Torsten:
>I see. Does that mean that you will not turn into a screaming dervish if
>someone lumps together Canada end the USA together under >the concept of
>"America" or if someone calls you Irish?
But, Torsten, I am Irish decent... ? I have Irish, Scottish and
Swedish ancestry. Anyways, my ideas of Canada aren't nationalistic
arguements. There *are* differences between Canada and the US just
like there are differences between Guatemala and Mexico. You'd
understand fully what I mean if you interacted for a length of time
in one or both of these countries.
Canada and the US share a common language and we share some
dialect areas between us. That's kinda it. US had a lot of black
slavery and continues to this day to aggrevate the situation by
dishing out white/black(/hispanic) statistics on its news programs.
This is unusual on Canadian news. We had the Underground
railroad and are historically sympathetic to African-Americans
because we chose to abuse the *aboriginal* population instead.
(Wasn't that smart of us? >;P) British Columbia also collected head
tax on Chinese and Japanese during the turn of the century because
some had this thing against Asians too.
At any rate, Canada has a totally different history with
totally different influences. Note that Canada was for the
longest time under British sway while the Americans fought against
the British a long time ago. We also have Newfies. The US
doesn't have anything close except New Englanders. We have
health-care; the US has arm-dismembering accidents ;)
Canada has some 30 million people, enough to fill up New York State.
So, as you can see, all these things make a difference in overall
views of the average Canadian. You do see a difference between
American and Canadian thinking.
One of those big rifts involves our sense of "patriotism". I put it
in quotes because an intense love of one's country as it might exist
in the States is, well, very strange here. The kind where people
will be totally heart-wrenchingly insulted if anyone were to say
"your country sucks" to them doesn't really show itself in Canada.
If someone comes up to the average Canadian and says "Canada sucks",
they might say, "Yeah, what else is new! We pay too much taxes!".
The point of the original topic was that nationalism has no place
in science and I hardly think that my views on Canada come into
play with IndoEuropean linguistics... or do they?
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