PerrydaSavage wrote on 10/19/10 at 00:32:49:

first I hope you know I was kidding.
How does Newfanese sound ? anything like canook ? saying oot instead of out or are you like Assie English,or South African English ?
I just found out this evening that English is the 2nd most spoken language in the world,the first,you guessed it "Manderine Chinese"
the place were English suposidly is spoken as perfect as can be is in north Wales,not even in England.

My own two cents, but since they're Eurocents are they worth a little more ?



You all speak about multiculturality, yet forget who it was that colonized your lands (never mind the issue of the North American Indian)
Was it poor glebes, toling the soil? In part.
For the major part, it was a mix of :
1) people sentenced to exile (so it was in His Majesty's Courts, to populate the Colonies, including Australia, South Africa and New Zealand)
2) entire communities deported (see the Irish or the Scots)
3) families following their loved ones into exile
4) communities seeking freedom of religion (the Pilgrim Fathers, for starters, not to mention Russian and Polish Jews)
5) communities seeking freedom of identity (wars in Europe meant borders would come and go, up until 1946, see the Poles, the Armenians, French and German Alsatians)
6) servicemen (meaning, entire regiments) posted to the Colonies, and families would either follow or form
7) and, last but not least, farmers tired of toiling the soil for His Highness or His Holiness, and spent small fortunes for tickets to the New World.

Read any short story which describes Ellis Island, very few were actually escaping "famine", most could read and write and had money to spare.

Now, my own personal experience.
I went over in 1968, one of the first words I learned was "WOP", if I didn't answer whomever of the schoolkids called me WOP I would get beaten more or less badly.
I learned to run fast, verry fast, very quickly.
I also learned to read and write in English, and so they found a new reason to beat me up, I would consistently win the spelling bees, which to the eyes of many WASPs was unacceptable.

My perception is that America created its own identity out of the desire for one, but never had the years and years (centuries upon centuries) to allow it to sink its roots deep into the weave of society.

The result is a number of contradictions on the one hand and misconceptions on the other.

Elvis would sing of his "Yiddishe Mommye" and many of his fans would don the hoods of the KKK;
Some will brag of being "American as Apple Pie", which is the most notorious Bavarian dessert;

Cowboy songs are riddled with slow yodels (again, from Bavaria and Tyrol)






or will sing about

  OR  

Now, let me telly you abot what a "melting pot" really is.
It's NOT a soup pot, where you put in many different things, and hopefully all will cooperate to make the main ingredient (water) a little more tasty.
Because if this were true, then the fundamental ingredient, the WASP community, is defining itself as "insipid".

The melting pot, the real melting pot, is known in English as a CRUCIBLE, or by Alchemists and Esoterists as the ATHANOR.
CRUCIBLE TO MAKE STEEL
ALCHEMICAL ATHANOR   ESOTERIC ATHANOR.

So, the crucible will take copper and tin, to make bronze; but both copper and tin will lose their identity as such.

Here I do not see anybody willing to meet others, neither in a crucible nor in an Athanòr.

Do not forget what it was like in the 19th Century for your own ancestors when they crossed the ocean.

One thing is social discipline, another is deculturalization.

Cool  

reloaded now round 2

We (wifey & I ) were in walmart on Sunday afternoon - fairly packed - and the wife mentioned how in every department she went in to there were groups of people speaking foriegn languages - not always the same language but nonetheless foreign languages throughout the store (what are they disccussing the price of items or plotting to take over the store i dont know I live in America where the language is supposed to be English - I dont speak any freaking foreign languages and i dont plan to learn any, any time soon if ever!)

- I asked the walmart associate in the frozen foods area where the Oscar Meyer Canadian Bacon was since they had re-organized the section since I was last in this store - she did not understand my question and did not answer me she just pointed for me to go to the island full of Oscar Myer Bacon 2 for $6, not what i asked for in plain understandable English .....she finally asked her co-worker (by way of foreign language) where this product was - pointed down the row to another location and there it was - he did not speak just pointed.......

When I go out in public I expect to be able to ask a question and get an answer in understandable English - not a blank look and point of a finger - or some in-coherent babbling in a foriegn language......speak english or GET OUT!...and take all your freakin relative who dont speak english or know how to follow American ways - GET OUT!

I would not go abroad because I dont know what the rules and customs are so i dont want to offend people in ther homeland by not following thier rules - just like i expect people who come here to follow our rules, not impose thier will and way of life on US......if you come here to visit for a week on vacation and you know enough English to get by for a week and you follow our rules fine - if you stay longer and think you are going to bring your culture here and impose your will on US think again we dont want or need that.......there is a saying too many chiefs not enough indians........there needs to be 1 set of rules and people who follow them....not a set of rules for every culture who comes here.

We let this get out of hand over the past 3-4 decades - I just want to see us enforce our rules and stand our ground and take back over this country before we all are forced to live a set of rules that was never intended to be a part of America.

we should stay out of other countries problems and solve our own first.

I wonder in another 100 years if most of the American regional accents, most predominantly what we call the southern accent, the Boston accent, and the northern midwest (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Dakotas and Iowa) will all disappear, as people are so mobile now.

Regional isolation is rapidly disappearing.  So will regional accents in all probability as people quickly move from one region to another, for a few days, or for a few years.

Look at metropolitan southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas - just as many people there now who didn't grow up there as there are natives.

Perry -

The isolationism of the 1930s just isn't economically or physically possible anymore.

In the 1930s, we had only rudimentary air transportation.  It still took days to cross the American continent by rail, and only the wealthy ever went overseas, and then by ship that took days to cross the Atlantic.

Today's international economy and our rapid transportation means, along with the computer and the internet, have changed us to the point where we'll never go back.

In 1940, the U.S. was basically self sufficient, except for a few raw materials, like rubber, not found in North America.  We were an oil exporter in those days, along with gold, silver, and many other natural resources that we now import in huge quantities.

The old saying that you just can't go back is so true.

weracerc wrote on 10/19/10 at 07:28:55:

It's pretty bad if you won't go on vacation to a different country just because you know nothing of there culture ,the reason you go to London,Paris,Rome is to learn about there culture ,the way they do things,experiment with ethnic foods make the whole thing an adventure,if you don't you will learn nothing.
I love it when people come here ,I love showing them around eat a real hamburger, go to Las Vegas there really is no place like it, any old family members that still live in the UK ,they love it when they come here , I dont tell to learn the American way of doing things before they come here ,thats rediculious.

My Italian friend you should know better American bacon is c---rap
nothing but fat,Canadian is way better but best of all is Irish or English
lots of lean meat in there ,the bacon you guys eat is called streaky,I eat it to because you just cant get Irish or english,oh well another cross to bear.