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Came here to reply the exact thing. I said already once on HN and I'll repeat it: Europe is not a nation, and especially it is not _a_ culture!
by pif 11y ago
Came here to reply the exact thing. I said already once on HN and I'll repeat it: Europe is not a nation, and especially it is not _a_ culture!
- askafriend 11y agoNeither is India....or even the United States for that matter. Also, while we're at it, can we also stop using "Cancer" as if it were a single disease that we can "cure"? "Cancer" is an umbrella term for a wide range of diseases that can affect vastly different parts of the body in different ways. It's not all the same thing.
- erelde 11y agoThe United States are very homogenous in comparison to Europe. The US have a strong race issue between "blacks" "whites" "asians" etc. Europe has a discrimination issue between what the US calls "whites". For example in France, Polish people are supposedly all plumbers and Portugese are masons. In the US there are only two languages, English and Spanish. In Europe there's too many to count with the modern revival of local dialects.
- dalke 11y agoThis is rather like arguing if Christianity is a homogeneous or diverse religion. The answer is "yes". In the US, views on race are very different in Alaska or Hawaii than in Alabama or Puerto Rico. The US also has discrimination issues between different whites. For example, in the US you can be "White non-Hispanic" vs. "White Hispanic". While less common than in my youth, the US also has slurs and stereotypes about US-born whites based on their family's historical culture. This lead to expressions like "dumb Swede", the stereotype of the Irish cop on the beat, and many ethnic slurs, including those concerning white Jews. "Only two languages"? What do you even mean by that? San Francisco has Chinese language TV broadcasts, and of course Chinatown. There are 40,000+ Hmong in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area. A radio station I used to listen to had shows in Navajo. Hawaiian is an official language in Hawaii. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States : > Tagalog and Vietnamese have over one million speakers each in the United States, almost entirely within recent immigrant populations. Both languages, along with the varieties of Chinese (mostly Cantonese, Taishanese, and Standard Mandarin), Japanese, and Korean, are now used in elections in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Illinois, New York, Texas, and Washington. ... The state government of Louisiana offers services and documents in French,
- DanBC 11y agoObviously very many languages are spoken in the US. How many are used in the bureaucracy? What languages are the laws written in? Because in Europe[1] there are 24 official languages and these are used to create the bureaucracy. EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States > English 80%, Spanish 12.4%, other Indo-European 3.7%, Asian and Pacific island languages 3%, other languages 0.9% (2009 survey by the Census Bureau) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio... > The five most spoken languages in the EU are English (51%), German (32%), French (26%), Italian (16%) and Spanish (15%). At 18% of the total number of speakers, German is the most widely spoken native language, followed by Italian, English, French and Spanish.
- dalke 11y agoYour comments are so noted. However, I objected to the phrase "In the US there are only two languages, English and Spanish. In Europe there's too many to count with the modern revival of local dialects." The US has more than two languages, even in official government use. (You linked to the same source as I did, which points out both Hawaiian and French use.) If we use the same metric, which points out the "modern revival of local dialects", then we must also accept the modern revival in the US of indigenous languages, and their use in tribal governments.
- kfk 11y agoUnited States has 1 common language, you realize sometimes we move 200km here and we don't understand each other? But I agree, in broad terms we are more similar than not (we all agree on the same things on human rights, individualism, separation of State vs Religion. Check: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede's_cultural_dimensions_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede's_cultural_dimensions...). It's just that in less broad terms - say quite kids - we are very, very, different. It's a matter of understanding which layer of culture you are referring to and avoid broad simplifications.
- atemerev 11y agoIt is a culture. Yes, in Copenhagen and in Naples, things are quite different, but there is also a common ground. Compared to Americans, e.g. most Europeans don't like to go all in with some idea or project — the want some plan B. And nobody fears nudity (there are some grades, from being all ok with it [Germany] or still having some reservations [France], but still). I lived in Russia, Switzerland, Italy, Denmark, Spain and the US. And I see more things in common between Russians and Americans then between Americans and the rest of Europeans. Both Russians and Americans like megaprojects, enjoy standing on moral high ground, like all-ins and risky endeavors, and long for foreign culture without really immersing in it. In Europe, none of these things are common.
- dTal 11y ago>Both Russians and Americans like megaprojects, enjoy standing on moral high ground, like all-ins and risky endeavors, and long for foreign culture without really immersing in it. Someone who has lived there will doubtless correct me, but I get the strong impression that China is similar. Must be a superpower thing.