Case in point:

I was advised by our guide that when a price was identified (on a trip south for a holiday), that price a vendor provided should be treated as 'the price' not an invitation to haggle. He explained that the local folk tended to set fair prices and that haggling was a sign of disrespect.

I'm not sure if it was simply a statement to get us to pay whatever price was indicated, but I also felt that it could have been accurate in depicting the folks we met selling stuff.

On the other hand, on another trip, I ran into the most uncomfortably in-your-face merchants I have ever met and they were aggressively competitive with one another for your dollar. It was exceptionally off-putting to someone who just wanted to walk down the street to the beach. It may have been moreso because I'm a Canadian and any haggling would be fairly gentle here, but there, they were up in your face and just did not take being put off with a gentle demure. That actually insured I would never return to that particular country again, although I feel certain that the pushiness was a result of economic conditions more than any cultural nature (other folk from there that did not engage in sales-to-live were much more easy going).

There are also differences in usage.

For instance, I found it quite surprising to find educated, nice folk in the Netherlands who were from Britain exchanging verbal good-natured jabs that included calling one another c*** and tw**. Apparently the British (or at least English) sense of those words was far less instantly offensive as it would have been in Canada or the USA. In Canada, if I'd said one of those to a friend, a stony look and a rebuke would be the least I would get and getting drifted or a real dressing down would certainly be conceivable.

ObTrav: When you said something you thought was harmless in Aslan, you might be surprised to find the Alsan you were speaking to reaching for a sword hilt. Or that Vargr merchant you were talking to using your 'Easy Vargr' guidebook and your best attempt to get the tonalities and harmonics right.... he might be rolling around on the ground howling in amusement at the incredibly off-colour thing you unknowingly said.

And then there's the issue of the 'trunk' in vehicles in UK vs. North America. And we've already talked about 'pop' and 'soda' and I could add 'hamburger' and 'wimpy burger' (NOT THE SAME!).

And then we throw in the Scots... or the Irish.... or Kiwis.... or Aussies. or the myriad of English and American accents (when I have gamed with people from the US Deep South online, I have found a whole different lexicon that would not be understood by my Scots cousin (and vice versa)). We are all English speakers in some sense, but our dialects, argots, cants, and accents leave us 'separated by a common language'. 

There certainly could be some fun in building some local linguistic or cultural gotchas into different worlds.

On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 9:42 AM Jeff Zeitlin <xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com> wrote:
On Mon, 8 Jun 2020 11:31:21 +0100, Timothy Collinson - timothy.collinson at
port.ac.uk (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:

>                             It can be interesting in a Traveller game to
>use 'non-local' usage to give a sense of not being in Kansas anymore, but
>of course that will vary depending on where you are!

You can do that with your own neologisms as well; for example, when
travelling in the Sword Worlds, you might very well go to a "wexler" to get
your Imperial credits converted to Sacnoth crowns...

("wexler", from German wechsel, which I always see on signs for currency
exchange 'stores', plus -er, suffix indicating someone or something which
does...)

The other thing to do to create the 'not from here' sense is to make sure
that they don't think like you do. For example, in the US, it's common -
essentially expected - to add a gratuity to the tab for almost any service,
from being waited on at a restaurant to the cab driver that took you from
that restaurant to the hotel, to the bellhop that carried your bag from the
door to the elevator, to ...

But what if the attitude is that giving a gratuity for someone doing their
job is considered _insulting_? That is, "This is what I do; I get paid to
do it, I do it in accord with the rules; I'm not mercenary to the point
that I need to be paid extra to _do_my_job_!". _Maybe_ the cabbie will
accept a couple of credits extra if you have six _heavy_ suitcases to load
into his trunk instead of two, but... seriously? For just the one or two
that _any_ tourist will have?

Or dining: You come from a planet where there once were severe shortages of
food, so you were taught to not waste any, and 'clean your plate'. But on
_this_ planet, doing that is an insult to the hospitality of your host,
implying that s/he isn't providing enough - you're _expected_ to leave a
small, even token, amount.

And so on...

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referenced materials is not intended to
infringe or devalue the trademark.

--
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Freelance Traveller
    The Electronic Fan-Supported Traveller® Resource
xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com
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