Subject: Re: National Geographic Quiz<br/>
Date: Nov 25, 2002 @ 04:30<br/>
Author: anorak222 (&quot;anorak222&quot; &lt;listen@...&gt;)<br/>
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<div id="ygrps-yiv-825789330">--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., &quot;acroorca2002&quot; &lt;orc@o...&gt; wrote:<br/>
<blockquote><span title="ireply"> &gt; myself <br/>
&gt; have found usdollars & english far more useful than any other <br/>
&gt; nonlocal mediums of exchange <br/>
&gt; practically everywhere i have gone<br/>
&gt; admittedly only about 35 countries but a fair sampling<br/>
<br/>
 </span></blockquote>I guess it depends which countries. I don&#39;t know so much about Latin America, but in Europe dollars are only useful at a bank. Before the fall of the Iron Curtain (and a couple of years after), the Eastern countries used Western currencies for their &quot;shadow economy&quot;, but usually European ones, most typically Deutschmarks. Even in 1997, I remember the duty free in Budapest airport was exclusively priced in DM, no other currency. No dollars, not even forint (even though at that time, forint could buy all the goods). After the war in Yugoslavia, Bosnia has even adopted the DM as their official currency. Of course now it&#39;s all Euro in these locations. I hear Russia used to prefer dollars, don&#39;t know how it is now.<br/>
<br/>
<blockquote><span title="ireply"> &gt; &gt; About the language ... many people in the world learn English, <br/>
&gt; but once they visit the United States they&#39;ll learn that Americans <br/>
&gt; don&#39;t. <br/>
&gt; <br/>
&gt; whattt<br/>
&gt; do you mean foreigners in the usa will learn that americans dont <br/>
&gt; learn english<br/>
&gt; hahahaha<br/>
<br/>
 </span></blockquote>Nah, I mean that they&#39;ll discover that what Americans call &quot;English&quot; isn&#39;t the same language they learnt. :) Because in most countries, English is taught with British spelling, vocabulary and pronunciaton, because that is really considered &quot;standard&quot;. Maybe there&#39;s a lesson or two about how American English is different, but then it&#39;s back to British.<br/>
<br/>
Regards</div>