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Anglosphere
>>Let's just say that I've heard it referred to as "Upper Juarez". LOL.<<
That's because it LOOKS just like Mexico. The border towns anyway. And they ain't pretty!
I live closer to the eastern part of Texas... But even here, there are a ton of Mexicans. And it really rubs off. I bet I say the little things, like "gracias" more than I do a simple "thank you". :-)
My husband grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. His parents are Puerto Rican- they speak Spanish ALL the time at home. And yet, he never picked any of it up! It cracks me up because he has the absolute worst accent when he tries saying anything in Spanish. Haha.
Hi there. Just found the thread, and it’s an excellent discussion, even if concision is not the key attribute (32 pages?!). So here goes a relatively long redressing of the topic, but first, a wee anecdote...well, movie scene. I absolutely love it: The Good Shepherd...Matt Damon is the Anglo-Saxon CIA guy Edward Wilson:
“Joseph Palmi: Let me ask you something... we Italians, we got our families, and we got the church; the Irish, they have the homeland, Jews their tradition; even the niggers, they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Wilson, what do you have?
Edward Wilson: The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.”
Fantastic. And wrong, of course.
Anyway, far too many posters seems to be following some sort of racial line – apparently, only countries with white people are in the Anglosphere (UK, US, Canada, Aus, NZ, etc). This is, to put it mildly, utter bollocks. My proof of this is that in London, Manchester, etc, the Indian, Zimbabwean and Bangladeshi immigrants settle in much more and faster than the Poles and French.
The basic definition of a “somethingsphere” is dependent on language, which is how the French & Spanish do it too. And if you think India is not part of it, then you (a) haven’t been there and (b) are focusing too much on race. Do not forget, a large % of English people themselves have black ancestry and, shock horror, Mongolian (thanks to Genghis) ancestry. Obviously, large numbers of people in India do not speak English, but that’s because of poverty – about 30% of the population is illiterate. These are the hallmarks of “Anglosphere”, although I am loathe to apply any of them too stringently:
1. The Empire as it stands – yes, even today. These are the overseas territory of our great land: Anguilla, Bermuda, British Antarctic Territory, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands , Cayman Islands , Falkland Islands , Gibraltar , Montserrat , Pitcairn Islands , Saint Helena (including Ascension, Tristan da Cunha) , South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands , Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia , Turks and Caicos Islands
2. English language being a major language (NO COUNTRY fits into this 100%, not the UK [lots of Urdu, Punjabi, etc], definitely not the US [obvious...] or Aus [indigenous], or NZ [Maori]).
3. Cricket – without the shadow of a doubt the most English activity of all time. I mean, which other sport has a break for tea? (As I write, England are somewhat spanking the Aussies in the Ashes...look it up, Yanks).
4. Legal/political system – this easily puts India, Pakistan, etc into the category, much more so than the US, for example.
5. Driving on the left – ok...this one is too strict. India, Aus & NZ are definitely in on this one, but not US, Canada.
6. English culture – now this is a tough one. In Britain we often talk about what exactly English culture is, if it exists. I think most English folk would agree now it consists of going on holiday to South Spain and being drunk even before getting off the plane. It consists of club culture and furious, randy sex. It consists of NEVER displaying patriotism for England or Britain (cos that would be racist , y’know). That could be a topic by itself, how the racists stole the flags of England & Britain from everyday people. It consists of always expecting England to get somewhere near winning the football (or sawker) World Cup and then failing respectably. Sort of. Watching Big Brother, being sarcastic and doing things like “nudity for charity”. This is...the sceptr’d isle.
P.S. I am Indian-British.
Aw, if we have to watch cricket to be in the Anglosphere, we're out! Now! Pack your bags, guys....
32 pages -- well, we just like to bullshit, your eminence.
Who said you had to be white to be in the Anglosphere? Obviously that will be news to all the black, Asian, Native American, Pacific islander, Hispanic, and other racial groups and ethnic speaking English today. Nor does being part of the Anglosphere exclude you from membership in other spheres that you might also be a part of.
Dear Uriel - without putting too fine a point on it, you misunderstood. If u scroll up, you will see I said
"far too many posters seems to be following some sort of racial line – apparently, only countries with white people are in the Anglosphere (UK, US, Canada, Aus, NZ, etc)..."
So, first of all, I didn't say all posters, and more relevantly, I didn't say you "had to be white". I said these are all countries with white people in them (the majority, in fact). That's all. Why have I not seen India, Pakistan, etc in the same line? Yes, Indians generally do not have an "English lifestyle", whatever that is. Indians have their own culture, etc etc. But like I say, a "sphere" to a big extent means language. For example, if a popular book (in English) comes out, it spreads like wildfire through the Anglosphere, then the Francosphere, etc.
And the first group includes Bangladesh, India, etc. As I know about India, I can say the appreciation of English-language books, films and music is very enthusiastic and often supercedes "local" movies/music, etc. There are no subtitles for movies (well, perhaps very rarely), unlike even rich parts of France, Spain, etc. That's not to forget the English language movie industry in India, which makes atleast 30 films every year.
But you do have an excellent point about being in several spheres at the same time, not sure if somebody's already said that. I didn't read through ALL the BS, as you put it!
Ciao
Isn't India generally considered to be in the Anglosphere, English having a strong, if not exclusive establishment there for some time? Same with Singapore. As for Pakistan or Bangladesh, I don't usually think of them as being members, unless they speak a lot more English than I've been giving them credit for.
Oh, my bad then. As for Pak & Bangladesh, it's true their spheres are a lot more "Islamic" than "Anglo". Plus Bangladesh in particular is VERY poor, and so illiteracy is quite high. What about...South Africa, Zimbabwe?
****Cricket – without the shadow of a doubt the most English activity of all time. I mean, which other sport has a break for tea? (As I write, England are somewhat spanking the Aussies in the Ashes.....***
Oh wow!.....cricket! What could be more quintessentially English than bloody cricket...cricket on the village green on a warm, sunlit afternoon (it really does happen here you know - it really does but you'd hardly think so this summer!) - twenty two blokes in white plus an umpire who usually looks about 95 years old on the lush green neatly trimmed pitch, two of them holding a bat in front of weird little wooden stumps called wickets, topped with cute little bails, one of the blokes, called a bowler, takes forever and day to stroll almost to the edge of the pitch at one end, turns round and then runs hellbent towards the wicket nearest to him by which one of the batsmen stands ready to run like the clappers to the opposite end of the twenty two yard long stretch as this charging bowler lets rip with the little red, and incredibly hard, ball - over arm - and hurls it all the way to the opposing wicket where the other batsman is hunched over his bat at the ready, ready to whack this incredibly hard red leather ball sky high up into the blue heavens and then he starts to run like it's the end of the world, meeting half way his team colleague running in the opposite direction to the other wicket.
Meanwhile all the eleven players of the batting and bowling team, called fieldsmen, are keeping their eyes glued on the little red but incredibly hard leather ball now flying through the sky ike a hawk, and hoping either to catch the ball before it lands on the incredbly green pitch or to stop it before it eaches the boundary - the outside edge of the entire playing area. If the ball is caught, the batsman is "out" - caught. If the ball reaches the boundary before a bloke stops it the batsman scores four runs. If the ball zooms right out of the playing area without hitting the ground but bombs an old lady sitting in a spectators' area full force on the top of her head while she is doing the Times crossword as the whole game bores her to death - the batsman then scores six runs.
Each run scored is met with an ever so muted, ever so English, ripple of applause from all the spectators seated all around the ground, or, more usually in a local cricket match between teams from neighbouring villages, either on the verandah of the pavilion or on all the seats close to it, the pavilion being the building containing all the facilities, including the room where the players all scoff their nosh in the intervals.
All the actions in cricket seem to take an eternity to put into effect. In between all this bowling, when all these blokes in white are strolling back to their correct positions, and the innings bowler is rubbing the ball on his trousers in order to get a required shine on it, and even more so if it's a case of an "out" batsman slowly ambling back to the pavilion as if time meant nothing at all, passing the incoming replacement batsman ambling just as slowly out to the vacant wicket position so that the new innings can get started, then a spectator can read two more chapters of Ian Rankin's latest Edinburgh set crime novel while waiting for the (BLEEPING) game to get going again.......
And so it all goes in such a sedate way.....bowling, batting, running back and forth - but in between long spells of nothing doing - just waiting, during which many of the fieldsmen scattered about the ground are idly gazing up at the (sometimes) clear sky either watching a kestrel hovering in the same position for ages fifty metres above the pitch, or else at an airliner passing several thousand metres above the ground on its way to exotic foreign parts and leaving a vapour trail to spoil the otherwise cloudless sky.
Come three o'clock in the afternoon the aged umpire yells out "Teatime!" and everything on the pitch, such as it is, comes to an immediate halt, and then twenty three figures in white all proceed to amble off the pitch and head for the pavilion where a team of ladies, mostly wives and girlfriend, or whatever, have prepared a grand feast of sandwiches of smoked salmon and cucumber, ham and tomato with coleslaw and salad, and Cheddar cheese and Branston pickle sandwiches, along with sausage rolls and Melton Mowbray pork pies with fresh fruit salad and cream and a variety of cakes to follow, all washed down with tea or soft drinks.
Later on the game continues....at the same gentle pace right until the "close of play" and the final score, as recorded by the "scorers" who do their best to sat awake throughout the whole thing, is clearly set out on the huge score board, usually placed near the pavilion.
At the end of play, and no matter who wins the match, all the players of the two opposing teams plus their families, friends and whoever wishes to tag along, all head for the Dog and Duck...there is always a jolly little pub close by, no matter where the ground is located, and then it's a case of bonhomie and goodwill all round, and nobody gives a toss who won or who lost.
A thoroughly English scene.....for cricket is essentially an English game...it started life in South East England in the 14th century, and Prince Edward, the extremely tall and athletic son of England's King Edward I and who later became the gay ill-fated King Edward II of England, is reputed to have set the game in motion in 1300 by "inventing" a game very similar to modern day cricket, and which was called, in Mediaevel English "creag".
Cricket is played all over England, and also in Wales, where the only county team playing in County Cricket Leage, under the auspices of the English County Cricket Board (ECCB) is Glamorgan...all the others are English conties.
Cricket has never caught on in Scotland to any great way - most Scots find it unutterably boring, far too slow, and you can understand that as all Test Matches can take up to five days of play, at the end of which it can never really be clear who has won in the end, and you have to have an English brain to fathom it all out by which time most Scots have either fallen alseep or gone off to the pub.
It's no accident that cricket is only played in the UK (apart from Scotland for the most part) and in the English speaking countries of the Commonwealth. To everyone else cricket is a profound mystery but quite a good cure for insomnia.
This "Summer" (the weather here in the UK has been dreich most of the time - "rain stopped play" and "match abandoned" have been so common where cricket is concerned) - a Test Match actually took place in Wales - in Cardiff....the very first time a Test Match in the UK has been played outside of England. Many of the old Anglo-centric Sassenach dinosaurs almost had a fit over that, and to hear them whinge andf whine about cricket going to "foreign parts" you'd think the Test had been transferred to Outer Mongolia or Burkino Fasso.
The Language of cricket - here are terms common in the game of cricket....only the English could think up such weird terms in the game of cricket:
Two short legs
Bowling a googly
Bowling a yorker
Silly mid on
Silly mid off
Silly point
Bowl a maiden over
Caught in the slips
Deep third man
Set an attacking field
Out for a duck
Play with a straight bat (presumably gay bats are out of the question....)
Only the English........ ;-)
Thank you, Your Grace. I'm sorry I'm unable to tug a forelock as I've had my hair re-styled, so you'll have to make do with a slight bow from the waist and an ingratiating smile.
Does the Moon belong to the Anglosphere? Remember that it was colonised by a few Americans (white ones) and the only language spoken ever is English.
I would say that South Africa is definitely in the Anglosphere, although, like several other countries, it has membership in a few other spheres as well. Being part of one group doesn't preclude being in others.
The moon has never been colonized by anyone. It's been visited. To truly colonize, you have to stay there. As it currently has a population of zero, I don't think we have to worry about what language is spoken there!
Since no one is currently capable of reaching the moon, apparently, we'll just have to for NASA to redevelop the capability they somehow lost. The US and maybe some other countries are thinking of making moon bases in the near future.
Several posters here have talked about various European influences shaping the culture of the US, such as Britain (of course) and Germany, in many ways.
But what about the non-European immigrants--such as Asians, Indians, and Latinos?
In the current generation of Americans in their 20s, for example, a substantial percentage are Asians, Indians, Latinos, and Middle-Easterners. There's a lot more non-European diversity in this country than ever before. In my own experience, at work and in school, a huge number of "brown" and Asian people are seen. Now keep in mind these are American-born people; they speak perfect American English with no accent, since they were born here.
During the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court judge Sonia Sotomayor, one of the discussion points was that whites would no longer be the majority in the US in the year 2028.
How is the cultural fabric of America going to change, if at all?
Also, Travis, I think your points about the connection b/w Germany and America may have some basis, but you're *really* exaggerating.
The austere religious fanaticism of American evangelicals is totally alien to the German experience, the land of good food and good beer. And Germans are much more blunt and straightforward, whereas Americans rely on indirect nonverbal cues and value politeness above the truth (the exact opposite of Germany).
I won't even go into the differences in attitudes toward sex, nudity, and alcohol.
I would say that the US is not a country of Germans, and not even a country of Englishmen, but rather a country of Scots-Irish. These are actually the people whose descendants seem to be everywhere in the US.
If you look at the map of how the US was first settled, most settlers did NOT come from England. Instead, most came from areas up North, such as Scotland and Ireland. There's a crucial cultural difference here. Also, the American accent has much more in common with Irish than with British English.
^^ Just to clarify, when I say Irish, I DON'T mean Catholic Irish, I mean Protestant Irish (as in Scots-Irish).
These are the people who shaped the culture of what's now the US.
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