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Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an American who does this in pretty much every conversation I have, this is a difference I would never have thought of. Semi-related: Do other countries have fragments of speech used as filler such as "like" and "you know"?
Absolutely. In Japanese, for example, you'll sometimes hear conversations littered with なんか (nanka) and かしら (kashira).
No mention of our odd restaurant tipping practices? I thought they are unusual compared to the rest of the world...
What are those odd tipping practices? I'm from Canada (Ontario/Quebec), and the standard is to leave 15% of the bill as tip. Less is considered being extremely rude. In other countries, the tip is included in the bill. In other countries, tipping is rare and made in very specific circumstances.
I wouldn't feel bad about not leaving a tip and whilst a waiter/waitress might be disappointed they be overly wouldn't insulted.
In the US I've seen much wider range of people expecting a tip. Eg in the uk you might sometimes round up a taxi fair, but I've had a new York cab driver get positively aggressive (initially refusing to give us our bags) when we didn't tip after he his inability to find a major hotel had added $30 extra on the meter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an Australian any kind of expected tip is odd.
The justification for this 15% is that government assumes that customers give tip to waitress/er, and thus take taxes off the waitress/er pay-check according to this 15% supposition. So basically, when you don't pay the 15% tip, the waitress/er is paying extra taxes because of you. Unless the service is bad, the normal would thus be to pay the 15% tip, unless its a tip-less kind of job. Some jobs are identified by go…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're talking about water just lying around, maybe so, but US water standards are if anything ridiculously stringent compared to much of the rest of the world [1]. Read that page carefully, and observe that while the US standards may appear at times to permit things somewhat higher than other standards, the US (along with Europe) strongly enforce them, so it's not that comparable. As for the air, it is generally…
Interesting to see that according to your source, European standards are 3 to 5 times more strict than the US. Depending on your definition of "rest of the world", maybe you meant water in the US is higher quality than India? Probably true.
Even in Europe water quality varies between "great" and "I wouldn't drink that" on a country-by-country basis, and sometimes on a city-by-city basis. Remember that "Europe" isn't a country and there aren't any such things as "European standards". Even to the extent that there is an European Union which sets standards for a portion of the subcontinent, enforcement and adherence varies widely. In Germany the tap water will be above American standards everywhere. In Italy, for instance, ask a local before drinking.
No mention of our odd restaurant tipping practices? I thought they are unusual compared to the rest of the world...
Tipping practices are pretty common in a lot of countries. In India, for example, it's expected that you tip a wide variety of people for a lot of small services. I find American tipping practices somewhat middle-of-the-road.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an Australian any kind of expected tip is odd.
The justification for this 15% is that government assumes that customers give tip to waitress/er, and thus take taxes off the waitress/er pay-check according to this 15% supposition. So basically, when you don't pay the 15% tip, the waitress/er is paying extra taxes because of you. Unless the service is bad, the normal would thus be to pay the 15% tip, unless its a tip-less kind of job. Some jobs are identified by go…
Before coming to the USA for the first time I read the following in a guide: "Americans often communicate via inflected grunts and groans, such as "uh-huh" for yes and "uh-uh" for no.
As an American who does this in pretty much every conversation I have, this is a difference I would never have thought of. Semi-related: Do other countries have fragments of speech used as filler such as "like" and "you know"?
In the South it's "noo", and it vaguely means "why don't you?". Or "allore", from Italian allora.
No mention of our odd restaurant tipping practices? I thought they are unusual compared to the rest of the world...
What gets me every time is all the other places where you are expected to tip, and where I have absolutely no idea of how much I'm expected to tip or that I'm supposed to tip in the first place. Pizza delivery? What? Cab drivers? Seriously? The omelet chef in a hotel's breakfast restaurant? Are you kidding me?!?
The weirdest one yet was when me and some friends were leaving the US, we got to the airport, and passed some sort of exterior baggage drop. We went to that, but there was a guy there in an airport uniform who took our bags and put them on the conveyer belt when we tried to do it ourselves. So we said "thanks" and walked away.
And he got so angry at us for not tipping him. So confusing.