Questions for Foreigners

[LoquiSordidaAdMe]

I'm an American. I have a question for the Brits, but it's a trivial thing unworthy of its own thread. One response is really all I need. But I'm not sure any specific British person I know could answer it, so I don't want to DM anyone either.

Since there are so many people on the AH from so many countries, I thought it might be useful to have a thread to ask each other obscure questions about our respective homelands without having to start individual threads.

This is that thread.

I'm going to ask my question in the first response. If anyone else is so inclined, please feel free to ask your own questions about other countries here. If you don't then this thread will probably die once I get my answer. So be it. Let's see what happens.

 

[RelentlessOnanism]

I'm an American. I have a question for the Brits, but it's a trivial thing unworthy of its own thread. One response is really all I need. But I'm not sure any specific British person I know could answer it, so I don't want to DM anyone either.

Since there are so many people on the AH from so many countries, I thought it might be useful to have a thread to ask each other obscure questions about our respective homelands without having to start individual threads.

This is that thread.

I'm going to ask my question in the first response. If anyone else is so inclined, please feel free to ask your own questions about other countries here. If you don't then this thread will probably die once I get my answer. So be it. Let's see what happens.

Well, don't tease us...what's the question?

 

[TxRad]

Well, don't tease us...what's the question?

Give him a few minutes to get his fingers untangled.

 

[LoquiSordidaAdMe]

A question for my British, English, Irish, Welsh, or Scottish friends.

I was watching The Mallorca Files on BritBox tonight, and the British detective mentioned a favorite meal being "a cheddar cheese sandwich with salt & vinegar crisps". In the final scene, she shows her German partner how she puts the crisps in the sandwich and eats it all together. When she opened her sandwich, there was some kind of spread on the bread. It may have been butter or mayonnaise or cream cheese. I couldn't tell.

My question is this. What is the typical spread that you would expect a Londoner to eat on a cheddar cheese sandwich?

I'm a fan of salt & vinegar chips and a bit of an anglophile, so I have to try this sandwich, and I want to make sure I get it right.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Question for Americans: Why do you call everyone else "foreigners?"

 

[KeithD]

Question for Americans: Why do you call everyone else "foreigners?"

Why do you think all Americans do?

 

[SamScribble]

My question is this. What is the typical spread that you would expect a Londoner to eat on a cheddar cheese sandwich?

Butter, possibly something like Utterly Butterly, but not mayo. The crisps need to stay crisp.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

Question for Americans: Why do you call everyone else "foreigners?"

What do you call people who live in countries other than the one you live in?

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Why do you think all Americans do?

What do you call people who live in countries other than the one you live in?

I seem to have hit a nerve. People are only "foreigners" when they're in a country other than their own. The OP has directed his question to people on this forum who are very likely in their home countries, so they are not "foreigners."

So Belle, what do I call people who live in other countries? It depends on which country they call home. Are you suggesting I should call Keith a "foreigner" because he lives in the Chesapeake region of the United States? I'd rather call him an "American," even if he's visiting my country.

And Pilot, my apologies for not qualifying my question. I know many Americans who call people by their nationality rather than "foreigner;" I should have written "Why do many Americans call . . ." I would also note that many people in other countries also refer to other nationalities as "foreigners," and I imagine it's for the same reasons: an implicit assumption that your own country is the "place" and everyone else are "others." Something akin to ethnocentrism.

Ultimately, though, my question was rhetorical, proffered essentially to draw the OP's attention to his assumptions about his fellow citizens of Lit.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

I seem to have hit a nerve. People are only "foreigners" when they're in a country other than their own. The OP has directed his question to people on this forum who are very likely in their home countries, so they are not "foreigners."

So Belle, what do I call people who live in other countries? It depends on which country they call home.

To say that a people are only foreigners if they themselves are in a different country is a very narrow definition. From Mirriam-webster:a person belonging to or owing allegiance to a foreign country

As I read Loqui's post, he was asking as an American, a question the answer to which is known to people who do not live in America. I.e. foreign to America.

As I read his post, he clearly means it to be a thread of similar questions, regardless of the posters home country. I.e. people who live in Great Britain can use it to ask questions of those foreigners who live in Canada. Canadians can use it to query Italians.

Or would you rather have separate threads for each country?
"Questions for Australians"

"Questions for Italians"

"Questions for Germans"

I know the ugly, narcissistic American is a powerful trope, largely due to the abundance of real life examples. But some questions are just questions, not insults.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

As I read Loqui's post, he was asking as an American, a question the answer to which is known to people who do not live in America. I.e. foreign to America.

As I read his post, he clearly means it to be a thread of similar questions, regardless of the posters home country. I.e. people who live in Great Britain can use it to ask questions of those foreigners who live in Canada. Canadians can use it to query Italians.

Or would you rather have separate threads for each country?
"Questions for Australians"

"Questions for Italians"

"Questions for Germans"

I know the ugly, narcissistic American is a powerful trope, largely due to the abundance of real life examples. But some questions are just questions, not insults.

Systemic xenophobia, perhaps. Not conscious, but implicit in how we talk about things. A separate thread for each country? Obviously inutile. How about questions for different nationalities?

In my field, we see ourselves as studying other cultures including our own. That is, we need to recognize that "ourselves," no matter who we are, are "others" as well.

 

[KeithD]

I seem to have hit a nerve.

No, I understood what you meant, but you yourself became guilty of what you were criticizing. You made exactly the same type of insensitive sweeping generalization. Pot/kettle.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Maybe the thread should be renamed “Questions for people who live in places the questioner doesn’t.”

It seems there’s questions that pop up even for writers in the same country. Eg Melissa and her hot dog buns...

 

[Kumquatqueen]

At least the OP specified they were an American. The number of threads on the internet where people expect you to know that (and it's *always* Americans) is annoying, though answering from a UK perspective is often entertaining.

Re cheese sarnies - most likely butter, though mayo or salad cream are possible. As long as it's a good mature cheddar it makes little difference.

 

[KeithD]

Since there are so many people on the AH from so many countries, I thought it might be useful to have a thread to ask each other obscure questions about our respective homelands without having to start individual threads.

This very clearly and carefully does NOT say the questions are to be from Americans to those who are foreigners to Americans. It couches the questions as from/to "respective homelands."

 

[SamScribble]

Re cheese sarnies - most likely butter, though mayo or salad cream are possible. As long as it's a good mature cheddar it makes little difference.

No! No! No! Neither mayo nor salad cream are kind to crisps. What would Mrs Walker say?

 

[ElectricBlue]

No! No! No! Neither mayo nor salad cream are kind to crisps. What would Mrs Walker say?

Whoa, Kumquatqueen! Now look what you've done! Sam is a gentleman, and for him to voice alarm: goodness gracious, there will be words .

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

No! No! No! Neither mayo nor salad cream are kind to crisps. What would Mrs Walker say?

Butter - hubby just shuddered at the thought of Mayo in a cheese and onion crisp sandwich. There are all types of folks every where, here more than most, so yes, we see the stereotypical American who refers to the locals as foreigners and complains they don't speak English well enough to be ordered rudely around, but we have exactly the same behavior from Brits, Aussies, Kiwi's, Germans, and Canucks. We also have people from all these nations who find the language, the people, the food, the customs utterly facinating and spend their vacation here soaking up as much as they can of all these aspects of French culture and ambience. Seeing little American kids from Georgia with their fabulous Southern accents ordering ice-creams in French at the beach, even if it's the only French they've managed to pick up in their short stay, is the sweetest thing, and the vendors love and appreciate that they're trying.

 

[jaF0]

To Canuckistanians, 'Muricans are ferreners.

To Aussies and Kiwis, people that stand upright are ferreners.


I can't imagine any kind of sauce or spread on a cheese sandwich, but then again, the only cheese sandwich I eat is done in a frying pan or grille and the bread is toasted so the cheese melts.

Salt and vinegar on chips is fine, but the first place I saw it was in Canuckistan. I didn't see it in 'Murica for a while afterwards. Oh, and chips are thin and crispy, not fat and soft. Crisps are crackers, not potatoes.

 

[XerXesXu]

People like me.

an implicit assumption that your own country is the "place" and everyone else are "others." Something akin to ethnocentrism.
.

I remember a friend with a plummy, upper-class accent telling me about a female TV presenter who had a delightful West-Country accent "... just like yours."

I said "But she doesn't have an accent. You have an accent."

My friend, at first, looked a little puzzled, then started to laugh.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

I remember a friend with a plummy, upper-class accent telling me about a female TV presenter who had a delightful West-Country accent "... just like yours."

I said "But she doesn't have an accent. You have an accent."

My friend, at first, looked a little puzzled, then started to laugh.

My hubby is probably what you'd describe as 'plummy-accented'. He sounds most of the time like one of those news announcers in the old Brit black and white war movies. My family loves listening to him because most of the time their Cajun ears just can't tune into his English 'Boarding-School' received pronunciation speech and he fascinates them. His actual pronunciation is wild, he'll say 'dine' for 'down', 'hice' for 'house', 'grind' for 'ground' and so on; anything with the 'ou' diphthong comes out 'i'. He makes me laugh when he says 'I can't look dine, the grind's going rind and rind'. Say that out loud and you'll know what an English top-tier boarding school boy sounds like.

When he says 'there', it comes out as 'thah', 'here' is 'hyah', 'what ' comes out as 'hwhat', 'why' as 'hwhy', and 'okay, yes' comes out as 'ikay, yah'. All his cousins and everyone he knows speaks that way, his aunt calls it 'Home Counties' and it is very nice to listen to, even after nearly 23 years, especially as he can't even hear it, he just thinks he sounds like the paperboy or the lady who runs the corner shop. All my friends think it's sexy, so I send him out to go and wash the horses or something when any of them are over, just in case they start making eyes at him and I have to go ninja-assassin on them.

 

[stickygirl]

I was watching The Mallorca Files on BritBox tonight, and the British detective mentioned a favorite meal being "a cheddar cheese sandwich with salt & vinegar crisps". In the final scene, she shows her German partner how she puts the crisps in the sandwich and eats it all together. When she opened her sandwich, there was some kind of spread on the bread. It may have been butter or mayonnaise or cream cheese. I couldn't tell.

WTF is the Mallorca Files - I had to google? I'm shocked that she "opens her sandwich to reveal her cream cheese" and this is day time tv?!

My question is this. What is the typical spread that you would expect a Londoner to eat on a cheddar cheese sandwich?

Londoners don't eat sandwiches, only pasties from Greggs and they add red sauce, sometimes brown. I hear they're squeamish about eating their girlfriend's sandwich... maybe they put mayo there to kill the taste?

I'm a fan of salt & vinegar chips and a bit of an anglophile, so I have to try this sandwich, and I want to make sure I get it right.

crisps not chips

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

WTF is the Mallorca Files - I had to google? I'm shocked that she "opens her sandwich to reveal her cream cheese" and this is day time tv?!
Londoners don't eat sandwiches, only pasties from Greggs and they add red sauce, sometimes brown. I hear they're squeamish about eating their girlfriend's sandwich... maybe they put mayo there to kill the taste?

crisps not chips

I will admit to a secret Greggs cheese and onion pasty addiction, lard and all, and yes, I know the paper bag is transparent with grease by the time you find somewhere to sit down and have a munch, but forgive me mother, I must, I must...

Will hates any and everything thing from Greggs, he's quite right, everything is marinated in lard, and yes, 90% of their product is revolting (our dogs won't eat them, and they once dragged a roadkill fox into my garden and ate it, stink and all...) but it's weirdly addictive, especially their yummy cheese and onion pasties, for which I make no excuse.

Some of the sandwich places in London, Pret a Manger comes to mind, make a couple acceptable sandwiches, their crawfish tails with arugula and spiced mayo is a winner as far as I'm concerned, but most of their range is just weird, bland, tasteless, or just plain nasty. Most other sandwich places turn out bland shit that loses its appeal directly after the first bite; walking through any mall with a Pret or Philpotts it's amusing to see the sandwich unwrap, the first bite, the horrified stare, and the rush to find a garbage bin to spit it into...

Subway is also a terrible way to introduce foreigners to the British sandwich experience, with bread you could use to hammer hobnails, or that shatters like shrapnel and lacerates your mouth, mayo that isn't, limp ham and dejected lettuce, and tomatoes so tough and leathery a mastiff couldn't bite through it; the garbage bins outside most Subway's are filled with foot-longs with one bite taken out of them...

 

[oggbashan]

Foreigners?

There was a famous UK newspaper headline from the 1930s:

"Fog in the Channel: Europe Cut Off."

Unfortunately too many Brits, even those who take foreign holidays i.e. holidays in places other than the UK, who think everyone should speak and understand English or they are not 'educated' or 'smart'.

The idea that anyone could be intelligent and not speak English is unthinkable.

Whenever we go to France, we speak French. My French is terrible with a Strime accent. My wife's French is the equivalent of Lori's Will's English - upper class supercilious and unaware of it.

In Germany, we speak German. In Italy, Italian. But in the Netherlands, we tried to speak Dutch but the locals laughed at us, praised us for trying, but all spoke perfect English.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

Will had a very good friend, Kees, a surgeon with the Dutch Red Cross contingent at Camp Bastion, unfortunately killed with his entire triage team by a teenage girl suicide bomber. Kees couldn't speak English, Will can't speak Dutch, but they both spoke Pashtun and Waziri fluently, so they'd chat away in an obscure Afghani dialect while people around them stared in puzzlement at two obvious Europeans yakking away in some weird, unheard-of lingo.