I am trying to picture JR Ewing saying ta, just doesn't work at all.I have never heard an American say Ta and can't imagine what it would sound like with a Texas accent.
Bob
OT but related. It is funny how young people learn a new language and pick up an accent while they are at. My German cousin's daughter learned English at school but still, understandably, with a German accent. The teenager daughter then went on a student exchange to Texas for, iirc, 6 months or so. I had phoned over to see how things were going and my cousin put her daughter on the phone. The daughter now spoke English with a Texas drawl plus a hint of a German accent thrown in to make things interesting. Just a bit difficult to understand. Perhaps when I say accent, it could also include dialects of the same language.
@R181 Bob, you make an interesting point because of my personal experience. I didn’t settle in Canada utntil I was 19 years old, 56 years ago. Over time I’ve lost most of my non-Canadian accent to such an extent that only a few people can identify that I’m not born and bred in Canada. I have several friends who have also settled in Canada for nearly as long as I have, and they haven’t picked up a CanadIan accent to any great extent. My wife is one of them. She came to Canada about five years after I did and to this day she has retained her Hampshire accent; interestingly, when we are in England, which is a yearly occurrence, her English accent is much more pronounced, as it is when she speaks with her friends and family in England on the phone
Your story has some common points with mine, except for the different respective ages when settling in a foreign country.
To digress some. Our two youngest grandchildren, 2 years and4 years, are great fans of Peppa Pig and brother George and I am too. Our house is strewn with Peppa books and I believe Santa/ Father Christmas will be bringing a few Peppa gifts in two weeks. Last April we were all in England for a family wedding and staying just outside Romsey where the wedding was in the Abbey. Peppa Pig World was nearby and the grandchildren went for a day’s visit and still talk about it.
When I was growing up in the UK we always wrote 7's unadorned. In Primary School as I recall, we were taught that crossed 7's were "Continental" (or maybe "French"?).
We love Peppa Pig...snort snort
As you say, I always thought and taught that this was because the Europeans wrote the number 1 with a pronounced top stroke and the horizontal bar was to separate the 7 from the 1.When I was growing up in the UK we always wrote 7's unadorned. In Primary School as I recall, we were taught that crossed 7's were "Continental" (or maybe "French"?).
I started crossing 7's on a regular basis when I started studying Engineering (and continue to do so). We were taught the logic that a crossed 7 cannot easily be mistaken for a 1.
Most of the general population in the UK still seem to use unadorned 7's...
<geek mode off>
Sounds like they had a great day, I hope they had the Advent calendar
We were never taught to put a line through the 7 to distinguish it from a 1 either. I can see where a line through the 7 would clearly distinguish it from a one. One of life's mysteries solved.
