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Anglosphere
<<We can also eliminate Britain from the Anglosphere as well, as it's clearly too Norman-French and Celtic influenced to be truely Anglo-Saxon anymore. Not to mention all of the immigrant influences from other countries. >>
Nein! England ist das Fatherland hverefrom alle die Deutsche Leode fromkamen. Heil England!
Am I the only one that is a little disturbed by excluding the US and Canada from the Anglosphere? Sorry, but I just don't buy it. They are as Anglo-Saxon culturally and as much a part of the Anglosphere as Britain and Austria (and Ireland and New Zealand and perhaps South Africa).
I was not excluding the US and Canada from the Anglosphere, if you had not read what I said in detail. I was just saying that it should be remembered in discussions of the Anglosphere the US has been less strongly British-influenced than the other major members of the Anglosphere outside the British Isles...
Hmm, well maybe it doesn't share some of the new innovations that Australia and New Zealand share with Britain, but most of the differences are due to conservatism that Britain and Australia and NZ don't have.
>>Hmm, well maybe it doesn't share some of the new innovations that Australia and New Zealand share with Britain, but most of the differences are due to conservatism that Britain and Australia and NZ don't have.<<
Maybe I am just somewhat influenced in my view of such due to being from the Upper Midwest, which is probably amongst the least-British-influenced parts of the US as a whole, to the point that even today such is more simply americanized than anglicized and where when such was not even really americanized is remembered as having been only yesterday in the bigger scheme of things.
Yes, that's probably it. So what do you think about the Republic of Ireland? It was thourally Anglicised, but is now completely independent unlike Northern Ireland. It also happens to be Celtic. All the other Anglosphere countries besides Britain had other people living there before colonization. North America had the First Nations people, Australia had the Aboriginees, and New Zealand had the Maoris. They still exist today, however cultural descendants of the colonizers do not consider themselves to be, say, Native American for example. But in Ireland, all of the people are Celtic since it wasn't really colonized by the British. But then its physical proximity to the UK means that it is probably more influenced by Britain than even Australia and New Zealand. It's even a European country which makes it share more similarities to Britain than Oceania and North America which have had time to diverge and adapt to different conditions. Also, it seems like for a long time it was under more direct rule from Britain than the other AS countries.
I would probably just cop out with respect to Ireland and say that it is British but not English, and define the Anglosphere in terms of British influence not specifically English influence...
How do Irish people view their country in relationship to Britain and the rest of the other English-speaking countries.
<<Hmm, well maybe it doesn't share some of the new innovations that Australia and New Zealand share with Britain, but most of the differences are due to conservatism that Britain and Australia and NZ don't have. >>
Well, if you think about it, Australia and New Zealand seperated from Great Britain much later in time, if the word seperated can even be used. Many Australians and New Zealanders still have close relatives who are British, so their cultural and linguistic ties are also just as close.
Travis, just out of curiosity, how many Anglosphere countries have you been to?
>>Travis, just out of curiosity, how many Anglosphere countries have you been to?<<
Well, two, those being the US and Canada. However, I do not see what the value of directly being somewhere personally, over what one can learn about places through other means, such as from what other people have written, to necessarily be that valuable. For instance, I nearly was in the UK and Ireland, but due to a change of plans, I did not end up there - but does merely being on a trip somewhere really teach one much about such anyways? To really get much out of personally being somewhere, one would have to have *lived* there for a good period of time, at least a few years, and been in intensive contact with other people there.
As I said before, but to go further, I think that a lot part of why I tend to differ from many here on this subject is not what countries in the Anglosphere we have physically been (as said above, such is practically meaningless in and of itself), but rather what parts of English-speaking North America we are familiar with. Many others of you seem to be very familiar with far more heavily English-influenced parts of North America, such as the Northeast (particularly New England) and the South (particularly the coastal South). If one were primarily familiar with, say, New England, one could very easily say that the US is just as much like England as, say, Australia or New Zealand. (Actually, that is very much the impression I get of New England itself myself.) This is the exact opposite of if one were only directly familiar with the Upper Midwest, where one could assume that the US as a whole is essentially a mixed continental European society with its own distinct national culture which happens to have a thin British-influenced veneer in the form of the English language and political institutions and philosophies originally developed in Great Britain painted over it. Of course, neither is true by any means, but by what parts of the US one is familiar with, it is easy to view the US as anywhere between those two extremes.
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