Incongruous shops near you

[Patrick Thistle]

When these 'many' 'British people' 'lose their shit', what do they do exactly?

"We went into this pub, right, and they saw we was English and they all started speaking Welsh!!! It was really rude!!!"

Or the guy on a bus who shouted at a woman of colour she should "speak English in are country!!!" until someone else told him he was in Wales and she was speaking Welsh.

And the constant fuss about Bilingual road signs being confusing. FML.

[pebblethefish]

A Co-Op just around the corner though, right? (winky thing)

Yes, you know exactly where I'm talking about

[Fussbudget]

There's a street a few minutes from here which at the corner has a corner shop (as you'd expect) next to a wedding dress shop that looks approximately 20 times too poncey for the neighbourhood, never mind being in the middle of a residential area with no footfall and no other shops for miles. They've been in business for years so the location is obviously working out for them (??)

[tee rex]

There's another problem which is that "speaking Chinese" isn't a thing.

I don't know what this means.

[ursus arctos]

Mandarin, ,Cantonese, etc are language.

Chinese is not.

[tee rex]

Yes, I know there are distinct languages and then dialects within languages, I've been around them (and feebly studied Mandarin) all my adult life. But that doesn't make "speaking Chinese" an un-thing. Not that it's up to non-Chinese speakers to tell them.

https://thespinoff.co.nz/tv/06-10-20...ision-history/

[caja-dglh]

When I lived in Brooklyn, the local Artisanal Mayonnaise store was next to a bike shop.

[ursus arctos]

That's interesting, tee rex

You generally wouldn't see that usage over here

I personally know some Cantonese speakers who are very cross with any claim that Mandarin is Chinese, especially if it comes from Beijing.

[Amor de Cosmos]

There's a block on the waterfront in New Westminster that contains nothing but stores selling wedding dresses to Chinese customers.

[treibeis]

"We went into this pub, right, and they saw we was English and they all started speaking Welsh!!! It was really rude!!!"

Or the guy on a bus who shouted at a woman of colour she should "speak English in are country!!!" until someone else told him he was in Wales and she was speaking Welsh.

And the constant fuss about Bilingual road signs being confusing. FML.

All right, I know there are people who do and say shit like that, yes. And I've not been to Britain for over ten years, so what do I know about now?

But I grew up with 99% Welsh family, north and south, and was there a lot. The Welsh speakers spoke Welsh, the non-Welsh-speakers, of course, didn't (not only within the family, but also in pubs, on buses, wherever).

I can't remember anybody commenting on it, one way or the other. It just was.

[WOM]

Do all the Welsh speakers speak English? Or are there any / many Welsh-only speakers?

[Amor de Cosmos]

All right, I know there are people who do and say shit like that, yes. And I've not been to Britain for over ten years, so what do I know about now?

But I grew up with 99% Welsh family, north and south, and was there a lot. The Welsh speakers spoke Welsh, the non-Welsh-speakers, of course, didn't (not only within the family, but also in pubs, on buses, wherever).

I can't remember anybody commenting on it, one way or the other. It just was.

Quite. locally signage is in English and French (by law) but frequently also in Chinese, Korean, Gurmukhi, and Tagalog. Also, increasingly, the evolved text of whichever indigenous nation one happens to be on. Haven't heard anyone make a squeak since the last Québec referendum.

[ursus arctos]

The Bloc still makes a thing of it whenever they need attention or votes

[Amor de Cosmos]

In Québec yes, among residents who never travel elsewhere I guess.

[3 Colours Red]

WOM I think if you're going to find any Welsh-only speakers, they'll most likely be in Gwynedd IMHO. Isolated, sparsely populated, fiercely patriotic. I've felt slightly uneasy there with my extremely rusty schoolboy Welsh.

I think a quarter of a percent of people living in Wales are said not to speak any English at all, but that figure includes all other languages.

[WOM]

WOM I think if you're going to find any Welsh-only speakers, they'll most likely be in Gwynedd IMHO. Isolated, sparsely populated, fiercely patriotic. I've felt slightly uneasy there with my extremely rusty schoolboy Welsh.

I think a quarter of a percent of people living in Wales are said not to speak any English at all, but that figure includes all other languages.

Ah, thank you.

[Patrick Thistle]

WOM I think if you're going to find any Welsh-only speakers, they'll most likely be in Gwynedd IMHO. Isolated, sparsely populated, fiercely patriotic. I've felt slightly uneasy there with my extremely rusty schoolboy Welsh.

I think a quarter of a percent of people living in Wales are said not to speak any English at all, but that figure includes all other languages.

Actually the highest percentage of first language Welsh speakers is in Carmarthenshire. I was very surprised when I found that out. I've observed an outpatients clinic in Bangor conducted in Welsh. It's surprising how many people think in Welsh and translate in their head.

Obviously treibeis may have never witnessed any derogatory comments made about Welsh, people speaking Welsh, or Welsh requirements. As ever with these things YMMV. But there are regularly rows about Welsh language requirements being "stupid" or people promoting Welsh being described as "language nazis" and so on.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

There's a street a few minutes from here which at the corner has a corner shop (as you'd expect) next to a wedding dress shop that looks approximately 20 times too poncey for the neighbourhood, never mind being in the middle of a residential area with no footfall and no other shops for miles. They've been in business for years so the location is obviously working out for them (??)

Similarly when I was at junior school my friend's family opened a saddlery shop in a little row of shops which also contained a hairdresser's and a newsagent (they took over the newsagent's old shop when it moved into the new bigger unit the other side of the hairdresser's). It was on a side street in a housing estate with very little passing traffic, and probably on the wrong side of town to be handy for whoever owned horses in the area, but they seemed to do a good trade, and it was still going until a few years ago.

[Felicity, I guess so]

There's a street a few minutes from here which at the corner has a corner shop (as you'd expect) next to a wedding dress shop that looks approximately 20 times too poncey for the neighbourhood, never mind being in the middle of a residential area with no footfall and no other shops for miles. They've been in business for years so the location is obviously working out for them (??)

Straight over the back from us are twin mens' and womens' wedding hire shops. No other shops round about, but weekends they get plenty cars double parked outside. So successful the scumbag* had a Rolls for a while, now settles for a personalised no. plate 4x4.

*having a Rolls may not make him scum in your view (does in mine) but he reported us to the police for pruning a tree 'without his permission' (it's our tree, in our garden), claims there were nesting birds (there weren't) and he cares so much about trees and birds, his garden has...none, unlike our semi-wild bird, newt and hedgehog haven. Scum.

[Jah Womble]

Many British people Absolutely. Lose. Their. Shit when they visit North Wales and hear people speaking WELSH!!

‘British’ and ‘Welsh’ aren’t exactly mutually exclusive, of course.

[Patrick Thistle]

‘British’ and ‘Welsh’ aren’t exactly mutually exclusive, of course.

Not saying they are. I was replying to Sporting about attitudes to non-dominant indigenous languages in European countries.

(The Welsh not British discussion is for another thread perhaps)

[Incandenza]

Our local adult shop that I wonder how it remains in business is located between a key maker and a vacuum repair shop--all on a street with high rents. I really don't know how all three of those are still open.

A local store that I always wondered about, but is now gone (along with the entire strip mall, replaced with the typical 4-story "mixed use" development) was a Lithuanian market. There's not really any Lithuanian population in my city that I'm aware of, so I don't know who their clientele was.

[Amor de Cosmos]

A local store that I always wondered about, but is now gone (along with the entire strip mall, replaced with the typical 4-story "mixed use" development) was a Lithuanian market. There's not really any Lithuanian population in my city that I'm aware of, so I don't know who their clientele was.

I wonder about places like that too. In our old neighbourhood there's a German restaurant. It appeared around twenty years ago. It has tables and chairs and even had a menu posted outside once but, to my knowledge, no one has ever seen it open, and never seen a soul inside. It's not in a inexpensive area, — Vancouver's west-side, near UBC — in fact lots of businesses on the same block have closed down in the past few years because the rents are so high. However this mysteriously deserted, so-called, restaurant remains. Very strange.

[caja-dglh]

Our local adult shop that I wonder how it remains in business

I think we need to ask Ursus how well that one would stand up in court