Hacker News Reader

Comment by mbell | Hacker News Reader

I could make an almost identical argument about the usage of terms like "Americans". The states and even cities themselves are all very different.

View on HN

Yes, indeed they are. But they all share a common language. It's a bit like Germany, Switzerland and Austria or even the german states themselves. We all share a common language so it we've seen the same movies, read the same media, etc. Certainly it's on a larger scale than the german states, but it's on a smaller scale than europe. If I travel 200 km to the east I'm in Poland. My GF comes from a village close to the belarussian border. I can pick the car, drive there in 6 hours or so and while it's Europe and even still EU, I can't even begin to talk to her parents or pretty much any other person in the village. I don't understand a single word they say, I have very little clue about how their life was and still is. If I drive 1000 km to the south I crossed at least 4 borders and heard at least as many languages on the way. So the proper comparison would be to compare texas to mexico or any middle american state.

"But they all share a common language"

Ha! You haven't been to Watsonville, California or just about anywhere along the border with Mexico, have you?

Try to follow the conversation between somebody living in my village and the next one 5 km further down the road. Or a bavarian and someone from Hamburg. They wouldn't understand each others dialects. You know what I mean. Even the folks down on the mexican border get fox news and understand plain old english.

Things tend to be pretty ok in western europe where most can agree on english, but don't forget that a large part of europe was behind the iron curtain and didn't get to learn english until 1989. The majority of people in the east doesn't speak any english at all.

In the city I named (Watsonville) there are many people that don't understand English and many of the signs there are in Spanish. This city is in the heart of agricultural California so most foreigners (and Californians, to be honest) never see it.

It is only about 60 minutes from Silicon Valley and yet has more culturally and linguistically in common with Mexico in many ways.

The people 150km to the south from here speak Sorbisch [1]. They have their own culture, their own schools even though they're mostly german national. Still, they get german TV and mix with "regular" germans on a daily basis. However, the people 200km to the east all speak polish and don't get any german tv. Which group is more likely to have some common ground with me?

The question is not if there are enclaves of other cultures and languages within a larger body of uniform people since on a small enough scale you will always find enclaves: Chinatown, Little Italy, or Kreuzberg in Berlin[2] but how uniform the population is. No population is truly uniform and I don't think anyone pretends that West-Coast Americans and East-Cost Americans are the same as Texan, but I dare to postulate that a common overarching government and a common official language leads to a greater degree of uniformness than 20+ official languages and a loosely knit set of contracts. A norwegian is most likely more different from a greek than a New Yorker from a Californian.

[1] The Sorbs are one of a couple recognized german minorities which explains their special status http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbs [2] Strong turkish/arab minority

I haven't been to the particular locations you name, but my experience with multilingualism in the US is that it's more like "Spanish spoken here" than "Does anyone speak English?"

Right, so that's 2 languages (English & Spanish). There are currently 23 offical working languages in the EU.

And I'm sure if you live in Watsonville, California, you can get your tax forms in English, right? This is definitly not the case within the whole of the EU and the EU offical languages. (e.g. someone in Ireland could not get their tax forms in Swedish).

Language isn't the only cultural barrier. Lets stop being obstructive - the argument is sound. There are many sub-cultures in North America. They have profoundly different outlooks.

The bigger lesson is, political boundaries suck at defining people or culture.

There's way more than two languages: http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/language/

If you live in a larger urban area in the US, odds are that you can encounter several dozen languages in a day.

Yes, clearly there are many different languages spoken in a large, populous country like the USA.

However that's not at all like the European Union which has to publish all EU Directives in 23 languages, and each country has 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 official languages for their region. In the USA, English is the lingua franca, and official stuff can be done in English. There is no language that you can use all over the EU that will work in all (or sometimes any) official capacity.

Several dozen? Probably only in New York.

Three to five separate languages per day, as you would encounter in any other moderately multicultural/multinational locale? Yeah, any large urban area will do that.

"If I drive 1000 km to the south I crossed at least 4 borders and heard at least as many languages on the way. So the proper comparison would be to compare texas to mexico or any middle american state."

If I drive 1000 km to the southwest, I'm still in Texas... :) If I wish to drive to the nearest ski resort, I spend most of the drive time getting across the damn state! If I want to hear about 40 different languages, I just go to the nearest shopping mall or to the cafe in the next building.

And you'd be right. But you'd also have admit that Americans tend to do that to themselves. "The American Way" and whatnot; less bright people even saying "Unamerican" as if that was a thing. Those aren't labels others gave you, Americans proudly confess them. And then there is this ever-present flag and/or red-white-blue. From far away those similiarities seem to kinda outweigh the differences, it's just real hard to look past that, it being everywhere and all the time.

Honestly this post is a perfect example.

You've classified "Americans" as one group when your really talking about "American Nationalists". It sounds like your attributing nationalist propaganda you see on Fox News to all Americans. This is also a great example of state/city variation. Living in Boston for 7 years I can probably count the number of times I've heard someone talking about "The American Way" or using the term "Unamerican" on one hand. One week long trip to Texas and you hear it a dozen times or more.

I didn't say all Americans are that way, I just said some (rather loud, rather constant) Americans generalize themselves; while I don't quite get that vibe from Europe. Movies, presidential speeches, whatnot... it's really not just some nationalists, you export that a lot. That doesn't say anything about those who have no use for that stuff and see through it, I'm just claiming you have a lot of people who don't. I cannot think of any country that is so developed and so into nationalism, at least appearing so from the outside.

You're making the mistake of thinking of Europeans as a whole and comparing it to America.

I've met plenty of Europeans who were incredibly nationalistic from France, Great Britain, Austria, Czech, etc. and they are extremely vocal and proud of their national heritage/identity. They love telling people that they're French, English, Austrian, Czech, etc. but they never claim to be European.

Similarities could be drawn between the individual European countries and US states/regions (Texas is a prime example).

They love telling people that they're French, English, Austrian, Czech, etc. but they never claim to be European.

Uhm, which was my point exactly?

As an American currently living outside America, I would like to emphatically state that America's cultural exports almost always represent Eagleland (check TVTropes... or don't waste half your Friday!) rather than the actual United States.

The problem is that it has taken a convergence of demographic tip-over into a mostly urbanized population and a major political/economic/cultural crisis to stop large portions of the American population from deluding themselves into thinking of America as Eagleland.

I never claimed that it's representative, that was a strawman from reply #1. I just said compared to Europe, Americans seem to do a lot of the stereotyping themselves -- and that also means "American media" compared to "European media". I stand by that, and you just basically confirmed it.

I think you'll need several more hands if you count the times when Bostonians talk like that to mock Texans.

The cultural differences among states do vary, but not to the degree countries in Europe do.

> I could make an almost identical argument about the usage of terms like "Americans".

I hear you and partly agree, but the comparison is a stretch.

In USA, how many hours by car do you need to find a local that doesn't speak your language?

The very same ad can easily be broadcast US-wide. Never do that in Europe (not that anyone has ever tried).

Trying to impose a law on all EU countries alone is usually unsuccessful [1]. Cultures are quite different. The feeling of being part of EU is far weaker than that of being part of your European nation. We don't say we are EU citizens. We don't watch the same thing on TV. We don't read the same newspapers. We don't have the same food habits.

My point: European countries are by far further apart than US states, and as a result, generalizations are more likely to fail.

But, sure, you do feel differently about death penalty, gun control, socialism and Mormons from state to state.

  [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loVjrNFJAik

"In USA, how many hours by car do you need to find a local that doesn't speak your language?"

Zero. The janitors and the landscapers of the company don't speak much English. The baker at the ethnic grocery down the street doesn't speak English, but his daughter does.

Depends on your definition of "a local" - I may have lived in a particular city for 30 years, doesn't make me "a local". In fact, I can think of places (I grew up in one) where being "a local" required multiple generations.

True. Local has a different define in a rural or stable area than it does in a rapidly growing area.

That's actually my point.

A lot of Europeans would answer, "I'd have to take the train (or the plane)," because they would think about the nearest country, not the nearest janitor.

In USA, how many hours by car do you need to find a local that doesn't speak your language?

I don't have to drive. Last week, I walked to a local deli and heard the following languages on the street within a few minutes: english, spanish, russian, chinese, polish(maybe, not sure) and arabic.

This is addressed in the article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com