I recently heard that a jumper is a sweater. I also learned from my German exchange students that an American sweatshirt is called a sweater by the West German kid and a pullover by the East German kid. The word sweatshirt was never heard of.
enthusiast
It's amazing how much we get to know of other people's cultures these days.
It is relatively easy now for Europeans to travel in Europe. Air fares to the USA from the UK are sometimes cheaper than fares within the USA or UK. Until the early 1980s only the privileged few had ever travelled long-haul and that was mainly to visit families and friends or for work.
Now they advertise weekend breaks in New York from London in the same way that they used to advertise trips to Paris.
From the UK, a trip to Australia used to be something that people saved up for ten years and was only achievable for those who wanted to visit family members living there.
I live in a city which has a lot of tourism and I see people from all over the world in a way that would not have been possible thirty or forty years ago. It is still not possible for everyone for travel, we may not have the money or time but it is less likely that we will not have come across someone who is not from our culture.
English language television and films are broadcast world-wide, whether it is from Australia, the USA or Britain the chances that it is possible to see programmes from many different places in the course of a week (if you so choose).
I wonder how long we will be able to hold onto these differences. The time we have now is quite interesting. Anyone with access to a computer and a phone line can find things out for themselves by clicking on the Internet, we don't need to wait for an article to be published in our own country.
I wonder how we will look back on this time in twenty years time. Will we all know that, for example, "jumper" means different things in different places or will we all use the same word? Will we converge or diverge?
Will we converge or diverge?Depends on the fit of the jumper, Jo
