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Archiver > CORNISH > 1998-11 > 0912227489


From: <>
Subject: Etiquette question
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 23:31:29 EST


Since everyone is planning for the virtual Christmas party and is way off the
subject of genealogy, I have a question to ask of my world wide cousins. The
other night on TV, I caught the end of a program where a man was explaining
why Americans hold their silverware differently than the Europeans do. He
said that the American way where one uses the fork in the left hand to hold
down the food and then transfers it to the right hand to spear the food is the
old fashioned way. In the 1880s European society apparently decided that it
was silly to keep transferring the fork from one hand to the other. The
Americans stuck to their old ways.

I am curious to know which countries use the "American" way and which
countries use the "European." This might be an interesting of guessing the
nationalities of guests at the Cornish Christmas party.

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