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The United States are very homogenous in comparison to Europe. The US have a strong race issue between "blacks" "whites" "asians" etc. Europe has a discriminat

by erelde 10y ago

The 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 10y ago
This 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 10y ago
  Obviously 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 10y ago
    Your 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.

by erelde 10y ago

dalke 10y ago

This 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 10y ago
Obviously 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 10y ago
  Your 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.