Originally Posted by
Ekdog
Welcome to the forum. For someone who learned English as a second language, your writing is excellent. If you hadn't mentioned it, I'd never have guessed. I think Tandempower meant to say that taxis in the United States are not all the same, that there are a lot of different kinds.
Exactly, there are cars and minivans, etc. They come in all different colors and signage. When I was younger, I expected them all to be yellow sedans with checkers, etc. As far as I know, they are locally owned and organized, so there's really no way to homogenize them to achieve some kind of uniformity. Theoretically, some taxi owner could attempt to conform company vehicles to some cultural/aesthetic standard, but I don't think that standard is there, beyond the yellow checkered design used on some taxis.
I wouldn't worry about you English. I used to do this when speaking second languages. It's natural because you assume others are more comfortable with the language than you are, but the problem is that there's a good chance your English is better than a lot of 'native' speakers, so it is awkward to apologize for language skills without sounding like you're a language snob. Language politics get all mixed up with the politics of native vs. foreign identity so I find the best thing to do is just use words you know and ask people what they mean when you don't understand. It might not be a language-acquisition problem but just a communication problem based on divergent patterns of mind.