OK I think it’s pretty obvious now that this topic touches some nerve with you. t I am not talking about people you meet and get to know, and you find out you have something in common and you talk about it.
I’m talking about people who overhear you speaking, and then:
Them (often interrupting): Where are you from?
Me: Western Europe (hoping the vague answer will tell them I’m not interested in chatting)
Them: (puzzled look) Where in Europe?
Me: The UK.
Them: Duh that’s obvious. Where?
Me: Wales
Them: Oh wow cool. (Then speaking very quickly in a monologue…) I lived in London for a few months had a blast. Wow you must really like miss the rain here huh. I really liked the NHS in the UK, so much better than the crap we get here. Hey let me tell you about the time I took the tube from Clapham Junction to Reading and it was delayed 6 hours. Hey you really can’t get good beer here, a decent pint costs about 3 quid in England (and so on…)
Yes, you might say that this person is a boor. But it is surprisingly common in my experience. And it is this that I meant, and maybe less extreme versions of it, when I said that people ‘assume that I want to hear about their study abroad’.
At the end of the day, ‘international experiences’ are just not that interesting. Most of the ‘study abroad’ things people do seem to be expensive and glorified tourism. That they have spent a few months on a college-organised trip somewhere is just not that interesting, it doesn’t give us very much in common.
I just wanted to mention this specifically: it’s not that I would get offended, but that Americans do. I have had Americans ask me what I dislike about the US, or what it’s biggest problems are, and then get very offended by my answers. So now I avoid those sorts of conversations with people I don’t know very well.
And I can understand their impulse to get offended: no matter how open minded you consider yourself, it can be tough to hear criticisms of your family from an outsider, especially when they’re not the criticisms you expect.
And honestly, about people who studied abroad, I think most of them are surprised and disappointed that their compatriots are not more interested in and impressed by their tales and anecdotes, and they see meeting someone from the target or a nearby country as a chance to unload a few anecdotes.
And saying ‘quid’ is blatantly not natural, at least in the times I have experienced it. It would be like me meeting some Americans from Chicago in the UK, and crassly saying “y’all” to them every chance I got, to demonstrate how au fait I am with American English. Especially so, because where I come from, people don’t say ‘quid’ very much. Just like people don’t say “y’all” very much in Chicago.
That I’m an atheist, or at least not religious. I can get why people might think this- the majority of my friends are gay, I cuss a lot, hold pretty liberal beliefs. But I’m a pretty devout Catholic. I think a lot of people who aren’t religious often assume that people who are hold the most extreme views, and that there isn’t a middle ground of, well, normal people who just happen to be religious.
This is really typical, as in one person coming up out of nowhere and doing this to you? I don’t know where you go where this happens, but maybe you need to find better places.
This is the raw nerve. To call it “glorified tourism” is wrong, and offensive. Different people may have different experiences, but when I went it was something we took very seriously. We treated our hosts with consideration and respect, and we tried to take full advantage of our being there. As well, we met as far as possible the expectations placed on us as students, just as native students presumably do. This isn’t glorified tourism. Obviously this is at odds with the impression you have of (American) students who’ve studied abroad, and maybe you’ve only met the lousy ones. You do seem to meet the rude ones, anyhow.
As for giving someone something in common with you, I was thinking more of the fact that the person in your example also happened to spend an appreciable amount of time studying or living in another country, like you have. Not, in particular, because the other person studied in the UK specifically, possibly in a distant city that you barely know.
Shrug. Campus coffee shops in a well-regarded college town, for the most part. Not ‘out of nowhere’ but maybe standing next to me in a queue at the coffee shop, or after hearing me speak to a friend or on the phone. Or maybe at a bar, they really latch onto it there.
Dangerously close to a ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy here – and I’m not the only foreigner who reports getting this all the time.
In any case, this is the assumption that some people make, that I want to hear these sorts of monologues. Now, suppose you are right that people make this assumption rarely. What of it? How does that invalidate what I said?
Fine: maybe your study abroad thing wasn’t glorified tourism. But ask people who live in European or Australian cities where lots of study abroaders go, especially American study abroaders. These are a big majority of US study abroaders, and a large chunk of them do seem to treat it as a glorified vacation: live in an ‘international’ dorm, picked out by their university, barely attend classes, and generally get drunk with other Americans from other unis.
Now, to be honest, that sounds like a lot of fun. I’m sort of envious. But it is tourism.
And I guess your second point is the rub: to many Europeans, spending lots of time in another country is not unusual or interesting. Now I know that this may be less true in the USA, since the US is a lot more insular, but still.
I suppose, if I’m being honest, that I look down a little on people who are overly excited to meet a foreigner: it betrays their insularity. In more cosmopolitan places, meeting foreigners is just not noteworthy.
People always assume that because I’m politically conservative and a practicing Christian that I’m some ultra right wing combination of Glenn Beck and Pat Robertson. I’m actually fairly soft spoken about political stuff. I will defend my faith, but definitely don’t preach to people who don’t care.
Well, it doesn’t invalidate it if your point is that every so often you sacrifice a minute out of your life to listen to it. If you’re at a university, which is in some ways like a small town, I would think that you’re going to tend to see many of the same people at the same time, at the same place on campus. That’s how it usually was for me. So…what I’m coming to is this: Within that community, are there so many of these ex-participants in foreign study programs? And of those, so many of the annoying ones? I would think you’d have met all these types by, say, early October of any given academic year. I think that’s what I’m having a hard time understanding, in terms of how big a problem this seems to be. (Full disclosure: I’ve never been to your part of the U.S., so there may be some regional differences at work.)
As for those of us who’ve been, most of us don’t expect a great deal of interest on the part of our compatriots who stayed home. Some of us do miss the places we visited, though, which may sometimes lead to talking about it.
It is true that most U.S. students are accustomed to universities in which their progress is more closely quizzed and monitored, than they are to the system in many other countries where you just have to do your work and have your examinations at the end of the term. There are bound to be some who come to Europe or wherever, and take that as an opportunity do blow everything off, because now they don’t have weekly assignments or essays every two weeks. But I can tell you that wasn’t our style and we couldn’t have gotten away with that. we worked. Just as earlier we had to blow off a lot of the fun classes that other people got to do in high school, while we were busy taking our raft of required courses to get into the university we were in. We had fun and blew off steam, too, when we were in Europe, but it was a great deal more than that.
I would think it depends on the situation. The countries of Europe all have their own characteristics, but remain broadly similar to one another in the same way that they are different from most of the United States or Canada. (And, I would think, probably also Australia.) So it isn’t just that we’re insular, or that the miserable exchange rate makes it expensive to travel. It’s also that when we do get to see your part of the world, it really is different and exciting to us.
I’ve had people butt in when I was in the middle of a conversation with an Italian coworker (my accent veers to Italian as well, in such company). I haven’t had people butt in like that otherwise, but some of the other things pdts takes exception with are similar to my own reaction to “oh, you’re from Spain! Olé toh reh rooooh! Oh, do play your music out loud, I want to hear flah men coh! Will you be bringing payeyah to the potluck lunch?” Wrong ends of the country and don’t touch my computer, much less my headphones, unless you want a trip to the ER for a HDD extraction.
I don’t think anyone here will mistakenly assume that put down the sabre is amiable and outgoing…
Live in a small town in the rural Midwest for 30 years, then you can criticize others for their “excitement”. :rolleyes:
I also think you are mistaking (due to ignorance and naivety–hey! you’re not from around here!) American inquisitiveness and friendliness with provincialism. We have plenty of both, but it’s normal polite social intercourse among Americans to talk about where they’re from and where they’ve been (in and out of the US). You may have noticed, it’s a larger country than UK, so it’s not so easy to bop over to a foreign country to shop/visit. Living in the UK is no guarantee of cosmopolitanism, btw.
I know, of course not – outside of SE England, the UK is probably prone to the same thing. I bet if I were an American in Wales or Northern England, the same things would get to me too.
This wasn’t a specific complaint about America. See why I avoid any conversations that might even hint at being critical of the US? People are hypersensitive to (even imagined) slights at their country.
I think it must have something to do with our history; people from different originating countries or heritages have bumped into each other from the beginning and were bound to talk about these things to pass the time. What else was there to do on those long cattle drives or wagon rides? Cowboys of the old west came in all colors and heritages, to give one example. So “where you from” and “tell us about it” was probably par for the course. In a world of handmade entertainments, it was a short step to, “What kind of songs do you have in your country”, and “Can you sing one of them?”. Even while this hypothetical foreigner was beginning a process of integration, these facts of life didn’t help to distract attention from the person’s culture, or from interest in it.
As for “provincialism”, it’s interesting that the word is used to describe a pejorative attitude or outlook both ways. The prejudice of some city people that rural people are narrow-minded and unsophisticated, and an actually unsophisticated or narrow-minded outlook on the part of country people, are both denoted by the term provincialism.
Yes, it was. You specifically said that you were referring to the US wen you were talking about insularity. Just because you didn’t mention in it in that sentence doesn’t mean you weren’t talking about it.
It doesn’t really matter much, though. You claimed to have some great cosmopolitan tolerance, when you really don’t. Instead of looking down at foreigners, you look down at people who are from smaller towns. You just picked a different group to be prejudiced against, that’s all.
At least when we “insular” folk are excited to meet you, we’re trying to be nice to you. We’re not treating you any better or worse than anyone else. We’re actually curious to learn about your culture. It seems you’d rather think your culture is superior and look down on us small-towners.
You see, if I’d been thinking of you as a foreigner, I’d have just considered it a difference in culture. But, apparently you want to be treated like an American. And, in America, even the slightest prejudice is frowned on heavily.
Well, that’d be like someone in this country talking to a Mexican, and consciously interjecting as many Spanish words as possible, as if one said, “Hey Jose, what a nice som-BREH-rrrooo”, and “are you bringing en-cheell-YAAHHdth-ahs” to the potluck?" Just about anyone here would find that offensive as well, but I don’t think this is exactly the sort of thing that pdts was talking about. Granted, we’re talking here about different languages, so it couldn’t be exactly the same, but I’m sure the difference is clear.
And I hear you about the music. Especially at work, you often want to keep your music private. Just because one other person says they want to hear it, it doesn’t mean everyone else around the office does.
My wording was unclear when I spoke about insularity, above, but it wasn’t directed at Americans in particular. Remember I said that to many Europeans, going overseas is not a big deal, not to all. I emphatically do not think that this is an issue peculiar to the USA. Or to small towns.
I do look down a little on people who don’t meet many foreigners, to be honest. But I recognise (as you could tell from my tone when I admitted it above) that this is a slightly disreputable attitude. It is irrational.
As for the rest of your rant, I’ll give it all the consideration it merits.
I kind of understand where pdts is coming from. Most people, upon learning I’m from Korea, react the same way: they mention that they like kimchii or they bring up North Korea (where I am NOT FROM and have NEVER BEEN TO). Or they mention some fourth cousin that has taught in China. Or they compliment me on my “good English.” :dubious:
You know actually, re-reading your rant you have put it better than I could: ideally, I would like to be treated just like anyone else. And that means that yes, maybe when you get to know each other a little, you talk about your respective backgrounds. It doesn’t mean the monologue I talked about, and which Nava has hinted at.
And yes, I’m probably a curmudgeonly arsehole for not wanting to hear all about how your great-granddad was mayor of a North Welsh town over a century ago, upon just meeting you. Nevertheless, I just don’t find people that interesting, I’m more interested in ideas. If I’d rather talk to you about an interesting thing, I resent you constantly bringing the conversation around to my home country, as if all you can see is ‘foreigner’ and not a particular person.
More generally, people in the US have a very interrogative style of conversations. You tell each other about yourselves, and ask questions about the other person. This can be unsettling to people from a more reserved culture like most of the UK. More than a few British men have compared dating American women to a job interview – the barrage of questions is endless.
This is likely a plain cultural difference. I don’t really want to talk about myself or hear about you, except obliquely, and especially not when it’s these superficial and repetitive talks about nationalities. Why is that not ok?
I should mention that in person I am really polite to these people – that’s one reason I feel a bit venty on here.
Man, it’s really amazing how my initial observation of “people always assume I want to hear about their study abroad or foreign relatives. I don’t, really” has snowballed.
Oh and your claim about prejudice being frowned upon heavily here wouldn’t seem to mash with the proportion of people who think Barack Obama was born overseas, or who would never consider an atheist for president.
