One definition that captures the essence of what I mean by insular:
interested only in your own country or group and not willing to accept different or foreign ideas (Cambridge International Dictionary of English)
As a basic (simplistic?) attempt at answering this thread’s question, here are some easily quantifiable questions:
How many countries have you visited?
How many ethnic cultures have you experienced? (In person, not in movies or TV.)
How many languages do you speak?
I’m interested in responses not only from Americans, but from others, as a point of comparison.
And, of course, I realize that the definition above of *insular * can apply to the residents of many countries besides the U.S.A.
Yeah its true. Politicians sometimes insult each other by claiming the other ‘cares’ what the world thinks about the US. Tom Delay went into a tirade because the Supreme court looks at other countries when determining our laws domestically.
Countries visited: 0
languages spoken: 1, poor spanish is my 2nd
Countries visited: about 26
Ethnic cultures: eastern European, western European, Scandanavian (which some would include in western Europe), Slavic, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Malian (including Dogon), Ugandan, Egyptian, Japanese, Vietnamese, Guatemalan, Brazilian
Languages spoken (past and present): English, Spanish, Portuguese and French, in varying degrees of fluency.
I am far from the typical American. My career has taken me all over the world, and I lived in other countries for many years.
Countries visited: France, England, Germany, Canada, Australia (5)
Ethnic cultures? what does that mean? I’ve lived in New York City. There’s a different ethnic culture on every block.
Languages: fluent English, decent Spanish, very primitive French, Hebrew, and Korean.
I’m an American who has visited Canada and Mexico – and I was pretty damn proud of myself for making it to both of them. I’ve always been a little insulted by the assumption that if I’m not well-traveled then I’m a cultural philistine. I’ve simply never had the funds neccesary to allow me to travel overseas. Heck, if anyone would like to donate a few thousand dollars ($5,000 should be plenty) I’ll be only too happy to go about globe-trotting.
Anecdotally, I think that’s quite true. Possibly it has something to do with the fact that America is such a large country–many states are the same size as or a great deal larger than other countries–but we only have Canada and Mexico (well, and Puerto Rico/Cuba/etc.) remotely near us. I believe it’s fairly easy for an Englishman to get to, say, Spain or France for a weekend trip; foreign travel (or even traveling from one end of the country to another!) is a bit of an ordeal to Americans, many of whom don’t even live at all near Canada/Mexico/what-have-you. And maybe since Foreign Culture may not be readily obtainable, people are uninterested in it? Out of sight, out of mind, you know the drill.
But of course that’s a (potential!) reason, not an excuse.
For myself:
I’ve visited Canada and Mexico.
Ethnic cultures…eh. I saw some Mexicans from the window of a tour bus once. Does that count?
Addendum: I speak English, can read French fairly well and speak it well enough to be understood (although not even remotely fluently), and can read Spanish with a fair degree of accuracy but only have a few useful words/phrases.
Countries visited: Bahamas, Costa Rica
Ethnic cultures: Not sure what this means.
Languages: Just English with a smidgen of Spanish. When I was in Costa Rica, I made an effort to use what little Spanish I knew, though fortunately, most of the people I spoke with knew English quite well.
Countries: I visited Tiajuana for a day when I was 4, so I dunno if that counts.
Cultures: Uhhhh, Well Hawaiian is really interesting.
Languages: English, French and German with enough Spanish to get my self in deep trouble.
Mexico, Canada, Germany, Czech Republic (lived there for two years), Slovak Republic, Poland. I have many more on my “plan to visit” list, finances and time permitting.
I was a cultural anthropolgy major in college, so yeesh, I dunno. Lots.
English, obviously, and passable Czech. Rusty Spanish learned in college, and high school French.
Countries visited: I think 7, mostly in the northern part of Europe.
Cultures lived in: American and Danish
Languages spoken: Fluent Danish, some German and Russian
Dangerdad speaks fluent Spanish and lived in Chile for a couple of years.
You might like to know, for additional information, that of my 5 sisters-in-law (that is, women married to either my 3 brothers or Dangerdad’s 2 brothers), one is an American citizen–though her parents are not. All of us have lived abroad for extended periods, and one family is permanently in Asia. Between all of the adult siblings and spouses, I can count up 8-9 modern languages and several more dead ones. (Now ask us about how many religions we’ve got…)
Neither my husband or I are from particularly cosmopolitan families; we’re both lower-middle-class Californians, as white as Rainbo bread.
Looking over this more carefully, I realize that I don’t know what you mean by “ethnic cultures experienced.” I assumed you meant living for an extended period, but you might have meant attending festivals or eating food or something. So, I have no idea how to answer that one.
How many countries have you visited?
Canada and Mexico. I’d love to travel the world, but I can’t afford to. I have been to maybe 30 U.S. states, including Alaska three times (at one time that would’ve counted as another country).
How many ethnic cultures have you experienced?
Are you from the U.S.? This seems like a strange question for someone from the U.S. to ask. We got cultures out the yingyang here.
How many languages do you speak?
Since I was “college track” in high school, I took Latin instead of a living language (whether or not that was a good long-term decision I couldn’t say). I took 2 semesters of French in college and 4 semesters of Spanish; I cannot speak either one, but could probably pick up Spanish pretty fast if given the opportunity.
As others have pointed out, the U.S. is a big, geographically-isolated country, with 50 country-like states. We have a lot to learn just about our own country. I wonder how many non-U.S.ers really know that much about the U.S. or about countries other than their own.
My intra-U.S. travels have spanned over 2500 miles. Is it common for non-U.S.ers to travel that far from home?
I was born in Canada, and now I live in the US. I never had enough available cash to be able to afford to go overseas, or even elsewhere on this continent.
Ethnic cultures? Do you mean like Toronto, where they’ve got that whole “Chinatown”, “Little Italy”, “Little Greece” thing going? Or do you mean having been in a country with a different ethnic makeup from your own?
I speak English. I took French in high school and failed it miserably, and I took Spanish then, too, and passed it miserably. I haven’t ever had occasion to speak French, and only one time since 1975 have I been required to relearn the Spanish I forgot, to communicate with a co-worker from El Salvador. Now I’ve forgotten it all over again, and could not carry on a conversation in either French or Spanish (not that I could ever do it before…)
Yeah, I struggled with how to phrase it. I didn’t really want to use the word ethnic, but *culture * on its own was too broad.
I mean groups of people who have distinct and uniform differences in language, customs, clothing music, food, etc.
This means that there are multiple cultures within a country, even excluding recent immigrants. The distinctions are, to some extent, arbitrary, and they tend to be based on nationality.
So, one example would be “Italian”, even though there are cultural differences among the various regions in Italy.
Each ethnic culture in New York would count. In fact, I included the question precisely because of multi-cultural cities like New York (or Toronto — I just noticed **fishbicycle’s ** post). I’m sure that residents of mid-west states are not routinely exposed to a large variety of cultures.
But I’m not talking about simply seeing someone from a different culture. I’m looking for some direct experience with people from that culture.
I moved to the US some time ago (15 yrs) and was surprised at how much less insular Americans were than I expected or had been led to believe.
Most people had a decent idea of what and where Holland was, and some notion of things to do with that country and culture. A surprising number had visited, even. I believe the Dutch significantly less knowledgeable about, say, South Carolina, despite it being twice as big as Holland.
It’s not until you live here that you grasp the sheer size of this country, and what that means. From most places in the US it’s easy to drive for 2 days and still be well within the same language borders. So the lack of foreign languages is meaningless as a measure of insularity. Same for the number of countries visited, and for the same reason.
It’s akin to asking Europeans how many non-European languages they speak, and how many non-European countries they’ve visited…
8, I guess. West Texas Black, northen New Mexico Hispanic, southern New Mexico Hispanic, Mexican (upperish middle class to somewhat poor), South Texas Hispanic, West Texas Hispanic, Yankee, Navajo
I can speak enough Spanish to get myself in trouble but not enough to talk my way out of it.
I’ll agree to that. I thoroughly dislike the “x percent of Americans don’t have passports” snide comments. The equivalent area and population would roughly cover the EU and EEA, so I wouldn’t have needed that piece of paper to visit all but two of the countries I’ve been to.
On the other hand, I do wonder if there’s a real awareness in the ‘average American’ as to how different they are from other countries, particularly regarding economic ideology and religion. These are the two elements where I wonder if the insularity stereotype is applicable.
