Just an interesting thought. O.o

[firebird_88]

I was talking with and_zero and a few friends about this over dinner last night, and this topic still interests me.

In the United States, people will answer the question "What are you?" with some other place in the world ("I'm part Italian, I'm Egyptian, etc."). If we're out of the States, however, we answer "We're American." I'm sure we're not the ONLY

Comments

[inrisan]

Hehe, Latvians and other Baltics are hate USSR and Russians. It's OK, even most of Russians hate USSR (popular word for "Soviet" is "sovok" (совок means "scoop" - just similar sounding)
And UUSR... It's have no word for citizenry. In Russian "Soviet" (Советский) is adjective, but not the noun. Russians always means that they are Russians, (Tatars - Tatars, Ukrainians - Ukrainians etc).

[firebird_88]

Haha sorry, I keep using the USSR as an example because that's straight from my history class. XD Thanks for the clarification though, that makes sense now!

I was thinking about that explanation too, since the U.S.S.R. is made up for a lot of different ethnicities. But it's weird that that DOESN'T happen in the United States, even though we're made of 50 distinct states. You would THINK that Americas would say "Oh, I'm from New York", but we don't, we usually just skip to countries. XD It's kinda weird and funny, I think.

[inrisan]

I'm from Bashkortostan - this is a federal subject of Russia and he is a part of Russia. People here refer to themselves in ethnicity, there are people that say - "I'm Bashkir" and "I'm Tatar" and "I'm Russian," in general, living in Russia more than 120 different nationalities, because there is the word "Russian" (as a national identity ) and have the word "Rossiyanin" (Россиянин) (as belonging to the country - is used very rarely, in the society pages, for example)
In USSR we are have no normal word for call ourselfs. Just "Soviet people" - but it hard to use in formal speech. So we are stay have a etnic mind about ourself. Even in the USSR passport we have indicate the nationality, not always correct.

[firebird_88]

Ooooh. O.o Wow, that's complicated! 120 nationalities in one country is a LOT. X.x; China has 56 or so distinct ethnicity, but they're easier to tell apart because they tend to look different from the Han majority (which is 99% of the people in China).

[razcolnicov]

Hello

[firebird_88]

Whoa, there's a lot of Asian blood in Mexico? O.o I feel horrible that I'm Asian and I didn't know that, haha. I know the Bahamas and Jamaica and a lot of those island nations in the Atlantic have a lot of Asian blood too...

Hahahaha, I guess so? We're also a nation founded BY immigrants, so I guess that's where it comes from. I assume there are a lot of Americans that are like "...Well, my family has been here since the Revolution, so I guess I'm British. << >>;;;;" XD;

Haha your English is great, don't worry about it! Aw, thank you. :)

I'm still really confused about what to call myself. In China, I say I'm American, but in America, I say I'm Chinese. Sigh. :/

[daihua]

Same here (though I'm from North of the border^_^)I'm Canadian in China and Chinese in Canada

At the same time, my parents are from different parts of China and I was born in a city founded by immigrants from other parts of China, so when people ask 你是哪里的？，I have to go into this long winding talk about how my parents grew up in different provinces but my grandpa on my dad's side is from another province and his dad is from some place else...........One is suppose to have at least 3 generations back at one place to consider themselves--人

WHOA, much delayed response, sorry. XD

[firebird_88]

Haha awesome! :D Hello!

Ooooh that is complicated. o.o *pets* My family was all from the Sichuan province, and while my grandparent's families were from various towns in the region, they got married and settle in my hometown, so now we have a ton of uncles/aunts/cousins in the same place. I'm not sure how I'd refer to myself in your situation though... I guess we say where we were born and not so much our ancestry? 8D; I don't even know.

[wateria]

hmm...never really thought about this before. I guess one reason we call ourselves American is because some of us have ancestors from quite a few different places. lol example with me: American Indian, German, Irish, Scottish, as well as others I don't know. lol So we're more of a mixed blood I guess. So saying we're American is alot easier than listing all those places. :)

[firebird_88]

Ah, that's true, I never thought about it that way before. XD hahaha.

I think it might come from us being a nation FOUNDED by immigrants to begin with (by default, the Americans that were here from the beginning were probably British lol) so that may be it as well. We were probably one of the first "diverse" countries before globalization spread, so that may be it, too. Not even sure. XD It's an interesting effect, no? I don't think most Americans even realize we introduce ourselves as Americans outside of the States but have a different answer back home lol.

[kartos]

I have one thing that will answer this. In my Econ class or whatever in high school, I was told the "melting pot" analogy was wrong, that we were infact a salad bowl. Everyone maintains that origin, but is still part of the new whole. This is why people relate their families origins and what their genes say.

[firebird_88]

Ahhh, true, that's a good point. XD When I was typing that I had a moment of "...Wait, or was that a salad bowl?" but then I shrugged and figured I was imagining it.

Although I guess a lot of the West can be considered a melting pot to some degree since we're getting more and more multi-ethnic people now. As Russel Peters used to say, sooner or later, we're all going to be beige. LOL.

[janegray]

Well, in Italy we very often ask "where are you from?", because we are only officially an united country :/

It's no coincidence that Italy in Hetalia is a country made of two people. As many things as Himaruya got wrong (and they are quite a lot), he definitely got that one right. North and South might as well be two different countries.

It's especially ridiculous when you consider that Italy is a small country. We are already small, and we fragment it further.

[firebird_88]

O.o Huh, that's really interesting!

Europe is crazy like that, isn't it? ^^; I looked up the Holy Roman Empire the other day and I ended up with like, 800 names of tiny, tiny areas within the Empire that took about 2 minutes to fully download because the map was so complicated. @_@;