Non-U.S. Dopers: What Are Typical "American" Traits?

In My Humble Opinion
101

First of all, my spellcheck would like to correct your spelling of “behavior”. :slight_smile:

Second, totally out of curiosity, where were you in Eastern Europe that everyone assumed English speaker = American? Just because that wasn’t my experience. People often seemed to assume, if I was chatting with someone else, that we were in fact speaking German. And - keeping in mind I wasn’t just in Eastern Europe, I was in the Balkans, where people refuse to admit they’re speaking the same language even if they obviously are and insist that they must have a translator because they cannot possibly understand that bizarre, foreign language you’re speaking!* - most people seemed to assume that Americans don’t even speak English - they speak American. I was an English teacher and I probably STILL have students, after two years, who think I am from England, even though I told them a zillion times that I am NOT English. People who didn’t speak more than two phrases of English (inevitably: “I love you!” and “motherfucker!”) told me with great authority that English and American were different languages and seemed to doubt my insistence that there is no such think as “American” and that despite the accent difference, Americans and English people generally have no trouble understanding each other.

Whoa, that went into a rant there. Sorry!

*I am not kidding at all. When the Bulgarian president meets with the Macedonian president, the latter insists on using a translator, while the former doesn’t. :rolleyes:

102

Honestly, yes I can, and without resorting to Wiki or Atlases. But I’ve always been a geography/history freak so I’m not exactly a representative sample. :wink:

What is true is that I think nearly all Australians or Europeans are aware that those countries exist and could find them on a map, though.

103

Ah, the Canadian spelling - gets the spellcheck every time!

Anyways, the English=American thing I noticed mostly in the Czech Republic (only because I spent the most time there, not sure about other places). I taught English too and several of my classes were conversational English for adults, where you basically just sat around and shot the shit for a while (at my extremely slapdash, under-the-table type school - I do realize that other places take these classes more seriously).

Anyways, my students often got to talking about America and Americans and would say things to me like “you Americans all do x”, or “why do Americans always x”. No amount of me pointing out that I was not American ever made any difference - they just didn’t seem to think it was a different thing. Other teachers at the school were from England, Australia, even South Africa, but we were all Americans in their eyes.

Now, that is a small sample from a fairly small town in Czech, but that was my experience. It’s interesting to know that it varies!

104

You know, some of the claims in this thread make me roll my eyes, just a wee bit, but this hits the nail on the head. WTF is wrong with our country that people can’t find anything on a map? It is so fucking embarrassing. If only we could clone my sixth grade teacher. A couple hundred thousand of her, we wouldn’t have this issue anymore.

105

It does seem that way for the most part. Latinos are everywhere, Asians* from various countries have their enclaves, and from there you get down to still smaller enclaves of nationalities like Persia, Armenia, and Russia. There’s quite a few South Asians, too. But L.A. being the way it is everybody’s spread out, and you won’t meet or see people from most of these ethnic groups unless you look for them.

*Meaning East Asian, excluding the subcontinent.

I’m not surprised by this. For some reason, former colonial powers usually do seem to have many immigrants from their former colonies. We’ve always had a lot of Filipinos on the West Coast, and their country became independent around the same time as India.

106

All aboard the Waaambulance.

107

The way you phrase this implies that nobody except the Jews actually came to the US during the 20th century and thus nobody else can claim ancestry as a direct line, which is idiotic. Pardon me for not feeling bad for your “victimhood”; I lost some relatives* in the Holocaust as well, but I identify more readily with my Icelandic** heritage, as my mother emigrated back in the late 1960s and she made sure I experienced a lot of her culture. I have every right to my ethnic identity, and I don’t feel the need to shit all over people because they’re not the immediate descendant of the immigrant(s) in the family. There are legitimate reasons for a person to feel more connected to what you’d identify as “distant” roots, and they’ve been mentioned above. People can manage to hold onto their heritage long after the original immigrant parent has died and still identify as at least partially belonging to that culture.

[sub]*The ancestors in that part of my family came over just before the Bolshevik revolution, so we really don’t know anything from before them leaving Odessa.
**I’m sure I get more stupidity about my ethnicity than you do as a Jew, as I get the “OMFG, what the hell is going on/what did she just say?” look any time I mention something that’s directly pertaining to Icelandic culture in person. I can’t even mention my siblings’ names to people I don’t know well without getting the “what a freak” stare. People at least have a vague idea of what Jews are as a cultural ethnicity.[/sub]

108

:rolleyes: Whatever. I was challenged to defend my position and I explained why being 1/1024th Dutch from when your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather came to Ellis Island does not give you a Dutch “identity”. Do you actually have anything to contribute?

109

What a straw man. My only argument this entire time has been that it’s not appropriate to take pot shots at my legitimate identity and then wave it off with “Har har, I’m 1/600th Irish and that means I drink whiskey sometimes!” as if those are remotely equivalent. Not once have I proposed any kind of universal rubric by which to determine the legitimacy of anyone’s claim to any particular ethnic or cultural identity, nor have I sought to denigrate anyone’s cultural identity except to point out that some people who say “I’m Irish” or “I’m Italian” when they’re really Americans through and through are a bit deluded. This assignment of extra feelings and motives to me says a lot more about the people doing it than it does about me, IMO.

110

Seems like fighting about heritage is another less desirable trait :smiley:

111

elfkin477 has hit the nail on the head, I think.

“American” does not denote a cohesive and distinct cultural identity that everyone agrees on, or even should. This is in contrast to “German”, for example which definitely does denote a cohesive linguistic and cultural whole that far predates the existence of any actual political state called Germany. We have never had such a national identity and never will. It would be dismissive of all the many national and ethnic groups that are here. And, of course, where would that leave the Native Americans? If you’re planning an art museum, do you put the Plains Indian buffalo hide paintings in the same sequence as Gilbert Stuart and George Wesley Bellows, because they are all “American”? You could insist that geography makes it so, but you end up with a strange juxtaposition. On the other hand it isn’t any more acceptable to separate out the non-Native Americans from the Native Americans; one wouldn’t want to have an exhibit of “American Art” that deliberately excludes Native Americans. And if you did it the other way around and included only Native Americans, the rest of us would be asking, “Well, what are we then?”

It really isn’t so cut and dried as some people believe.

112

I’m pretty sure you’ve invented a false dichotomy here, but I’ve hijacked this thread enough and don’t really care to piss up this tree any longer anyway.

113

The self-confidence thing Springtime for Spacers mentioned is definitely one. Also, intense national pride of a very specific sort. If a non-American would demand respect by saying “I’m an educated intelligent businessman!” an American would say “I’m an educated intelligent American businessman!”.

In the same vein, Americans tend to see America as the default. When you run into people in hostels and the like one of the first questions is always “where are you from?”. I’ll answer Sweden, Americans will answer Tucson or Portland, or Arizona or Maine. That it’s the US is taken for granted unless counterindicated.

I’ll hand you a cite: Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond. He claims that one of the driving forces of civilization and the increasing complexity of society is that people need to find a reason not to kill each other. Two hunter-gatherer types running into each other start reciting names hoping they’ll find a relative in common, for that very reason.

114

I don’t think it’s that at all–it’s just that we tend to identify ourselves as being “from” a state or city or county, since our states are generally the size of your countries or bigger. “I’m from America” would sound very strange to us and we wouldn’t think to say it unless nationality was specifically addressed. It’d be like you saying “I’m from the European Union”.

115

You know, I wonder if it’s differentness of how we sound that makes it more noticeable and therefore seem louder. The loudest sober people I run into on a semi-regular basis are Québécois. Do you think they’re louder than other Canadians? They unfailingly draw attention by how loud they seem, but then, like a lot of other Americans I only speak a handful of words of French. On the other hand, I don’t perceive Spanish speakers as being nearly as loud, but I can often understand what they’re saying.

Even when we speak the same language, an unusual accent is instantly noticeable, which makes me wonder if that’s what’s going on here given in a thread from the recent past about loudest people the respondents pretty much picked people from places distant as the loudest, and there was no consensus on who was actually the loudest.

116

Apologies for not reading this entire thread before posting. It’s fascinating and I’m enjoying it; if I had more time I’d savor it all.

Now, an answer from an Indonesian I know well. He observed that Americans, unlike Indonesians, when parting, don’t say “goodbye” and then leave. It goes more like this:

A: Okay, see you later, thanks for coming over.
B: Yeah, bye, I’ll see you next week.
A: Right, at the party next week. Oh, what time does that party start again?
B: I think around 6, but I’ll have to ask Susan.
A: Susan! Did you see what she did to her hair?
B: I know, isn’t it hilarious? Oh well, she can wear it anyway she wants. Well, gotta run, if I don’t hurry I’ll be late to picking my son up from soccer practice. By the way, did you hear, they have a new coach?
A: No, I hadn’t. What happened to the last one?
B: Oh, long story … I’ll tell you about it some other time.
A: Alright then, bye-bye.
B: Bye, have fun tomorrow at Tom’s. Wish I could go.
A: Oh gosh, I almost forgot about that. Well, Tom’s a nice guy, I always like going there.
B: He sure is, have you met his new wife?
A: Yeah, she’s a piece of work. Well, anyway, I know you have to get your son, so I’ll let you go … see you later.
B: Okay, bye. I disagree with you about his wife, though.
A: What? Oh, I didn’t know you were her friend, sorry.

Etc. After about five more instances of saying “bye” and “see you later,” eventually the two will part.

I never noticed this habit of Americans until the Indonesian pointed it out. Now I see it is true.

117

Having so many actual uses of some form of good bye sounds clumsy to me, but otherwise yes, I have definitely noticed a tendency for long, drawn-out goodbyes that freequently get sidetracked. I didn’t know it was an american thing though.l

118

It’s pretty difficult to emigrate to any other economically prosperous country. I think one reason is that there are just too many of us. With 300M people here there might actually be 30M who are so disgusted with our political situation here who’d like to move to another country, Canada being the nearest and obvious choice. But that would almost double their population.

What do you mean by “acting on it”, sir? I have learned (some of the) Dutch language. I studied German throughout high school and college. Not “Dutch” exactly, of course, but linguistically close to it, and more available. And I hardly need mention that I’ve traveled there.

You mean the millions of Dutch who came to America to escape slavery in the 20th century? Every nationality and culture has its own history. Do not go projecting that of yours onto theirs.

Moreover, the tradition of celebrating ancestral cultures is almost as old as America itself. There is a Holland America Society in New York, whose members are descended from Dutch settlers of the colonial era. There are German American societies in Orange County, and Italian American societies here and there. Are these people all nuts? You must think so.

I’m really sorry that your family ended up in such a hostile town. But I take deep offense at your suggestion that only extremely recent arrivals can participate in a the heritage of a culture. Particularly offensive is the idea that only by suffering for a culture, can you have any right to participate in it.

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119

I’m sorry but this is just silly. There are lots of ways to define diversity, but by just about any measure, e.g. number of residents from abroad, number of languages spoken, number of ethnicities, Los Angeles is one of the most diverse cities in the world.

Thirty Six Percent of Los Angeles residents were born outside the US, as opposed to London where about Twenty Seven percent of residents were born outside the UK.

Also, from the site linked above, more than half of LA County residents speak a language other than English at home.

120

Then I would expect Canadians to do the same thing, but they don’t. It’s always “I’m from Canada” and never “I’m from British Columbia”.

Also, the “US is default” thing is underlying, identifying yourself as hailing from a city or state rather than a country is just one sign of it.