Questions for Foreigners

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

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

I am, sort of; I was actually born in Hawaii, in Waipahu, but we moved to Fort Wayne when my father divorced my mom when I was born. Mom grew up an army brat, mostly in Fort Wayne, so she took us to the place she had the best memories of. Her family is mostly in Louisiana, and I spent a large part of my life growing up shuttling between my home in Fort Wayne and my uncles and aunties in Houma, Louisiana. My husband's from England, and when this ridiculous 'Brexit' business reared it's head, he decided it was to risky for me to remain there; lot of anti-foreigner feeling, especially in rural Oxfordshire where we lived, whipped up by the EDL, BNP, and the National Front, far right white supremacist organizations; people we'd known for years insulted me to my face, vandalized my car, refused to serve me in stores, that kind of thing, so I was offered this job in Cannes, in the South of France, I took it, and we've been here ever since.

 

[oggbashan]

In 1962 I went with a group of friends to what was then Yugoslavia. We had spent months studying Serbo-Croat and had a basic tourist command of the language. But there are/were dialects of Serbo-Croat and went spent most of our time on what was then a remote island. We were the first tourists to go there since the 1930s. (Not anymore, It has many tourist hotels.)

The local dialect was incomprehensible to us. We had an Intourist guide from the mainland - a communist official. The locals didn't like having an official visitor so they refused to understand her.

The only language we had in common was German but the locals didn't like speaking it. They had been occupied by German forces after Italy had surrendered and had bad memories.

But the local Mayor was proud of his 'English'. He had served with Australian forces in North Africa and Italy. He gave a speech of welcome in 'English' - but it wasn't. It was Serbo-Croat accented Australian slang. I had returned from Australia a couple of months before so I understood every word while my friends didn't. I stepped forward, and matching his slang, thanked him for his welcome and complimented him on his 'English'.

He responded by awarding us the 'freedom' of the island. I didn't know what that meant until we tried to buy drinks. For our whole stay we weren't allowed to pay for any drinks. But we repaid the locals by being an unskilled workforce. We dug wells, repaired stone walls, rebuilt barns, etc. Eighteen young men, fuelled by local alcohol, could do a lot.

The Intourist guide? After one night camping she decided we were no threat and left the island.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

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.

True - lip-reading Germans and Northern Europeans is easy, French, Spanish, Greek is nigh impossible - it's to do with enunciated consonants which appear on the lips, vs a variety of throaty vowels which don't. Its possibly one reason why French sign language (which ASL is based on) caught on better than northern European ones.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

.....

 

[Payne_Hall]

True - lip-reading Germans and Northern Europeans is easy, French, Spanish, Greek is nigh impossible - it's to do with enunciated consonants which appear on the lips, vs a variety of throaty vowels which don't. Its possibly one reason why French sign language (which ASL is based on) caught on better than northern European ones.

I hadn’t had cause to run into this to notice it actually. That’s really cool, now that I think about it though. The accents I had a chance to see people try to read seemed to be among the easier side then. But most people I was around were also more along the hard of hearing side than the fully deaf side of things. They had problems, but they did still have some sound to work off of. They just preferred to see the mouth to truly piece it together.

 

[Payne_Hall]

Also, as a funny side note, I know one of them had a great affection for having an Aussie friend say the C word over and over (I don’t know how many people that word offends and I’m sorry if mentioning it does!). Apparently that word just looked amazing.

 

[oggbashan]

True - lip-reading Germans and Northern Europeans is easy, French, Spanish, Greek is nigh impossible - it's to do with enunciated consonants which appear on the lips, vs a variety of throaty vowels which don't. Its possibly one reason why French sign language (which ASL is based on) caught on better than northern European ones.

Another major difference is with older songs. German songs (except dialect ones) have clear words sung as they are spoken.

French songs can change the word syllable emphasis and endings when singing - odd!

 

[Emirus]

My husband's from England, and when this ridiculous 'Brexit' business reared it's head, he decided it was to risky for me to remain there; lot of anti-foreigner feeling, especially in rural Oxfordshire where we lived, whipped up by the EDF and the National Front, far right white supremacist organizations; people we'd known for years insulted me to my face, vandalized my car, refused to serve me in stores, that kind of thing.

What a load of crap. I was going to write a full response but I simply don’t have the patience. I don’t believe a word.

 

[Emirus]

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.

*
Just for something to do I thought I’d get back to the original question.

A cheddar cheese sandwich with salt and vinegar crisps? Revolting.

A cheddar cheese sandwich with mayonnaise or cream cheese? Even more revolting.

Two slices of bread, or a soft bun, with butter and substantial slices of cheddar cheese. It’s as simple as that.

Or you could have crisps instead of cheddar but plain not salt and vinegar.

Another alternative would be a chip butty, again with bread and butter or a soft bun. Laced with salt and malt vinegar, something Americans have never heard of, and with proper chips not these odious fries you seem to find on every menu.

ps. The only spread you put on a cheddar cheese sandwich is Branson pickle.

pps. Pulled pork is very nice in a sandwich or bun, with or without butter.

ppps. Bread and dripping anyone?
*

 

[Emirus]

I didn't realize the word had such baggage attached to it. BelleCanzuto quite eloquently captured my thinking. I just wanted a succinct title for a thread where people could ask questions specific to countries other than their own, and get answers from folks who live or lived in that particular country.

If anyone has a better title for the thread, I'll happily change it. Now that I have my answer, I'm curious to see if the thread survives.

How about changing the title to Questions for the World? Or you could go the whole hog and change it to Questions for Aliens.

 

[SamScribble]

ppps. Bread and dripping anyone?

Yes, please!

 

[Bramblethorn]

What a load of crap. I was going to write a full response but I simply don’t have the patience. I don’t believe a word.

Lori's story is pretty consistent with what I've heard from other non-white/non-Brit friends living in the UK.

https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/17748201.thames-valley-hate-crime-rises-racist-homophobic-crime/
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/18517041.751-hate-crimes-reported-oxford-12-months/

ICYMI, things were bad enough around Brexit that an MP was murdered by a white-supremacist terrorist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Cox

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

What a load of crap. I was going to write a full response but I simply don’t have the patience. I don’t believe a word.

And yet I still don't give a fuck

 

[SimonDoom]

And yet I still don't give a fuck

I think that's the right call.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I think that's the right call.

Lori's story is consistent with that of many people I know. My mum moved here years ago and was fine when in or near a university town, but as soon as she moved to a small town, she had to drop her American accent as otherwise people wouldn't serve her in shops and all.

Imagine my surprise when cheap transatlantic phone calls came in in the mid-90s and her accent went from the excellent attempt at RP I'd known for 20 years, back to American Midwest, over about 3 months.

The people putting up the 'no dogs, no Irish' signs I remember as a child didn't go away, they just learned to be quiet about their opinions.

Now I live in one of the most multicultural parts of London and since the Brexit vote there's been loads more harassment and violence towards Eastern Europeans and some towards anyone perceived as 'foreign'. It's almost a return to the 70s only instead of the Irish getting it it's the Muslims being accused of terrorism and central/eastern Europeans getting the blame for 'taking jobs'.

Back to sandwiches, in a pub you'd have a cheese ploughman's, ie some lumps of good cheddar, some bread, some salad, and a good helping of Branston pickle or similar homemade chutney. In a packed lunch, just cheese and butter, but some ham and salad would be good with it. Anyone adding the crisps would do so as they eat.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

Lori's story is consistent with that of many people I know. My mum moved here years ago and was fine when in or near a university town, but as soon as she moved to a small town, she had to drop her American accent as otherwise people wouldn't serve her in shops and all.

Imagine my surprise when cheap transatlantic phone calls came in in the mid-90s and her accent went from the excellent attempt at RP I'd known for 20 years, back to American Midwest, over about 3 months.

The people putting up the 'no dogs, no Irish' signs I remember as a child didn't go away, they just learned to be quiet about their opinions.

Now I live in one of the most multicultural parts of London and since the Brexit vote there's been loads more harassment and violence towards Eastern Europeans and some towards anyone perceived as 'foreign'. It's almost a return to the 70s only instead of the Irish getting it it's the Muslims being accused of terrorism and central/eastern Europeans getting the blame for 'taking jobs'.

I used to be really hurt when people would come into Accident & Emergency and when I pulled the screen across they'd say they didn't want me helping them, they wanted a white doctor. Thing is, at 2AM, when you're on a gurney because you've been brought in all busted up because you're shitfaced and picked a fight with the wrong passerby, who you get is all you get. Like I said, I used to be hurt by it, I used to go home and cry about it, Baltimore was never like this, but Will told me to toughen up, and get those room-temerature IQ morons kicked out of there. So I did. I'd hand them a form to sign when they demanded a white doctor, and when they signed and asked what it was for, I'd tell them they'd refused consent to any care or treatment, and absolved the hospital of any further responsibility for their care, and that they were happy to find another hospital to treat them, so get their shit together and get TF out of my A & E, I had genuine emergency cases to deal with.

After a few of those flatheaded ding-dongs limped piteously out while G4S escorted them off hospital property I think word got around and the verbal shit ceased. A lot them also took offense at me pulling on examination gloves but the fact is, they almost always exhibited high DBI (Dirt-Bag Index: multiply the number of missing teeth by the number of tattoos and you get the number of days since their last bath...) and I wasn't touchng them unless they'd been boiled first...

I was still hospitalized by one attack, though; I'm only small, just 5 feet tall on a hot day, and a huge 14 year-old boy beat the shit out of me and I sustained a subdural hematoma and had to have a craniotomy to remove the blood clot and ease the pressure as my brain swelled. I was off work for 4 months while the section of skull they removed healed and my hair grew back.

 

[oggbashan]

...

My husband's from England, and when this ridiculous 'Brexit' business reared it's head, he decided it was to risky for me to remain there; lot of anti-foreigner feeling, especially in rural Oxfordshire where we lived, whipped up by the EDL, BNP, and the National Front, far right white supremacist organizations; people we'd known for years insulted me to my face, vandalized my car, refused to serve me in stores, that kind of thing, so I was offered this job in Cannes, in the South of France, I took it, and we've been here ever since.

I am sorry that you experienced that. Unfortunately, arseholes are everywhere.

In the City of Canterbury, a German student was beaten unconscious with a bag full of bricks - just because he was German and didn't speak English.

If you looked then as you do in your AV, not only are they arseholes, they don't appreciate beauty.

A couple we know live in rural Lancashire. They met in Bali. He was a Civil Engineer and she was a teacher of English, working mainly with service people who dealt with tourists. One of her students said that Ralph, not his name, spoke the purest English she had ever heard. (Ralph had been to a public school). She arranged for Tri (She was always known as Tri because her full name has many syllables difficult to say in English) and Ralph to meet. He was taken with her looks and her brain after they spent a couple of hours discussing Shakespeare's The Tempest, and a few months later they married (now 52 years ago).

As a child Tri had trained as a Temple dancer but she grew too tall at five feet six to Ralph's five feet eight. But she still moves like a dancer. They have lived in Lancashire for forty years and Tri is a major asset to the community. She taught ballet and dance to the local children, helped with the Cubs, Scouts, Brownies and Guides, and the local church. Now in her seventies, she still looks wonderful and has a part-time job in the local convenience store but the customers often have to wait because so many elderly gentlemenm just want to spend time with Tri.

But even Tri, despite being a major part of her local town, has faced abuse and prejudice. But anyone acting like that is roundly abused themselves because so many people like or even love Tri. (And Ralph still can't believe that Tri agreed to marry him!)

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

I am sorry that you experienced that. Unfortunately, arseholes are everywhere.

In the City of Canterbury, a German student was beaten unconscious with a bag full of bricks - just because he was German and didn't speak English.

If you looked then as you do in your AV, not only are they arseholes, they don't appreciate beauty.

A couple we know live in rural Lancashire. They met in Bali. He was a Civil Engineer and she was a teacher of English, working mainly with service people who dealt with tourists. One of her students said that Ralph, not his name, spoke the purest English she had ever heard. (Ralph had been to a public school). She arranged for Tri (She was always known as Tri because her full name has many syllables difficult to say in English) and Ralph to meet. He was taken with her looks and her brain after they spent a couple of hours discussing Shakespeare's The Tempest, and a few months later they married (now 52 years ago).

As a child Tri had trained as a Temple dancer but she grew too tall at five feet six to Ralph's five feet eight. But she still moves like a dancer. They have lived in Lancashire for forty years and Tri is a major asset to the community. She taught ballet and dance to the local children, helped with the Cubs, Scouts, Brownies and Guides, and the local church. Now in her seventies, she still looks wonderful and has a part-time job in the local convenience store but the customers often have to wait because so many elderly gentlemenm just want to spend time with Tri.

But even Tri, despite being a major part of her local town, has faced abuse and prejudice. But anyone acting like that is roundly abused themselves because so many people like or even love Tri. (And Ralph still can't believe that Tri agreed to marry him!)

You are so sweet, your Maj, !

It hurt most because these people wallowed in our hospitality every year; we threw huge Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year Parties where the entire village came and were wined, dined, danced to at least 2 bands, and treated like honored guests; these were our friends and tenants, and we wanted them to share festive times with us. We let them use our paddocks for their Spring and Summer Fayre's, my Rowena would make pinanta's with the local schoolkids and fill them with candies for the kids for Easter, and hide chocolate eggs all around our pastures and paddocks and Bryn would dress up as the Easter Bunny or in a chicken suit and pop up from behind trees and bushes and show the little ones where the eggs were hidden.

We gave over our barns for their Christmas Fair, Halloween we'd host 'Spookfest', a Halloween fancy dress party for the kids, with witches with Lucky Dip tubs so all the kids got a present, face-painting, cookie and cupcake decorating, and an adult fancy dress dance and disco and food-fest later when all the kids were put to bed.

They took all this, they ate my food, drank my drink, accepted my hospitality, and then one day they're keying my car and telling me to my face to go home, asking me to resign my place on the local school Board of Governors because some of the parents didn't feel comfortable with me being around their children, and refusing to serve me in shops and telling me to find another store to shop at because "we don't want your sort in here..."

I was the village GP (family doctor) and I withdrew my services, closed my practice, fired the staff because tough shit, none of them defended me, and transferred all the patient records to a practice in Banbury, so now it's a 28 mile round-trip to go to the doctor, and I have no f*cks to give.

 

[AvroAnsonXIX]

The only language we had in common was German but the locals didn't like speaking it. They had been occupied by German forces after Italy had surrendered and had bad memories.

I'm Australian, before the EU existed we used to fly a Canadian aircraft from New Jersey in the USA to Cologne Germany. If we rented a car in Germany we were not terribly welcome in France, the Benelux, or Denmark (German license plates). Using American, Canadian, or Australian papers we were always welcome.

 

[oggbashan]

If our locals were like that - a few are but they are a very small minority and cause disgust with most of us - our medical practices, GPs, District nurse, carers in homes, dentists, and local hospitals would all have to close.

My dentist was Finnish. Her partner was Swedish but became a British citizen sponsored by me; the current dentists are Sri Lankan.

My GP is Nigerian; the other members of the practice are Norwegian., Swedish, Australian, and a couple of English.

My oncologist is Greek; my neurologists: a junior one is English; the consultant is Omani; the nurses - I don't know. Maybe half are English white, some are British-born black and many are African.

I love them all...

 

[oggbashan]

Until about ten years ago, my brother's rural Suffolk village had no ethnic variety at all. My brother and his family from NE Kent and Birmingham were seen as furriners!

Then a Chinese family opened a local Fish and Chip shop. They diversified and now sell fish and chips, pizza, kebabs, Chinese and Indian food. They were regarded with extreme suspicion at first but with tolerance. Now they are an essential part of the village.

About five years ago two black families bought houses in the village. It took a couple of years before the locals accepted that they weren't going to turn the village into a ganja-based Jamaican colony. They acted just like everyone else and now - they are just another set of villagers. That is amazing after such a short time and owes more to the incomers' tolerance than the villagers' acceptance.

 

[Emirus]

The moronic British National Party and their supporters have always been anti-African and anti-Asian and that’s been their attitude for decades and has nothing to do with Brexit. That is not the attitude of the vast majority of the British people.

The number of illegal immigrants coming from the Middle East, supposedly because their lives are in danger, are supposed to stop in the first safe country they come to, which is Greece. But they don’t do so. They travel through other safe countries to France and then come across the English Channel in small boats many of which are unseaworthy. They are grown men often pretending to be of school age. The French deny it but they do everything to assist them because they don’t want them. Nothing to do with Brexit.

Why do they want to come here? Because they know our government is a soft touch as regards giving them monetary benefits, free housing, free NHS medical care they haven’t paid a penny into, and not having to pay taxes UK residents who have spent all their working life in this country and paid all the taxes demanded of them. Them not being wanted in this country has nothing to do with Brexit.

Anyone who is going to be of benefit to the UK, and not sponge off the state, is and always have been welcome in this country whatever their colour or nationality. Nothing to do with Brexit.

Eastern European people who come to this country are always welcome, providing they contribute, because they are renowned as hard workers. Nothing to do with Brexit.

Every country has its racists, some more than others, particularly in the largest countries but racism has not been caused by Brexit either in the UK or other European countries. Nothing to do with Brexit.

 

[Emirus]

And yet I still don't give a fuck

Okay.

 

[Emirus]

I think that's the right call.

Okay.

 

[Emirus]

If our locals were like that - a few are but they are a very small minority and cause disgust with most of us - our medical practices, GPs, District nurse, carers in homes, dentists, and local hospitals would all have to close.

My dentist was Finnish. Her partner was Swedish but became a British citizen sponsored by me; the current dentists are Sri Lankan.

My GP is Nigerian; the other members of the practice are Norwegian., Swedish, Australian, and a couple of English.

My oncologist is Greek; my neurologists: a junior one is English; the consultant is Omani; the nurses - I don't know. Maybe half are English white, some are British-born black and many are African.

I love them all...

Exactly my sentiments.