I’m British living in the US, and I pretty much agree with the position sketched here, with one finesse: it’s not where you were born that determines your nationality, but the culture you were raised in.
(You have to make some exceptions for the children of immigrants, who are more like borderline cases, they are from neither country.)
So I think, even if all your grandparents were as English as they come, if they all emigrated to the US, then you are an American. I don’t care which country you like more or identify with, you are American, not English.
And when you think of it, isn’t that a rather more inclusive view? You become a member of a nationality in virtue of being raised in a certain culture, which is in theory open to everyone. Whereas the more American view, on which you are ‘100% irish’ or whatever, has an uncomfortable racist edge to it, to my ears.
What possible relevance could the nationality of your grandparents have, except in a historical/‘heritage’ way, or in an oddly racist ‘pure blood’ way? It’s creepy when people describe themselves as ‘100% Irish’, like they are describing a purebred dog.
So whilst the guy you spoke to was a complete dick (anyone who gives their critical opinion unasked generally is), I have become very exasperated with the whole ‘I’m Irish’ thing in the US.
Isn’t this a consistent position: The Americans who think they are Irish are wrong, and the Irish/British people who think third-generation immigrants from Pakistan are not Irish are wrong (and racist).
Now, I think there is some confusion here though. English lacks a neat way to distinguish between ‘Irish’ meaning the ethnic group (whatever that is) and ‘Irish’ meaning people of that country nationality.
Sometimes people use ‘English’ to mean the ethnic group, and ‘British’ to mean the (more inclusive) nationality. So a third generation immigrant from Pakistan to England is British, but not English. They are Pakistani (ethnically) but not Pakistani (nationality-wise).
You can put the source of irritation with ‘Irish’ Irish-Americans this way. Yes, they are Irish (ethnically), and it is that that makes them Irish-Americans. But they are not Irish (nationality-wise).
This is where the racist edge to the American ‘Irish’/whatever thing comes in: it seems to imply that the ethnic group characterisation is more important than the nationality characterisation.
I have to say, you could unite so many ethnic groups of the UK, and perhaps Ireland as well, I don’t know, through their bigotry towards Somalians, who seem to get the worst of it.
I wouldn’t say that the Americans who think they’re Irish are wrong, though. They’re speaking American English, and in American English, “Irish” can mean “Irish-American”. It doesn’t mean that in English English, usually (although I do know a number of people who were born and raised in Britain but consider themselves Irish - without the hyphen!), but that doesn’t make it wrong, just a difference in dialect.
Yes. Some languages don’t have that problem. In Russian, for example, there is a clear distinction between “citizen of the Russian Federation” and “person of Russian ethnicity”. And the people who fall into the former category but not the latter will be the first to correct you if you describe them as Russian, even in English.
Globally, of course, it’s very common for people to identify themselves by their ethnicity first (and sometimes last). It’s not necessarily a good thing that they do that, human relations-wise, but I think it’s too common just to dismiss them as “wrong”. Ethnicity and nationality are both inventions of the human mind; they’re not natural characteristics, and I really don’t see how it’s our place to decide that the entire world has to abide by what we think is the “right” way to determine what adjective someone uses to describe themselves.
Personally, I’m happy to live and let live. If you hold a country’s passport, if you were born and/or raised there, if your family’s from there and you feel a strong sense of affinity to the place, go ahead and identify yourself accordingly. It doesn’t hurt anyone else, although it may confuse them a little.
alexandra, the Somalians haven’t really registered on the Irish consciousness. It’s the Nigerians here.
I think this is often true, and usually Americans do mean that. This I think is an usage that many Europeans don’t get/use.
But this defence/explanation risks being a whitewash – I certainly do think that some Americans think they are members of a certain nationality in a more substantive sense than x-American. That’s quite a rarity, though look at the OP who thinks the UK is his/her country.
I think there is a genuine linguistic miscomprehension when Irish-born Irish meet Irish-Americans initially. I have to say, maybe I’m a minority in Ireland in this regard, I can more readily identify with my non-Irish ethnicity friends who were born in Ireland, than my American friends with Irish ethnicity.
I’d be hesitant to try to delve into someone’s mind and make such assumptions. There are certainly Americans for whom their ancestry is just a minor element of their background while other Americans see it as a fundamental part of who they are. But I don’t know that that necessarily means they think they’re more than merely x-American. Note that the OP starts off with “I’m an American” and then says “England is my country as much as America”. That sounds like x-American to me.
And that’s the thing about x-Americans. When they identify with another country, they virtually always do so as an addition to their American identity. You never hear (or at least I never hear) people who were born and raised in America saying “I’m not American, I’m x”, the way you would hear non-Russian citizens of Russia saying “I’m not Russian, I’m x” or the way those people I referred to earlier say “I’m not English, I’m Irish”.
I really think this is just a cultural thing that doesn’t translate particularly well.
In my experience this holds true in most of northern and western Europe at least. Wearing the national flag in a non-official/non-sports setting brands you quickly as neo-nazi or some other variety of extremist.
Here in Finland for one thing, it’s a quick and easy way to spot the kind of person who uses the term “cultural enrichment” ironically, and likes to think he’s more patriotic than “all of you homo/nigger/raghead/gypsy-lovers”.
I can’t begin to imagine what the OP’s coworker’s personal take on the shirt is, but if my co-worker for example, who’s a Russian citizen, suddenly came to work wearing a Finnish flag sweater, I have to say I’d be more that mildly curious about what’s up with him.
Well, let’s not get confused, here. I consider myself an “English-American,” (or “English-Scottish-American” if you want to get technical) in the sense that that culture has influenced my life for as long as I can remember and that England seemed as much home to me as America did. Every winter and summer when school was out we’d head to England and stay there until school started again the following September, which gave me the rather bizarre feeling that I was little more than an exchange student in my own country who’d go back home for the holidays (if that makes any sense). Pretty much everything in my family revolved around England, what the aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents back there were doing, what was happening there, etc etc. I don’t mean to imply that I’m one of these types who had only a tenuous connection to England at best (as in the case of some, say, “Irish-Americans” who have never even been to Ireland and only call themselves Irish because their last name is O’Malley, or something). On the contrary, England was quite possibly the biggest cultural influence in my family…far more important than America, even though we were Americans. Therefore, I can’t see why I would be wrong to consider it my country as much as America is.
Understandable because AFAIK there aren’t too many Finnish-Russians (or are there?), but there are many British-Americans. Therefore, I think an American self-identifying with Britain would be more common and easy to grasp than a Russian with Finland. Stranger things have happened, though, and there’s nothing wrong with asking a person why they’re wearing another country’s flag. There IS something wrong, however, with being a snarky ass about it, and we all seem to agree on that.
Also, I’m not sure if many Brits or other Europeans really understand how much we learn about England in American schools. American History class really beats into our heads just how English America was and how important England was/is to America (which, although true, does alot to alienate non-white Americans). In light of that, and of my particularly family circumstances, I don’t think it’s so odd to consider England “my country,” as well as America. I grew up with my grandma saying “welcome home” to me every time we arrived in England! That was a strange feeling.
We all were legally Russian until 1917. Russian last names are still reasonably common. The Russian Orthodox Church is still the second largest religious community in Finland, etc. We did fight a war or two to stay away from Russia after leaving them, though.
Both of us fought a bloody war to stay away from our former masters. Yours was much earlier, so some would think you’ve grown further apart from your “Mother Country”.
Indeed. Besides, yours is a special case, since your family has kept their connection with England. Enough to live there part of the year.
Based on what I’ve seen on other forums, you basically learn that they’re “The Monarchists with bad teeth there in the Yurp, whom you saved from the Naz-eyes. And they have Liz Hurley & Kate Beckinsale of course.”
I don’t think most people would consider it odd if you think of yourself as English, based on what you’ve told in this thread. But the flag-waving is separate issue.
The constant plastering of their flag just about everywhere, that the Americans do, might be necessary to keep a nation of that size together, but it doesn’t really translate too well to anywhere else.
I can’t of course speak for everyone, but much like it’s been said in this thread, the Europeans tend to view the wearing of a national flag in non-official situations, as a sign of the wearer having some issues they need to compensate for with “Well at least I’m an <insert_random_nation>ian”.
While I concur with the general tone of the responses here, it’s not without reason that many Europeans object to some Americans’ habit of proclaiming their European old country roots. I don’t mean just mentioning them if the subject comes up or we’re asked, but the ones who go out of their way to talk about it and generally bore people over it. We had a long argument about that somewhere on here, that descended into near-Pitworthy ugliness. After all, to be fair to us Americans, one sometimes gets the impression that Europeans think we were created out of thin air, as if by magic, in 1776 and therefore have no shared heritage. While the guy in question does sound like a jerk, it might have been seeing the flag worn by an American tipped him over the edge. I imagine his opening statement, “What part of the UK are you from, then?” was dripping with sarcasm.
I wouldn’t wear a Dutch flag because of my name, or a German one because I once got to live there for a year, but in the OP’s case it sounds a little more justified.
(Side question for British folks, or linguists–does the tag word “then” in this context imply sarcasm or contempt?)
AFAIK he didn’t know I was an American until I told him. I suppose someone else might have told him, but I don’t think so. His statement didn’t sound sarcastic to me, but maybe I just didn’t pick up on it?
Either way, he’s not doing too hot. Everyone hates him and he gets into shouting matches with the boss. We’ve got a pool going to see how long he lasts!
This is after all true. By the time we finish college, we’ve all had some Shakespeare for example, but certainly not Goethe, or Voltaire, or Cervantes in the original languages. The only people who can claim the latter are the ones who have really dived into one of those languages and made it part of their major.
Although we aren’t subjects of the Crown, I think it’s safe to say that any American automatically understands “the Queen” to mean the monarch of the UK. Any other reigning queen has to be qualified by her realm, or at least her name, like Beatrix of the Netherlands.
One reason for the whole x-American thing, that I haven’t seen mentioned here yet, is that our surnames often provoke questions from others in a way that I don’t think happens in the old countries. For instance, when people hear my last name, people often ask me if it’s Polish. It’s not Polish, but Dutch in origin, yet has been changed over the centuries to something you would never find in The Netherlands today. There’s the “van” prefix, but the second part doesn’t look Dutch at all. My answer to these inquiries is that my name was originally Dutch, but has been transmogrified over time what with impatient clerks, semi-literate ancestors, and so on. Based on a 1/512 or 1/1024 component of actual Dutch blood, I wouldn’t call myself Dutch, or even Dutch American. I wouldn’t go beyond explaining the name to someone, and that only if they asked me to, but there’s no denying that much of American culture has been about how people whose parents came from other countries learned about each other, and how to live with each other.
