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Taliaquin posted:I have to disagree with posters who've said there is no real culture shock. The culture shock I experienced when I moved here was massive, even overwhelming at times. Yeah, agreed; I'm a Briton who moved to the US 13 years ago and then back to the UK 3 years ago and I got culture shock both ways, weirdly enough. On the plus side, having a British accent is probably more of an advantage in the US than vice versa 
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Jun 9, 2014 21:54
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feedmegin posted:On the plus side, having a British accent is probably more of an advantage in the US than vice versa Did you get a lot of comments about your British accent?
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Jun 9, 2014 22:12
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whiteshark12 posted:Did you get a lot of comments about your British accent? Depending on context, but yeah, reasonably often. Funniest was when I was in a Shadowrun game, playing a British character (yes I am a huge nerd) and apparently one of the other players complimented me on my acting skills to the GM, but thought I was pretty weird for never dropping character... (Actually, I am absolutely terrible at imitating accents, unfortunately)
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Jun 9, 2014 22:21
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Britons and Australians seem much better at imitating American accents than vice versa. Every Canadian I meet I assume is American unless they say otherwise, never heard one say eh or aboot either.
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Jun 9, 2014 22:26
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Soviet Commubot posted:Most people I know heat water in a microwave if they're making tea or hot chocolate or something. Coffee, the most common hot drink by far, is made in a coffee maker. That really depends, here in southern California gas range/stoves are ubiquitous and I'm not entirely sure why (easily available and cheap natural gas?). Other parts of the US I've lived in have been universally electric. Gas heats up much faster than electric, I personally boil my water in a kettle on the stove and make coffee using a French press. Drip coffee machines are very common in American households, basically an electric kettle which drips the hot water over the coffee grounds (on a filter). That makes lovely coffee though  If you make tea it's usually just one or two cups, you heat the water in the microwave or on the stove and steep it in the cup. Our coffee and tea cultures seem somewhat like the inverse of each other.
Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Jun 9, 2014 |
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Jun 9, 2014 22:26
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Mustang posted:Britons and Australians seem much better at imitating American accents than vice versa. I lived in Michigan (practically Canada  and it took me a few years before I could hear the difference. It's subtle, but there. (Like New Zealand vs Australia)And yeah, every stove I came across in the US was electric. I missed the hell out of gas hobs and am very glad to have them again. So much nicer to cook on, but back in the 1950s electricity was ~the future~ I guess and the US mostly switched to that.
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Jun 9, 2014 22:31
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Depends on the region whether you have mostly gas or electric stoves. Here in the US South we make ice tea by the gallon and add sugar. Its dirt cheap to make now but originally it was a luxury item since tea, sugar and ice were expensive, especially the ice. Some people make it so sweet you think you're going to become diabetic while others might only add a bit of sugar. Even immigrant ethnic restaurants in the South offer sweet tea.
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Jun 9, 2014 22:47
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Hello Internet reminded me of another small difference: Landline phones in the UK are still a thing. You need them (or need them to not get charged a lot of money) to call most businesses. With some exceptions like Virgin fiber, you need to pay for telephone service to get internet. In my apartment, it's also linked to the gate intercom.
Dominoes fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Jun 9, 2014 |
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Jun 9, 2014 23:22
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We don't do God. Seriously. Regular church attendance currently stands at about 6% of the population, and the average age of a churchgoer is 51. There's a big spike at Christmas to sing carols because carols are nice, and a smaller one at Easter, and aside from that nobody really gives a gently caress. There's very few places where churchgoing is an integral part of social life like you'll find in Dullsville, USA. Yes, the Queen is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England and styles herself (among many other things) "Defender of the Faith". If you do join us, you may consider yourself properly acclimatised when you see this as a mildly interesting oddity instead of an utterly surreal contradiction.
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Jun 10, 2014 01:16
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We do however do sectarianism. This is though unlikely to be a major issue outside of Scotland or Ulster. Earlier today my flatmate described a property we were looking at as "behind the cathedral" and I looked at him as though he was a mentalist. "The cathedral" is of course on the opposite end of town unless you're a papist. And I'm jewish.
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Jun 10, 2014 02:12
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The_White_Crane posted:
I had appendicitis as a teenager, probably ~12 years ago. My experience was actually pretty similar to yours: I felt horrible pain in the morning, went to my GP in the afternoon, he said "get this kid to the hospital" and off we went, I had surgery that evening and everything turned out fine in the end. The thing is, I had great insurance because my dad works for the state gov't and my mom works for the hospital where I was treated. So my experience is probably the best possible outcome you could hope to have in the States, and I'm guessing that it still cost at least $20k out of pocket.
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Jun 10, 2014 02:40
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mossyfisk posted:We do however do sectarianism. This is though unlikely to be a major issue outside of Scotland or Ulster. Hey, I'm Jewish, too. Not religious in the slightest though. Are there good delis and bagel shops over 'thar?
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Jun 10, 2014 02:57
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feedmegin posted:Yeah, agreed; I'm a Briton who moved to the US 13 years ago and then back to the UK 3 years ago and I got culture shock both ways, weirdly enough. Is an American accent an advantage at all in the UK? 
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Jun 10, 2014 03:10
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Tao Jones posted:Is an American accent an advantage at all in the UK? I was told that I had a movie star voice when I was on the phone with Sky.
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Jun 10, 2014 03:20
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Mustang posted:Britons and Australians seem much better at imitating American accents than vice versa.
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Jun 10, 2014 05:24
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Mustang posted:Britons and Australians seem much better at imitating American accents than vice versa. I think the only actor I’ve ever seen do a good accent was Robert Downey Jnr, the rest have been abysmal to the point of feeling the need to don an Australian flag and "glass cunts" while screaming Nationalist rhetoric. We don't have much in the way of identity except for the unique accent - a friend of mine once likened the butchering of our accent akin to lighting the American flag on fire (or putting the milk in tea first). She was born in a refugee camp. *** EDIT: Found a vid explaining. TL;DR it’s our tongue. Essentially it sits in a neutral position which most other accents don’t speak with, if you want to do an Australian accent you basically need to unlearn how to speak, whereas all we need to do is learn to do something different. Unless of course you only speak with a Broad accent. Broad accents (think Steve Irwin or a blender) take a bit of effort to break out of. Rougey fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 06:00
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feedmegin posted:I lived in Michigan (practically Canada I'm guessing you lived in the southeast of the state, everywhere I lived up north had gas everything. Of course, this is probably because I always lived in really poor communities where nobody had the money to make the switch. Mustang posted:Depends on the region whether you have mostly gas or electric stoves. Things like food are a lot more regional in the US than foreigners and even most Americans think. This is especially true east of the Mississippi although it is still true to the west to a somewhat lesser degree. This goes for a lot of things, the US is obviously more homogeneous than Europe but not as homogeneous as lots of people think. Cicero posted:It kind of sounds like the various British regional accents are stronger or more prevalent than the North American ones. I'm American and at least with people who are two of [urban/educated/affluent] I generally can't tell what part of the country they're from at all (also includes non-Quebecois Canadians). I don't want to sound like a dick here but I think it's more that you need to get out more, people that are any two of those three things are a small minority of Americans and not really representative of the whole. The UK certainly has a lot more and arguably more divergent accents, which makes sense given they've had a lot more time to develop them, but the US has strong regional accents that are actually getting stronger rather than homogenizing. http://edition.cnn.com/2011/09/29/living/american-accents-ireport/
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Jun 10, 2014 10:48
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Rougey posted:Australians cheat IIRC, the way we speak makes it extremely easy to adapt and pull off other accents. The original Mad Max was dubbed by American English speakers in America, because test audiences found the Australian accents too hard to understand.
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Jun 10, 2014 11:21
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Trin Tragula posted:We don't do God. TCD posted:I was told that I had a movie star voice when I was on the phone with Sky.
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Jun 10, 2014 11:36
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I have an American friend who lived here in the UK for the past 8 years. He told me his parents were really worried when he first moved to the UK as they thought we didn't have basic stuff like washing machines and, this is the weird one, real underwear  I pressed him on that one quite hard and all he could say was his parents thought we used drawstring cloth garments or something and not elastic. I would be curious to know if a lot of American's view the rest of the world as a bit poor and rubbish compared to them.Taliaquin posted:Regarding this, I've found that it's the general assumption here, unless you wear a clear indicator of faith like a headscarf, that you're an atheist. People here are so surprised to find out that I'm not an atheist and I've found myself apologizing for it. However, they're absolutely fascinated by stories about my Christian fundamentalist parents. This is true. When I was a kid we had one girl in our whole year who was the 'weird Christian one' because she wore t-shirts that said 'God is great' and stuff. Nobody really thought about religion much at all, and the Christian girl was given odd looks because she was a bit too keen on God and it was really out of place.
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Jun 10, 2014 17:01
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Dr Scoofles posted:I have an American friend who lived here in the UK for the past 8 years. He told me his parents were really worried when he first moved to the UK as they thought we didn't have basic stuff like washing machines and, this is the weird one, real underwear I get weird questions like that about France whenever I go home. One guy straight up called me a liar when I told him that French people have TV and Internet just like Americans do 
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Jun 10, 2014 17:11
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Soviet Commubot posted:I'm guessing you lived in the southeast of the state, everywhere I lived up north had gas everything. Of course, this is probably because I always lived in really poor communities where nobody had the money to make the switch. Close enough, Lansing then Ann Arbor. Hmm - is it perhaps not so much poor/rich as rural/urban (and yes, I know there's an overlap)? I can imagine gas being much easier out in the sticks, and come to think of it I think my ex sister in law living in a trailer near Hillsdale had a gas tank out back for fuel. Edit: I did have one fairly dim cousin of my ex-wife's asking if we had cows in England 
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Jun 10, 2014 18:53
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majestic12 posted:I had appendicitis as a teenager, probably ~12 years ago. My experience was actually pretty similar to yours: I felt horrible pain in the morning, went to my GP in the afternoon, he said "get this kid to the hospital" and off we went, I had surgery that evening and everything turned out fine in the end. If you paid at least $20k out of pocket for appendicitis, you did/do not have "great insurance". Either that or your best guess is hyperbole based on your perception of our healthcare system.
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Jun 10, 2014 19:18
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Soviet Commubot posted:I get weird questions like that about France whenever I go home. One guy straight up called me a liar when I told him that French people have TV and Internet just like Americans do Do Frenchmen ask you strange questions about the United States?
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Jun 10, 2014 19:19
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Dr Scoofles posted:I have an American friend who lived here in the UK for the past 8 years. He told me his parents were really worried when he first moved to the UK as they thought we didn't have basic stuff like washing machines and, this is the weird one, real underwear American's do view most of the world as a cesspit though I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that about Britain in particular. Was he from some podunk town in the Midwestern US? They're the butt of jokes from both East and West coast Americans. Americans have felt superior to everyone else since before the US ever existed and it's pretty clear where it originates: Britain. Alexis De Tocqueville posted:The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction. Switch out America for England and it's still just as true, American's have long seen themselves as a "City upon a Hill."
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Jun 10, 2014 19:45
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feedmegin posted:Close enough, Lansing then Ann Arbor. Hmm - is it perhaps not so much poor/rich as rural/urban (and yes, I know there's an overlap)? I can imagine gas being much easier out in the sticks, and come to think of it I think my ex sister in law living in a trailer near Hillsdale had a gas tank out back for fuel. I suppose it might be a question of whether or not the electrical grid can handle the extra draw of heating, especially in the winter but I honestly have no idea. I grew up in the Mt. Pleasant area but not actually in Mt. P so the rural/urban thing would make sense. Kopijeger posted:Do Frenchmen ask you strange questions about the United States? Most of the time I get what I assume are the standard, and sometimes strange, questions about guns, food and healthcare although occasionally I get some really weird ones. I suppose the most common weird thing is less a question than an assumption, that I must have been to New York tons of times the way most French people have been to Paris. A lot of them seem to have a hard time really grasping that New York isn't the center of the US the way Paris is in France. When they find out I've never been to NYC it just blows their minds.
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Jun 10, 2014 19:47
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Soviet Commubot posted:Most of the time I get what I assume are the standard, and sometimes strange, questions about guns, food and healthcare although occasionally I get some really weird ones. I suppose the most common weird thing is less a question than an assumption, that I must have been to New York tons of times the way most French people have been to Paris. A lot of them seem to have a hard time really grasping that New York isn't the center of the US the way Paris is in France. When they find out I've never been to NYC it just blows their minds. My ex-parents-in-law were big fans of Mt Pleasant because casinos, but I never visited there myself. As for Paris - same as with London in the UK. The scale/balance difference (both capital-city-to-rest-of-country and the sheer distance in miles) is really hard for us Europeans to get, sometimes. I did visit NYC, once, but that's because I had to move to NJ for a year for a job so it was genuinely about as far away as London is from, like, the Midlands. (Don't do this, incidentally. I got to visit NYC only once because said job was a 60-hours-a-week nightmare from hell and I didn't have time or energy to do anything else.)
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Jun 10, 2014 20:07
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Dr Scoofles posted:I would be curious to know if a lot of American's view the rest of the world as a bit poor and rubbish compared to them. Very much yes. I've been told that I'm lucky to be here (USA), especially if people find out I'm South African. (also yes, people here love my 'sexy british accent') since most Americans can't tell the difference between SA/AUS/NZ/UK accents.
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Jun 10, 2014 20:17
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Dr Scoofles posted:I have an American friend who lived here in the UK for the past 8 years. He told me his parents were really worried when he first moved to the UK as they thought we didn't have basic stuff like washing machines and, this is the weird one, real underwear I don't think you would get this in most major cities, but there are a lot of isolated rural conservative spots in America that are under the impression the US is the only "modern" country and all others are full of backwards barbarians. Sorry my country is full of dumb people  Also yeah most Americans haven't traveled as much and so are really only used to other American speech, so British/Australian accents sound very exotic to us. Even though people say you can use those accents to pick up women (or men) in a bar as a joke its actually very true. Axetrain fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Jun 10, 2014 |
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Jun 10, 2014 20:50
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Electric kettles are likely also less popular in America as they take about twice as long to boil there than in the UK due to America having lower voltage without significantly increased amps.
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Jun 10, 2014 20:56
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Dr Scoofles posted:I would be curious to know if a lot of American's view the rest of the world as a bit poor and rubbish compared to them. That's a pretty common attitude among the older generations. I think it stems from most of their exposure to what "overseas" is like coming from reports about life under Communism in the Cold War or having served in Vietnam during the war. If pressed, people with that sort of attitude might concede that Canada might be modern and Japan must be because of all the TVs and cars they sell us, but anywhere else is full of provincials, heathens, or terrorists.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:37
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thrakkorzog posted:The original Mad Max was dubbed by American English speakers in America, because test audiences found the Australian accents too hard to understand. When Gillard (our last decent PM, the red headed) went to America as Minister for Educated, she took some time for a media opportunity to read a book to school children. The kids asked her what language she was speaking. I'm suprised you lot could understand Irwin half the time, but I suppose that was part of the fun. That typical iconic Australian accent is not actually the way the majority of people down here speak - it's primarily spoken in Rural areas - also Queensland but gently caress Queensland. Most of the population speak in a general accent - except when overseas. Then everyone likes to speak with a broad accent because unless you go full broad very few people will ping you as Australian. It's as if, as American, the only way to be recognised as an American outside of the USA was to throw on a thick Bostonian accent and say wicked every couple of sentences. EDIT: redreader posted:Very much yes. I've been told that I'm lucky to be here (USA), especially if people find out I'm South African. (also yes, people here love my 'sexy british accent') since most Americans can't tell the difference between SA/AUS/NZ/UK accents. Still, the ladies love "those British accents" so gently caress it, call me pip and I'll clean your chimney. Rougey fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Jun 11, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 00:43
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feedmegin posted:Also, while not nearly as common as in the UK, both electric and stovetop kettles exist (the former take longer to boil than UK ones, though). That boiling speed might have to do with voltage. The standard US wall socket gives you 120 volts while UK sockets give you 230. Double the power:faster boiling.
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Jun 11, 2014 05:10
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Free healthcare, water that boils faster, ugh, what *isn't* better about the UK? Also, legit question. I've never been to London, how's it compare to say, New York? Like just hustle and bustle and general-vibe wise.
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Jun 11, 2014 05:23
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Rougey posted:It's as if, as American, the only way to be recognised as an American outside of the USA was to throw on a thick Bostonian accent and say wicked every couple of sentences. I'm a Californian and when I'm overseas I tend to put a bit of an affected twang into my words that usually isn't there. It's like, subconscious or something. I bet a lot of english speakers do something like this when traveling to english-speaking countries.
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Jun 11, 2014 05:55
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appropriatemetaphor posted:Free healthcare, water that boils faster, ugh, what *isn't* better about the UK? Everyone's in a rush in London. Rush hour tube is loving hilarious, thousands of people crammed sardine like into a train, armpits in faces, all desperate to avoid eye contact with each other. Fun game to play, stand on the right (I think it's right) on a tube escalator. This is from someone who only travels to London for work occasionally. The British/Natural History museums are absolutely worth a look though.
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Jun 11, 2014 09:22
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haakman posted:Everyone's in a rush in London. Rush hour tube is loving hilarious, thousands of people crammed sardine like into a train, armpits in faces, all desperate to avoid eye contact with each other. Fun game to play, stand on the right (I think it's right) on a tube escalator. As a Londoner who visited New York for a week like a month ago - London is quieter. It's still busy, sure, especially in touristy places like Leicester Sq, Oxford St etc. but it's just less full on than NY is. You're supposed to stand on the right, if you want to be a prick then stand on the left (please don't).
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Jun 11, 2014 09:39
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tentish klown posted:As a Londoner who visited New York for a week like a month ago - London is quieter. It's still busy, sure, especially in touristy places like Leicester Sq, Oxford St etc. but it's just less full on than NY is. As a severely jetlagged person I stood on the left my first morning in London a few months ago and got told off. We stand on the left in Australia and I just assumed we'd picked it up from you guys.EDIT - Left, I mean, not right. Octy fucked around with this message at 09:45 on Jun 12, 2014 |
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Jun 11, 2014 10:05
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Octy posted:As a severely jetlagged person I stood on the right my first morning in London a few months ago and got told off. I've never understood why it would be the other way in the UK. In Australia it's the same as if you're driving, keep left unless overtaking.
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