National or European

**Vuk** · 10-21-2012, 15:37

Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

1500 years ago

See the difference?

Also - we've stopped referring o ourselves as "Geats" or "Jutes" or "Anglians".

No, I don't.

**Philippus Flavius Homovallumus** · 10-21-2012, 16:29

Originally Posted by Vuk

No, I don't.

Your lack of understanding is not my problem.

Americans who know nothing about Europe - God save us from the lot of you.

OK - get this - in England if you go 150 miles in any direction you'll wind up in a place where people speak a different dialect, if not language, and have different shaped noses to you.

We are that different. Americans are descended from people who left their homes, Europeans are mostly descended from people who have (more or less) stayed home. It means something to be from somewhere in a way it doesn't, and can't, in the US

**lars573** · 10-21-2012, 16:53

Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

Your lack of understanding is not my problem.

Americans who know nothing about Europe - God save us from the lot of you.

OK - get this - in England if you go 150 miles in any direction you'll wind up in a place where people speak a different dialect, if not language, and have different shaped noses to you.

We are that different. Americans are descended from people who left their homes, Europeans are mostly descended from people who have (more or less) stayed home. It means something to be from somewhere in a way it doesn't, and can't, in the US

Oh come off it. I can do the same thing, and I'm in North America.

**Philippus Flavius Homovallumus** · 10-21-2012, 17:04

Originally Posted by lars573

Oh come off it. I can do the same thing, and I'm in North America.

In some case, yes, but were those same people there 300 years ago?

There are working farms in the South West, not just big ones, that have been in the same family for 500 years or more.

Any time an American or Canadian comes to the UK to stay they seem stunned by the level of regional variation we have here - and the size of the regions.

**lars573** · 10-21-2012, 17:34

In some cases, yes.* There's a town here in NS that was founded over 400 years ago. No one can dispute that Europeans weren't here before 500 years ago. But to say that in those intervening 5 centuries in the places that have had the longest settlement (like the Atlantic coast of North America and the Caribbean) that the kind of regional variation you talk about in Britain doesn't exist is silly. It just covers larger areas most of the time.

*Not me personally though, my moms ancestors didn't leave Cornwall until the 1880's. According to her family stories and my googling of the surname Tippett.

**Philippus Flavius Homovallumus** · 10-21-2012, 20:04

Originally Posted by lars573

In some cases, yes.* There's a town here in NS that was founded over 400 years ago. No one can dispute that Europeans weren't here before 500 years ago. But to say that in those intervening 5 centuries in the places that have had the longest settlement (like the Atlantic coast of North America and the Caribbean) that the kind of regional variation you talk about in Britain doesn't exist is silly. It just covers larger areas most of the time.

*Not me personally though, my moms ancestors didn't leave Cornwall until the 1880's. According to her family stories and my googling of the surname Tippett.

Right, over a larger area. Anyway - the point is that Vuk is wrong, and that there is a difference, at a fundamental level between a Frenchman and an Englishman. The area you're talking about would be equivalent to a small country, or at least a region like "the North of England" in Europe. The level of variation, and the sharpness of the divisions is also much more pronounced here - such as the difference between Devon and Cornwall.

Your family left Cornwall, so does that mean they were English?

That's a trick question - anyone called Tippett in the 1880's would have considered themselves to be "Cornish" and more akin to the Welsh than the English. This is the sort of nuance that is completely lost in the US, particularly among "Anglos", where there is massive regional variation in England this doesn't seem to be reflected in the American diaspora.

**lars573** · 10-21-2012, 23:43

Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

Right, over a larger area. Anyway - the point is that Vuk is wrong, and that there is a difference, at a fundamental level between a Frenchman and an Englishman. The area you're talking about would be equivalent to a small country, or at least a region like "the North of England" in Europe. The level of variation, and the sharpness of the divisions is also much more pronounced here - such as the difference between Devon and Cornwall.

And there is a fundamental difference between and Yank and a Mexican, or a Canadian and a Brazillian, etc. The difference between someone from Northern New Brunswick (Acadians) and Southern New Brunswick (British mix) can be quite pronounced. Hell the difference between myself and my cousins is pronounced, and they're from Southern New Brunswick. And we're all of British stock.

Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla

Your family left Cornwall, so does that mean they were English?

That's a trick question - anyone called Tippett in the 1880's would have considered themselves to be "Cornish" and more akin to the Welsh than the English. This is the sort of nuance that is completely lost in the US, particularly among "Anglos", where there is massive regional variation in England this doesn't seem to be reflected in the American diaspora.

My moms family. My fathers surname is Smith, by some miracle my Grandfather managed to track back his paternal line to the Midlands (I think, I saw the work once when I was a teen). I think it did come with them, but then morphed into the regional variations you now see in North America. Like the US south east being settled by Scots. Or Newfoundland being settled by Irish and Scottish.

Example the English found in Newfoundland

Where as I sound like this guy: