I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it’s pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that’d be rather time consuming.
Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can’t ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.
edit: the high number of replies mentioning “swimming” made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.
Winter driving and shoulder season driving. Snow, ice, black ice, freezing rain, slush, hydroplaning, driveway clearing, walkway maintenance, windshield scraping, and keeping an emergency kit for breakdowns. Stuff like that.
Or driving in general. As an American who didn’t get a driver’s license until I was 21 (gasp! so old) due to some reasons, I can attest that many, many people here simply can’t comprehend the idea of someone over 17 or so not having one. I got turned away from a hotel once because they didn’t know how to use a passport as an ID.
The only other people I’ve met with this problem were immigrants. And we were always able to bond over lamentations of how difficult it is to solve this problem… the entire system to get a license here is built around the assumption that everyone does it in high school, so every step of the way is some roadblock like “simply drive to your driving test appointment”…
As an American who didn’t get a driver’s license until I was 21 (gasp! so old)
I’m now 41, never made a license - there wasn’t really much of a need until now. I can get anywhere I want with a combination of bicycle and public transport.
Guessing you live in or close-ish some kind of urban center? I got my license at 18 cause the closest bus stop from my parents’ place was a 30 minute walk from the closest bus stop, getting literally anywhere useful was at the very minimum another 30 minutes on top of this, and getting downtown was another 45-50 minutes of bus+metro over those last two stretches, assuming no traffic. I currently live 60km outside of town, it’s the exact same story. 20 minute walk to the bus, 30 minute bus ride to the train station, and 45 minutes of train to get downtown. North America was built for cars, for better or (especially) for worse, our public transit infrastructure is terrible, things are so far from each other, nothing was built for it…
When I moved out of my parents’ place and got an apartment in the city with my wife though, we managed without a car. Bus/metro/walking got us everywhere we needed for every day life, and we used car sharing services when we needed to go out of town. I wouldn’t mind going back to this, but living in town would be literally twice as expensive, and we’re deeply priced out of that area if we ever want to buy, despite me making a solid 6 figures lol
North America was built by the train, it was later destroyed for the car.
Yaaaaaayyyy
Currently in Finland - single family home in a town with 46k people. Originally from a 2k village in Germany.
We have two daycares, a school and a grocery store 1km from home - here that kind of stuff is integrated in the neighbourhoods where people live. Many elementary schools, some just grades 1 and 2 - by grade 3 they can already easily travel the longer distance to another school by themselves.
Sigh. My town is even larger and more populous than yours… Really discouraging. Jobs in my field (programming) are mostly around town, and it’s too expensive for me to buy there, so unless I manage to keep working remote indefinitely, I’ll never be able to buy lol
This right here is a big one. I live in a college town in Minnesota and the students from out of state are absolute mennaces on the road in winter. My dad used to plow snow for one of the local universities. He had multiple students drive directly head on into his plow because they never cleared off any of their windshield before they started driving down the road. Luckily the snow plow tends to handily win in those situations and the plow trucks all had dash cams for exactly that reason.
You also get the people who think they’re invincible in the snow because they’re driving a 4 wheel drive truck. Newsflash, 4 wheel drive doesn’t mean you stop any better and it doesn’t do much when you’re on glare ice.
Similarly people who haven’t dealt with snow have no idea what to do when they do start sliding. So many people will just hit the brakes when they start to slide, which anyone who is familiar with winter driving should know that is the exact thing you never want to do.
Snow tires are another big one. I drive a tiny crappy rear wheel drive pickup but as long as I have a good set of snow tires on it and a few sand bags in the bed of the truck, then it still out performs any other vehicle with all weather tires in the snow.
I live in a ski town that caters to the Los Angeles crowd, and I feel you on all that. 4 wheel drive does not mean 4 wheel stop lol. We are lucky in that we don’t get that permafrost y’all get up north, usually the roads dry out a few days after a snow storm so snow tires aren’t mandatory up here. But the number of overconfident goofballs in the winter is way too high.
The big one I can think of are snow rated tires, most people have plain old radials that don’t do squat in snow. And then you have people that don’t know which axle is their drive axle and that’s always fun to watch. Thankfully I have a two door wrangler with all terrains that is a breeze to drive in snow, very rarely do I have to chain up.
What’s shoulder season driving?
So it will snow at night but warm up during the day so you’re dealing with icy conditions that have a layer of melt water on them. Or freezing rain that flash freezes at dusk to black ice. And so on.
Was a bit of a learning curve for me, having moved from subtropical Florida to Colorado the land of eternal winter. I bought a Subaru.
I had an Uber driver in Florida last time I was there (business) and when he found out I was from Canada he told me he went to Boulder in the winter for a vacation and thought it would be cool to rent a car and drive up a mountain. Yeah, he was pretty freaked out by that driving experience. :)
Good call on the Subaru. My wife had a couple and they were great in the snow. First car we ever had with heated seats, too!
When I first moved here I thought to myself,”Damn there are a lot of Subarus here.”. The reason became abundantly clear during my first winter here lol.
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A few years ago I was stuck in a terrible traffic jam, five hours through ice and snow for a drive that should’ve been 50 minutes.
A woman froze in her car in that jam, and since then I’ve made sure to always have a warm sleeping bag in the car.
Also, heated side mirrors are so nice
Speaking more than one language. Being from Switzerland, we’re required to study 2 languages (+ our native one) at school. So it’s not infrequent to encounter swiss people who speak 4+ languages
In Germany it’s also mandatory - but learning the language at school unfortunately doesn’t necessarily mean you can speak it. LucasArts adventures contributed more to my language skills than my first English teacher. I’m always shocked about the lack of English skills in a lot of Germans when I’m back visiting. Rather surprisingly one of my uncles born in the 30s spoke pretty good English, though.
We’re now living in Finland - me German, wife Russian, we each speak to the kids in our native language, between each other English. So they’re growing up with 4 languages.
It’s quite interesting to watch them grow up in that situation. When learning about a new historical figure my daughter always asks which languages they spoke - and few weeks ago she was surprised someone only spoke two languages. So I explained that some people only speak one language - she gave me a very weird look, and it took a while to convince her that I’m not just making a bad joke.
Also Germany.
I learned english in school but only enough to be able to read it.
Once I started reading user submitted short stories (lile fan fics but different) my grammar really improved.
Nowadays the content I consume is basically 90% english based.Just my capitalization and grammar structure sucks. Also my vocal skills as I have no one to talk to.
But: I really have to thank my last Grundschul and Realschul english teachers. Without those two I may have never got into english that well.
For me it was mainly watching films and tv shows in english. I’ve always preferred the original audio on anything, really. So it motivated me a good bit to become more fluent.
The only german dub I didn’t hate was Breaking Bads’, and even then I wasn’t overly fond of it.Without those two I may have never gotten into english that well.
FTFY. Not a dig, just correcting your already very good English.
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That’s a point current generation children are actively working on by following English-speaking streamers, communicating in predominantly English Discords, etc. The worst: my kid chose to prefer American English. Where did I go wrong?
Of course I know people that only speak one language.
It’s me.
In the UK I was given the option of German or French, but I wasn’t taught very well, and could barely speak a few basic sentences after 5 years of schooling. If this is a common experience, as I believe it is, it results in a populace who speaks english only. (Obviously an issue exacerbated by the commonality of English on the internet and popular media)
It blows my mind how inefficient my school must have been. Right now, I can’t imagine learning something for 5 years and retaining nothing.
I don’t know that it’s necessarily that it’s “inefficient”. Moreso that it’s difficult for a language to actually stick and be useful if you’re not immersing yourself in that language. You can go to class all you want, but if you’re not trying to actively immerse yourself in it beyond class, you’re not going to learn the language no matter how good the teacher is.
It’s relatively “easy” to immerse yourself in English language content because English has sort of become the “lingua Franca” of the modern world. Something like Polish, for example, isn’t.
I’m still not multilingual, but this concept made a lot more sense to me as to why I never retained my Spanish classes when I started learning programming. There’s a huge difference between say, reading a book / watching guides / reading tutorials on a programming language (which by itself generally won’t get you anywhere) vs actually following along, trying to make your own projects, etc.
How would a child do that, if no one in their community speaks the target language, outside of the ~90 minute class?
Well that’s exactly my point. It’s pretty “easy” to do it with English because there is so much English media to consume out there. A lot of shows and movies they want to watch are probably already in English. Their parents might speak English for work, etc. Less so with many other languages.
Same with French here in Canada. I took French for six years and I still don’t speak it at all, and I actually did really well in my French classes.
I spent more time conjugating verbs than actually speaking it.
I took Spanish for three years here in the States. Most of the Spanish I know now I learned after high school. This seems to be a pretty common problem in nations with English as the official language…
Damned be my pervasive mother tongue! I want immersion! Immersion I say!!
and could barely speak a few basic sentences after 5 years of schooling
Thanks to events earlier last century pretty much everybody at least in Europe/Russia can speak a few basic sentences, and is often more than willing to demonstrate: “Haende hoch!” (hands up), “Nicht schiessen!” (don’t shoot) and a few others.
Oddly it’s actually very common (and required in some areas) in the US to study more than one language also. What is extremely uncommon are opportunities to use a second language, so very few people actually ever become fluent. It’s a shame really.
I can speak a few languages, but only the one I speak right now is useful.
Growing up in Australia I was required to learn a second language in years 7 and 8. All I can remember is how to say “and now cumshot” thanks to my friend and I finding his dad’s porn collection.
Knowing how to swim. Basic life skill in a water-rich country, but many expats can’t.
Surprisingly, many Irish don’t know how to swim, even though it’s an island.
Never been to Ireland so apologies if this is stupid and wrong and dumb - I was under the impression that a large amount of the seaside was mountainous / cliff faces? If someone learned to swim under those conditions I’d say they’d likely be adopted by Poseidon himself.
It’s fecking cold!
Can confirm. Went swimming in Ireland in the summer once, my friend who lived there gave me a wetsuit to wear. Some other locals wore them, others didnt.
So are Irish conditions different from conditions over the sea in Wales, or…?
I can relate to this.
In Ontario, it’s often swimming.
Lots of lakes here, children need to be taught to swim
Dutchy here.
Most, if not all, children learn to swim when they reach age five. Lots of water here, it’s pretty much a basic life/survival skill.
That leads to a follow up question to people from different areas: Is swimming a regular part of school sports?
I grew up in Germany with pretty much no lakes, and we had blocks of sports classes in the swimming pool from first grade - didn’t make me a great swimmer, but I can go swim a bit in a lake without having to worry.
Now we’re in Finland (lots of lakes here), and also swimming classes take place from first grade.
It’s generally not taught by default in US schools, but some schools offer it as an elective and/or as a competitive sport. Maintaining a swimming pool is an expense that many schools, especially in poorer districts, cannot afford. Outside of schools, there are sometimes community swim classes at places like the YMCA, but those require the parents to be actively involved (like with many extracurricular activities) and usually are an additional expense.
Physical education is usually a mandatory part of US schools through high school (where students graduate at around age 18), and schools often offer students a selection of sports for PE - I did fencing one year and wrestling, gymnastics, and archery other years - but swimming requires more infrastructure than a basketball court and some padded mats.
Maintaining a swimming pool is an expense that many schools, especially in poorer districts can’t afford.
German here: the solution for most of the schools I went to and heard of (elementary) was to get a bus to drive to the next public swimming pool and they’d let us use it for a few hours. The government is funding that. And that solution worked for most of them, although I only managed to get do my swim test after swimming classes in school because I was anxious about it.
NL here. It’s similar here. I remember the bus, our school would hire a coach to take group 3 (think six-year-olds) to swimming at the pool on the other side of town. And until you had at least one diploma, you were required to come along. By group five, everyone had at least a basic swimming diploma.
When I was a kid in Florida in elementary school, that’s what most elementary schools did, mine was next door to a swimming pool so we just walked. At the time I think it actually was mandated by the state - swimming pools in backyards are extremely common there and it was an upsettingly common occurrence for kids to drown in them, so they took a week to make sure we all knew how to tread water. I don’t know if Florida kids still learn how to tread water or if swimming lessons are now woke somehow.
Physical education is usually a mandatory part of US schools through high school
In Germany the same - but swimming classes are mandated by law from grade 3 onwards, though we started going from grade 1 back then.
American here. The nearest swimming pool to my hometown was in Canada. So no.
Edit: I don’t think this is normal
Also american here and I learned to swim before I started preschool. But I also live in the land of 10,000 lakes so it’s basically a requirement here. So this is another one of those things that is going to depend on which state you’re in.
Oh yeah, I make no claim that any of my experiences are anywhere near universal. Basically no part of the American experience is.
How big distances / population are we talking here?
I was growing up in a small village, so in elementary school we went by bus to a nearby village with 7000 inhabitants and a swimming pool.
Now we’re living in a town with a population of 46000 with its own swimming pool.
Yeah, a small village. It would have been a half-hour bus ride to the town of ~5000, but they couldn’t compel all students to get a passport, and the nearest pool in the US would have been about an hour and a half away, so it was never part of the curriculum. Some kids had their parents drive them to Canada after school for private (expensive?) swimming lessons, but it wasn’t standard.
Not where I am. It never came up, despite water technically being everywhere. People just assume I guess. Still not something I can do.
I had swimming as a subject from 7 years old in school here in NL.
It used to be part of the school curriculum but it was often after most children had at least learned the basics in swimming classes.
There’s dedicated swimming schools, run by swimming pools and overseen by the government.
Same for Swiss. It’s not normal that you can’t swim here.
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We learned swimming in primary school in Germany, no opting out.
But having lived in several African countries and now in China, it’s surprising how many people not only can’t swim, but are deathly afraid of water.
Maybe that’s different from state to state. I grew up in Hessen but don’t remember having mandatory swimming lessons. I learned it mostly on my own so I don’t even have a „Seepferdchen“ and know a few people from NRW who don’t either. I remember there was the option to do it in school but not sure why I didn’t take it then.
Either way, not being able to swim at all is pretty rare in Germany because going to the pool is a popular activity for kids here.
One of my friends is 33 and she and her older sister can’t swim. They grew up on a rural farm far away from any body of water. “Where would we have learned or practiced?” Over the years, I have learned that a lot of people in the US cannot swim, especially when they were poor as kids, even in major cities near water.
One of my friends is 33 and she and her older sister can’t swim. They grew up on a rural farm far away from any body of water.
Gen-X. Lived near a lake or ocean 80% of my life. Grew up poor. Swimming lessons were a costly luxury that didn’t make the budget. Ever.
Ever indoor pool I’ve gone to in the UK has offered Swimming lessons. Not having natural bodies of water isn’t a great excuse for basic swimming. Seems to just be a culture difference since everyone I know had lessons at an indoor pool as kids
Typical for colored people
For me it’s not for a lack of trying. It just hasn’t stuck I guess.
I cannot understand how someone can not learn how to swim. Idk, it’s like never learning to jump, or skip, or run?
I know things get harder to learn when your brain isn’t plastic and malleable (i still can’t roll my Rs), but it’s still strange and seems dangerous.
Are there not more physical elements involved?
Sand. It’s coarse and rough and it gets everywhere, but that shouldn’t stop you from learning to swim, it can be made easy. Start by practicing floating and familiarizing yourself with the medium. Being at ease is essential, so stay wherever the waterline reaches your shoulders. Breathing is an important part of the ordeal, because full lungs keep you afloat. Breaststroke and sidestroke are good starting points, whichever resonates more with you. Personally I think sidestroke is better because it’s very smooth and the body falls quite naturally into this position (look it up on youtube for tutorials, it’s very simple). Last but not least, we learn by playing, so have fun. 😀
I can’t help but commend the legitimately useful comment above me, but also, yes.
Yes, swimming is more complicated than I could possibly understand because I knew how to do it before I knew what I was doing. I’m a native English speaker, so I understand privilege, but swimming seems like such a primal thing to not be able to perform. I have a relatively close friend who can not swim and is scared of open water. It’s weird to me. Maybe there’s a privilege to swimming ability in America, but he’s a white dude, so it’s weird.
I cannot understand how someone can not learn how to swim.
Poor kid. Couldn’t afford lessons. Revel in your privilege! :-D
I understand that in America, at least, there are certain elements that kept certain people from being able to learn to swim. To me, it wasn’t lessons. I was just around water? Maybe I was too young to remember any formality to me, I was around water, so I learned to swim.
Just misunderstanding social cues. Where I live (Spain), there’s a script you’re supposed to follow for certain things and newcomers, understandably, don’t understand the script. One famous example is buying new clothes. They all look great on. The idea here is that the poor person spent their hard-earned money on the new clothes. Damned right they look great on! Another would be birthdays celebrated in public venues. Perhaps someone you know is celebrating their birthday in a public venue and you had no idea they were celebrating their birthday on that day. You walk up to them and wish them a happy birthday, BUT you were not invited to this celebration. Since you weren’t invited you did not come prepared with a present for the birthday person. The safe thing to do is to ignore, socialize with the people you came with, and make like that person isn’t even there until they approach YOU. When and if they approach you, you make pretend you’re all distracted and you have to be like, “Ahhh! I didn’t see you! What’s up?” The reason: that person is buying all the invitees the drinks and food. In exchange, the invitees have brought presents. It’s a very nuanced and weird situation all of us have encountered. We err on the fear of not having brought a present because we had no idea because we were not invited.
That’s interesting. Would you please further explain the clothes shopping thing? Is it that it is rude for a shopkeeper or, say, the people you may be shopping with to say anything except “That looks great on you”?
It’s more like after they bought the new clothes. Like, your friend bought new clothes and wants to show you what they bought. It could be a friend, a brother, a sister, a cousin, an aunt, anybody. While shopping for clothes, before they buy the clothes, is the right time to criticize. It’s perfectly acceptable, and desired, to be out shopping and trying on clothes before buying them, to say whatever you like. “That makes your ass look huge, don’t buy that!” is desired, not discouraged. Never trust the salesperson. The employee of the store is going to tell you it all looks good so you buy it, even if it looks bad. They even try to sell you more crap, saying things go together when they don’t. I’m talking about after they bought the clothes and they’re showing you what they bought because you’re their friend or relative or whatever.
Is it not true in the US too? I wouldn’t tell someone who wasn’t a very close friend that their new outfit looked bad after they’d already bought it. That just sounds like a jerk move even here.
Yeah, it’s very similar, but at home in the US I can think of a few situations where it might be ok to say it looks bad from my personal life.
Got it. That makes way more sense. Thanks for taking the time to explain it.
The birthday thing fascinates me because it’s the exact opposite of how you would handle it in the US. Here you would wish them a happy birthday and then move on since you weren’t invited.
In the USA, the birthday thing is the best thing about the USA. It’s all about being selfless (I’m American btw, been living in Spain for so long I’m a citizen) and it’s actually something that creates conflict in interpersonal relationships between natives of Spain and the friends they make that are not from here. It is a huge drama that somebody needs to make a documentary film about now. This birthday thing has no age. It could be a 20th birthday or a 100th birthday. You ain’t invited, you didn’t know, you didn’t bring the presents, you just keep to yourself in the public venue. It’s harsh. It’s harsh because you were excluded and you don’t care, because you’re American, you just want to be nice and wish them a happy birthday. Spanish people are all nope on that shit. It’s all about the presents and who bought you the drinks and food.
are you saying its transactional then? like a social contract of “it’s my birthday, so I’m paying for my guests food and drink.” You, my guest, have accepted that contract by bringing a gift?
This flies in the face of birthdays I’m used to. There’s no expectation that If I invite someone to my birthday that a) they need to give me a gift (I would never expect that) or b) I’m paying for their food and drink. I guess because that social contract isn’t in place, the idea that someone can come over and say happy birthday isn’t a big deal. It’s just a gathering that happens to be on my birthday.
It’s not really transactional. It’s just a situation where you got left out of the birthday and happened to go out to the same place where the birthday is being celebrated. However, it’s interesting to note that there is no such thing as a surprise birthday party. The birthday boy or girl is the one that throws the party because of the reciprocity aspect. You wouldn’t be caught dead attending a birthday without a present for the person whose birthday it is. You also wouldn’t be caught dead letting people bring you birthday presents AND buying you dinner. It’s more like “tit for tat” than “transactional.”
Lmao wtf is going on with the birthday party one.
I guess here in Korea it’s eating with chopsticks. In Sweden it was Swimming (especially for my Indian work mates). In Germany it was opening a beer bottle with anything you just happened to have in your hand at that time. In Poland I’m not sure, but probably making those elaborate sandwiches for parties.
Is the chopstick thing a dexterity issue? I’m so more inclined for chopsticks that, if eating alone, I’ll use the other ends of my silverware like chopsticks (and I’m not a part of any chopstick culture).
I dont think it’s so much an overall dexterity issue just a practice issue. Someone who doesn’t regularly use chopsticks might have really high hand dexterity but they just haven’t practiced that finger coordination. I.e. its easier to teach an athlete a new sport but a football players gonna have to practice to play hockey well.
The most common mistake I see with infrequent chopstick users is overgripping and a low grip. If you squeeze too hard it not only fatigues your hand but it actually makes them harder to control, same for choking up on them. If feels more secure but it actually gives you worse control. For any one wondering a high grip and only as tight as you’d hold a pen should make it easier to use chopsticks.
Yeah, opening a beer (or other bottpe with a capped lid) is a very cool skill to have (one which I haven’t really mastered since I drink beer very, very infrequently).
In Germany it was opening a beer bottle with anything you just happened to have in your hand at that time.
This goes for Denmark too.
Used to be the case in Switzerland, now most beer bottles have a twist-to-open cap that still looks like a normal beer bottle cap.
How to walk on ice is a big one. How to cross a street is another one here in Chicago (hint: look at the cars, not the lights).
For the ice one you mean taking a running start, sliding on it, and yelling weeeeeeeee… Right?
Just like crossing a street.
In Chicago it’s the same thing.
I didn’t, but that’s another learned skill in this category, yes.
I grew up in rural Canada, but have been living in major metropolitan areas for most of my adult life. It still surprises me when I learn there are other adults that don’t know how to chop wood, start a fire, work basic tools, etc.
Are chopping wood and starting a fire common activities in the metropolitan area where you live?
Going to the beach or camping, not unusual to start a bonfire.
Suburbia I’m canda just mean the great outdoors
I have no earthly idea how to do those things and I’m from Canada. It’s also a gender thing if you’re older like me.
You’re an immigrant or from the city? Everyone from rural areas know how to do it
In the dry SW US the answer is drink water when it’s 100F or worse 115F+. Having a half liter of water from the hotel for the half day mountain hike, or pounding a half gallon of ice water and throwing up five minutes later. Your body doesn’t tell you when you should drink, it tells you when you are already behind on drinking.
This is no joke. Even experienced hikers won’t bring enough water for their trek and will end up either being emergency heli-evac’d out or just plain die.
In Australia it’s not just knowing how to swim but where to swim and when. A lot of tourists drown in the ocean here because they don’t know how to read the waves / don’t have an understanding of the local area.
Never swam in an ocean, could you elaborate?
He must be referring to riptides. In some spots the water hits the beach as waves. In others nearby, the water gets pulled back into the ocean, and those are the spots you need to avoid.
Then depending on the ebb and flow of the twice-daily tides, the riptides are stronger or weaker.There are ways to see where the riptides are, yet many people from my own coastal town are oblivious to these dangers. Inland/landlocked tourists are even more oblivious and vulnerable.
As an Aussie what the person below has said is a big one here. We just call them rips. Basically if you just try to swim in them normally you won’t go anywhere and will just make yourself tired. Same goes if you’re caught in a rip and trying to get out. It can lead to people drowning from tiring out and going under. What you want to do is swim diagonally across the rip. Then you can go about your swim or swim safely back to shore. Another tip is if you don’t know what a rip looks like then it can be hard to see them from the shore or while your in the water. They aren’t waves.
Another one I think people usually have issues with or you hear of a tourist going missing is swimming in water inland. This is more of an up north Aus thing. Basically if you can’t see into the water your going to swim in them don’t. Crocs like to hang out in that sort of water. Very easy to not see them at all.
Great advice, appreciate that! I’ve only swam in small lakes, a couple of rivers, and the Black Sea, so yeah, I could easily see myself making some mistakes in Australian waters. Not that I’m planning to anytime soon, but if I do, I might as well stay alive thanks go this thread.
Cheers, mates!
Why are you black
Pronouncing local place names. Lots of scattered areas here with place names that are spelled like other places names (for example we got a town called Egypt, a town called Binghamton, etc.) except that they’re all pronounced differently. For example, we have a town called Leicester, named after the actual Leicester, and locals tend to raise an eyebrow when someone asks “how do you get to lester” (that would be the normal way to pronounce it)?
“Who’s Lester? Is he the new guy in town?”
“What? No, the town.”
“That’s Leesester, not Lester.”
“I’m sorry, wut?”
I of course just add to the confusion if I’m the one to break the news, as I have a Kiwi accent, which is atypical around here. So it becomes a “what do you know” kind of interaction.
There’s a place in Colorado called Buena Vista, yes, named in Spanish for good view. The locals all state that it’s Spanish. But they want it to be unique, so no, it’s not pronounced bwena. It’s fucking pronounced byunah. They literally know they’re pronouncing it wrong, they claim that it’s Spanish, and then they still say you’re pronouncing it wrong if you actually say it correctly.
There’s a city in Kentucky called Versailles. Pronounced, you guessed it, vur-sails.
haha you’re joking. 🤦
I briefly lived in a place with some very unintuitive place names that I had no idea how to say.
Problem is that unless it’s a very large area, there’s often not an easy way to look up how local place names are pronounced.
I remember for some of the places, I had taken to searching on YouTube hoping to find local news reports where they said the name out loud lol.
Lmao. It’s not quite that long, but there is a river nearish to me with a bizarrely long name. I tried looking it up one night and could only ever find people abbreviating it! So I’ll never know how the full name is pronounced lol. Maybe no one else knows either.
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Where I live basically every location is some combination of “French, native American, English, Scandinavian”, “pronounced natively or not”, and “spelled like it’s pronounced or not”.
The fun ones are the English pronunciation of the French transliteration of the native word.
How to stay safe in the wilderness. We get too many people that aren’t from around here that think you can do a hike late in the afternoon wearing sandals and only bringing a water bottle. People don’t realize that the wilderness is a dangerous place if you aren’t prepared. Weather can change rapidly and you need proper clothing and footwear to account for it. Make sure you have enough time for the hike and bring the essentials just in case something happens and you need to spend a night outdoors.
The death valley Germans comes to mind. The theory from the guy who found their bodies was that they thought area 51 would have patrols/guards like US bases in Germany. They didn’t realize that area 51 has a largely unguarded area as part of its “official territory” because death valley does the guarding for them.
Great long form write-up from the guy who found them: Here
I’m somewhat upset at you for having spent literally 8 hours on that wonderful blog. Thank you and also fuck you for that link. People give warnings for movietrope links, I might recommend the same.
Yeah, while I’m not a big hiker myself, being Swiss I know how prepared you need to be.
Walked around in Taiwan when I came across a hiking trail. 1.5 hours, like 150m verticality only, labelled as easy. Cool, but not enough water (only carried a 2l bottle). Went to a local teahouse and got me 4 more bottles to be safe and went for it. Walked past countless others because I was underprepared, and am glad I did because those could have turned out not so nice if I did go.
Pooping in the toilet.
When I went to university with a lot of international students, there would often be poop on the seats.
My understanding is Asian toilets are different and a good few students from there were standing on the seat and aiming at the bowl from height, with mixed success.
The opposite happened to me in Japan. For the love of God I can’t do an asian squat and there was only this old style squat toilet there. On top of that I really had to go because I had a bit of a diarrhea situation going on. I had no idea which one was the front and which was the back of the toilet. I figured if I try it I will just shit on my pants, so I had to completely remove them. Then I awkwardly lowered myself down no some kind of a weird squat, holding on to the walls of the stall for life, sweating like hell and bam, some of it went on the toilet.
I was relieved that I didn’t shit myself but mortified how to clean up my mess. In the end I was able to clean it with some water and I was lucky that it was in the night (at a cheap hostel) and nobody came in why all of this was happening.
Hadn’t thought about the trickiness the other way. Before I visit I will definitely spend some time googling how to poop in Japan.
Most bathrooms in Japan have either western style toilets or a choice of both, especially in urban areas. But better to not be caught unawares.
Wait, that’s how that happens? I always found it weird with those signs to not poop while standing up.
That’s how it was explained to me by an Asian buddy who’d been back and forth. He and/or I could be wrong (or he could’ve been fucking with us…)
Lol no, you poop squatting on the toilet, without any part of your body touching the toilet. Toilets in India (and probably rest of Asia) are at ground level, with two porcelain blocks on either side to keep your feet on (the blocks are set into the ground and have a rough top; neither you nor they will slip). Most hotels will also have western toilets.
Also using toilet paper is considered unspeakably gross. You are supposed to use water and/or your left hand (right hand if you are left-handed), and to then wash your hands with soap. Because of this, you should touch food only with your dominant hand; using the other, however clean it actually is, is seen as uncivilised.
I have yet to figure out how a person who has leg problems or a back problem ever uses a toilet that you don’t actually sit on.
The flexibilility is maintained by practicing it from youth and doing it every day. Also, there are safety handles.
And related to this, using a bidet.
Apparently, being able to tell the difference between laundry detergent and fabric softener. Had multiple asian-native room mates in college that made that mistake. They were all pretty fluent so I don’t think it was a language barrier issue, but to be fair, Big Laundry doesn’t exactly make it easy to tell what’s what on first glance.
Asian here, my home is addicted to all scented products including laundry with generous amounts of fabric softener. The river water is so hard it’s a necessity in any case, but we love everything having a good smell. In fact, the nearest market sells more scenting products than cleaning products if you can believe it.
English is my first language, but labels on laundry detergent are complete ass. And it seems to be an across the board thing for whatever reason. 90 % of them don’t say what it’s for on them, just various synonyms for clean, and scent or no scent. The other 10% say “detergent” or something vague in SUPER small text. I just Googled laundry detergent and the results were exactly as I just described. Like shit hopefully this jug of nondescript liquid makes my clothes clean lol.
the Big Laundry conspiracy runs deeper, fabric softener ruins some fabrics, and degrades most others
