Is the stereotype of the insular American accurate?

In My Humble Opinion
81

I’ve never been out of the US. I also don’t feel I need to go abroad just to have been abroad. When I go, I’m going because I’m interested in the people, the culture or the landscapes… not because I’m a sad little midwesterner who’s never been out of the continental US.

I mostly support two people on savings and a very small wage. We live fine where we are, and we had enough to take a trip to the pacific northwest, but that blew any mad money we might have had for the summer. We also made our own meals (turkey sandwiches and granola bars) for the vast majority of the trip, which saved us a ton of food money. I couldn’t afford airfare in the US, much less to Europe, so those of you who think it isn’t about money need to think again.

I know exactly one person outside of the US, and we don’t get along all that well. So, if I’m going to ‘crash with friends’ I guess I better meet some Aussies before we try to go. :smiley:

82

Is this a poll where you gather information about other poster’s opinions, or a debate where you tell people they are right or wrong?

83

Sorry, I didn’t mean to get into an argument, again … :smack:

I was just making two general observations: 1) People choose to spend money on things that they want to spend money on; and 2) People have many choices available to them.

So there are some Americans who do not travel abroad, and that’s their choice. And, as I said earlier, I think that there is nothing wrong with that choice.

My last post in this thread.

84

I’ve thought about the “why don’t Americans travel” question, and I think there are a couple factors that some people may not realize.

First, Americans don’t get as much vacation time as the typical European. We’ve had threads on this in the past. I get two weeks of vacation this year, plus the various holidays and sick days. Most Europeans I know get quite a bit more than that. Secondly - and this is anecdotal, please correct me if you think I’m wrong - Americans tend to move about more and our families are more spread out than those of our European friends. I live 2000 miles away from my parents. I have a limited amount of money and vacation time. If I don’t use at least some of that money and time to visit my parents, my mom would be upset. Last year, I had the idea to go to Spain and Portugal and was in the very tentative planning stages of my trip when my cousin got engaged and I had to go to her wedding instead. And it wasn’t a little train ride away, oh no; it was in Mexico City. Most of my family lives in the Los Angeles area, and I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area (a distance slightly more than London to Geneva), so most of our allotted vacation time and money was spent in LA. Combine the large distances we often live from our family members with limited vacation time and the massive - not to mention wildly diverse in geography, climate, and population - area Americans can visit without a passport, and people are surprised that we tend to stay on our own continent?

85

I’m another one who has never been outside North America, and yes money is one main factor. But another thing I always have to remind Europeans is our crappy lack of vacation.

I have never had more than 15 days of vacation/sickness a year in my working life. And living alone I end up taking half a day here to deal with the DMV, half a day there to scream at the bank, miss a day cause my car broke down and I either had to fix it, or take it to the mechanic. A couple days a year they send you home cause they think you are sick too.

Then add in the ‘required’ three and four day weekends to travel halfway across the country to a family wedding, a couple expected days with the parents for christmas. All my vacation is gone before I get any vacation. I havn’t gotten a full week for vacation since college, christmas and spring breaks, and then I had no where near the money to go abroad. I spent summer working pretty much straight through.

The only time I have enough time to go was when I was unemployed, and I sure as hell am not going to spend the money in that situation.

It’s pretty much the same for everybody I know. Unless their parents were able to send them in highschool, or pay for a honeymoon abroad,they have never had the time and money together at the same time, until they retire.

86

I’m from Spain.

Countries visited:

Andorra, France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland, England, (do Northern Ireland and Wales count separate?), Germany, USA (some 20 states), Mexico, Brazil, Argentina.

Ethnic cultures:

uhm, for starters I’m multi-cultural and multi-ethnic. My parents are from two parts of Spain that are very different and I have blood from some 8 different ethnic groups (all white, but Basque, Kelt, Phoenician…). Not sure what exactly do you mean by “ethnic cultures”, sorry but for me ethnicity and culture are two different animals.

Languages spoken:
decently, Spanish, English and Catalan.
Also Itañolo (mix of Spanish and Italian), some French, some German.
I can read without a dictionary German, French, Dutch, Afrikaans, Portuguese, Italian.

87

dammit, the thread is like 5 days old, and when I suddenly decide to post to it, Kyla pre-simulposts almost everyone of my points. :frowning:

88

No, after all, many Europeans stay in our own continent too. What surprises us is when we have to answer to things like “Spain? Isn’t that right by Colombia?”

When I was in grad school in the US, one of the teachers (American) added to one of his exams a question that was worth 5 extra points. He’d drawn a blank map of the 48 contiguous states and we (23 foreigners, one American) had to fill in the names. He tried it too.

All the foreigners marked that he’d dropped Rhode Island. The person who got most states right was myself (44); the ones who got less were the two Americans (12 the teacher, 15 the student)! That is what we find surprising.

89

I think Mishall got it just right. Education level, coastal vs. mid-continent location, income level, and degree of “ethnicity” within one’s own family are surely all correlated positively with experience/interest abroad. These are not independent factors – but has anyone come across a multiple regression study of this to see to what degree each of these variables contributes?

90

Hijack alert!

I’ve never heard of this, but I imagine it would be an absolutely beautiful language. Is it widely spoken? Is it a real language, or more slangy, like Spanglish? Where do people speak it?

</hijack>

91

That’s a fallacy of division, IAMBIC. Just because the U.S. is 229 years old doesn’t mean the individual citizens who live there are also 229 years old.

No, really, I’ll prove it. As an offer of proof that Americans are as interested as anyone else in traveling abroad when cost is no object, I and my girlfriend will visit as many countries this summer as you are willing to pay for.

92

Yeah, that’s just embarrassing. I’m not really sure what’s going on here, because I surely had geography in school. In 10th grade world history we had to be able to completely label a blank map of Europe - not just countries and capitals, but waterways, too. And we had to learn all the countries and capitals of Spanish-speaking countries in Spanish class, too. This was at an ordinary public high school. And I’ve had similarly stupid conversations…like the time I had to explain to a coworker what a province was, and that Vancouver is a city in British Columbia. Which is in Canada. Which is the big country to the north.

93

It’s not slangy and not a real language. It’s just what you get when you put one or more Hispanics and one or more Italians in the same room. It involves a lot of speaking with your hands (Hispanics) or your whole arms (Italians) and, thanks God and them Imperialist Romans of some 23 centuries ago, a lot of words that are similar.
For example, an italian “umbrella” (lit. “little shadow”) would be a spanish “paraguas” (lit. “water stopper”) but since it sounds like “sombra” (shadow), it’s easy to make the connection via spanish “sombrilla” (lit. “little shadow”, meaning those big umbrellas you carry to the beach or set up at bar terraces).

94

Ooooh. Okay! When I was in Italy, my friends and I spoke Spanish to people, and they’d speak back to us in Italian. It worked out okay. One of my friends had a long conversation on a train with someone - my friend spoke in Spanish and English and the guy spoke Italian and French and by the end of the train ride they were good buddies.

95

Yep, I’ve had the same experience at work. We had a lot of Spaniards with lousy English and a lot of Italians whose English was as good. So some of them were having a conversation and one of the Americans came by and said “oh, I didn’t realize you guys spoke Spanish!” The italians look at each other, look at the spaniards, scratch their heads, look at him, say “we don’t”. He goes “oh! So it’s you guys who speak Italian?” The spaniards look at each other, look at the italians, scratch their heads, say “no, we don’t speak Italian.” “Oh! So what are you speaking in?” They look at him like he’s got 5 or 6 heads and one explains “each in his own language, we understand each other just fine.” He is still trying to understand it, poor guy.

I went to Ireland with a school group, and there were some French youths our age there. It took us about one evening to teach them how to pronounce French “like a Spanish country bumpkin” whenever we couldn’t understand them - written French is a lot more similar to Spanish than spoken French. By the third evening, we understood them without resorting to that. Real nice bunch of guys. Language groups are neat!

96

Countries visited
USA, Texas, Canada, Mexico, Bahamas, St. Martens, France, UK

Ethnic cultures experienced
Still vague for me. But to answer the underlying intent, when I have traveled to foreign places, I try to experience what THEY like instead of trying to find a McDonalds.

languages
Bupkiss. And anyone who lives where I live and doesn’t learn spanish should get a kick in the shins. I took Latin. I know spanish than I do Latin. All I remember is the word for Farmer in Latin.

I’d LOVE to see more of the world and intend to do so. But cost IS a factor! I do well enough, and my latest trip cost me what would have been a nice chunk of change in my retirement fund.

Heck, I remember an investment company’s commercial a few years back that talked about a smart couple that took walks instead of long vacations.

But to be fair, I believe there is SOMETHING to the whole “insular” American thing. When I told people of my plans to go to Europe recently, a got a lot of “Oh, really?” In other words “WHY?” Several people said, if I was going to spend that much, why not just go to the Bahamas (this is not really a foreign country for Americans), on a cruise or to Vegas?

I don’t think that this thread will settle anything. OF COURSE we are all going to disagree with the notion that we are not insular. Because, largely, we aren’t.

Dopers do not reflect outside society. We are intellectually curious people. Most of us would go overseas if the opportunity presented itself.

97

I think I can explain a little bit of that, back when I was in school in the 70’s and 80’s there was a huge backlash against 'learning by rote memorization of facts ’ that went a little to far. I was usually in the G&T classes, and teachers who pushed facts and maps were considered bad. There was actually a teacher removed(demoted) from teaching the G&T world history class because he started each section by having the students learn a map of the area. It was considered an outdated education model, and he was replaced by a ‘modern’ college style teacher for my year in which we simply sat around having a discussion about the motivations, without every bothering with the facts and specifics. My only knowledge of maps comes from personal intrest

98

Countries visited: 9 (some multiple times)

** Foreign languages spoken:** 4 (French is my strongest, German and Spanish are tied for second, my weakest language is Hungarian).

Foreign cultures: I’m a little confused by this question. I’d assume Canada and England don’t really count as foreign cultures compared to America. Germany and Hungary have the most foreign cultures I’ve encountered. I love the whole Name Day thing in Germany (who wouldn’t begrudge an extra opportunity for gifts?)

99

[QUOTE=watsonwilI don’t think that this thread will settle anything. OF COURSE we are all going to disagree with the notion that we are not insular. Because, largely, we aren’t.

Dopers do not reflect outside society. We are intellectually curious people. Most of us would go overseas if the opportunity presented itself.[/QUOTE]
True, but the insinuation has been made (not by you, of cuss) that those American Dopers posting to this thread who claim to have an interest in travel but are unable to afford it are lying because the U.S. is the “richest country in the world.” That’s a classic fallacy of division, as well as irritating.

100

I think, outside of the reasons already mentioned, a certain amount of the insularity is the firm U.S. belief in our own shadow on the world stage. I don’t mean this as “U.S. citizens don’t care about the world”, but more that we don’t feel the impact of other countries’ actions as substantially as our impact vis a vis them. I really don’t think this is much different from any other country that has ever suffered the “superpower” syndrome. Did your average Briton of the 19th century care so substantially about the goings-on in, say, Kongo as they might today? Perception of power can make a country feel very safe and complacent.

I also think some of it comes from our nearly unique history of insularity from invasions. Not since the War of 1812 has the U.S.A. felt truly imperiled by foreign troops on our soil. What war we have seen since that point took place on ground claimed by another sovereign state, or was made by fellow Americans. Without that sense of fragility, a sense of historical national preservation is not as real as it is when you read about the country right next door to you and how many times you trashed one another in the past century. What, in my personal experience, drives Americans to look outwards is a sense of curiosity instead of practicality.

Again: all this is just a general theory floated. I expect it’ll be sunk soon enough.