Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Getting to Know Americans

nyu.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 178 posts

Re: Getting to Know Americans

#131

Post by grammaton »

yequalsx wrote: post #121
grammaton wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He was in the Wehrmacht Wait, what?

Yeah, he's a WW II vet. My dad passed away in December and he was a WW II vet. My dad fought the Germans and he never said a bad word about Germans or Germany. None that I ever heard. My girlfriend's dad? I've heard plenty from him about Americans (in a negative sense). My girlfriend's dad fought on the Eastern front and he tells stories about how uncivilized the Soviets were. He doesn't say the word but it sort of h…

I take it he's thrilled his daughter is dating an American - son of an Allied veteran, no less?

Sorry if I'm prying, I'm just fascinated by living history.

Re: Getting to Know Americans

#132

Post by crasshopper »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #106

(I'm American and) I'm most curious about the supposed "superficiality" of Americans, particularly w/respect to friendships. Can anyone enlighten me on the reason for this? Are people of other countries accustomed to dealing with people who are less mobile and more likely to stick around for a while, and therefore more willing to invest time in a relationship? Is it an overemphasis on an appearance of independence?

In my experience, Germans are more likely to retain friends from secondary school, more likely to date someone for longer, and more likely to keep a social appointment.

I would describe Germans as "slower to warm" to someone, but they "stay warm" for longer.

Re: Getting to Know Americans

#133

Post by bdhe »

FraaJad wrote: post #100
bdhe wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed people from the Indian subcontinent tend to be a lot more sarcastic than Americans. I wonder if it is a relic of the British colonization.

Definitely not. They were not here long enough and did not interact with enough people to have that influence. Most of the sarcastic comments, the tone and the nature of sarcasm does not even parse for a westerner. In fact you will see a lot of Indian language sarcasm directly "translated" to English leading to hilarious situations. British just came, looted and left. It would be good if people stopped attributing ev…

> British just came, looted and left. It would be good if people stopped attributing every god-damned thing about India to the "British Influence".

My bad. I just wondered, considering that British humour is a lot dryer than American humour. I apologize if my comment was misconstrued in anyway.

Re: Getting to Know Americans

#134

Post by lupatus »

grammaton wrote: post #112
jbooth wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of the beef with "typical Americans" is with your last type. If you get off the coasts you can find a whole bunch of Americans who are seemingly proud of not knowing anything about the rest of the world.

> If you get off the coasts you can find a whole bunch of Americans No, actually you won't. Most of America's population lives within two hundred miles of it's coastlines. This group of proudly ignorant people is therefore much smaller than they're stereotypically thought of being.

Having driven from Richmond, Virginia, to Anchorage, Alaska, twice, I can first-hand confirm that there is a LOT of empty land in the heart of North America.

It is because of these trips that I no longer worry about global overpopulation and just look at people quizzically when they start talking about the topic.

Re: Getting to Know Americans

#135

Post by burgerbrain »

grammaton wrote: post #129
burgerbrain wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wehrmacht: german armed forces in the 30s/40s. You run across WWII vets all the time in america, is it so stunning that there might be vets in Germany as well?

Yes, thank you, I know who the Wehrmacht were. I paid attention in history class. More so I'm just surprised when I run across any veteran of WWII. FYI, no you don't run across WWII vets "all the time." Most of them are in their eighties or nineties at this point, and there aren't too many people of that age, let alone specifically WWII vets. Mainly I was just surprised by a very random piece of information. You cert…

Here, it is not at all uncommon to hear that somebodies grandfather is or was a vet. There were something like 15 million of them just from the US as I recall. For someone a decade or two older than myself (he says it was her father, not grandfather, so you can get a good guess at their ages...), encountering veterans would be only that much more common.

"You certainly don't hear about the German veterans of WWII in America all that much."

"My girlfriend is German and lives in Berlin."

I am under the strong impression that her father lives in Germany....

EDIT: Furthermore: "The total number of soldiers who served in the Wehrmacht during its existence from 1935-1945 is believed to have approached 18.2 million." With numbers like that, this hardly seems like such a particularly odd occurrance.

Re: Getting to Know Americans

#136

Post by arethuza »

geebee wrote: post #124
microtonal wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, but Britain is probably the other extreme. I believe there is only one country that could've produced magnificent material such as Monty Python or Fawlty Towers ;).

But what country could have produced "Airplane!", or "O Brother Where Art Thou?" You could say that something like "Seinfeld" (and "Curb Your Enthusiasm") is more the product of a very unusual subculture (in fact, this is the basis for much of the humor, how poorly new yorkers fit in the rest of US culture), but keep in mind Seinfeld had the highest ratings of any sitcom in US history, so the appeal is obviously very…

To be clear I wasn't talking about humor in media - of which there are a lot of excellent examples, but the amount of humor that seems to be part of day to day life.

Incidentally, I wouldn't regard Monty Python as being very representative of "natural" British humor - I'd probably suggest Al Murray in his "Pub Landlord" persona to be far more like the comedy you are likely to encounter in real life (or Frankie Boyle for us Scots).

Re: Getting to Know Americans

#137

Post by FraaJad »

bdhe wrote: post #133
FraaJad wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not. They were not here long enough and did not interact with enough people to have that influence. Most of the sarcastic comments, the tone and the nature of sarcasm does not even parse for a westerner. In fact you will see a lot of Indian language sarcasm directly "translated" to English leading to hilarious situations. British just came, looted and left. It would be good if people stopped attributing ev…

> British just came, looted and left. It would be good if people stopped attributing every god-damned thing about India to the "British Influence". My bad. I just wondered, considering that British humour is a lot dryer than American humour. I apologize if my comment was misconstrued in anyway.

Sorry for being a little harsh there.

At the height of British occupation , there were not more than 1700(!) British people at the same time on the Indian subcontinent. Which itself is a fantastic testament to the British Raj's bureaucratic machinery. The English education was an instrument in creating that machinery.

Re: Getting to Know Americans

#138

Post by [deleted] »

jff wrote: post #120
jbooth wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in my experience at least, the people I'm griping about are pretty far from "off the boat". They see themselves as natives, and their ancestors left europe 150 years ago because it was a totally different place then. Not much to do with their current viewpoint on, say, Brazil or China.

My father's side of the family came to America about 100 years ago from Sweden. They settled in North Dakota, one of the dreaded "flyover states". My great-grandfather apparently didn't tell his children anything about the home country, nor did he teach them Swedish. He wanted them to focus on being Americans, rather than trying to be Swedish. These days, we eat lutefisk on Christmas Eve and that's about it.

[deleted]

Re: Getting to Know Americans

#139

Post by jwhitlark »

jff wrote: post #120
jbooth wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in my experience at least, the people I'm griping about are pretty far from "off the boat". They see themselves as natives, and their ancestors left europe 150 years ago because it was a totally different place then. Not much to do with their current viewpoint on, say, Brazil or China.

My father's side of the family came to America about 100 years ago from Sweden. They settled in North Dakota, one of the dreaded "flyover states". My great-grandfather apparently didn't tell his children anything about the home country, nor did he teach them Swedish. He wanted them to focus on being Americans, rather than trying to be Swedish. These days, we eat lutefisk on Christmas Eve and that's about it.

Wow. Aside from the fish, that is exactly the story from my father's side of the family.

Re: Getting to Know Americans

#140

Post by slowernet »

yequalsx wrote: post #72
psykotic wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am Danish but "left" the country 7-8 years ago. The last few months I've been back to prepare for my move to the US, which will be my second time living and working there. It's remarkable how absurd the Danish world-view appears to me now after living abroad in several very different cultures. The social welfare system is more attractive than ever, but the provincialism, the we-are-the-best attitude, and the subtle…

I'm American but grew up in the Canal Zone. I've been in Germany a lot the past two years. My girlfriend is German and lives in Berlin. My impression is that Germans really do believe they are the best. They will never say so publicly but deep down they really believe it. My girlfriend's dad joked about Americans and hamburgers. I offered to make him one since he'd never had one. He emphatically said no. I'm a picky…

Did it occur to your girlfriend's Dad that the name "Hamburger" might indicate something about the origin of the dish? I wonder if that would impact his interest in trying it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger#First_beginnings

Post reply on HN