Clark: ok I am showing my own ignorance now of "outside" cultures LOL but what I am referring to is a form of American dancing that originated in the Appalachian region of America....like a sort of country style dancing, originally with clogs (like the group I saw here) but now I think in America they use something like tap shoes. It is very exciting and exhilarating to watch. Very lively and accompanied with musicians on fiddles playing traditional American country music. I am astonished I had to explain this to an American!!!! I looked it up on the net and it sems there are other Appalachian dance groups here in the UK so it has to be popular. I'm not surprised by that. They got a huge reception in the church I was in.
Damian,
I'm not surprised. People have to understand that the U.S. is huge. I live here on the East Coast and while I'm familiar with the Appalachians and Appalachian folk music, I don't know much about it nor am in any way a part of it (I live in the midst of suburban New Jersey in the greater NYC area and am very much removed from the rural people of the Appalachians). Clark lives in California, so he's ten times more removed from it than I am. I'm sure there are types of folk music/dance/cultures out in the West that I'm completely unaware of...I've never been there, despite the fact that it is part of my own country. Given the plurality of the American people and the vast amount of subcultures, it's not surprising that one may not be familiar with all of them. For example, I know where the Rocky Mountains are, but this doesn't mean I know all about the culture of the people who live there. Overall, I'd say I'm pretty good with geography...especially European geography.
Getting back to language...I find it very interesting to examine the dialects of these rural "mountain folk."
Hi Clark,
I am french but i don't especially think France is the best place to live, and i am not an exception in france. I don't say it's good or bad, i just don't know. Because i have not been everywhere in the world. Why do you think because you are from America (you did not choose, just born in the country), it is the best contry. Do you think it's serious to think like that?
Personnally, i think France has some advantages and some defaults.
Nic, je suis américain et je pense que les Etats Unis est le mieux pays du monde parce que mes ance^tres (pour la plupart, sauf ma grandmère) étaient américains et aussi parce qu' il est facil pour moi a\ trouver d'emploi et recevoir des avantages.
Je suis su^r que si je naisse en France, il est possible que je pense que la France soit le mieux pays du monde.
It has been a long time since writing or speaking in French, so forgive my rustiness ;-P
Every country has good and bad points, and we as citizens choose to remember the good points and try to forget the bad ones. It mostly depends on the person and what circumstances a person is brought up in. For me, I started here at this forum (a couple years ago?! Has it been that long???) ranting and raving how English I was. Well, part of that was a young person trying to be unique on top of an identity crisis; the family that I know are all in England, and I wanted to be just like them. But, I grew up a lot since then, and matured a bit, and now I am proud of my American, and English, heritage. Where the heck did that come from? Well, I just got off work and have little else to do :-)
Damian, I thought you were on about native Scottish dancing called "Appalachian" something-or-other. Like Mjd says, we live in a huge country, and most Europeans cannot fully comprehend how bit it is until they have been here. I have seen this on many occasions when my family from England come here, or when I had two German friends stay here. TO them, travelling 30 miles is a long stretch. To us out here in the West, 30 miles is not that bad.
Clark,
I understand the affection and the respect you feel for your ancestors and i am the same with mines. But it does not make me proud of being french. I think you are proud of something when you made something with your own hands, i did not invent or made France.
I do not know where else to ask this question, so I will ask here. I am not looking for a debate, just to find what I am looking for.
I am reading a book called, "The Case for Christ." I found out that the Gospels were probably written before 100AD (I had already learnt this from other sources beside this one book), but the Gospels that we have today did not come cirectly from the original versions.
So, after the original versions had been written, what when did people copy them, and who copied them?
It just seems to me that we can say, "yeah, the gospels were written earlier than most people think." But when I think about it, none of the originals exist today, and if the versions that came after the originals came out 100 years later, who knows what could have crept into the gospels that was not originally there!
The letters of Paul of Tarsas were probably written before 60 A.C.E.
The ones that were authenticated, in any case.
Some letters appear to have been written by someone else.
But in any case, the fact that there is Church material that is consistent
with the Synoptic gospels provides much historical validation of a historical Jesus.
In fact it is amazing so much survived the destruction of Jerusalem and Israel by the Roman Empire in 70 A.C.E.
Who says letter writing isn't important!
All through the power of Literacy.
Damian,
(The river) Avon (hence Stratford-on-Avon - where Shakespeare was born) is still there, but you're right - a lot of the old English counties were divided or dropped a few years back.
Well, for the first 20 years of my life I never travelled further than 50 miles from where I was born... and I was born in Los Angeles. That's probably not the norm for people in that area, but for those who were born and continue to live in the vast central part of the U.S. (where it may be 500 miles or more to the only "foreign country", Mexico or Canada), there is just little exposure to foreign people and cultures - certainly not on the scale one gets in the UK or Europe where everything is so close.
Still, that's no excuse for ignorance. I was drawing maps of the world when I was six years old and can locate all but the smallest nations (ususally the ones in Oceania are the most difficult to learn about). I studied Icelandic and Norwegian long before I went there.
