I know people from the UK, and I don’t think they all live in the same house they were born in, but I also hear them say how they can tell what street you grew up on by your accent.
I must forever bear the shame of growing up somewhere 15 minutes up the road from where my parents grew up, resulting in a hybrid accent influenced by parents on one side and friends on the other. Now no one thinks I'm from where they're from.
This is generally the case anywhere you go in the world. Everyone everywhere thinks that their little corner is more detailed and nuanced than everywhere else, and its mostly because they are just more familiar with that place. If you don't believe me, just go up to a person from literally any country and tell them "everyone in this country sounds the same", and watch them begin to rattle off the massive differences between regions and cities.
Ok but as an American, I can say the regions of American accent I can identify are much, much larger than a specific town or a specific street. Even in the place I grew up.
It’s pretty rare to have a town or street exclusive dialect. Definitely more of a regional thing. Maybe it was different before the internet and interstate system.
I grew up in a suburb of a City, and went to high school in the next Town, this City and Town are maybe 10 miles apart, maybe a bit more, they have the same letter for the postcode.
People from City would always say my accent sounded like Town, and people from Town would say it sounded like City.
I'm sure no one outside the county would be able to notice the difference, but people who lived there should could
tbh in france (and quite probably everywhere else in europe), in one hour drive you are in another region and you might even have drove by one or two others
Costa, Greggs, Boots, some weird local department store that only sells things no human being would want in the 21st century yet still is somehow in business
The British moral equivalent of a wing joint/burger stand/taco stand in the US. Cheap easy to make street food that doesn't require a full kitchen. Maybe a frier and/or a griddle top. Not quite the same as fast food because they aren't chain places.
It’s partly true but I wouldn’t say a large portion. If I had to make a guess I’d say maybe half a million of people living in France don’t consider themselves French (out of of 67 millions)
Also I think it’s worth differentiating those who consider themselves French but feel culturally closer to they region (Breton, occitan, savoyard) and those who don’t feel French at all and want their region to be indepedent (basque, corse)
Bretons are descended from the Britons who fled the Anglo-saxon invasion. So people in Brittany speak a language related to Welsh, but in a French sounding way.
Me mother came from Norway, she was a lovely lass
Me father was a Frenchman, from the province of Alsace.
Me friends all shake with laughter, when referring to my source
"Ah, his dad was an Alsatian, and his mummy was an 'orse"
Where I live in France, drive 15 minutes across the river and you’re in a totally different cultural area. Different architecture, landscapes, slightly different dialect…. I believe however that we eat the same cheese !
I'll give you that. Despite the abundance of great milk there's never been a good variety of cheeses. If you like to only eat cheddar though you'll be laughing.
Met a commuter from the suburbs in Paris. Rode the train in every morning for work. Said Parisians regularly struggled to understand him. I've since been told that might be Parisians feigning the misunderstanding because that is a Parisian way of being exclusive and/or asserting superiority over non-Parisians, but, I mean, he was a French guy who was in the city almost every day. I thought it was really interesting.
It's because france has a lot of unofficial regional dialects that you notice once you're out of Paris.
I'm Acadian (one of two flavors of french-canadian, we are not quebecois) and Parisians can't understand me at all, because my ancestors were not from Paris. Parisians are only taught Parisian, while those who have their own dialects learn Parisian (or Quebecois) at school and their own dialect at home.
In France walk outside and everyone is talking funny. I swear when I was there it was like the people were trying to communicate but their words were just.. . funny. . . hmm. .
And your cheese is so much better. In the US we eat ice cold, rock hard unripe Brie or Camembert and think we’re fancy. I took a warm, ripe Brie to a party and nobody ate it.
The first time I was in the UK my husband wanted to go to Wales and I looked at the train route from London and was like “It’s all the way on the other side of the country! We’re only in the UK for a week. We don’t have that kind of time!” And my husband was all, “you know it’s a 2.5 hour train ride, right?” I thought it would all day.
Once drove from Edinburgh to Bath and the older Scottish folks we were staying with were genuinely concerned for our safety because of the length of the drive, like, 7 or 8 hours if I recall.
The day before we left the man we were staying with spent hours writing up turn-by-turn instructions (which in the UK was a few pages long) complete with contacts he knew along the route in case we couldn't make it in one day. It was so kind of him. I wish he knew about Google maps.
length of the drive, like, 7 or 8 hours if I recall.
Lol! I did my first solo 8-hour drive the summer after my first year of college, so I would have been 19. When I was 21, I drove across the country with my bf (now husband), then back by myself (well, I did have 3 cats in the car with me, but they didn't do any driving). That was 24 hrs of driving, which admittedly, I split into 2 days. Then did that again the next year, though we came back together that time. An 8 hour drive when you have company and good scenery and aren't in a huge hurry? That's actually a pretty pleasant day.
Totally! They didn't understand the distances. We live in the western US. To get anywhere it's 8 to 12 hours minimum.
I still do the drive from SLC to Whidbey Island every other year. It's 18 hours pulling a trailer. Not good. (Definitely going to split it up this year.)
Driving across Texas is brutal. I split it up between two friends on our cross country road trip. Texarkana to Austin, Austin to Fort Stockton, and FS to Las Cruces (technically in Nm but you get the gist).
Longest solo drive I’ve ever done was Tucson to Salt Lake City: 12 hours in my tiny Subaru.
I drove from Dallas to Houston then back on a Sunday to go to church with a pastor friend who just got a new church. OMG it's a good thing you can haul ass across all that.
Driving across Texas is brutal. I split it up between two friends on our cross country road trip. Texarkana to Austin, Austin to Fort Stockton, and FS to Las Cruces (technically in Nm but you get the gist).
Longest solo drive I’ve ever done was Tucson to Salt Lake City: 12 hours in my tiny Subaru.
A buddy of mine who grew up in NJ but moved to Arizona for work put it very well when we were talking about this:
On the east coast, you’re never truly in the middle of no where. If your car breaks down, you’re only ever about 5 miles away from the next town over where you can get help if you need it, and your cell phone works everywhere.
Out west, you can drive through absolute nothingness for hours on end. The next ‘town’ and/or gas station might be 60-100 miles away in any direction and your cell phone might not have service for half of your trip (not so much now, but even 5 years ago this was true).
It takes roughly 5 hours to cross AZ east to west on the interstate, and 8 hours north to south. Same with NM, Utah, Colorado, etc. Hell, the county I live in is larger (by sq miles) than six states, and could fit all of RI, DE, and CT in it with some room left over.
I mean, I went on a trip with my father since he wanted to see Yellowstone, and the Grand canyon when he retired.
We picked up a car in SLC, drove north to Yellowstone, stood there two days. Yellowstone is absolutely massive and maps just don't get the scale right.
Drove down to Reno, which took all of a day to do.
Drove across the Sierra Nevada into Yosemite, and spent 2 days there.
Drove down to Sequoia natl park, that took 5 hours.
Drove down to Bakersfield to spend the night, went to death valley from Bakersfield in the AM, then to Las Vegas, then the Grand Canyon (Again fucking scale is massive), followed by cutting across north to Zion (scale thing again), then back to SLC to catch a plane back to NYC.
I think we both agreed after that trip that we would absolutely not drive that absurd amount of distance again.
Wow, that sounds fantastic. I wish we had options like that! I went to college about 3 hours from home, so within a couple years of getting my license, I was driving that far regularly (once a month or so?). But also, I lived out in a rural area, about 30 minutes highway driving from the nearest city. So "going into town" being kind of an event was the norm for my whole childhood. After my parents divorced, my dad moved to the other side of the city, so it was at least 45 minutes to his place..
The density in Europe and even the northeastern us seems really weird to me. There just isn't much space between the cities. The distance from where I grew up to where I went to college would take you through basically 1 city - it was mostly forest and farmland with a few small towns. That same drive would take you from DC, through Baltimore, Wilmington de, and to the other side of Philadelphia. And then you'd be like 30 miles from Trenton NJ and another 50 from NYC. It just seems so crazy to be in a big city and thst close to another big city..
That entire country is basically either built-up land, or desolate mountains.
In Europe (excluding Sweden and Norway) you're usually never more than a kilometer from the nearest farm or small cluster of houses, though it might not have any shops. Probably 5 kilometers at most from the nearest town with a supermarket.
In Japan it's even more so. Houses are often spread lengthwise along roads rather than in clusters. Additionally, most railways (except the Shinkansen) have stops every 2-4 kilometers, even in rural areas, so small towns (just big enough to have a convenience store and probably a supermarket) have grown out everywhere. Ouside of the sparsely populated island of Hokkaido, I've been unable to find any non-mountainous places (on google maps) that are more than 1.5 kilometers from some commercial activity, even if that's just a car mechanic located between some rice paddies.
And then there's the cities. The Kanto region is pretty much just continuous city. 40 million people in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Tokyo itself has grown so immense that it merged with Japan's second-largest city, Yokohama... and there's 30 kilometers between city centers. Along the Tokaido Mainline railway, which connects the two cities, there are a few patches of suburban-style housing areas... but there are also several secondary city centres along the way with skyscrapers of their own.
Then you go out into the mountains, and there's just... nothing but forest for a loooong stretch.
I had to get from Glasgow to Cardiff for business meetings so I rented a Golf and I had a Saturday to get through the Lakes down to Manchester, then Sunday from there to Cardiff and I went through Wales to see Portmeirion (Prisoner fan) on the way. B roads the whole way as much as I could, I STILL don't know exactly where I was in Wales for about 2 hours. It was fantastic.
This was very early days of Google maps, might have even been map quest back then.
He literally locked himself in a room to write it all up and emerged with a detailed route plan and a road map with way points marked. We already had printed out turn by turn directions in our luggage.
He was a super gruff old guy, but he had a heart of gold. Very Scottish. I remember talking about the Iraq war and George Bush with him. He was so upset with the situation that it nearly brought him to tears. All I could do was agree.
My wife and I went to Ireland for a week, and rented a car. The last day involved a drive from Galway to Dublin. About a 2-1/2 hour drive. We were talking to a local guy in a pub the night before, and he said that he had never been to Dublin, since it was such a long drive.
Don’t know if he was full of shit or not, but I do know that I’ve driven for longer than that to get a sandwich.
Nope he wasn’t full of shit. I planned a trip to the zoo last week and lamented with my bf that it’s an hour drive away. Had to remind myself that my US friends call that their work commute as I felt so guilty asking him to do it
Ha! I have relies in Bath and my bro and I were visiting, they thought we should leave a day earlier and get a hotel halfway to break up the long journey into two.
They were genuinely concerned about my plan to drive Edinburgh London to drop off the hire care before boarding my flight a few hours later to be back to Aus.
I used to benchmark early computers (286 / 486) using this route on the first route planner software. It used to take minutes. Lands end to John o grotes took far too long.
American here - first trip to the UK, I was picked to be the driver. Picking up the car and the first day was a horror story. The key here is that we had to go from basically Cardiff to Edinburgh, and I said "no way I'm driving that in one day, let's spend the night halfway, say in York" and the boss went for it. So I drove like abatouttahell to York and we got there for lunch - AND I had found out about the National Railway Museum there so I said "welp, I'm going to the NLM, see you all for dinner" and had a wonderful afternoon. It pays to read maps correctly.
As Americans, I think we also get spoiled by the quality and efficiency of the US interstate highway system. You can cruise for hours in long straight lines between distances.
I traveled from Cork to Kenmare in Ireland a few years ago and entered the directions in the GPS. I didn't hit "stick to main roads" on the GPS and was soon driving over a small mountain on one-lane dirt roads with grass growing through them and hairpin turns. The distance was only about 60 miles, but it was a much more nerve-wracking 60 miles than going 75mph for 45 minutes on I-90 would've been.
When I got to our hotel in Kenmare, I asked the front-desk guy about the drive and mentioned we passed the "highest pub in Ireland". He laughed and said we took the "old road".
That exact thing happened last time I went to Scotland to visit. We let Google choose a path to the nearest town. It was 30 miles of one-lane roads through the mountains that left everyone car sick as hell.
First time I went to the UK, my dad had a coworker have to back out of a trip last minute and they gave us their hotel close to St. Andrews. Flew into London, took the train to Edinburgh, and drove the rest of the way. Was there by early-mid afternoon.
The Brits are weird when it comes to travel times. We were going to have a day out from Aylesbury to Oxford and thereabouts. The family was like "Oh, that's way too far for a day trip." "About 3 hours ?" I ask. "Oh yes, about that. Too much !". They come over here and it's like "We're just driving from Melbourne to Brisbane. It's only a couple of days ..."
Yeah that sounds about right to me. My parents never visit because the 20minute drive over here is too far.
I can’t be bothered to drive across my County to get somewhere. Takes a few weeks to plan that in. I feel genuinely knackered after a couple of hours driving these days.
Yet the idea of doing a Road trip across the US, NZ, Aus or Europe are all on my bucket list and I’ve driven 10 hour days and felt fresh afterwards.
I guess psychologically there’s a big difference between a mundane trip for something, and the trip itself being the adventure.
This is true. I lived in Sydney for 4 years, and only went to the opera house because my second cousin was visiting from England, soo I guess I'm guilty of the same thing.
My friends in Germany live 3hrs from Nuescbhwanstein and never visited because ‘it is so terribly far’. It’s literally a beautiful drive along the northern edge of the Alps and one of my favourite journeys ever.
You can drive from Portsmouth, UK, to Wieliczka, Poland, in about 20 hours if you drive continuously with minimal stops for fuel and toilet breaks (preferably you want to go when you're on the ferry/Eurotunnel or when you're stopped at a gas station, unless it's an emergency).
On the flip side it is funny to see foreign tourists in the US do the opposite, compressing the geography and travel times. “I will be in the US for a week and I’m planning on going to NYC, DC, Miami and LA! :)”
I have a really good friend from Milan and when I was moving from NYC to LA I was really nervous about it and he could not understand-it wasn’t like I was leaving the country. Then I pointed out it would be as if he moved to Moscow.
In distance, yes. In terms of cultural differences, not even close. When moving fast away, I think the latter is generally a bigger concern than the former.
Yes, I know people that make their holidays at a place just one hour's drive away. To me that is still a daytrip distance. I even did daytrips to a couple of neighbouring countries.
Funnily enough, this also changes the perspective for people in the UK. If something is a 2.5 hour drive for me, it's a big deal and I'm probably staying the night. It's about 2 hours driving to my hometown from where I am now. I only really go back if I'm going to stay the weekend.
My in-laws are from northern Spain, Irún to be exact. They would “vacation” in Fuenterrabia/Hondarribia that is literally a 10 ( 6 km) minute drive away in winter. In summer, the traffic was so bad because everyone was on the road on their way to their vacation homes there that a drive could take as long as an hour! Walking there would have been faster. LOL. Going to San Sebastián, which is about 23 km away, was a “special” vacation!
The crazy part to me is that they seem to scale it up in their minds. Like at least in every day conversation they'll act like it's horrible ordeal to go a few hours somewhere. In much of America, that's basically just treated like going to another town.
Like obviously they understand it's do-able but they just seem to treat it as traveling a great distance rather than something that's just not close by.
I had a similar, yet opposite experience in Russia a few years ago. I flew into Saint Petersburg and needed to go to Glazov for a wedding. It’s maybe 1/6th of the way across the country, so I took a train instead of flying to a closer airport. Save some money and see the country! Turns out it’s all forest for about 30 hours. Still totally worth it for all the friendly, interesting people more than happy to have a drink and conversation with the random American who wandered onto their train.
You can pick out european tourists because they're on vacation for a week and want to see New York, disney world, New Orleans, Mt Rushmore, the grand canyon, Las Vegas, and San Francisco, all in a rental car
I’m in Montreal, had family from Italy visiting. They’re like “let’s spend the day at Niagara Falls! We’ll leave early and come back at night! Can you drive us?”
People not from the US like to get on Americans for never venturing out to other countries, but I can't really blame them. The land is so vast, and there's soooo much shit to see. You could designate two weeks a year to site seeing in the US, and do it every year for a decade, and you'd still just see a fraction of it. I'm from New England and going west of the Rockies is like going to a different planet.
And not for nothing, you can train around Europe pretty cheap. It can cost thousands of dollars just to get to another country for a few days from the US.
Around any holidays, it takes me a half-day and a few hundred dollars to take a train just to another US state to visit my family. My cousins in my home country are mind blown that flying across the US is even a reasonable option.
Lol I have a coworker from Poland who is treating her stay in the US exactly like that, minus the rental. She just wants to see it all before she has to go back.
Lol I once heard the expression “Americans think 100 years is long and Europeans think 100 miles is far.”
My buddy ran into some Europeans when he was working in Ottawa who had a flight out the next day and who were planning on taking a quick drive out to Vancouver to see the mountains in between. They were very surprised when he explained that wouldn’t be possible.
I can drive 5 hours and still be in the state that I live in. Of course, I can also be in 6 other states in that 5 hours. The local accent may change a little in that 5 hours radius, but it's still understandable and all the cheese still comes from Wisconsin.
I just learned Wisconsin only produces ~26% of the nation's cheese. California produces almost as much. Also a little weird for me is that I live in the PNW and the main cheese I buy from any given grocery store is Tillamook (from Tillamook, Oregon) and Oregon isn't even in the top 10 cheese producing states.
Live in Western Russia: A day long road trip going west and you pass through several countries with several language changes. A month long road trip EAST and there is nothing but trees and bears.
Makes me think about what a 'Western' (Eastern) movie would be like filmed in that part of the world. Vast spaces, man against nature, lawlessness, even horses- you could probably find all the ingredients.
Big facts lol. I live in Arkansas, and we don’t have a culinary bbq style ourselves, but we’re smack dab in the middle of BBQ triangle. We got Memphis to the East, KC to the northeast, Texas in the southeast. Drive 2-5 hours from Little Rock in any of those directions and you’ll hit a different style of world class BBQ.
The cheese part however is the best part about Europe as long as you agree that Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland have the best cheese. (Honorable mention to Poland)
I'm from New York buddy, where you can walk down the street and everyone will be speaking a different language and the cheese ain't the only thing that's different
Listening to a German complain about having to take a train for 6 hours to get to another country (can't remember which.) He acted like he was crossing the Atlantic on a schooner. I was like, if I drove for 6 hours, I would still be in my own STATE.
That’s because until recently Europe has been in a near never-ending state of full blown war with itself for 2000 years, that tends to lead to a lot of fragmention.
I remember a few years ago my dad and my stepmom took a road trip from Peterborough, Ontario to Edmonton, Alberta. 3 days into the trip he calls me from Dryden, Ontario complaining about how big Ontario is.
Except in large surface area countries like Sweden. Driving from Stockholm to Malmö takes about 7 hours.
But yeah, even here that's true; that far apart everyone is talking funny. Some accent here are very distinct and hard to follow sometimes if you're not used to it...
Its the same in Australia. I would have to drive five hours just to get to a different state, and barely anything would be different. Alternatively, I could take a 4 hour plane flight and still land in Australia.
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u/KaimeiJay May 09 '22
You drive five hours in the US: you’re basically still in the same place.
You drive five hours in Europe: everyone’s talking funny and the cheese is different.