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Ask a foreigner

I can't remember if we talked about this already ... Probably. But what's your "national dish?" How do you serve/eat it? And is it really as good as everyone says it is?

We don't really have such a thing here in the giant USA, but if we did, it would probably be the cheeseburger. Hot off the charcoal grill, it really is wonderful. The crap from McDonald's, not so much.

I dunno - I think some First Nation food is pretty iconic . I’m not sure what is the most universally known but maybe Fry bread? :).


i miss lots from my states influenced childhood. When I arrived in Europe a pbj was still considered utterly bizarre. Now you can sometimes buy goobers here. ( But never just grape jelly ) Things I miss - corn bread ( no sugar thank you ) grits, sunflower butter , ( I really like nuts and seeds and spreads of them) , someone else baking a decent pumpkin pie. Pecan pie is becoming more common - but not as good. Never seen a sweet potato pie here .

If I make meat loaf I get funny looks. It’s pretty rare I make it - but it’s alien here.
 
I think some First Nation food is pretty iconic .
I've never had any First Nations food and I doubt if anyone I know has, either. There are no restaurants serving it almost anywhere, at least in my part of the country. So I wouldn't call it any kind of national dish in most of the USA.
 
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is that likely to happen to me too? Is it common that accents of childhood re-emerge in final years?
Most multi-lingual accents are caused by the person learning the language late enough in life (anywhere from 6-20, the brain has permently shut down unused audial areas in the brain) so that their brains are no longer capable of actually hearing the entirety of the sounds the other language is using. So they’re actually speaking as they hear the language being spoken. Practice/familiarity often bridges the gap, largely with length & cadence; speaking words in the same rhythm that native speakers do... so even if some sounds are still strongly accented? The rest of the word, and musicality of the sentence, blurs the edges of that.

When someone starts to lose their hearing? They’re both a) no longer constantly exposed to the cadence around them to pattern off of, as there are high/low/mid gaps AND b) not able to hear the sounds they themselves are speaking. So even if someone has been fluent & nearly unaccented for 50 years? The baseline way they learned how to pronounce words / shape their mouth / push air / add tone & inflection / etc. will start to fill those gaps.

((IE a badass hearing aid will erase a lot of his returning accent, if it bothers him))

But wait! There’s more 😉


My regional English accent/cadence/word choice changes depending on where my head’s at, how tired I am, how much pain I’m in, if I’ve been drinking, what I’m feeling, and who I’m speaking with. <<< That’s super common for kids who grew up moving / multilingual, because they’re actually hearing so much that they don’t have “an accent” because their ears & brains are still young enough to hear “all” sounds. Language tends to be a BIT “delayed” but when they start talking-talking about a year after monolingual kids? There’s no accent in either language. Although some words get missclassed as the other language. ((As an example? I was 31 before I knew that ‘Ah so’ isn’t English. It’s Japanese. Whoops!))

Snort... “all” has rabbit ears, because it’s only all of the sounds they hear. My French-language sounds are sooooooooo bad that being in France? (Especially Paris!) Is like living in a badly dubbed Kung-Fu movie. And I have an impossible to describe needle piercing headache the whole time. I can hear Acadian French, Creole French, Swiss French, Asian French, & African French just fine. And Country-French still has some gaps, but I can hear the outline of the word. (Sept Tours, for example, I hear as Seh’breathy T’breathy’ooo... Se’tooh.) But Parisian French kills me. So hard
.

Bilingual/Multilingual speakers ALSO have ^^^ Where what they’re thinking/feeling/etc. causes varying effects their accent. And it’s especially noticeable in the elderly who can still be sharp as a tack, but returning more and more often to the memories of their youth (for many reasons, like grandkids remind them of being new parents, or their own childhoods; or the death of a friend / or pain in any part of their body, recalls them to when they were young and strong)... and it’s a giant tell in someone who IS slipping into dementia what decade their minds are revisiting.

^^^^
12 years of speech therapy on 3 continents, too too many neuro-psych classes, and a Speech Pathologist godmother.

That last one? Is my fave go-to source. She makes my life make sense! Never ending fount of info & practical tips/tricks. If you’re EVER worried about anything speech related? Speech Pathologists are brilliant & amaaaaaazing.
 
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Most multi-lingual accents are caused by the person learning the language late enough in life (anywhere from 6-20, the brain has permently shut down unused audial areas in the brain) so that their brains are no longer capable of actually hearing the entirety of the sounds the other language is using. So they’re actually speaking as they hear the language being spoken. Practice/familiarity often bridges the gap, largely with length & cadence; speaking words in the same rhythm that native speakers do... so even if some sounds are still strongly accented? The rest of the word, and musicality of the sentence, blurs the edges of that.

When someone starts to lose their hearing? They’re both a) no longer constantly exposed to the cadence around them to pattern off of, as there are high/low/mid gaps AND b) not able to hear the sounds they themselves are speaking. So even if someone has been fluent & nearly unaccented for 50 years? The baseline way they learned how to pronounce words / shape their mouth / push air / add tone & inflection / etc. will start to fill those gaps.

((IE a badass hearing aid will erase a lot of his returning accent, if it bothers him))

But wait! There’s more 😉


My regional English accent/cadence/word choice changes depending on where my head’s at, how tired I am, how much pain I’m in, if I’ve been drinking, what I’m feeling, and who I’m speaking with. <<< That’s super common for kids who grew up moving / multilingual, because they’re actually hearing so much that they don’t have “an accent” because their ears & brains are still young enough to hear “all” sounds. Language tends to be a BIT “delayed” but when they start talking-talking about a year after monolingual kids? There’s no accent in either language. Although some words get missclassed as the other language. ((As an example? I was 31 before I knew that ‘Ah so’ isn’t English. It’s Japanese. Whoops!))

Snort... “all” has rabbit ears, because it’s only all of the sounds they hear. My French-language sounds are sooooooooo bad that being in France? (Especially Paris!) Is like living in a badly dubbed Kung-Fu movie. And I have an impossible to describe needle piercing headache the whole time. I can hear Acadian French, Creole French, Swiss French, Asian French, & African French just fine. And Country-French still has some gaps, but I can hear the outline of the word. (Sept Tours, for example, I hear as Seh’breathy T’breathy’ooo... Se’tooh.) But Parisian French kills me. So hard
.

Bilingual/Multilingual speakers ALSO have ^^^ Where what they’re thinking/feeling/etc. causes varying effects their accent. And it’s especially noticeable in the elderly who can still be sharp as a tack, but returning more and more often to the memories of their youth (for many reasons, like grandkids remind them of being new parents, or their own childhoods; or the death of a friend / or pain in any part of their body, recalls them to when they were young and strong)... and it’s a giant tell in someone who IS slipping into dementia what decade their minds are revisiting.

^^^^
12 years of speech therapy on 3 continents, too too many neuro-psych classes, and a Speech Pathologist godmother.

That last one? Is my fave go-to source. She makes my life make sense! Never ending fount of info & practical tips/tricks. If you’re EVER worried about anything speech related? Speech Pathologists are brilliant & amaaaaaazing.
That’s INCREDIBLE!

I’m kind of excited as to where my accent might end up! ( similar childhood moving habits to you)

it also makes a lot of sense , my parent HAS lost hearing too ! I’m saving this post !
 
I can't remember if we talked about this already ... Probably. But what's your "national dish?" How do you serve/eat it? And is it really as good as everyone says it is?

We don't really have such a thing here in the giant USA, but if we did, it would probably be the cheeseburger. Hot off the charcoal grill, it really is wonderful. The crap from McDonald's, not so much.

Canada is sort of the same but we have Poutine and Donairs (like a gyro made from beef with a sweeter sauce).
LRM_20160824_141950.jpg
 
I've never had any First Nations food and I doubt if anyone I know has, either.
<grin> Betcha have!!! 😁 It’s just so much a part of our everyday diet that it’s not “different” enough for most people to notice.

Unless....😱 you’ve never had...

  • Roast Turkey, cranberry sauce, squash & sweet potato, (essentially thanksgiving dinner)
  • BBQ across the Great Plains & festering stinking swamps of the south
  • Chili & cornbread from the intersection of the Great Plains & Arid Southwest
  • TACOS! in the arid lands (and burritos / tamales / similar things wih all kinds of salsas & meat creatures & fish/shellfish as one gets into the border lands & rich coastal areas)
  • Crawdad-lobster-crab boils / clam bakes / fish&chips (catfish in the Midwest, Cod & halibut back east), crab cakes & salmon cakes
  • Smoked salmon
  • Luao (okay, that’s different enough, Pacific Islander wise for mainlanders to notice)
  • Potatoes (came outta South America, mostly, but some varieties were up here... as there were trading routes from the PacNW crisscrossing the continent to the southern end of the Andes. I theeeenk it was Sir Walter Raleigh who first brought them back to Queen Elizabeth, but Spain may have gotten them first)
  • Popcorn
  • Tomato Ketchup <<< Yeah. Truly. European ketchup/catsup was made with blueberries and other weirdness. Eastern US tribes showed colonists how to store tomatoes this way. Italians reeeeally ran with it, back in Europe, creating umpteen gazillion tomato sauces, but the shelf-stable, salty/sweet/acidic (antimicrobial Shazaaam), keeps for years tomato ketchup we dunk fries in? Born here.
And the list just goes on.

I’m not including chocolate... just because natives drank it bitter, like coffee. It was Europeans who thickened it & added sugar. But unsweetened hot chocolate? Is close. It was a treat for nations and tribes up here, if a standby a bit further south.

To be fair... the Northeast has a climate almost identical to Northern/Central Europe, so the cooking & storing methods -as well as most of the meat creatures- are virtually identical. Roasts in ovens, soups/stews, fried and grilled and baked fish, boiled & seared shellfish, boiled & roasted roots , hardy greens & fine herbs, berries fresh & jammed & sauced, honey, and maple syrups. Biggest difference between NE Native & EU settlers’ foods was leavened bread, vinegar, & single malt (but even so, most European peasants at the time used a multigrain flour, the Scots fur trappers brought bannocks, and the Irish settlers soda bread, and the French lard or butter pastry crusts... so even leavening wasn’t guaranteed). If the Middle East had discovered the Americas? We wouldn’t be noticing all the “it’s falafel, and gyros, and schwarma, and pepper sauces...and we’ve been eating the same foods the same ways for thousands of years, BFD” southwestern & gulf coast foodables, rather than cold climate foods.

I dunno - I think some First Nation food is pretty iconic . I’m not sure what is the most universally known but maybe Fry bread? :).
I’m having a Trevor Noah moment 😎...and voting for ....TACOS!!!

((it’s possible to live healthy on almost nuffink but tacos, so says the archeological record of around 10,000 years or so to the near present (couple hundred years ago) in parts of the Southwestern US & MesoAmerica. There were decades & even generations long droughts where animal protein seems to have only been consumed maybe once a month, or a few times a year, if that. Diet otherwise seems to have been almost entirely maize tortillas with peppers and beans. Complete protein from the corn & beans, vitamins & minerals from the peppers. It’s wacky from a geographical perspective because just a few hundred miles in either direction it’s temperate north & rainforest south... where there was crazy abundance in hundreds of kinds of foods, both flora and fauna. Soooo much more variety than we know today. But there’s this great big swath of desert/drought/arid lands that people still lived, and lived well, as abandoned cities along dry rivers estimate 10s of thousands. Even during droughts. They did leave eventually. Which makes sense, on the whole abandoned bit, I expect. As droughts became longer and more frequent. But the rubbish dumps and chemical analysis of the physical remains says it might not have been raining enough to cultivate much beyond the rivers reach... but it was raining tacos! From outta the sky 😉 ))
 
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<grin> Betcha have!!! 😁 It’s just so much a part of our everyday diet that it’s not “different” enough for most people to notice.

Unless....😱 you’ve never had...

  • Roast Turkey, cranberry sauce, squash & sweet potato, (essentially thanksgiving dinner)
  • BBQ across the Great Plains & festering stinking swamps of the south
  • Chili & cornbread from the intersection of the Great Plains & Arid Southwest
  • TACOS! in the arid lands (and burritos / tamales / similar things wih all kinds of salsas & meat creatures & fish/shellfish as one gets into the border lands & rich coastal areas)
  • Crawdad-lobster-crab boils / clam bakes / fish&chips (catfish in the Midwest, Cod & halibut back east), crab cakes & salmon cakes
  • Smoked salmon
  • Luao (okay, that’s different enough, Pacific Islander wise for mainlanders to notice)
  • Potatoes (came outta South America, mostly, but some varieties were up here... as there were trading routes from the PacNW crisscrossing the continent to the southern end of the Andes. I theeeenk it was Sir Walter Raleigh who first brought them back to Queen Elizabeth, but Spain may have gotten them first)
  • Popcorn
  • Tomato Ketchup <<< Yeah. Truly. European ketchup/catsup was made with blueberries and other weirdness. Eastern US tribes showed colonists how to store tomatoes this way. Italians reeeeally ran with it, back in Europe, creating umpteen gazillion tomato sauces, but the shelf-stable, salty/sweet/acidic (antimicrobial Shazaaam), keeps for years tomato ketchup we dunk fries in? Born here.
And the list just goes on.

I’m not including chocolate... just because natives drank it bitter, like coffee. It was Europeans who thickened it & added sugar. But unsweetened hot chocolate? Is close. It was a treat for nations and tribes up here, if a standby a bit further south.

To be fair... the Northeast has a climate almost identical to Northern/Central Europe, so the cooking & storing methods -as well as most of the meat creatures- are virtually identical. Roasts in ovens, soups/stews, fried and grilled and baked fish, boiled & seared shellfish, boiled & roasted roots , hardy greens & fine herbs, berries fresh & jammed & sauced, honey, and maple syrups. Biggest difference between NE Native & EU settlers’ foods was leavened bread, vinegar, & single malt (but even so, most European peasants at the time used a multigrain flour, the Scots fur trappers brought bannocks, and the Irish settlers soda bread, and the French lard or butter pastry crusts... so even leavening wasn’t guaranteed). If the Middle East had discovered the Americas? We wouldn’t be noticing all the “it’s falafel, and gyros, and schwarma, and pepper sauces...and we’ve been eating the same foods the same ways for thousands of years, BFD” southwestern & gulf coast foodables, rather than cold climate foods.


I’m having a Trevor Noah moment 😎...and voting for ....TACOS!!!

((it’s possible to live healthy on almost nuffink but tacos, so says the archeological record of around 10,000 years or so to the near present (couple hundred years ago) in parts of the Southwestern US & MesoAmerica. There were decades & even generations long droughts where animal protein seems to have only been consumed maybe once a month, or a few times a year, if that. Diet otherwise seems to have been almost entirely maize tortillas with peppers and beans. Complete protein from the corn & beans, vitamins & minerals from the peppers. It’s wacky from a geographical perspective because just a few hundred miles in either direction it’s temperate north & rainforest south... where there was crazy abundance in hundreds of kinds of foods, both flora and fauna. Soooo much more variety than we know today. But there’s this great big swath of desert/drought/arid lands that people still lived, and lived well, as abandoned cities along dry rivers estimate 10s of thousands. Even during droughts. They did leave eventually. Which makes sense, on the whole abandoned bit, I expect. As droughts became longer and more frequent. But the rubbish dumps and chemical analysis of the physical remains says it might not have been raining enough to cultivate much beyond the rivers reach... but it was raining tacos! From outta the sky 😉 ))
Love this whole post .
 
So my local supermarket has an end of isle American section. I've never seen such a thing in any supermarket I've been to ever. Made me wonder if there might be an American base nearby but there isn't.

It's normal to have sections fir Indian, Jamaican, Polish, Jewish, Halal, Japanese & Chinese foods here, maybe a few others.

I nearly bought some twinkies but I only want to try one really. I imagine they are dry and very sweet?

20210822_125457.jpg
 
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