Comfortably Foreign: a series of thoughts on the New World

Normally when I see the 4th of July drawing close I avoid it like the plague but this year I've decided to take a different approach and explain why I find the whole thing odd. So I present to you Comfortably Foreign, which is a small series of 'essays' on my thoughts about the Anglophone nations of the world (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa in my opinion) and where we fit in, though with special emphasis on the US because of the upcoming 'holiday.' I hope it leads to fruitful discussion rather than a shouting match.

Regards,

The Vedic Underdog

Comfortably foreign: Why we’re all British

First a present an anecdote that got me thinking. If you don’t want to read it skip this paragraph where I explain why you, Anglophone, are a Brit. For the rest of you here it is:

I often go to international student nights and revel in the cosmopolitanism. Somehow I feel more at home in such surroundings than more homogenous social events. Anyways I was sat with an American friend and was chatting away to a Japanese student, and during this conversation I told her I was British. After a short while I turned to talk to my American counterpart (in English of course). The Japanese girl, not having a good ear for different accents in English asked my friend if he was British too. ‘No, I’m American’, he said. At which stage I jokingly added ‘Well, it’s the same thing!’ At this stage my friend, slightly offended turned to me and said ‘actually, I’m Polish-Ukranian!’ I found myself highly bemused by such a comment and retorted ‘Mate, I don’t have a single drop of English blood in my body, that doesn’t mean I don’t belong to this realm!’ At that stage he went to get a drink but how I wish he would have stayed so that I could have interrogated him about the ‘roots’ he was so quick to bring up.

I find it out and out daft when Canadians and Americans think that just by having surnames which are not common in Britain they are in no way connected to Britain. Almost always the name stretches back far too many generations or there are too many nationalities for the person to have any connection to. Most of the time they can’t speak a word of the language and I remember meeting a ‘Greek’ that could not name a city beyond Athens. Was hilarious and poignant at the same time. Some of you at this stage may argue that ‘fair enough we’re not necessarily the ethnicities we claim we are, but we are 100% American. Why the emphasis on Britain?’ Well dear reader that thinks like that, I’m glad you ask.

If your legacy is America, think of where that legacy itself comes from: the coloniser. The language, the attitude (see the next post), the culture. Yes, different cuisines came across from wonderous Europa but it’s no secret that when they were ‘Americanised’ they lost a lot of flavour and were filled full of sugar and fat. What cuisine does that remind me of? Yes, British food (which to be honest I don’t really like, I prefer the food of the motherland hands down)! Blues music is heavily based on English folk, and if you don’t believe there’s reams and reams of work done by music professors on the subject. And attitudes? Well just read the next article to understand how the British and American psyche are more alike than you may like to admit. And yet people over there hesitate to call themselves British, even if they do genuinely have British blood in them. ‘Anglo-Saxon’ was the word used by one counterpart. My friend, the settlement my town was built on was ‘Anglo-Saxon’, but that was more than a thousand years ago. We’ve been British since then!

Does it make that bitter pill ‘colonisation’ easier to swallow? It’s nice to say it was ‘the British’ that brought over the smallpox blankets, that had nothing to do with you I suppose. Well everyone was involved so I’m afraid that you don’t get off so easily. That goes for any Australians and Kiwis too: being part of the settlements means you were involved with the Empire, live with it, don’t finger the blame on people who live thousands of miles away and claim you’re bereft of sin. If you take my roots (which I am very close to might I add!) into account, you’re in the same bracket. Sorry, it’s just something you’ll have to live with. Condemning is one thing, to say that it was ‘them not us’ is another. Stop it!

In essence, enjoy your roots, nothing wrong with that. Just don’t disown the one nation that, more than any other makes up the culture of yours. It’s just silly. We’ve been allies for so long that it shouldn’t even matter. Here’s to continued cultural nourishment on a more equal plane.
Regards,

The Vedic Underdog

Comfortably foreign: Thoughts on the Anglosphere with focus on Anglo-American relations

Before it sails over anyone’s head let me just point out that the title is a play on words based on the name of a Pink Floyd song.

Now down to the nitty gritty of it all. The English speaking nations of the world (and I mean the proper ones, UK, US, Canada, Australia and NZ, possibly South Africa too. NOT INDIA) have, in my opinion, a very odd relationship. I would not be the first to draw this comparison. Scores of people that study English literature will learn of Oscar Wilde and Robert Louis Stevenson’s experiences in dealing with people and customs from different sides of the Atlantic. Oscar even summed up the ‘special relationship’ best with his quote that the US and UK were “divided by a common language.” Now this is something that has been a cause of much bafflement to me for a very very long time. It just doesn’t add up in my book. The primary reason for this is perhaps down to my own life; until recently I felt a strong kinship with Indians (and in some senses one could argue I still do) and this has been hugely influenced by my ability to speak their language. I, for many years, felt more at home in India than other cousins raised outside the motherland because of this. From this I always felt that culture and by some extension kinship was inexplicably linked to language. After all if I can express my thoughts and feelings in a coherent manner in someone’s language, a bond is formed, isn’t it?

And yet somehow Brits and Americans, whilst having admiration for one another, do feel they are different sides of the coin at the very least and as such see each other as foreign. My American relatives argue time and distance count for something. Whilst that may be so it can not fully explain the barriers that exist, because this is not the case everywhere. I will of course dip back into Hindi because, after all, that is a language I know well. Through colonisation etc various Indian diasporas have come into existence, two famous examples being Fiji and Surinam. In both nations there have been at least 5 or 6 generations of separation with India, and as such the Bihari dialect of Hindi, Bhojpuri, has been spoken amongst these communities and changed a little. And yet it is still intelligible for a speaker of a more mainstream more Indian form of Hindi. What’s more the nuances are accepted for what they are, nuances, and then the bonds form. They still feel a part of India, or at the very least that Indian culture is not something separate and distinct from them. Heck, even the Guyanese, who now speak English, still feel India is the motherland!

This led me to think that perhaps it’s a European thing. The reason I say this is because there is a significant difference between European and Brazilian Portuguese, not enough for them not to be mutually comprehendible but enough for my language partner from Rio to realise I’d been learning what they speak in Portugal and informing me what words were used in South America instead. That said from speaking to him it appeared that when he got over this hurdle with the Europeans they just chat and don’t make a (massive) deal out of it. It’s only natural to talk about differences, but I could easily talk about the differences between Scotland and England with someone, couldn’t I?

There just has to be a British element. Or at the very least a north-western Europe element because the French are well known for mocking the ‘ridiculousness’ of the way the ‘colonies’ speak their language. I’d argue that maybe (just maybe) the Francosphere are more divided than we Anglos are.

But wait they have that ‘Francophonie council’ (google it if you don’t believe me) where they meet up and, regardless of what they officially say, fight the onslaught of English in the international arena. I can’t think of anything like that for English, well at the very least it’s not as prominent, and in any case there isn’t much of a need for it, is there?

So wait, is this a British thing? And before any Americans get up in arms, that is the correct adjective because, whatever happens English came from England. And YOU CAME FROM ENGLAND. And if you disagree with that I explained this above. Have a read again about 'Why we're all British' if you haven't.

The ‘British’ argument is one that I’ve leaned towards for a long time since there is an ‘us against the world’ mentality in these isles coupled with a sense of righteous snobbery from having shaped so much of the world in the image it is in today. And the Americans have definitely got this too. I’ve lost count of the number of Americans who feel that their government is a ‘do-good’ police force for the world and that they really are bringing ‘democracy’ to world, only the world isn’t too grateful. Argue the political ramifications elsewhere, this is most definitely in the psyche of many Americans, much as Victorian England thought that they were doing a great service to the world with all its ‘expansions.’ If you’re anti-war you may argue about how your nation is a ‘great beacon of civilisation’ and how the world can learn much from following your examples. That, again, was something the Victorians thought when they pushed through all the labour reforms and cleaned up the Thames with the largest sewage system then known to man. I see a lot of similarities in mindset even if many Americans feel that England is some weird foreign country that couldn’t be more different. I’m sorry I still don’t buy it, why are Brits and Americans so adamant about considering each other different?

Well, the best answer I can come up with is that it’s comforting. We’re familiar to the Americans and they’re familiar to us. In this mad crazy world where national identities are often blurred and manipulated and changed Britain (or the US) is a wall to lean on and give and take culture from, and then pretend as though it never happened. It’s better than having a rapport with say, the French or Russians, with their weird languages and bizarre rituals, call the English foreign because they speak our language so we can talk the night away about how different we are when secretly, deep down, we know we have more in common than we may admit to. One thing I found particularly weird when I travelled to the New World (I love calling it that and sounding like some big shot explorer!) is that I felt far more at home in the US than I did Canada. That was down to one thing; a cynical attitude. As strange as it may sound, the cheerful attitude of Canadians, whilst lovely (and I’m not knocking it I swear) did create some distance. Weird. Not enough for me to think of them as foreign before anyone points the finger, but the distance was there. Just like there is a bit of distance between me and many people from London proper, but it’s not huge.

So enjoy thinking of Brits as totally different, Americans. I know it’s not true. I know our secret…

Regards,

The Vedic Underdog