Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Do you find the US South more of an adjustment culturally than even crossing the border to Canada (not including Quebec/ Atlantic Canada)?
Are there other places in the world where parts of a country are more similar culturally to a neighboring country than other parts within that country?
Oh definitely! I live in Michigan, about 40 miles from the Ontarian border. My familiarity with Canada is primarily Ontario and Quebec. My familiarity with the South is primarily KY, TN, VA, NC, & SC.
Whenever I go south of the Ohio river I feel as if I am in a foreign country culturally. However, Ontario feel just like another state (admittedly, one with cute accents, pretty money, and the metric system. LOL).
Quebec certainly has more of a foreign feel to it than Ontario for obvious reasons. Yet I still feel more in sync with the population or culture there than I do in the South.
Whether I am in the South or Quebec I have some difficulty understanding when the locals speak. The difference is in Quebec it is indeed another language, and a beautiful one at that. Whereas, in the South it is supposedly English but I find it grating. Sorry my southern friends. It is just how I feel.
It kind of depends how much familiarity you have with Canada to begin with.
Someone who lives nearby but has never visited Canada before would probably still be confused by things like the political system, the media (different TV channels and radio station programming), the metric system, the currency, the ethnic mixture in some areas (fewer black and hispanic people, more people from east and southeast Asia), and various other smaller things like the GST, the font on some road signs, the use of single rather than double yellow lines to divide opposing lanes of traffic, the use of French on packaged products...
But if you have seen this a few times before, then switching over becomes a lot more natural, and similarities in geography, climate, produce, and other factors tend to become more apparent.
Quebec doesn't feel American or northern/southern at all because Montreal looks like a European city.[/quote]
I disagree. The perfectly straight, grid street pattern of Montreal's long and wide avenues, I find is more new-world and not at all like Europe.
Downtown Boston and Quebec City on the other hand, have street patterns more like downtown European cities which are a chaotic tangled maze or spiderweb of very short streets which constantly change their names.
Quebec doesn't feel American or northern/southern at all because Montreal looks like a European city.
I disagree. The perfectly straight, grid street pattern of Montreal's long and wide avenues, I find is more new-world and not at all like Europe.
DowntownBoston and Quebec City on the other hand, have street patterns more like downtown European cities which are a chaotic tangled maze or spiderweb of very short streets which constantly change their names.[/quote]
Are there other places in the world where parts of a country are more similar culturally to a neighboring country than other parts within that country?[/quote]
Definitely. Many international borders of Africa and the mid-east were drawn up by European colonial powers, for instance at the 1882 "Berlin Conference" based on a surveyed straight line, without regard to natural tribal or ethnic territories. This is true of Iraq, where the Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds can't get along, and we see the results. IRAQ was first created only in the 20th century as a British Protectorate and its borders drawn up by an Englishman who had little understanding of the native culture. Nothing has been the same ever since. The ethnic Kurds are spread out over SE Turkey, NE Syria, north Iraq, and NW Iran, but from what I understand, speak their own language different the standard language of any of the countries they're in.
Eastern Ethiopia is Moslem and culturally much more like Somalia than the rest of Ethiopia.
The upper part of Pakistan speaks the Punjabi language of neighboring India, very different from lower Pakistan where they speak Urdu.
The southernmost part of (Buddhist) Thailand is Moslem and wants to breakaway and be part of (Moslem) Malaysia, which would be more logical, but Thailand refuses to give it up. That region is having a civil war.
Much of northern Romania is Hungarian-speaking, not Romanian-speaking.
Kosovo was made up increasingly of ethnic Albanians (Moslems) and so they broke away from (Christian Slavic) Serbia a few years ago.
The St. Croix river towns of northern Maine arguably should all along have been part of Quebec, since they are isolated and separated from the whole remainder of the USA by a several-hours drive through enormous forested wilderness areas.
Basques live on both sides of the French-Spanish border and speak their own ancient shared language.
The town of Needles, CA is over 200 miles from its county seat of (?San Bernardino or Riverside), which ignores Needles, and there is a campaign to make the town part of Arizona.
When Czechoslovakia was first created following WW 1, it included ethnic German areas called the Sudetenland (south-east land) and this discrepancy was one of the famous causes of W W 2.
For over 20 years, the country of Pakistan had 2 completely disjointed parts "West Pakistan" and "East Pakistan" but other than both being Moslem, the 2 parts had very little in common. (Easterners speak the Bengali language also spoken in neighboring Kolkata/Calcutta, India). After being ignored and discriminated against for decades by the predominant Westerners, (and especially after the disastrous 1971 flood), East Pakistan finally broke away and became the new country "Bangladesh".
The westernmost parts of China have many Moslems and that region is more like the central Asian countries. But China recently built a new east-west railroad line and is aggressively settling the area now with ethnic (standard) Han Chinese people. For that matter, sharp Chinese businessmen and traders are aggressively investing in eastern Siberia where the Russians are rather lackadaisical and lazy. Eastern Siberia is fast becoming more Chinese-influenced, and Russian influence there is decreasing.
The prosperous, very southern tip of Brazil is culturally much more similar to Argentina, than it is to the heavily Afrocentric, poverty-stricken northern part of Brazil.
I'm wondering how many people posting Yes have actually traveled in Canada. Most of Canada is very rural. Victoria has a European feel. Calgary feels more like Texas than NY or any Northern town (although it felt most like Montana/WY with a bigger city).
Toronto does feel similar to a large NE city, although it's much cleaner than any large American city I have seen. London, ON is similar to some of the upper Midwest areas, but still cleaner and it has a bit more charm.
Quebec is not like any American city, IMO.
I realize that most posts like this are just a desire for people to bash the South or try to stigmatize it as so different it's like its own country, but unless you have visited most of Canada and/or most of the South, you really can't compare.
People on C-D make such sweeping generalizations, and many have never been to areas that they try to claim as superior or inferior.
BTW- Daniel, I don't know any Southerners who think of the North as one area as you stated. Southerners don't think of Michigan as the same as NY or NJ. Unfortnately a lot non-southerners do think of the South and apparently Canada as huge monolithic places with no differences as shown in this thread.
!!!!!!!!!!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tiger Beer
Similar feeling here, I also grew up in Michigan.
I've noticed that some southerners generalize ALL northerners are exactly the same (the thread calling MI people a bunch of yankees on the MI forum is a very recent case in point)....However, I also have noticed many Canadians ALSO generalize that everyone south of their border is exactly the same.
I think they inherently know that its very different in differnet places in the States. But generally speaking, we are ALL suppose to be southern hillbilly evangelical war-mongering Bush-loving bible-belting and insert everything else you can imagine that is negative, to differentiate how much more enlightened Canada is than US. Generally they collectively forget to remember the MI, NY, CA, MN, OR, IL types of states, and just generalize that we're all from TN or TX.
I also noticed general assumptions among Canadians that ONLY Canadians say 'eh' or drink pop. When, in reality, it is a very large large geographical region that is in no way at all Canada specific. I almost think that it could be more Americans say 'pop' and 'eh' than there are Canadians - taking into account that the population of the American Midwest is probably as large if not larger than Canada...and across the board, many of us in the Midwest say the exact same things that Canadians claim to be exclusively Canadian.
Can you tell I've spent way too much time around Canadians? I like their politics and country, but get pretty worn down by so many negative generalizations they have about Americans.
tisk tisk tisk...you're complaining about southerners generalizing northerners, and canadians generalizing americans; yet here you are generalizing southerners
FYI, southerners are as different from one another as northerners are
Are some people seriously suggesting that Minnesota is more similar to Mississippi than it is to Manitoba? No, just no. I know there are some differences across the border, but that's just not the case. Minnesota could BE a Canadian province. (Lower) Michigan is more "American," but still similar to Ontario and Quebec. I'd feel much more at home in Winnipeg or Brandon, MB or Sarnia or even Montreal than Jackson, MS or Baton Rouge.
the official language of quebec is french. not a bit like michigan
i love the way some northerners proudly suggest that they are more like canada, as if being related to the south in anyway is such an insult. whether you like us or not, we're still your fellow countrymen....now kiss our backwards butts
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
