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English vs English


deanb
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Bathroom lights work with a regular switch inside the bathroom.

 

He was saying that what you call chips we call french fries everywhere, not just McDonald's.

 

What the hell is an electric shower? Or a power shower for that matter.

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There are three basic shower types here.

 

an electric shower is a small unit (about a foot tall and a few inches deep) that sits on the wall in your shower. cold water pipe goes in, hose and showerhead comes out. A heating element inside heats the water, usually have a temperature dial and a power dial which would have off, cold and two levels of hot power.

 

a mixer shower has hot and cold water pipes from your heating system a mixer tap for temp adjustment, and the shower head. they're the most basic.

 

a power shower is basically a mixer shower with a pump to increase flow rate. Because the last two systems use your hot water they're not good if you have a small hot water tank as after one person has a shower there's no hot water left. A lot of older houses have these hot water systems, as decent combi boilers (that heat water on demand rather than heating it and keeping it in a tank are relatively new here) hence  the popularity of the electric shower. 

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An electric shower sounds dangerous. A power shower sounds like a sex thing, or maybe an industrial cleaning-type shower.

 

The guy who posted to Facebook was from Florida, where it is normal for people to carry guns everywhere, not be polite, be afraid of their neighbors and the government, hate and fear foreigners, and Bush is considered a hero and Obama an idioFlorida is both the South and a million times worse than the South. Most of the population is high on fundamentalist Christianity and/or methamphetamines/bath salts/the hot new cheap degenerate drug of the month.

 

It is America's shitstick and non-USAns should be aware that white Floridians are, as a rule, dumb and evil motherfuckers or retirees from the North or both.

Edited by Mr. GOH!
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@TFG:  The mixer shower is the only kind of shower I have ever encountered in my life.  I have heard of showers with built-in on-demand water heating, but it's always as part of the actual shower itself, not a separate attachment you can install later.  I've also heard of on-demand water heaters for replacing the house tank heater, but it's for the whole house and from the faucet side would be transparent to the user, you just wouldn't run out of hot water.

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I don't think many Americans differentiate between mixer showers and power showers; most newish homes don't have power showers, but I have definitely taken showers in homes in the USA with showers that had their own pump to increase water pressure. It's not common at all, but there are some places in the US with low water pressure.

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I'm confused about him saying the TV looks better. I was under the impression lots of your TV still wasn't in HD, whereas here everything is in HD unless you set it up wrong.

 

I've a sneaky feeling since our HD is likely to be just as 1080p as yours that he's maybe talking about the general quality. Especially since he's 60 he might favour our dramas more, we do have some good ones (you guys carry importing them).

 

Mira-Escape-9.8kW-Electric-Shower-Chrome

 

This is England, our wiring situation is pretty good on the safety side*. And as a just in case there's an emergency cut off right out of shot there (usually if you're a terrible person you'll put the light switch and shower cut-off switch next to each other and your guest will power off the shower each time they go to have a piss in the dark).

Given you guys have AC in a lot of places it's strange you don't have electric showers. They're still a bit of a luxury over here mind, but becoming popular since bathtubs = space we don't have in modern homes. 

 

*especially given you guys use a regular switch in the bathroom. Can't find a full picture of one, just a picture of the handle, but basically it's a white plastic hockey puck in the ceiling with a string coming out the centre which descends to a pull handle of your choice (you can get some nice themes pull handles). I imagine you guys have the little wall lamps with shot pull cords on? It's one of those but all the way from ceiling,

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Yeah, I've seen lights like that, but they're typically in closets.

 

My guess about the electric shower would be that it's not really a thing here because given we have more space in general we probably tend to have bigger tank water heaters than you do, making it less necessary.  The AC is basically a requirement for huge areas of the country due to weather.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So cos it fascinates/bemuses me that you guys do this: Do any of you know your like...genetic breakdown or whatever..heritage. i.e the whole "I'm 1/32th Irish" stuff.

 

My gran has been doing family tree and pretty much everyone I'm related to until you hit my parents generation are all from like a 20sq mile area across a handful of villages with the occasional exotic person from Leeds in there.

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It's not really something most people do for real, I think, it's more like when you're sitting around with family at holidays or whatever it's kind of fun to try to work out "Okay, great grandma X was Irish, and great grandpa Y was German..." and figure out the percentages.

 

For obvious reasons we're a lot more mixed than you.  ;)

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Asian folks should start doing the percentage thingie. Like sure, I'm 100% Chinese but China's a big place and regions do have their own flavors. Hell, every village has their own flavor. What I'm getting at here is that when these sort of discussions come up, it's pretty boring when it comes to me and most other Asian folks. I do suspect though that if something was done with me, I'd get something similar to what Dean's grandma found.

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China is as ethnically diverse as the whole of Europe; you could break it down by ethnicity (1/32 Han, 1/2 Cantonese, 1/16 Fujian, etc).

 

I'm half Scottish (with some English thrown in further back;the Scottish half is split 3/4 clan Campbell and 1/4 clan Blair) and half "German," although the "German" half is mixed evenly between Swiss German and Eastern European diaspora German (the millenium-long diaspora ended after WW2 when the Eastern block relocated ethnic Germans in Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, and so on to Eastern Germany). I consider myself a generic white Midwestern American, although I like to proclaim my membership in clan Campbell whenever I drink a bunch of Scotch.

Edited by Mr. GORE!
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According to Americans, Glaswegian is the sexiest uk accent, followed by cockney. Geordie was seen as the most intelligent. This is not how the survey would pan out if carried out over here.

 

In the opposite direction Brits* found New Yorkers to have the sexiest accent, Chicagoans the least.

 

*hate that term, as I can't help but associate it with vaguely racist red top headlines.

Edited by TheFlyingGerbil
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Well, we're probably all getting our accents from mainstream media (but seriously, where would Americans be hearing Georgie except in Georgie Shore: the complete opposite display of intelligence?!)

 

On that basis, I say Texan accent is sexiest. At least that is where Angie Harmon and Peri Gilpin are from and what I know of that accent.

 

 

On the other subject, my sister does genealogy as a career (you can see her on Heir Hunters occasionally) so maybe I should ask her more about my heritage. All I know is that my dad's family were all cockneys.

 

Funny related story: my dad didn't find out his mum had died earlier this year until this sister came across the death certificate months afterwards. :wacko:

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