Questions for Foreigners

[Nellymcboatface]

Although I spent a good deal of my life living in central London, I was born and bred in The Cotswolds, where the 'local' accent was only local to an area of about five square miles. To complicate matters further, three or four times a year, I would make the 50-mile journey to really foreign territory to stay with my grandmother in 'the valleys', just outside of Cardiff. My grandmother's first language was Welsh.

I'm Cotswold'ish...

The scene in `Hot Fuzz' where they use a translator for the interview with the farmer about his swan ...

I first saw this film whilst working in Glasgow, surrounded by a Glaswegian audience that were laughing hysterically at a dialect that I understood perfectly...
Was unique...

Part of my family come from the FOD... `ow bist old but?' being the greeting..
and at meal times you have `yuttings'

I have a lot of friends in the valleys of Wales and that brings a whole load of `Down by yurs..." into discussions..
My mates local was the `ynysdee' hotel - try pronouncing that after a few beers...
Or the `Frywrm'... Thankfully we could always drink in the `Forge'.

 

[oggbashan]

My nephews and nieces were born in Birmingham to parents from NE Kent.

They might have been picked on for their accents at their schools in rural Suffolk but because they were always the largest pupils in their year groups, and by age thirteen each of them was taller than any local adult, they weren't.

By the time they were adults, any visiting relations would be instantly identified as a relation in their village.

The next tallest woman was five feet six to my nieces' five feet eleven and six feet two; the tallest man was five feet eight inches to my brother's six feet five and his sons' six feet seven.

The main door of the local public house was only five feet five inches high and the bar ceiling was six feet six inches so some of my relations had to stoop or sit down.

At my brother's funeral, it was easy to tell the relations from the local friends. All the relations were head and shoulders above the villagers, except for one recent arrival, a woman at five feet ten inches who was fed up about being asked if she was a relation. Maybe she will be. She is now the girlfriend of one of my nephews, the only local man she can dance with.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

Hey Lori
ask him to say 'diet coke' and hear 'dark cake' He's proper posh

FYP

Y'know, in 23 years of married deadlock I've never noticed it before but you're right; when he says 'diet coke' I hear 'Dite kaok', with a sort of back of the throat catch to it, which is just the funniest thing. Ooooh, he's an a aristo...

He's never thrown food around in restaurants though, or called girls 'totty', or smacked them on the bottom as he walked past like he had a right to, or acted like those Bullingdon Club halfwits, which he says are typical of the kind of moneyed hooligans and verminous yuppie larvae they'll let into Oxford these days.

 

[oggbashan]

...

He's never thrown food around in restaurants though, or called girls 'totty', or smacked them on the bottom as he walked past like he had a right to, or acted like those Bullingdon Club halfwits, which he says are typical of the kind of moneyed hooligans and verminous yuppie larvae they'll let into Oxford these days.

You're right. The real nobility usually, with a few odd exceptions, behave impeccably. They have a sense of Noblesse Oblige which includes being polite to their social inferiors.

The oddities? They're usually just harmless English Eccentrics e.g. The Marquess of Bath and his wife lets but he was polite to people.

But Life Peers of whatever party or none? They seem to have more assholes than would be a normal proportion in the general population.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

This is a wonderful description. It made me laugh. I can just see it.

People from other countries often think of Americans as provincial and self-regarding, and in some ways we are, but we're also suckers for British accents. For many it doesn't even matter which British accent.

I can definitely agree with that. When Will decided to sell his condo in Daly City, a bedroom suburb of San Francisco, in 1999, I made an appointment with a realtor to drop off the keys so they could do showings, as we were heading back to Houma, and thence back to London. We walked into the realtor's office and Will walked over to the all-boobs and big hair girl at the desk and said 'I've come to drop my keys off for Miranda', and the girly went all big-eyed, stuck her chest out and breathed 'oh my God, say that again!'

I swear to God, I nearly bazooka'd the bitch; I'm standing right there and she's giving him CFM eyes with an extra helping of lashes. After I'd clicked my fingers in her face a few times, and blown a couple of air-horns she realized I was trying to get her attention and deigned to accept the papers, inventory, and bunch of keys and we left her in a spreading drool-slick. I always knew he was real dishy (my mom's favorite word) but to see some barely-dressed boob-skank practically offering to have his babies kind of opened my eyes a little wider, and taught me to stick just a little closer, just in case...

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

You're right. The real nobility usually, with a few odd exceptions, behave impeccably. They have a sense of Noblesse Oblige which includes being polite to their social inferiors.

The oddities? They're usually just harmless English Eccentrics e.g. The Marquess of Bath and his wife lets but he was polite to people.

But Life Peers of whatever party or none? They seem to have more assholes than would be a normal proportion in the general population.

Will's aunties, titled ladies all, used to show up at our home, especially when Will was recuperating from his cardiac sugery, dressed in tweeds and twinsets, rubber Wellington boots, and 1950's Hérmes silk headscarves and dig-over the onion beds, thin out my hyacinth beds, re-cane the raspberries and the gooseberry bushes, and brew up pots of tea in the rhubarb tunnel over cheese sandwiches they'd been carrying around in their pockets all day wrapped in tinfoil.

They also ate like a herd of Clydesdales, and swilled port like it was a soft drink, and make a huge fuss about tucking him in just right. I tried explaining that I was his physician, and I got 'yes dear, we know, but we're his aunties and we've had him longer, and we know exactly how he likes to be tucked in'. I could see him out the corner of my eye doing that 'I tried to warn you but nooo, you didn't believe me. You can't win, so just consider yourself put in your place,' smirk, and I'd have to content myself with making throat-cutting gestures at him behind their backs...

Will calls them 'The Dragon Ladies', because if you piss them off they'll burn you to the ground and stamp on the ashes; they've each got several hundred years of being bred to get their own way standing behind them, and they have no compunction about fighting good and dirty; a typical aristocrat, in fact...

 

[Handley_Page]

.
When Will decided to sell his condo in Daly City, a bedroom suburb of San Francisco, in 1990, I made an appointment with a realtor to drop off the keys so they could do showings, as we were heading back to Houma, and thence back to London. We walked into the realtor's office and Will walked over to the all-boobs and big hair girl at the desk and said 'I've come to drop my keys off for Miranda', and the girly went all big-eyed, stuck her chest out and breathed 'oh my God, say that again!'
...

A pal of mine used to work for a firm who made real big TV transmitter aerials (costing a fortune). As he was from the South East and of good stock, he spoke with no real accent, but in really good English; clear and well-vowelled.
He was in the USA on holiday, just got off the plane after a long flight and stopped at a stand selling cold drinks.
"Can I have a Coke, please?" he said.
The young lady operating the stand gazed at him in sheer amazement and muttered "Please say that again. I've never heard it like that."

 

[Kumquatqueen]

My accent is generic SE England, but I can switch from old-school RP thanks to my godmother (almost the only person I've known who could diss the royal family for being 'dreadfully nouveau') to modern RP (if surrounded by poshos at work, then join in) to proper sarf Lahndan, like, innit. Mastering glottal stops was very useful for learning Arabic and similar languages.

Thankfully I haven't been dragged in for Show and Tell by any of my cousins for years, because that was hideously embarrassing. "This is my cousin from England. Say something in English, Kumquat!" Though every person I meet locally is still entranced by my normal voice - thanks to cable TV more of them can understand so I don't have to give my best impression of a MidWest accent to be understood any more, except when asking for water.

Can't stand crisps in sarnies myself, but if I did they'd not be salt and vinegar and they'd go between two slices of cheese. And not tell my mum because I'm sure it would be deemed low-class and/or Northern...

 

[Rustyoznail]

People from other countries often think of Americans as provincial and self-regarding, and in some ways we are, but we're also suckers for British accents. For many it doesn't even matter which British accent.

Aussies aren't quite the suckers for any English accent, but there are exceptions.

My wife, her sister and our niece left wet patches on their chairs after watching Tom Hiddleston's "Art of Villany" Jaguar ad. Multiple times...

And yet, I'd be the World's Worst husband if I said Rachel Riley could count my numbers...

 

[Bramblethorn]

You're right. The real nobility usually, with a few odd exceptions, behave impeccably. They have a sense of Noblesse Oblige which includes being polite to their social inferiors.

The oddities? They're usually just harmless English Eccentrics e.g. The Marquess of Bath and his wife lets but he was polite to people.

And then there was Lord Lucan...

I like to think I'd be pretty mellow if I had servants to attend to my whims and a nice country estate or two.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

My accent is generic SE England, but I can switch from old-school RP thanks to my godmother (almost the only person I've known who could diss the royal family for being 'dreadfully nouveau') to modern RP (if surrounded by poshos at work, then join in) to proper sarf Lahndan, like, innit. Mastering glottal stops was very useful for learning Arabic and similar languages.

Thankfully I haven't been dragged in for Show and Tell by any of my cousins for years, because that was hideously embarrassing. "This is my cousin from England. Say something in English, Kumquat!" Though every person I meet locally is still entranced by my normal voice - thanks to cable TV more of them can understand so I don't have to give my best impression of a MidWest accent to be understood any more, except when asking for water.

Can't stand crisps in sarnies myself, but if I did they'd not be salt and vinegar and they'd go between two slices of cheese. And not tell my mum because I'm sure it would be deemed low-class and/or Northern...

You'd get on well with Will; he describes the royal family as vulgar, bourgeois, and generally unspeakable, truly fitting of the term 'tribe of Prussian horse-cripplers'.

 

[SimonDoom]

You'd get on well with Will; he describes the royal family as vulgar, bourgeois, and generally unspeakable, truly fitting of the term 'tribe of Prussian horse-cripplers'. He refers to the Queen as 'Brenda, the queen of middle-class snobbery', Philip as Phil The Greek or Stavros, and Charles as long past pathetic and probably about due for a bloody good hiding.

This has always been my impression. It's a bad reality TV show. But I know plenty of people -- Americans -- who've religiously watched every royal wedding, and who snap up the trashy magazines off the rack when the royals are on the cover. I haven't watched one wedding.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Don't slag off Brenda - she's diverted despots from subverting multiple wars, served in WWII, and terrified Saudi princes by driving them round herself in her Range-Rover at top speed. Anne is OK too. The rest... yeah.

We have monarchy-lovers here - someone still buys The Express newspaper but the real obsessives seem to be American (aren't the Kennedys or Kardashians enough?). Went to a family wedding round 2007 and a woman ran up to me to tell me how she was 'so sorry to hear about Diana'. Given I've got a couple hundred relatives I struggle to keep track of, I was trying to subtly ask who she was related to, until the penny dropped that she meant Lady Di what died 10 years earlier, and who I hadn't given a thought to for at least half that.

 

[RelentlessOnanism]

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.

Could be salad cream...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salad_cream

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

This has always been my impression. It's a bad reality TV show. But I know plenty of people -- Americans -- who've religiously watched every royal wedding, and who snap up the trashy magazines off the rack when the royals are on the cover. I haven't watched one wedding.

Ditto; the latest one with the Ginger Whinger and Gold-digger Barbie ('where's my Princess crown, they said on the Hallmark channel that gals who marry princes become princesses, look, read 'The Princess Diaries' if you don't believe me, I wanna be a princess, Waaa! Waaa! etc.) broke all boundaries of taste and decorum; Will made sure he was track-day driving at Circuit Paul Ricard at Le Castellet specifically so he didn't have to watch dignity go for a long walk; I watched in horrified fascination until even I'd had enough, and I'm widely known for having no taste at all...

And poor Dopey, having to rely on the pittance his mother left him, a mere $25m (and a putative $100m from Netflix) instead of sucking the British taxpayer dry while simultaneously doing absolutely nothing to earn it. The problem is, the Netflix series isn't even remotely as grotesque as the real story playing out in real life as the two of them whinge about not being allowed to wear Queen Mary's tiara and pillage the royal jewel collection to wear as much finery and look as tasteless as possible, or not being paid hundreds of millions of pounds from the Civil List while actually not doing anything to earn it. You do no work, you get no pay, it's a simple equation, why haven't those two grasped that yet?

Or there's actually the real reason for flouncing off in a huff; Archie's lack of a title. If she wants to change that she's going to have to invent a time machine (ask Hallmark, they know all about this stuff) and go back to 1917 and stab King George V so he doesn't sign any Letters Patent strictly defining who is and is not entitled to the prince or princess honorific, and how that's arrived at. It was all settled and agreed 100 years ago; changing it up to suit you just because your 'I Want' nerve is jangling is not gonna happen.

It's a great soap though, isn't it? Maybe they should make a movie of it, 'The Princess Diaries: The Empire sort of strikes back, but nicely...'

 

[Payne_Hall]

An enjoyable side note about accents is that they look really cool, too. I mean they’re actually a visual thing. Some hard of hearing friends back in school used to love this German exchange student. Even cooler, they didn’t seem to have a harder time reading words through the accent, at least no more than hearing people had.

 

[Rustyoznail]

It's a great soap though, isn't it? Maybe they should make a movie of it, 'The Princess Diaries: The Empire sort of strikes back, but nicely...'

Don't need a movie - just extend "The Crown" tv series. It's very sudsy. Or so I'm told by Bec.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

Don't need a movie - just extend "The Crown" tv series. It's very sudsy. Or so I'm told by Bec.

Yeah, but the Beeb could add Daleks and secret heirs to the throne and lasers and telepathic yetis and time travel....what, don't eyeball me, it'll work, you'll see...

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Yeah, but the Beeb could add Daleks and secret heirs to the throne and lasers and telepathic yetis and time travel....what, don't eyeball me, it'll work, you'll see...

So many Beeb classics could do well with a bunch of Daleks.

 

[Rustyoznail]

So many Beeb classics could do well with a bunch of Daleks.

Only if they were written by Steven Moffat.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

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

I've put potato chips on a bologna sandwich and the miracle whip did not bother them at all. I guess they'd be soggy if I took all day to eat it, but I wasn't waiting for the chips to get soggy and the bread to dry out.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

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.

Hmmm... I woulda thought you were from Indiana, looking at your name.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

I've never had crisps ("chips" to me) on a sandwich before. It's good to learn something new.


To my . . . friends from elsewhere . . . wouldn't the spread make the crisps soggy? I guess butter might not, but mayo would, I would think.

And you're american? I guess it's just a hood thing, like hot cheetos in ramen(jail thing).

 

[JaxRhapsody]

Aussies aren't quite the suckers for any English accent, but there are exceptions.

My wife, her sister and our niece left wet patches on their chairs after watching Tom Hiddleston's "Art of Villany" Jaguar ad. Multiple times...

And yet, I'd be the World's Worst husband if I said Rachel Riley could count my numbers...

When I was a kid, we went on a school field trip to a zoo or something like that where a person brings in animals to show off and talk about, like how say Jack Hannah or maybe since you're an aussie(or from New Zealand actually, I believe) during his life Steve Irwin might have down, bring animals on talk shows. Well the woman presenting the animals was australian, it was then at around ten years old I fell in love with the accent.

Being from america, I can't find most of our dialects attractive and understand why others outside the continent wouldn't either. Though there is a lil something about the wisconson accent, but it'll probably get annoying real quick, she can only be a booty call.

 

[PennameWombat]

Pennsylvania Dutch, probably.

One year we took a Canadian friend from Quebec to Northern France. We had a meal in a restaurant. We were all speaking 'French'.

The Quebecois French puzzled the staff most. They winced at my Strine French but my wife's impeccable upper-class educated Parisian impressed them most. They had worked out that I was Australian (I'm not); our friend was from Quebec; but they thought my wife was French (she's not).

Back around 2005 or so I was in Paris for a business trip related to a consortium of companies. About ten of us from many countries were at a restaurant one evening when one of the funniest experiences I've ever had on one of these trips took place.

A local had guided us to the restaurant, he'd been born and still lived in the general area around Paris. One of other attendees was from Quebec. Given the polyglot nature of the diners, English was the default tongue (fortunately for me, my French ends at moules et frites, une bière and merci.)

Ogg knows what's going to happen next, but we had a Quebecer at the table who finally got the attention of our Parisian host (I'd noticed over the course of the day the latter having sidled out of a couple of conversations with this person but this time he was trapped.) The Quebecer insisted on speaking French to our Parisian.

After a moment the Parisian said, somewhat loudly and in English, "Stop. I can't understand a word you're saying! Speak English!"

My other non-tourist Quebec experience was when I worked in New York for a multinational hi-tech company in the 1990s. Got a phone call from a colleague in Toronto, asking me to go present to a customer in Montreal.

I said, "you know this stuff as well as I do, why do you need me to go?"
He said, "you're American."
I said, "I know people are suckers for my aw-shucks accent, but..."
He said, "I'm Canadian. If I go they'll expect me to speak French. But my French is abysmal. They all speak English, but, well, it's Quebec. But you're American, you can do it all in English and no one will be insulted."

Couldn't argue with that. Got my trip to Montreal.