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System Metternich posted:More like oldcomplaintless "Village" is an old fashioned term almost no one would use in most contexts outside of describing some kind of storybook theme park or place where Amish people live.
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Feb 18, 2017 08:43
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That's really more a question of vocabulary & legal jurisdiction. Village isn't really in common usage in American English in that sense. A lot of states don't use the word village at all. I don't think any place on the west coast is called a village unless they're trying to be quaint. However apparently 20 (of the 50) states do have villages as a legal entity...it depends on how they're viewed in government hierarchy rather than size. Sovereignty over it's territory / citizens factors in all legal definitions of city versus town, village, etc. City is usually the largest and most autonomous. A town or community may be mostly administrated by the county, etc. In terms of general conception, maybe a city has tall buildings? There really is no recognized universal definition.
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Feb 18, 2017 08:47
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System Metternich posted:Thought of another question: I hardly ever see Americans discussing “villages“, it's always “towns“ or “cities“, and the perception of size seems different as well - I've seen towns with like 40,000 people still being described as “small“. What would you say makes a village and separates small from mid-sized and big towns? It's also possible to have a suburb of a large city be primarily a residential bedroom community for the commercial industry that exists in the larger city. Such suburbs may also cater to this image by having "village" in its name even if it's legally a city and has a population of 20,000-40,000.
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Feb 18, 2017 18:49
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A village in America is maybe 5 or 6 thatched roof cottages being terrorized by a dragon. I have never in my life heard anyplace in the states described as such
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Feb 19, 2017 01:04
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The only places called villages in America are either shopping centers, part of a theme park, or neighborhoods in cities with the word village in their name. Villages in the sense of communities are the places in Europe a lot of our ancestors sold everything they owned to get away from. There's not really a distinct word for "a group of five or six houses and a store of some sort" in American English. Some parts of America are so thinly populated that that counts as a town. My parents retired to a rural area where the local "city" has a population of about 25,000. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Feb 19, 2017 |
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Feb 19, 2017 01:11
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Tiggum posted:The "it's just a tool" argument always seems to me to be blatantly ignoring the very obvious fact that tools have specific purposes and the purpose of a gun (as a tool) is to kill things. This is probably late, I am still making my way through the thread. I Keep a pistol in the trunk of my car, not to shoot people, but to humanely put down any animals that i hit with my car that dont die outright. Even animals that have been hit by other people. I hit a deer the other day. did what i could to avoid it but i hit its rear quarters and broke both back legs and spine. I shot it on the side of the road. Much better than it dragging itself through the woods and starving. I called the game warden and the deer was was picked up and given to families that were doing without. I dont think i am John Wayne, but a gun is a tool when you need it.
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Feb 19, 2017 03:49
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The term "village" in the US is actually used fairly extensively but far from uniformly: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_(United_States) It's generally a municipal or census definition however. In my region small towns with an independent municipal government are generally referred to as boroughs. LogisticEarth fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Feb 19, 2017 |
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Feb 19, 2017 04:38
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:There's not really a distinct word for "a group of five or six houses and a store of some sort" in American English. Some parts of America are so thinly populated that that counts as a town. My parents retired to a rural area where the local "city" has a population of about 25,000. When I lived in Idaho, I couldn't help but think of Boise as a town, because it was so dang small and sparsely populated. Los Angeles, New York? Yeah, those are cities.
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Feb 19, 2017 06:53
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System Metternich posted:But other friends who have been there told me that Americans basically take the car for every distance that's longer than the car itself. That's hyperbole, of course, but which distance would you be ready to walk instead of drive? Every Wednesday I walk to choir practice and back which Google Maps tells me is 1km (~0,6 miles) or about 12 minutes of walking each. Would you take the car for that? And would it even be feasible to walk in your average American town? It definitely depends on the area but like others have said, in a lot of places sidewalks and other means of foot traffic are either nonexistent or essentially ornamental. In one place I lived, the walk to the grocery store was "only" half a mile, but it was half a mile down a six-lane road with a 50mph speed limit, and at one point the sidewalk ended for a stretch and you'd just walk along in the dirt next to the big barrier wall that protected the suburb from road noise. I've known people whose backyards bordered a shopping center, but because of the way the neighborhood was laid out it was a two mile drive from their garage to get there. In the really big shopping center we used to drive from one store to another because it was preferable to trekking across a quarter mile of busy, boiling blacktop. A lot of American public infrastructure is essentially anti-walking.
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Feb 19, 2017 20:23
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Scudworth posted:I've spent many months in America staying at friends houses all over the map, getting more of a feel for day to day stuff than a usual tourist does, and I will tell you the #1 craziest poo poo about the USA - So is this a cultural thing? I grew up in the northeastern US, then lived all over the world for 20 years before settling in the midwest, and outside of asians, I've only ever met one other person (an american with a european immigrant wife) who insisted I remove my shoes before entering his home. He did have some beautiful hardwood floors so maybe he just didn't want them to get scuffed. So what's the deal? Is it some kind of hygiene thing (tracking in germs)? I'm curious. Just so you know, I'm one of those weirdos who doesn't like walking around without shoes unless I'm at the beach.
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Feb 20, 2017 00:59
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MightyJoe36 posted:So is this a cultural thing? I grew up in the northeastern US, then lived all over the world for 20 years before settling in the midwest, and outside of asians, I've only ever met one other person (an american with a european immigrant wife) who insisted I remove my shoes before entering his home. He did have some beautiful hardwood floors so maybe he just didn't want them to get scuffed. Cleanliness; tracking dirt/mud/whatever in from outside and yeah scuff marks.
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Feb 20, 2017 01:41
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It's not germs it's just dirty. Literal dirt, from the ground, half the reason we wear shoes in the first place,shouldn't be on carpets or floors of a home.
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Feb 20, 2017 01:58
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I've actually had someone say "oh right, asian" to me before when taking off shoes and it's just really bizarre to me. Do you just track dirt around and vacuum more? Do you wear your shoes to bed? In the shower? Do you keep the shoerack next to your bed? I just cannot understand why you'd want to keep your shoes on inside. You can wear slippers instead, which are warm and way more comfy. Do you just never buy slippers? "You can have my shoes when you pry them from my cold dead feet" seems to be a way more universally accepted sentiment in the US.
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Feb 20, 2017 05:51
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Everyone where I live always takes off their shoes at the front door and to be extra polite I also remove all clothing.
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Feb 20, 2017 05:53
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Jenalia posted:I've actually had someone say "oh right, asian" to me before when taking off shoes and it's just really bizarre to me. Do you just track dirt around and vacuum more? Do you wear your shoes to bed? In the shower? Do you keep the shoerack next to your bed? I just cannot understand why you'd want to keep your shoes on inside. You can wear slippers instead, which are warm and way more comfy. Do you just never buy slippers? "You can have my shoes when you pry them from my cold dead feet" seems to be a way more universally accepted sentiment in the US. Have you never been to a house where people don't do this? It just doesn't make that much of a difference, dirt-wise
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Feb 20, 2017 06:51
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I think this may again be connected to the diving vs. walking question? Like yesterday I was walking to my grandmother's, and because it had rained the day before the wood trails were super muddy, and not removing the shoes at the door would have meant spreading said mud everywhere. Whereas if I would have driven there I could theoretically have left the shoes on without dirtying the whole place up.
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Feb 20, 2017 08:12
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System Metternich posted:I think this may again be connected to the diving vs. walking question? Like yesterday I was walking to my grandmother's, and because it had rained the day before the wood trails were super muddy, and not removing the shoes at the door would have meant spreading said mud everywhere. Whereas if I would have driven there I could theoretically have left the shoes on without dirtying the whole place up. No, keeping your shoes on is also the norm in walkable parts of the US, and the generally much more walkable UK. The secret is that if your shoes are super muddy, then you take them off. (or brush them off, or whatever)
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Feb 20, 2017 08:42
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I used to cut across grass and people looked at me like I was completely insane. Like, across a square people will walk 2 over sidewalk as opposed to root 2 over grass. If all you do is walk over sidewalk, then sure, your feet will be pretty clean anyway. Why not leave the shoes on. But Americans are also funny about being barefoot in general. If I run out to grab my paper and am barefoot my neighbors look at me like I'm insane. Don't I know there could be broken glass? I mean, sure, theoretically but realistically where I live people aren't dropping bottles on the ground very often. And even if they are my feet have callouses so I'd have to be pretty impaired for them to do damage. You step on a piece of glass, you notice it, it hurts, you pull it out of your foot. That used to happen to me a lot in college (where broken bottles were pretty much everywhere) but you usually don't even bleed. You feel a prick, you pull the glass out, but because your callous protects you there isn't even any blood. Why buy shoes when your body makes them for you?
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Feb 20, 2017 09:18
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How is the political climate currently in the state and city that you live in? This has been said to death itt already, but rural tends to swing right and urban left. I live in rural Indiana, so folks around here are, politically, optimistic at the moment. The closest city to me is Cincinnati, Ohio, which seems fairly mixed, depending on the election cycle. But I do not live there. What kind of food culture does your local area have? if you're into cooking, or simply know of some local delicacy, please share a specific dish, with a recipe if you have one, of something that you enjoy making or buying yourself that would be representative of your local food culture. This is hard for me to answer because I am from a military family that moved all the time, so I had trouble absorbing local cultures like that. I live on a farm that has been in my family for generations but I have only personally lived here for ten years. I can say that I never heard of eating rooster gonads before I moved here. Mostly I just get nagged by my Cincinnati relatives about Skyline Chili, which is a kind of chili served over pasta topped with shredded cheese. It sucks. The only people I've ever known that liked it, grew up eating it, and have been brainwashed. How is religious life and worship for you in the states? As an outsider, it appears as if religious life might vary pretty wildly from state to state, with some US areas having markedly different religious demographics than others. I'd be especially interested in whether people experience any prejudice or bias against their religious practice, or lack thereof, in their home states, or from US society at large. Indiana, like a lot of Great Lakes/Rust Belt states, has a heavy Mid and Eastern European bent. Bavarian Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist influences, but also Amish and Mennonite communities. I myself am Catholic. Pretty much any rural American area will have Baptists and non-denominational Christians as well. The Amish and Mennonite communities are a fairly unique subset of their areas. They often run construction businesses in their locales, for instance. They are building a substantial amount of my brother's new house. Though they shy away from things like domestic electricity or owning motor vehicles, they do not hesitate to ask for rides to and fro from their "English" neighbors (they pay a fair fare, of course). There are many Amish in my area and I have never seen or heard tell of bigotry against them. The two big metro areas in Indiana are Indianapolis, and Gary, which is actually an off-shoot of Chicago. Both tend to be more liberal, but I don't know much about them other than that; minority religions are so limited in rural Indiana that I doubt direct persecution could even be an issue. Rural Indiana has a tiny racial minority population. I know the KKK had a strong presence here a few decades ago and there were things like cross-burnings, but nothing since that I know of. Many of my nieces and nephews are adopted people of color, and in our own extremely limited anecdotal experience, we've never encountered racism here. I realize that doesn't mean much. Sharing what you work with or study for, or if you have any specialized knowledge, would imo also be interesting, because it would allow follow-up questions for specific fields, like, imo someone working with law or healthcare would probably have interesting insights on those areas. I own a farm, I raise livestock for meat, mainly for the organic niche market. Small-scale farming, like most farms around here. Some pigs, lots of poultry, a cattle herd, and sheep. Not really so different from the small farms I saw in Europe. How familiar are you with other US states than the one you live in? Like, how many different ones have you lived in, or visited for a shorter or longer period of time. Are some states essentially as foreign to you, or even more, than some foreign countries might be? Do you feel as if there is animosity between your home state and other states? I moved around a lot when I was younger because my dad was in the Air Force, and after he retired we traveled the US quite a bit because our extended family is quite scattered. I was born in Germany, and we traveled (Western) Europe quite a lot before he was assigned a new spot in the states. I've been to France, the British Isles, Ireland, Italy, and Switzerland. I've been to every state in the eastern portion of America, all states in the South, some in the Plains States, but none in the West, unfortunately. No state I ever visited seemed foreign, just perhaps the accent was a bit different. As far as I can tell, we have the normal rivalries from region to region, state to state, and even town to town that everywhere else has. Native southerners and native northerners tend to hate each other more than that, though. Can't say much about the other regions. Have you experienced any stereotypes against your nationality or state when travelling? Nothing that your typical tourist wouldn't expect, I think. It was never a problem. Tourists are usually annoying. If someone was to visit the US for the first time, or your state or city in particular, what sights would you recommend? Forget New York, everyone and their dog goes there. It is not as great as the movies and poo poo make it out to be. Go to the Rocky Mountains, or the Smoky Mountains of the eastern South, or the Grand Canyon. America has many insanely astonishing and mind-melting natural wonders. As for my state of Indiana in particular.....eh, it is pretty much like farmland anywhere, a lot is flat and empty, some is rolling and pastoral, with copts of trees and meadows. Very pretty, but not spectacular. Indianapolis is a decent city I suppose. Zippy the Bummer fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Feb 20, 2017 |
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Feb 20, 2017 09:20
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How does voting work? Like, the physical aspects, the gritty details. How many voting offices are there? Are there really these long queus? How do the ballots look? How do you fill them in?
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Feb 20, 2017 23:47
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Namarrgon posted:How does voting work? Like, the physical aspects, the gritty details. How many voting offices are there? Are there really these long queus? How do the ballots look? How do you fill them in? There are as many answers to this question as there are states.
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Feb 20, 2017 23:51
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RE: Village chat, in New England there are often neighborhoods in towns referred to as villages. They're not an official moniker, and they don't appear on any official paperwork of any kind. They're just a way to add a little character to one part of a town. Everyone else is correct that even 20k+ population communities are called towns. Usually cities are designated as such due to the services or commercial activity they provide and typically include far more high-density housing. There's a part of my town called "Machine Shop Village" for no reason. The signs just popped up last summer and nobody knew where they came from. The town must have just decided 2016 was a good year to start designating neighborhoods with signs. Jenalia posted:I've actually had someone say "oh right, asian" to me before when taking off shoes and it's just really bizarre to me. Do you just track dirt around and vacuum more? Do you wear your shoes to bed? In the shower? Do you keep the shoerack next to your bed? I just cannot understand why you'd want to keep your shoes on inside. You can wear slippers instead, which are warm and way more comfy. Do you just never buy slippers? "You can have my shoes when you pry them from my cold dead feet" seems to be a way more universally accepted sentiment in the US. I'm not sure how often you walk through mud and poo poo to get the impression that wearing shoes outdoors immediately makes them dirty, but you might be shocked to hear that shoes don't actually track in dirt like 95% of the time. That's what welcome mats are for.
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Feb 21, 2017 00:29
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Turdsdown Tom posted:I'm not sure how often you walk through mud and poo poo to get the impression that wearing shoes outdoors immediately makes them dirty, but you might be shocked to hear that shoes don't actually track in dirt like 95% of the time. That's what welcome mats are for. Yeah, I mean of course I'm going to take off my shoes if they're muddy, dirty, I stepped in something nasty, etc. I live in the suburbs and work in an office so it's not like I'm trudging through cow poo poo all day.
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Feb 21, 2017 00:42
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Shoes worn outdoors aren't clean, dirt is dirty, that's what is on the ground outside. And it's on your shoes.
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Feb 21, 2017 00:44
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Do you pee in jars to maintain control over your essence? What's so dirty about outside? When it's bad enough to be seriously dusty/dingy (for example, when it hasn't rained for ages) then it's dusty/dingy inside too.
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Feb 21, 2017 00:51
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Same shoes you wear in public restrooms. Oil from leaky cars in parking lots. Gum and bird poop on the sidewalk etc. To put it another way, would you lay down on the floor in your own home? Would you lay on everything you walked on today (purely from a cleanliness standpoint)? As an American I'm confused by this too.
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Feb 21, 2017 01:23
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The shoes-in-houses thing is more of a family thing, and I think it harks back to the early 20th century when it was considered inappropriate to be indoors without shoes on, which I don't think changed until the 60s. I still hear people refer to having your guests take off their shoes as "Japanese style", which is a phrase that comes up in King of the Hill and Mad Men.MightyJoe36 posted:There are as many answers to this question as there are states. Counties, even.
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Feb 21, 2017 01:59
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honda whisperer posted:To put it another way, would you lay down on the floor in your own home? Would you lay on everything you walked on today (purely from a cleanliness standpoint)? No and no. 
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Feb 21, 2017 02:44
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Shbobdb posted:Do you pee in jars to maintain control over your essence? I own a vacuum cleaner.
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Feb 21, 2017 03:04
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If I'm living someplace, I'll take my shoes off if there's carpet, leave them on for hard surfaces. If I'm visiting someone and know I'll be on carpet, I'll ask if they want my shoes off, otherwise I'll leave them on unless requested. I don't think it's a generational thing since my parents are still sticklers for taking them off but none of my grandparents ever cared at all. I don't think it's a class thing either, since one set of grandparents were uneducated and incredibly poor and the other were solidly middle class. Also nobody here in the south calls anything a village, but I think that's a thing people do in New England pretty regularly.
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Feb 21, 2017 04:22
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:Have you never been to a house where people don't do this? It just doesn't make that much of a difference, dirt-wise I have and it sucks because slippers are way more comfy than shoes, especially if you're wearing heels. Preferring shoes to slippers is crazy-talk.
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Feb 21, 2017 04:45
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For a Canadian perspective, it is common courtesy to take your shoes off in every home unless the homeowner tells you otherwise (and that's usually because they've been doing renovations and the floors are kinda dirty). Also, we totally have villages here. I grew up in a town that was a 15 minute drive from a village where my mom grew up. Over here, a village is place with less than 500 people and a hamlet has less than 50. My little brother went to school in a nearby hamlet for one year of elementary. People from the village have to come to town for a lot of basic groceries. The village was mostly comprised of some churches, a community hall, a western store (for buying saddles and stuff), a hotel and a Chinese restaurant. They also had a swimming pool with a cool Calvin and Hobbes mural, so my town's elementary school did swimming lessons there every year. The village got the swimming pool and my town got the curling rink. One thing that might be surprising about North America to Europeans is that nearly every small town or village will have it's own Chinese restaurant. I can't speak specifically to the states, but I read an interesting article a while back about Canadian Chinese restaurants. Back in the day, Asian immigrants were only allowed to run one of three business. Laundromat, convenience store or restaurant. Many of these immigrants chose restaurant, and as they began to settle on the west coast, they would move further and further inland. A family would choose to make their restaurant in a small town that didn't yet have one, so as to not compete with another restaurant. This lead to a lot of changes in traditional dishes to both suit the tastes of the rural farmers in the area and to utilize local ingredients that they had easy access to. There are regional variants of all kinds of Chinese dishes across the country! I know that might be a little off topic, but I think it's interesting! Canada in general is both very similar and very different to the US as we have a mix of American and European customs.
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Feb 21, 2017 08:48
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MightyJoe36 posted:There are as many answers to this question as there are states. This is already more interesting of itself than you might think.
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Feb 21, 2017 10:49
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Scudworth posted:Shoes worn outdoors aren't clean, dirt is dirty, that's what is on the ground outside. And it's on your shoes. Again, have you ever heard of a loving welcome mat? lmao it's not like they've been around almost as long as human civilization has built enclosed living quarters or anything. If you're that obsessive about the potential for stuff that was once outside to end up being inside, I hope you don't have any windows that open and you better just seal the doors with Quickrete barnold fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Feb 21, 2017 |
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Feb 21, 2017 17:27
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Namarrgon posted:How does voting work? Like, the physical aspects, the gritty details. How many voting offices are there? Are there really these long queus? How do the ballots look? How do you fill them in? Your voting location is usually the nearest large room to wherever you live. For me it was the community center for a little neighborhood about a mile from my apartment. Churches and schools are also common locations. You show up to your assigned location, wait in line (never mute than 15 minutes in my experience) and then get handed a ballot and a sharpee and directed to a booth. Every county I've voted in just used a big piece of card with the candidates/issues on it and yes/no bubbles next to each that you fill in. Once you finish filling out the ballot you drop it in a box and leave. Whole thing takes maybe half an hour, less if there aren't too many dumbass constitutional antecedents to vote on. Florida allows voting by mail for anyone who wants to. For that you get a ballot about 2 weeks before voting day that you either return by mail or drop off at an elections office.
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Feb 21, 2017 18:12
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Every county I've voted in just used a big piece of card with the candidates/issues on it and yes/no bubbles next to each that you fill in. Once you finish filling out the ballot you drop it in a box and leave. In the light of the (obviously false) voter fraud claims; is their any measure that ensures you can only vote once? We get mailed a physical voter card about a month in advance with your name, which has to correspond with your id when you show up, and you don't get the card back.
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Feb 21, 2017 18:24
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Namarrgon posted:In the light of the (obviously false) voter fraud claims; is their any measure that ensures you can only vote once? We get mailed a physical voter card about a month in advance with your name, which has to correspond with your id when you show up, and you don't get the card back. We have a voter ID card/number that gets checked. I assume they put it into some kind of system and would notice if you voted twice but I don't really know tbh. There is definitely voter fraud here though. Every year some local politician gets caught trying to cheat, and a lot of carpetbagging yankee snowbird assholes vote in 2 states.
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Feb 21, 2017 18:34
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Nessa posted:For a Canadian perspective, it is common courtesy to take your shoes off in every home unless the homeowner tells you otherwise (and that's usually because they've been doing renovations and the floors are kinda dirty) Same. I moved to Canada from the US, and the first thing I thought was weird was that everyone took off their shoes when entering the home. It makes sense, but I don't remember that from growing up in the US.
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Feb 21, 2017 22:57
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I think at this point it's almost a family-by-family thing in a lot of western cultures - my family would literally never wear shoes inside the house but my wife and her family never take the loving things off until they're getting into bed or the shower or whatnot. It seems super weird to me to be chilling at home wearing shoes watching TV, but that's just how my family was. To be fair, a good chunk of my family now lives in Canada so idk maybe the shoeless spirits called them home.
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Feb 21, 2017 23:03
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It's literally family-by-family and subregional.
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Feb 21, 2017 23:17
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