Quote:Original post by LessBread

Quote:Original post by Eelco
Not even within the netherlands; its not a whole lot bigger than LA, but people at the extremities of the country arnt able to mutually communicate in their local respective accents.

So long as they speak English, sure, but in LA you'll find large communities of people speaking Spanish, Russian, Korean, Vietnamese and Chinese, even Farsi. In one of the small towns south of Fresno, a third of the population is Sikh.

But again, the high spatial frequency of these variations make them totally useless in pinpointing an american away from his natural habitat.

Americans lump a lot of different ethnic groups into broad catagories, like "white".

Poles frequently assume I'm French. I've never been to France, I know nothing about France, I know very few French words, but, I'm ethnically French.

(Or they assume I'm German if they notice 'loud foreigner' before my ethnicity, but I digress.)

One could say "Europe" is more diverse; if I go across the boarder, everyone will be totally different. But for that to be true, it also means that within those borders, people have to fit into more clearly defined boxes.

Georgia might look far more like Louisiana than Poland like Germany, but one of those things the US states will have in common is how many different cultures have been thrown together.

It's always striking to me how many Poles look so much like each other.

There's a lot more diversity within our "white", "black" groupings than one realizes until they see what it looks like without that diversity.

Quote:Original post by benryves

Quote:Original post by Bregma

Quote:Original post by AndyEsser
I'm sure us Brit's are quite easy to spot, but that's not for me to say.

Definitely. It's the bad teef. It seems children in the UK are raised on an exclusive diet of sweets and dentistry is illegal there. Orthodontics stop at the channel. Everyone past the age of 40 has dentures.

National stereotypes are fun, especially when they're the complete opposite to reality.

To be fair, I think its more the crookedness than the rottenness that is being implied by the stereotype. Do you have any objective measures for that, cause I suspect there might be a grain of truth to that.

I stick out like a sore thumb everywhere so I can't attribute my americanism to looks. But I did notice while I was in panama the other week that people were more sauntering than walking (kind of like a hunched walk versus my strides). Also, I usually look people in the eye and smile as I pass and it caught people off guard (again not sure how much of it was giant gringo staring at me vs. cultural differences).

Maybe I'm naive but in the US I can never spot people from other countries unless they speak. The US is too much of a melting pot to pin someone down based on looks. Unless your default position is to assume anyone who isn't black or white is from a different country.

I disagree with Less that there is a difference between cities. If you stripped the team garb and put a New Yorker in a lineup with an Atlantian, you would be hard pressed to spot a difference in physical appearance alone. Maybe once they opened their mouth you could spot it but not on looks or a walk.

As for the american vs british thing, from personal experience almost every young european I've worked with learned British english in school. They use funny words (ie rubber for eraser, lift for elevator, supper for dinner, overuse of the word "proper") and I've heard some funny pronunciations as well.

The south americans/mexicans I work with all learned american english. Probably similar to us learning spanish. From what my spanish friend tells me, I am learning south american spanish. Which apparently means I don't place enough emphasis on using the correct pronouns.

Americans do value the super white and straight, and that requires some extra work (such as braces) that isn't normally a dental health concern. I don't have a link handy but you can find before and after pictures of British and other actors who have gone to Hollywood, and they all have their teeth straightened & serviced.

Apparently Egyptians are the easiest to spot:

">Walk Like an Egyptian.