# Is Europe more/less/just as diverse as the US? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 10, 2010, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023 "2010-03-10T20:10:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/1 "2010-03-10T20:10:45Z")
It seems to be a major issue with a lot of people here. Plenty of threads such as [this one](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=555328) descend into arguments over whether Europe is more diverse culturally than the US. Well here’s a thread for people to debate it. Disclaimer - I have no great credentials to argue it, I’m not a cultural expert. I’ve been in the United States 6 times, have visited parts of 12 different states, from long stays to a few hours here and there. Other than the Republic of Ireland, I’ve been in the UK (NI, Scotland and England, not really Wales), France, Germany, Spain, Malta, and Italy. I’ve been in the Midwest, the Northeast and the South (barely) US. Although I have seen diversity amongst the states I’ve visited it, it seems to me that much of the (Eastern at least) US is made up of suburban tracts that don’t huge differ hugely from one another, culturally. This is partly due to the fact that as a visitor one can only spend so much time in any area, one never gets to know all that many people on any but a superficial level, one mightn’t get to know the history of an area etc. Generally speaking, Midwestern culture(s) that I encountered were more introspective, people on the East Coast seemed that bit more international in mindset, but having said that, this was just a general impression and could be just confirmation bias etc. etc. Linguistically, although many languages other than English are spoken across the US, most prominently Spanish, English is the lingua franca of the country, the mother tongue of the majority and I’ve not (yet) been in a situation in the US where only knowing English was a hindrance. In Europe, most individual nation states have a national language that differs somewhat from their neighbours. Ireland where the lingua franca is English also has the Irish language which forms an important part of the culture, in some very visible ways. Although many people across Europe are educated in English and a tourist may get by speaking English it is easy enough to find oneself in a situation wherein nobody you encounter can speak English, or to the level at which you can meaningfully communicate with them. This has happened to me in Spain and in Italy. Accent. Anglophone accents vary enough that it is easy enough for many people with the knowledge in Britain and Ireland to identify the town or region a person grew up in. It might not sound that remarkable but it is fairly easy for me to identify someone from a town 10 miles away by their accent, and 10 further miles etc. I don’t have a complete knowledge of all Irish accents but they differ enough from one another as to be specific geographic locators. I’ve heard a surfeit of US accents but they don’t seem to vary with nearly the same frequency as in Ireland but then to my foreign ears I probably miss some of the subtleties. FWIW university educated younger people from across much of the US seem to have a somewhat homogenefied (is that word?) accent. Ok these are only a couple of things, and cultures are more than these so please feel free to contribute your opinion, points, etc, on either side and let’s please try to keep things civil. 🙂 To put it more succinctly, in my experience at least, Europe seems more diverse than the United States, culturally. However, I’ve provided ample caveats about the limits of my exposure. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/2 "2010-03-10T20:30:53Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#): > > To put it more succinctly, in my experience at least, Europe seems more diverse than the United States, culturally. However, I’ve provided ample caveats about the limits of my exposure. Well, gee. The United States is but one country whereas Europe is made up of a myriad of small countries. So, yeah, I’d have to agree that Europe is probably more diverse, but, then again, it’s not an apt comparison. If you want to compare Germany or Britain to the United States that might be a bit more fair. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/3 "2010-03-10T20:34:23Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > Well, gee. The United States is but one country whereas Europe is made up of a myriad of small countries. So, yeah, I’d have to agree that Europe is probably more diverse, but, then again, it’s not an apt comparison. If you want to compare Germany or Britain to the United States that might be a bit more fair. The common argument is that the US is made up of fifty states that are all quite different. See the link in the OP. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/4 "2010-03-10T20:35:58Z")
You need to define your metrics, first. “Diversity” can mean many different things, even if you limit it to cultural diversity. But I tend to agree with \*\*Odesio \*\*in that the comparison is loaded heavily in favor of Europe. ---
**Author:** ![Desert\_Nomad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desert_nomad/32/177_2.png) [@Desert\_Nomad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desert_Nomad)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/5 "2010-03-10T20:46:27Z")
You also need to define Europe. Is Armenia part of Europe? Turkey? Chechnya? Greenland? ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/6 "2010-03-10T20:46:37Z")
> [@Baron\_Greenback](#): > > The common argument is that the US is made up of fifty states that are all quite different. See the link in the OP. For the most part, they’re only quite different from the perspective of us Americans. We certainly have pluralism here in the United States in that Texas, California, and New York have different ways of doing things, living, etc., but the differences aren’t all that significant for the most part. I lived in Germany for three years and I couldn’t really figure out a difference between Bavarians and other Germans. Except for those damned backward running clocks of course. ODesio ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/7 "2010-03-10T20:50:07Z")
I would say that Europe is easily more diverse than the US, but I’ll take only a single aspect. Religion. Europe has _very_ roughly equal proportions of Protestants (of all denominations), Catholics (and/or CoE - yes, I’m including the UK), Muslims (in Eastern Europe and a significant proportion of mainly newcomers in Western Europe) and irreligious or non-theistic (widely differs per country, but up to 70% - 80% in Estonia & Sweden for example). In the US, Protestants and a smaller amount of Catholics appear to make up for the vast majority of the population. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/8 "2010-03-10T20:57:49Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > I would say that Europe is easily more diverse than the US, but I’ll take only a single aspect. Religion. Europe has _very_ roughly equal proportions of Protestants (of all denominations), Catholics (and/or CoE - yes, I’m including the UK), Muslims (in Eastern Europe and a significant proportion of mainly newcomers in Western Europe) and irreligious or non-theistic (widely differs per country, but up to 70% - 80% in Estonia & Sweden for example). In the US, Protestants and a smaller amount of Catholics appear to make up for the vast majority of the population. According to Wikipedia, there are 53M Muslims in Europe out of 825M. That’s a very broad use of the term “roughly equal”. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/9 "2010-03-10T21:29:44Z")
For Europe, for the sake of this debate, shall we limit ourselves to the European Union? Would that make it easier? I’m not really sure what North Americans mean when they ask “Is x like y in Europe?” To confuse issues the terms Europe and the EU are used synonymously sometimes here. Although we known we’re European, in Europe tends to mean on the continent to us in Ireland, and I believe it is the same in Britain. ---
**Author:** ![badbadrubberpiggy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/57b2e6/32.png) [@badbadrubberpiggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/badbadrubberpiggy)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/10 "2010-03-10T21:35:05Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#): > > Accent. Anglophone accents vary enough that it is easy enough for many people with the knowledge in Britain and Ireland to identify the town or region a person grew up in. It might not sound that remarkable but it is fairly easy for me to identify someone from a town 10 miles away by their accent, and 10 further miles etc. I don’t have a complete knowledge of all Irish accents but they differ enough from one another as to be specific geographic locators. I’ve heard a surfeit of US accents but they don’t seem to vary with nearly the same frequency as in Ireland but then to my foreign ears I probably miss some of the subtleties. FWIW university educated younger people from across much of the US seem to have a somewhat homogenefied (is that word?) accent. > > . As for this, I’m not sure we can count accent as “diversity”. Of course you can identify people from 10 miles away when it’s where you grew up - but to other people, they actually do sound really similar, enough that we couldn’t identify them as different regional accents. Just like an American can tell the difference between different regions, but to you they sound mostly the same. When you’re used to hearing something constantly, it’s much easier to pick out the differences. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/11 "2010-03-10T22:03:03Z")
> [@badbadrubberpiggy](#): > > As for this, I’m not sure we can count accent as “diversity”. Of course you can identify people from 10 miles away when it’s where you grew up - but to other people, they actually do sound really similar, enough that we couldn’t identify them as different regional accents. > > Just like an American can tell the difference between different regions, but to you they sound mostly the same. When you’re used to hearing something constantly, it’s much easier to pick out the differences. But it’s not just accent, although accent is the main thing one would notice. Dialectal words also change from town to town, region to region. And I’m not talking about just 10 miles away, I’m talking every 10 miles in every direction throughout the country. FWIW not everyone would care or be able to pick up on accent differences. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/12 "2010-03-10T22:12:12Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > According to Wikipedia, there are 53M Muslims in Europe out of 825M. That’s a very broad use of the term “roughly equal”. I’ll have to look it up, and it depends on your definition of “Europe” but I estimated it was about twice that. ETA: I consider Turkey to be part of Europe, and it’s got 71 million Muslims according to Wikipedia. ---
**Author:** ![Desert\_Nomad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desert_nomad/32/177_2.png) [@Desert\_Nomad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desert_Nomad)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/13 "2010-03-10T22:17:32Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#): > > For Europe, for the sake of this debate, shall we limit ourselves to the European Union? Would that make it easier? > > I’m not really sure what North Americans mean when they ask “Is x like y in Europe?” > To confuse issues the terms Europe and the EU are used synonymously sometimes here. > Although we known we’re European, in Europe tends to mean on the continent to us in Ireland, and I believe it is the same in Britain. That eliminates Switzerland which nobody would place anywhere except Europe. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/14 "2010-03-10T22:41:17Z")
> [@Desert\_Nomad](#): > > That eliminates Switzerland which nobody would place anywhere except Europe. I was just trying to simplify things but whatever ye think. It’s a debate so let’s debate it. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/15 "2010-03-10T22:59:05Z")
What about EU + the EFTA countries (Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein - effectively they are all part of the same single market) as a compromise? ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/16 "2010-03-10T23:03:31Z")
There’s a relatively simple and non-controversial definition of “Europe”, which I think we might as well use: the part of continental Eurasia that is west of the Ural mountains and the Bosphorus, and any islands nearer to that part of Eurasia than to any other continent. You might run into complications with lightly-populated territories such as Greenland, but it’s a pretty good definition. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/17 "2010-03-10T23:14:16Z")
> [@Ximenean](#): > > There’s a relatively simple and non-controversial definition of “Europe”, which I think we might as well use: the part of continental Eurasia that is west of the Ural mountains and the Bosphorus, and any islands nearer to that part of Eurasia than to any other continent. Well that’s the obvious one. It brings in such places as the Russian Republic of [Kalmykia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmykia), where the dominant religion is Tibetan Buddhist. Take _that_ USA! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/18 "2010-03-10T23:29:55Z")
> [@Ximenean](#): > > There’s a relatively simple and non-controversial definition of “Europe”, which I think we might as well use: the part of continental Eurasia that is west of the Ural mountains and the Bosphorus, and any islands nearer to that part of Eurasia than to any other continent. You might run into complications with lightly-populated territories such as Greenland, but it’s a pretty good definition. So you’re cutting off most but not all of Turkey? ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/19 "2010-03-10T23:49:13Z")
Europe isn’t Europe without Transdniestria! ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2010, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023/20 "2010-03-10T23:56:49Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > So you’re cutting off most but not all of Turkey? Well, yes, for the purposes of this thread, and what with the Bosphorus being the traditional dividing line between Europe and Asia and all that. I have no problem with Turkey joining the EU, but for the purposes of this thread I also have no problem with drawing an arbitrary line along the Bosphorus. It makes maybe 80 million difference, and less than that in cultural difference, which is what the thread is about after all. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-europe-more-less-just-as-diverse-as-the-us/532023.md?page=2)