is here that I wondered if he was being a snot or if it was a regional accent thing on his part.
OK, so I’ve read most of this, a few points from the land downunder, Australia.
Registry of addresses: We don’t have any specific thing, however we have compulsory voting. Everyone is supposed to enroll to vote when you turn 18. Some do some don’t. You’re also supposed to notify of a change of address, again some do some don’t.
If the cops really wanted to find you, apart from drivers licence, would be to check the phone companies databases.
Drinking Age. Legal is 18 and over. Kids are allowed to drink at home if the parents provide it. Usually they will start with a few at home. When mine started going to parties at 16, I’d buy a 4 pack of pre mixed drinks for them to take as long as the parents hosting the party were cool (which they usually were). Being up front meant they were less likely to try to smuggle stuff.
Corn on Pizza?:eek: Never heard of it. Chicken on the other hand is delish on a Pizza with pineapple, onion, BBQ sauce and some chilis.
Play Date. Heard of them, rarely ever indulged. If someone who wasn’t close by asked if the kids could have a play date I’d drop the kid off at their house and come back a couple of hours later. Usually, I’d have the kids in the street knocking on the door or just wandering in the house to see what my son or daughter were up to.
Practical Jokes on tourists? Ask people who’ve gone out bush about stories of the Yowies or Drop Bears.
Dentists are a problem here. We have had them in the past going through the primary schools for checkups, but we also have plenty of flouride in the tap water. The main problem with dentists here is the price. If you don’t have private health insurance it can be quite expensive and the emergency options are really limited.
Same reason Spain or Italy or France do: they developed at a time when “the next town over” was almost foreign. Many people, specially women, didn’t travel more than one day’s journey (about 40km or 30 miles on flat land with good roads) in their whole life.
The advent of television, universal schooling, etc. are having a sort of “flattening” effect on accents, they’re changing a lot faster than they would have changed before communications were as easy as they are now and in many places* they’re, uh, collapsing for lack of a better word. Accents and dialects which used to be similar yet distinct are grouping up, and there’s a lot more cross-pollination from other dialects, it’s a lot easier to know words from other areas. My parents learned a handful of words from different Latin American countries thanks to movies; nowadays people learn a lot more of them because of movies, but also because of migration and tourism in both directions and because of TV.
- in many places, not everywhere, IANALinguist etc. etc.
“Fill-it” is the normal British pronunciation, “tack-o” is somewhat regional (it’s the short a from the north).
Nava pretty much answered this already. Think of it like this: there didn’t used to be such a clear distinction between languages, people just managed to communicate with the next town over, but not 5 towns over. That would work all the way from Denmark down to the toes of Italy. At some point lines were drawn and it was decided this is one language, that is another. In America a fully formed language arrived and was distributed over the country, where it developed regional differences. The development of the two pretty much went in opposite ways.
Around here, children under the age of 9 aren’t legally permitted to cross a city street by themselves. So it’s either play dates or nothing.
The hot dishes are the ‘international’ part; the rest is a good German hotel breakfast. Basic German breakfast is your first and third bullet point plus coffee/tea.
It seems it’s currently the fashion in the US to pronounce some words of foreign origin as a native of that language would say them – or make some attempt towards it, at least. We do this less in the UK (or else we just do it with different words– there’s no consistency on either side of the Atlantic in this). Taco is one of the words that, in the UK, gets pronounced as just another English word (which, of course, it is, to all intents and purposes).
On the “fill it” pronunciation, though: he’s not mispronouncing the French word filet, he’s correctly pronouncing the English word fillet, which has been part of the language for centuries, and is no more French than theatre or college.
On a couple of occasions I’ve had non-native English speakers correct me when I said “fill it”. 
On “playdates” - personally the whole “mutter mutter kids these days” aspect that seems to come out when people discuss the word really does make me roll my eyes a little. As far as I can see, the standard “playdate” of the modern primary school child is the exact same way I socialised all through my 1970’s childhood, except that in those days it was called “Mum can I go to Cathy’s house to play?” I’m happy for all of you guys who had friends whose houses could be walked to, but it would have taken about an hour and a half for me to get to my best friend’s house on a bike, so, yeah, driving it was. My kids live a lot closer to their school friends, but still half an hour’s bike ride or so. I wouldn’t have been doing that in the 70’s either, even though I was walking myself a kilometre to the bus every day from when I was 7 or 8.
I think the thing that bugs me most about these discussions is, as adults, the whole “drop round to people’s houses” thing is really out of fashion. I’m personally quite in favour of people “just dropping round”, very happy to have a culpa with a neighbour or anyone who happens to be passing, but most people don’t do this because many many people label it rude. You’re supposed to check first, you’re supposed to make plans in advance and be organised.I think it’s all a bit sad but I recognise I’m in a minority here. Yet when our kids socialise in the exact same way, by planning in advance and being well-organised, it’s somehow labelled as dysfunctional? How the hell does that work?
Rant over 
But playdates are about parents organizing meet-ups for their toddlers. They’re not “Mommy, can you take me to Cathy’s?” When the kid is old enough to ask, it’s not playdates any more.
In many countries, toddlers meet by being taken to a park or other public area. The parents meet when and after their kids either hit it off or start hitting each other and need to be separated. It’s sort of the opposite of a playdate.
Not just the US. I well remember an undergrad classmate who delighted in telling us of his travels in Paree, Munschen, Moskva, Roma, and Athenai.
Okay, so he blew his student loans on international travel. Not sure why I should be impressed.
Except he was an insufferable asshole. I was not allowed to say “Par-iss,” in his presence; it had to be “Paree.” Etc., etc., etc.
I think what threw me so hard with the taco was the existence of the Tacko product…as for fillet, I didn’t know the origin of the word, I just remembered this guy my dad had known from world war II going fishing with us and he also said it fill ay, so ramsey saying fillit seemed weird. Oregano was also a really odd pronunciation I’d never heard before. It was just prevalent enough in this particular series to really stick out and puzzle me because I’d not heard things pronounced by anyone else (and I’ve watched cooking shows with other brit chefs) that I wondered if it was regional something on his part or twattery.
still wondering roughly how many accent varients there are in England…
As **Nava **says, that’s not a “play date”, that’s a kid who needs a lift. Yes, what mostly bugs me about it is the level of parental involvement. I feel like the kids should be doing the arranging and the play and entertaining themselves, not being orchestrated by the adults. These are 8 year old girls I’m talking about, not toddlers who need constant supervision.
But that’s a really good point. I guess if we were organizing these play dates in order to model the behavior for our 8 year olds to now be taking over the process and working independently, I’d be fine with it. But these moms just won’t let go of the control and let the girls manage the process. That’s what I find frustrating, and it’s just part of my larger rant on the infantalization of older children.
Well, I do totally agree with you about the whole “infantilisation of children” thing. Round here, we have a thing called “walk safely to school day” and part of the materials they have on the promotional website includes the advice that that children under (I know you’ll be as horrified as I by this) TEN should hold hands with an adult every time they cross the road.
And no, they don’t just mean major roads either. :smack:. I ask you, how on earth are children who may need to be getting themselves to high school the next year (age 11-12 for us) going to cope if they’ve had to hold hands all the way up to age ten? Of course, in a lot of cases the answer is they won’t they’ll still be driven…
Mind you, the State government also promotes “bike to school day” which we participate in enthusiastically. The cognitive dissonance involved in promoting hand-holding-over-roads for nine-year-olds while at the same time promoting a method of getting to school which clearly precludes any handholding at all, clearly escapes them…
Just one thing to add to the “American” breakfast is biscuits and sausage gravy. It is a Southern thing but I think it’s eaten all over the place, along with grits to a lesser degree. Fried mush is something you’ll see too, but I don’t know where it originates.
Oh! And this American eats bean sometimes with breakfast; blackeye peas, anyway: Our brunch Saturday. 
Love biscuits and gravy!! Fried mush is probably also Southern.
Scrapple is Pennsylvanian…
Accents? Probably as many as there are villages and towns. Dialects can more easily be distinguished. Here is a list.