I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it’s pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that’d be rather time consuming.
Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can’t ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.
edit: the high number of replies mentioning “swimming” made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.
There’s a city in Kentucky called Versailles. Pronounced, you guessed it, vur-sails.
The capital of South Dakota is spelled “Pierre” and pronounced “Pier” like the thing ships pull up to.
And in California, the J, but not the LL, in “Vallejo” are pronounced as in Spanish. “Va-lay-ho”.
haha you’re joking. 🤦
I remember reading a Bill Bryson book, in which he mentioned a town (in Iowa, I think?) spelled Cairo, but pronounced cay-roh.