Questions you have about other nationalities!

[WatermelonWaveclub]

Just for fun. DD and I were just watching a video where Americans were asking questions about the UK. What are your questions (can be for any nationality from any nationality)? And please feel free to answer other people's questions!

I'll start with some questions for Americans:

Are your grocery bags really those ones without handles? They look really awkward to carry!

Why do you not have electric kettles?

In High school films the English teacher for example always gives them some homework to do by the next day and says 'see you tomorrow' - do you have the same classes every day? We just had English twice a week or something!

I have travelled a lot and like to guess the nationality. I notice the Germans are very territorial ie pushing to nab the window seat, the deck chair etc; the English expect everything to be like it is in England and get quite indignant if there isn’t “a full English breakfast” or all the houses don’t look alike and so on. They also assume superiority, generally consider other nations and customs to be inferior. I find Americans very assertive and open, very effusive in praise and generally good natured about their travel experiences. My favourite travellers are Filipino, Korean and Japanese, all of whom tend to be beautifully mannered and very well informed about cultural norms.

Feck is a watered down version of fuck, you can also use fuck to mean to throw something. He fucked the remote control at me

@Angelil Why would you need to order it well done for your kids though?

Well, presumably because that’s how the child likes their burger. And when you’re at a restaurant where you pay for your meal, the idea is that you get to eat something you really enjoy.

The implication was fussing because it might make them ill or something…

Agree that many French women (especially those in cities) look stylish, but in a rather boring way, in my opinion. I suppose that sort of look is what you’d call classic, elegant style (muted, neutral colours, tailored pieces etc).

But I think you can often see a lot more individual style in the streets of London, especially places like Camden, and that’s something I’d rather see. I might not always ‘like’ the individual’s style because some of it is too bonkers for my liking, but at least it’s original and interesting and shows some artistic flair or even sense of humour.

I didn’t really see that implication at all but perhaps you’re right 🤷🏼‍♀️ My children also like their beef rare and have done since they were quite little, but plenty of British adults don’t, let alone kids.

🥰

This used to be the case in Britain. I used to be a size 14 in my top half when young (large breasts) and not all stores stocked as big as 14. 16 was a plus size and meant shopping at Evans.

Yes, interesting to hear South Africans use 'stay' I this way too - I'm Scottish (from Glasgow) and after 10 years in England I still have to consciously make an effort to ask someone where they live rather than where they stay.

Oh this is my very favourite weird thing about my upbringing. Yes, everyone drives outside of the major cities. If there is someone in your family who doesn’t drive, you’re making arrangements for them to get around, because public transport is a fairy tale in all but the most developed American cities.

But remember each state makes its own rules for things like this, so the driving age varies by state. I grew up in a farming state (the same one we’ve already discussed has no regulations for theme parks) and the license to drive a tractor on the road is the same as a car on the road and you’d be expected to help out if you had a family farm so… the driving age is 14.

It’s not an instantly full license. At 14, you can take your written test (which was multiple choice and open book in my day!) and then you are allowed to drive with a licensed driver over the age of 21 in the front passenger seat. So your parents can teach you this way, or you can take a course at school. I took the school course and it was the summer between 8th and 9th grade, so would be the equivalent of the summer before you start your GCSEs. If you went the school route, you logged as many hours as it took for the instructor to sign you off. If your parents or anyone else taught you, you had to go do a driving test at the licensing office. When I was learning, once you passed that then you could drive alone as long as it was to/from school, work, or on farm jobs. You were also allowed to drive to the nearest petrol station to those destinations. If you wanted to drive to other places, you would need to have the adult up front again. Now… as you can guess this was dangerous and there were lots of car crashes so the rule has changed… so you now have to be 15 to drive to work and school alone. I’m not sure what the statistics are for that small change in age. At any rate, once you turn 16 it’s a full license automatically and you can drive anywhere.

The best random fact about it all: the farm element is still present in the driving code, so on that list of things that might come up on a test like parallel parking, reverse round a corner, hill start etc… we also have farm stuff. One day my instructor just drove us up to a field and said we had to reverse the combine harvester onto the road, down to the next gate, and back into the field. So I had a license and a car at 14, but I had to drive a combine harvester to get it! (Aside: it is only a ‘combine’ there and we never had the song and I feel someone in music marketing really missed a trick with that.)

I lived 10 miles from any sort of shop, so no popping in. We did have a company that would drive around a big freezer truck once a week and we stocked up that way. It was only the 80s but a bit like a 50s tv show in that you could leave a key with the freezer man or leave your back door open and just put a list on the door and your money in the freezer and he’d sort it all for you if you weren’t home. For everything else we would drive once a week to the big grocery store. I used to sit in the car and read for an hour or so while my mum did the shopping.

If you start walking along a road there, you will usually get a police car / sheriff pulling up to ask what’s up, because it’s so rare to see someone walking. They are usually worried your car is broken down somewhere and you need help, but if it’s not that they will be genuinely confused as to why you are out walking.

Me too.

Her accent is sooo funny (in a nice way!) She sounds more Yorkshire than me - born and bred Yorkshire - but also American at the same time. Love listening to her...

I follow her account on TikTok - yes, I'm way too old for TikTok but it's easy and I don't use FB at all.

Before good food hygiene, and still in some countries, well-done meat is far safer. So I can see why some would still think children should have well-done meat.

As a channel islander, we are part of Great Britain and so wouldn’t say we were going over to Great Britain. We would usually say ‘the UK’ or ‘England/Scotland’ etc. or maybe just ‘going to London’ .

Burgers that aren't fully cooked are much riskier than rare steaks so it isn't wise for even adults to have medium rare burgers and I certainly wouldn't give one to a child.

www.mashed.com/222056/you-should-never-order-a-burger-medium-rare-at-a-restaurant-heres-why/

I live in France. Everyone I know here orders their burgers medium rare, and I have literally never heard of anyone getting sick afterwards.

In my work canteen I had to avoid the burgers during my first trimester because they are all cooked medium rare and asking for mine to be well done when I usually eat my meat still mooing would have been a dead giveaway.

This is more of an observation about the difference in the ways doors open inwardly in the UK and outwardly in Scandinavia.
I always think you must have to step back from the door that you have knocked on so that it doesn't hit you when it's answered😀

I've eaten burgers that weren't fully cooked too and been fine but it is a very real risk and it has happened to people.

https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2015/01/fsn-exclusive-medium-rare-restaurant-burgers-caused-e-coli-outbreak/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993JackkintheeBoxE..colioutbreak

Two random incidents I plucked from Google but there have been others so I would avoid giving a burger that wasn't fully cooked to a child.

Better that than 4ft of snow falling in when you open it.

The Swedes stereotype the Finns as all being knife crazy hooligans, the Danes are all party pissheads, and we secretly all wish we were Norwegian (even though we know being Swedish is better).

The US is divided between shoes on and shoes off households. People will ask when they come in if they should take their shoes off. Shoes on the sofa is a step too far even in many shoes-on houses though. I think on TV they just don't want to make the characters stop and take them off.

Canada is all shoes-off.

Lol, my brother and I were raised on out of date food and as a result we are completely impervious to food poisoning, so I would probably do it deliberately, within reason. Obviously I'm not going to feed my child gone off chicken or moudly bread, but out of date yoghurts and burgers that are pink in the middle, sure.

It depends on the child. DP was raised on a farm with poor food hygiene. They would eat anything. But gets food poisoning super easy.

Thank you @knitnerd90 ! 😆

It depends on the child. DP was raised on a farm with poor food hygiene. They would eat anything. But gets food poisoning super easy.

Personally the possible consequences of E-Coli which is the main concern with undercooked burgers are so severe that I can't see how it's possibly worth the risk with a child, the second case demonstrates how severe it can be, but each to their own.

babyjellyfish

Lol I'm not sure what's so amusing about the possible consequences of E-Coli poisoning from undercooked burgers that resulted in the following in the Jack In The Box outbreak...but whatever floats your boat. Out of date yogurts aren't nearly so risky.

732 cases. A total of 171 people required hospitalization.[22] The majority of those who presented symptoms and were clinically diagnosed (but not hospitalized) were children under 10 years old.[6][7]
Of the infected children 45 required hospitalization – 38 had serious kidney problems and 21 required dialysis.[23]
Four children died: