Of course, the diversity, as measured in this sense, varies tremendously in different parts of the U.S. California is about 27% foreign born. Los Angeles is about 40% foreign born. If you compare the situation in L.A. with that in Memphis (only 5% foreign born), you would get two different pictures of the diversity of the U.S.
As you would anywhere else. California is about 27% foreign born, New South Wales is about 25%. Los Angeles is about 40% foreign born. Sydney is also home to about 40% foreign born residents. The US is completely unexceptional at its high points. The difference is that the absolute low point in Australia (Tasmania at 10%) is equivalent to the US mean.
Talk about it indeed. Saba and Saint Martin are both further than a thousand km from the the lower 48. Turks and Caicos squeaks in though: only 971 km from Miami.
I’m looking at a map trying to get to 50 nations or territory thereof. I got Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti. Turks and Caicos. What am I missing?
Also, there’s more to diversity than foreign or native born. The 88% or so of Americans native-born are children and grandchildren of immigrants, as well as the children of the (diverse) nations that were already here. Gotta mean something.
Will you guys get off the kilometers bandwagon? Yes, I know it’s the international standard. But the quote being refuted dealt with parts of America being over 1,000 miles from another nation.
Most of the West, 1,000 miles south of Canada is farther south than 1,000 miles north of Mexico. Most of the Midwest, Middle Atlabtuc, and Northeast is within 1,000 miles of Detroit (and hence of Windsor). And what us keft us within 1,000 miles of Cuba or the Bahamas. Alaska, probably all the state is within a thousand miles of Russia or Canada.
There is one part of the US not within 1,000 miles of a foreign nation… It’s Hawaii.
Upping the distance to a thousand miles and adding Alaska still isn’t enough to make Blake’s statement true or meaningful.
As is the population of other young countries, what’s your point?
Diversity can’t be measured only by the percentage of foreign-born residents. By that measure, Ireland’s more diverse than the U.S., and that idea’s hilarious.
Yes but how does what you are saying differentiate the US from other young countries with a recent history of immigration? Do you think that Australia is not made up of the children and grandchildren of immigrants?
OK, sorry about that. I hadn’t read the rules and didn’t realise.
My fault, thanks for the heads up.
So what? - the song is American in origin - it’s hardly surprising that it doesn’t work in other dialects.
Dr Seuss made a better job of it in The Cat In The Hat Comes Back - it can be read as Little Cat Zee or Little Cat Zed - and it works either way.
No, and I puzzled that you think I said that.
I will, however, point out two things: neither the UK nor Ireland are “new” countries, and “new” countries themselves have wildly varied rates of diversity. For example, if you look at the ethnic breakdown of Australia and the US, a far greater percentage of Australians are of English extraction than any percentage of Americans are of any single background.
Your first paragraph is illogical. There’s nothing about a large population that by sole dint of size makes it more diverse than a small population.
Your second paragraph ignores Australia and Canada, similarly geographically large (and in the case of Australia much more isolated) nations that travel substantially more than the US and are home to proportionally more foreign born residents.
In any event, my post was solely in response to an assertion that in the US:
It’s wonderful that Americans are proud that their diverse nation is a melting pot of cultures, but it should also be recognised that this is hardly exceptional.
Canadian shows, however, have a tendency to fly under Americans’ radar because the culture and accent is close enough to avoid it looking foreign. When I was a child, the Disney Channel was playing Avonlea and it took a while to realize that this wasn’t an American show. I’m sure there are still people out there who think it was about a Maine fishing village.
I’m not saying that. I said that it should be weighted, i.e. adjusted, according to population size. Take Jervoise’s proposed measure, number of people born outside the country. Consider two populations, one an island of a couple of hundred people that has hardly any foreign-born inhabitants. The other, a country like China, with the same proportion of immigrants. By that measure they have the same degree of cultural diversity, which is absurd. China has more cultural diversity than the imaginary island simply because it has more people.
This looks like a good place to ask: Do Brits also aspirate the letter H when they pronounce it? I’d never heard this before moving to Thailand, but I’ve met quite a few grade school students here who say “haitch” when reciting their ABCs. Since there are quite a few British teachers of English grammar here, I assumed that’s where it’s coming from.
They never used to. However, Australians also never used to - or at any rate, it was a marker of being less well educated. But I’ve noticed that all the primary school students in our yuppy neighbourhood seem to say “haitch” these days, and I’m even picking it up myself. So I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a “haitch shift” going on elsewhere too.
I’ll deny it. And I’d be happy to compare Passport stamps, if you like. My last one was from Easter Island (no, not just Chile - if you go to the little post office in Hanga Roa, you can get a separate Easter Island stamp).
Over 20% of all immigrants in the world live in the US (more than 3 times the amount in any other country).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-born_population_in_2005
Some do, some don’t. It’s actually one of the shibboleths referenced in the Wiki article someone cited upthread - which I found really interesting. When I was a child it was pretty much a class indicator, at least as far as my kind-of-snobby mother was concerned. She was cross if I did, as it showed lack of class. That’s a whole complex thought process, though. Aspirating is in some ways more Northern, and so by default slightly less classy, plus it’s not the ‘right’ way to say it, so shows lack of education, which in turn shows lack of class. British class nuances would fill the whole thread and more, though: suffice it to say, it’s often not seen as correct to say ‘haitch’ but it’s not uncommon.
When I landed in AUS, my primary school/grade school/elementary school teacher didn’t know that Americans pronounced Z as Zee.
And she was teaching a multi-cultural school with a high USA enrolment.
But she was probably very young and very inexperienced.
And my younger sister was corrected from H to Haitch by her teacher.