Quote:
Originally Posted by TheBig3
It likely won't change in Europe. From an outsiders perspective, you can't as an individual become "French" or "Italian" or as much as some MBers try through vocabulary "English."
Americans don't have anything that defines one as American. At least not to Americans. So people here are generally just assumed to be American. Accent or not.
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I'd argue this this is wrong. Nearly every culture in the world has been shaped and contains elements of other cultures. Certainly this is the case for the UK and the English language. You only need to look at English and British history to see if this is the case.
It's a two-way process. Immigrants usually adapt to the culture of their adopted country as much as they can, whilst often exposing the parent culture to native cultural practices which can often be very successful. 50 years ago few people in the UK had eaten a curry. with immigration from India, it brought along with it curry houses, Asian clothing, Bollywood films and other elements which have been accepted into mainstream British culture. At the same time, many Indian-descended people are often fiercely patriotic and live British culture to the fullest extent.
It's about attitude as much as anything. There will be those who view the parent culture as alien and those who choose to integrate. The reasons that people successfully integrate or not are varied.