Comment by nologic01 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nologic01 | Hacker News Reader

Global English is both a blessing and a curse. Never before could so many people communicate across linguistic divides (even if imperfectly). But the price is that never before was the rich collective cultural heritage under such threat.

The two facets are deeply related. Like any lingua franca before, global English was invented to facilitate trade (economic exchange). The fact that it is English and not Basque or Suahili reflects the dominant economic power of the 20th century. But the peculiarity of the Anglo-saxon world that insists on financializing and commercializing everything (David Bowie securities anyone?) means that culture too became a tradeable cash crop. Pop culture became an exportable mass market product against which local traditions stood no chance.

Thankfully it seems that the relative shallowness of commercially distributed culture (required if it is to reach global markets) limits its scope. Once local culture stops being seeing as an anachronistic relic but rather a source of wealth people embrace it again.

So it may be possible to both have our cake and eat it. The story has not fully played out yet.

This is perhaps nitpicking but I wish non-native English speakers would not use the term “Anglo-Saxon” to describe anglophone or (better) English speaking countries. The term refers to the original north Germanic invaders of England and so has tribal (racial) connotations and is typically used in English to distinguish people on that basis. Many/most Americans (e.g. black or Native American) so not consider themselves “Anglo-Saxon” nor would most Irish people nor many non-white Australians, for example. Heck - lots of British passport holders would not identify as Anglo-Saxon. If you don’t identify as Anglo-Saxon in an English speaking country, it’s jarring to hear your native home country being referred to as “Anglo-Saxon”. Just use “English speaking” which has no racial overtones and is both easier to understand and more precise.

> Just use “English speaking” which has no racial overtones

A lot of countries are English speaking. It's not racial, it's cultural overtones, but I agree that it sounds segregating to other.

The bigger problem is that they've used "anglosaxon" to use what we would probably refer to as neoliberalism, acting as if a controversial policy setting is somehow cultural or racial. You can be a good anglosaxon who opposes neoliberalism. You can be a good English speaker and oppose neoliberalism - whether from the right or the left.

neoliberalism is a second-half of the 20th century phenomenon. The mass production and commercialization of culture significantly precedes that, it is more an advanced industrialization pattern (late 19th / early 20th), with the invention of photography, vinyl disks, movies etc.

You look at the 19th century and instead of calling it neoliberalism, it was just called liberalism. It wasn't called neo- because they weren't trying to revive a discredited ideology, that's all. But it was still a contested position.

Now you attribute the mass production and commercialisation of culture to a technical development: this is not completely correct (trinkets are as old as trade, but might not have always been so affordable), but it's much closer to the truth than some kind of false racial essentialism. There's nothing anglosaxon about it and there's nothing English-speaking about it.

What happened to Anglo-American anyways? Substituting that term with the wildly incorrect but similar sounding Anglo-Saxon is quite literally a linguistic attack, unfortunately one that seems to occasionally get picked up by people meaning no harm because of how "more historic" is often conflated with "more sophisticated" even if it's the exact opposite when the assumed historic implications are wrong.

I stand corrected. Anglo-American would definitely be closer to the intended meaning. The term is only meant to be a rough placeholder for a set of norms and values anyway (and the corresponding economic systems and arrangements). It is neither geographically nor historically particularly sharp (has nothing indeed to do with race) and some non-English speaking parts of the world (e.g., the Netherlands) have been very much aligned.

I think it's different because it excludes Australia and New Zealand, which are otherwise exactly like North America in that they've inherited their language and culture from Britain. If you want to talk about the world-wide English-speaking-culturally-British-based-community it's "Anglo-American" that is more wildly incorrect, which makes "Anglo-Saxon" -- denoting the common heritage from a British, English-speaking, culture -- more correct.

As a born-and-raised American who speaks English for a first language and is of mixed Semitic and Celtic descent, I endorse this.

> I wish non-native English speakers would not use the term “Anglo-Saxon”

I quite like it and find it endearing. I'm definitely not of actual Anglo-Saxon stock but if non-English use that term then they're free to do so. Everyone knows what they mean. There are zero racial overtones associated with it.

Good for you. I mean that without sarcasm. I most certainly am not and don’t consider myself Anglo-Saxon in any way although English is my mother tongue. I would consider referring to New Zealand (for example - not my home country) as “Anglo-Saxon” quite insulting to Māori.

But I disagree with your last claim - there most certainly are racial overtones associated with it. Nobody would ever refer to Barack Obama, MLK, Kāterina Mataira, Rishi Sunak as Anglo-Saxon simply because having white skin and being off English stock is understood as being implied.

There are definitely racial overtones with the expression "Anglo-Saxon" as used in the US, at least in the last decade or so. This article is an example of some of the discourse around the term - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/anglo-saxo...

This is from the English Wikipedia. [1] Nowhere in the article is there any hint that the term is perceived as problematic by native English speakers or that it has racial overtonens. If indeed there is a critical mass of people who feel offended by it, you know what you need to do :-)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_model

The article about the actual people the anglo saxons does reinforce their point though.

> The history of the Anglo-Saxons is the history of a cultural identity. It developed from divergent groups in association with the people's adoption of Christianity and was integral to the founding of various kingdoms.

> Catherine Hills summarised the views of many modern scholars in her observation that attitudes towards Anglo-Saxons, and hence the interpretation of their culture and history, have been "more contingent on contemporary political and religious theology as on any kind of evidence."

> During the Victorian era, writers such as Robert Knox, James Anthony Froude, Charles Kingsley and Edward A. Freeman used the term Anglo-Saxon to justify colonialistic imperialism, claiming that Anglo-Saxon heritage was superior to those held by colonised peoples, which justified efforts to "civilise" them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxons

> The article about the actual people the anglo saxons does reinforce their point though.

Nope. On the contrary, it rather directly contradicts it.

> > The history of the Anglo-Saxons is the history of a cultural identity. It developed from divergent groups in association with the people's adoption of Christianity and was integral to the founding of various kingdoms.

And that's why "Anglo-Saxon" is nowadays used to mean at least the British nation -- a nation that includes the conquered Celts of Scotland and Wales, and lots of more recently immigrated ethnically and religiously diverese groups, but still as a whole the somewhat coherent Christianity-based English-speaking culture descended from the original Anglish and Saxon tribes that migrated to the British isles a millennium and a half ago -- or indeed that nation, plus the Anglophone erstwhile colonies that were settled and inherited their mainstream cultures from Britain (i.e the USA, Canada, Emutopia and Kiwiland, and possibly some smaller ones I'm forgetting at the moment). It is, as Wikipedia so correctly notes, a cultural identity.

It's just a convenient shorthand, because "Anglo-Saxon" is a fucklot easier to say than "the somewhat coherent Christianity-based English-speaking culture descended from that of the original Anglish and Saxon tribes that migrated to the British isles a millennium and a half ago, encompassing all the tribes they subjugated and assimilated since" or "all the preceding plus the Anglophone erstwhile colonies that were settled and inherited their mainstream cultures from it". That's how language works.

As an American (with no Anglo-Saxon ancestry), I strongly disagree.

We call them Germans, the Italians call them Teutons, the Spanish call them Alemanni. Those were all distinct peoples who came together along with others to call themselves Dutch. But we use Dutch to refer to different people, and Germanic to refer to an even wider group of people then all the aforementioned put together. I've never heard a non-joking complaint from any of them about that. Granted, they're saying Anglo-Saxon while speaking English, but it's their dialect of English.

I also can't see why Englishspeaking is better than anglophone. Engl- comes from Angl-. -phone means -speaking. They're both English language words with identical meanings.

You haven't mentioned Anglo by itself, but that's even more common. It means English, but disambiguates England and English people from their global influence. If English is fine, Anglo should be fine too. And if Anglo is fine, then Saxon and Jute and Frisian should probably be fine too. But it's not fine when you put them together?

It's ridiculous to say that the actual self-given name of the predecessors of a language and culture has racial connotations.

I use the term Anglosphere. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglosphere).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com