So, for all of my United Kingdom / Republic of Ireland readers, or anyone who has visited the British Isles, are the shift patterns in their manual cars the same as America’s? Specifically, is 1 in the upper-left corner, and R in the lower-right (at least for five-gear transmissions)?
On a related note, when you are sending emails to foreign, non-English-speaking countries where you do not speak the lingo either, say for reservations at local bed-and-breakfasts, do you just send the email in English and trust them to do the translating at the other end, or do you run it through an auto-translator first? If the latter, do you notate it as such, or just let it run free?
The gear shift is as you describe, top left for 1st, etc. Also, the foot pedals remain the same…gas on the right, center brake, and left clutch.
HTH, sv
Gears are the same.
(VW might be the exception — in the US they put R to the left of 1, and I don’t remember what they do in the UK.)
+1 on the car stuff (funny to sit on right and shift with LH.
Overseas email – just use English…if they need translation, they will deal with it
Just remember, you will be shifting with your left hand, while still operating the pedals as you normally do. All the while, trying to remember which side of the road to turn on (right hand turns are across traffic, left hand turns are not). The streets in towns are narrow as I’ll get out, but that is compensated by the small vehicles. And don’t feel any shame going around and around the roundabouts while you try to figure out where you are going.
I completely found the US WWII Cemetery outside of Cambridge by accident using the above advice.
@SteveV & @Richard – Thanks!
@JB – That is what we have been doing; I was just wondering if anyone did anything differently. In some cases, we can definitely identify responses that came through an auto-translator, but in a lot of cases, the respondees seem to have a pretty solid grasp on English. And no matter how you cut it, English is pretty much the defacto language of the internet, but it is still an interesting question…
@Reputo – Hence the question – I figured I had enough to worry about already with the left-handed shifting, left-handed driving nonsense, without having to learn some new gear pattern to boot. I am definitely not looking forward to my first traffic circle… which, if I remember, is right at the Dublin airport. Wonderful.
You could also check online for a phrasebook or a list of common terms and phrases, and copy same into your phone or notebook.
Specific or specialized stuff, I don’t know. For instance, I wouldn’t know how to even start translating “midget cheerleader porn” into French. Heh
Yup, already picked up an inch-thick phrase book, and will probably be doing some copying into our Kindle… And, if all else fails, I can just start flailing and pointing
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