Recent studies have suggested that cultures vary in subtle ways in the talk about talk that children hear and learn to produce. Twenty-two three-year-old children and their families in respectively Oslo, Norway and Cambridge, Massachusetts were observed during mealtime with the aim of identifying talk-focused talk. The analysis distinguished talk about (a) language "per se", (b) discourse management, and (c) former conversations and use of reported speech. No category of talk-focused talk appeared exclusively in either community, and the frequency of such talk was similar across these. The Oslo families talked more often about language "per se" and their talk-focused conversations typically had a question-answer form. Talk about talk appeared more often within narratives in Oslo and within explanations in Cambridge. A second analysis compared talk-focused talk at home with such talk at school, suggesting that talk about language "per se" appeared more often at school across the two communities. [This research was supported by the Norwegian Research Council.]