National or European

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

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.


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.

You're not getting it - Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset are all distinct, similar yes, but still most definitely distinct. That's after modern communications and the internet - as little as 100-150 years ago people in rural Devon could not understand people in rural Cornwall and would be hard pressed to understand people from Somerset. Hell, people here in Exeter sound different from people in North Devon and I sound inestimably different from either with my Surrey-Hampshire borders accent.

As someone who can trace both surname and leinage back to Devon(funny you brought that up), can I be part of Phillips super secret Anglo club?

I am starting to think the only true Englishman is Phillip

I dunno, lots of Cornish in Devon - you could be a stealth Celt.

I don't think he argued that other Englishmen are less English, just that they are "other" Englishmen.

To follow up on what he said, on my mother side (parts of) my family has owned and worked the same land since the first church records some 7-800 years ago or so. Family history has it going back way further than that, but that is of course speculation (but then, why would it have started with the Church book keeping?).

I guess Americans just have a hard time understanding the connection to a land, and a culture, that a person can have.

Bingo - "English" is a political identity - IA and I are both English but we'd be hard pressed to agree on much culturally other than warm beer.

Oh - while we're having a genealogical pissing contest, my cousin Olaf was able to trace the Wallinders as far back as Tord, who built the Church at Byr in Sweden in something like 978 AD.

Quite where Byr is - I couldn't tell you.

[lars573]

You're not getting it - Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset are all distinct, similar yes, but still most definitely distinct. That's after modern communications and the internet - as little as 100-150 years ago people in rural Devon could not understand people in rural Cornwall and would be hard pressed to understand people from Somerset. Hell, people here in Exeter sound different from people in North Devon and I sound inestimably different from either with my Surrey-Hampshire borders accent.

No I get it. When I meet people on the street here I can pick out where in Nova Scotia they're from (if they're European or African) by how they talk. Your putting up regional variations of England/Britain up on a pedestal as being somehow unique, it's really not. It happens everywhere. You know about yours because your from Britain. Same as me.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

No I get it. When I meet people on the street here I can pick out where in Nova Scotia they're from (if they're European or African) by how they talk. Your putting up regional variations of England/Britain up on a pedestal as being somehow unique, it's really not. It happens everywhere. You know about yours because your from Britain. Same as me.

I'm not putting it up on a pedestal - I'm saying it's much more pronounced, and it reflects historical identity much more. Nova Scotia is Province of Canada - Devon and Hampshire are counties and I can potentially tell where in the county someone comes from. As in, West Hampshire (Winchester area) or East Hampshire (Southampton area).

[Beskar]

I apparently have a very strange accent which is atypical for my area. Though apparently, you can tell I am from "the North" easy enough.