Why do circuit breakers go up for on and down for off?

My sons went to school with a child named Finbar, which wouldn't have been too bad, except that his surname is Furey. Finbar Furey is a very well known name in Irish music circles.

Accents are weird.

Until he died a few years ago, my mother's uncle by marriage had a VERY pronounced American drawl (I forget where he was from), but he'd lived in the UK (Manchester) since WW2, only going back to the US once for a 2 week visit!

Over 60 years after he came here, he was known to say "Weeell I gueeess Iyyy lost ma accsent nowww," while having a stronger accent than most Americans just arriving in the UK.

My cousins' Manchester accents disappeared totally when living in Germany, but would return within weeks of coming back to the UK to visit.

A teacher I met had an almost impenetrable Scots accent, but our neighbours in France told us that he spoke French with no accent at all.

"Apparently the English used to drop the H sound as well, but in the

I kind of doubt the latter, but I totally believe everything on the WWW.

I thought that the whole point of San Francisco is that it is inhabited by aliens and shows no sign of civilisation?

Whatever happened to Bertram?

It is the new Green Future.

Oh, my, how dumb you are...

Yeah. the "fifteen minute city". So everything you need is no more than a mile from where you live. No chance.

No. so everything you need is delivered to you in half an hour and you never need leave the house

A friend was born in Germany but iirc he was 7 or 8 when his family came to the states. He had a pronounced German accent. His brother, who was a couple of years old, had no accent at all.

My US-born daughter claims she could always tell when I'd been on the phone with family in Scotland, by the way my accent shifted.

My wife is from Boston but sounds neutral-American. But if she goes back east to visit for a week or two, she comes home with the southie-Boston accent. It's funny.

Yes, the time constant is a week or two.

Some people, even kids, can switch accents at will. Actors do that a lot too.

Or about five minutes on the phone to a schoolfriend for my wife's accent to strengthen noticeably.

For anyone who knows of Jake Thackray, he had a Yorkshire accent of immense power, but could also speak French fairly fluently. There are a few recordings of songs sung in French, but with his own normal accent. This appears to be the only one on YouTube:

I stopped for gas in South San Francisco. When I paid the guy, he thought he knew me. He asked where I was from and I said "San Francisco." He said "I've never been to San Francisco."

I got lost once in New Jersey, pre-GPS. I asked a local for directions to the NJ Turnpike. He said "That's White Horse Road up there but I don't know where the turnpike is."

I grew up in New Orleans. When I reached The Age Of Reason (32 in my case) I packed my MG Midget and drove to California.

The rich greenies want the rabble to live in tiny apartments in dense clusters, not have cars, and walk everywhere in architected landscapes.

And they want the poor people of the world to stay poor.

When humans got intelligent and invented weapons, we became the top preditor. So we developed tribes so we could fight other tribes for territory to hunt in. Language and accents define tribes.

Poms do too with the word honour.

I knew why they dropped the H, but still don't know why the fail to drop it on the man's name.