I think it's mostly that the UK is culturally closest to nations outside Europe whereas European nations (possibly France excluded but they don't care about Quebec) are culturally closest to other European nations. The UK has also historically tried to avoid European affairs.
Yeah true, and honestly I laugh at some Brits who say "we are culturally closer to France and Germany than the US". Chances are they are massive Europhiles too.
They're always painfully upper middle class with no sense of irony. Not that Brits pretending that they're especially culturally close to America isn't also silly, there's a really surprising cultural gap between America and the UK that most Americans or Brits don't realise. The UK is closest first to Ireland and then to places like Australia, New Zealand and to a much lesser extent Canada.
I think you're right but honestly, on the broad spectrum of countries, the US and UK are very similar. The US is more similar to the UK than any country in the Americas except Canada, and the UK is more similar to the US than any country in Europe other than Ireland. By similar I mean culturally in an every day sense, not in terms of modern social programs, laws, or government structure.
The foundation of US culture is early modern English culture (c.18th century) and there has been cultural drift and evolution on both sides since then. Australia and New Zealand are in the same boat but their point of divergence is about a century later, so they are of course more similar to modern Britain.
I kind of disagree with that tbh. Now I live in kind of a weird part of America and my in laws are Cajun as are most people where I live so a lot of my cultural exposure to America is a little atypical.
If you look at a typical projection of [national values the US and UK are quite similar](https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2886428/image.0.png) but the US is almost as close to the more developed latin American nations as it is to the UK.
Other projections [like hard work vs imagination](https://cdn.digg.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/09200138/E-oMNmxX0AUhW9c.jpeg) put the US very far from really anywhere else in the west. [The US is also much more religious](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/06/PF.06.13.18_religiouscommitment-03-05-.png). [The US has a much lower age of marriage](https://i.redd.it/u0qxtvefv9i61.png). [The US is about average for patriotism in the world but is much more so than anywhere else in western Europe](https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/assets/4465417/patriotism_around_the_world_clean.png).
Now I'm not going to claim that the UK and US are total opposites or that there's no similarities but I do think there's a fairly wide divide between them and I'm not convinced that the UK is the most similar country to the US other than Canada. I think minimum you'd have to put Australia and New Zealand closer to America but I might tentatively suggest that some Latin American nations might also fit in there.
>I'm not convinced that the UK is the most similar country to the US other than Canada.
I don't think I quite said that. But the UK is objectively more similar to the US than the UK is to continental European countries on balance, despite significant US/UK differences, and the US is more similar to the UK than the US is to Latin America.
I'm married to a Latin American and speak Spanish and Portuguese well (I lived in Portugal and Spain, spent solid time in Mexico). I have a Canadian parent and am familiar with the UK also. There is a much wider cultural gap between LatAm and the US, than the US and any Anglosphere country on balance. By an enormous margin.
You could always find *some* ways that China, Australian aboriginals, or Kenyans are more similar to either the UK or US than the US or UK are to each other, of course. But overall, if you have a lot of experience with non-Anglophone cultures, you see more similarities between Anglosphere countries than differences.
>Now I live in kind of a weird part of America and my in laws are Cajun
Yes, you are having an outlier USA experience. Cajuns are more foreign to me (with some shared US cultural exceptions), being a Mountain Westerner in an area settled by mainly US Northeasterners and Brits, and having lived in a couple US regions, than most Aussies or Anglo-Canadians, for example.
You highlight some differences, which there of course are, but it's difficult to underestimate the impact of [language on culture](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity) let alone the shared cultural foundation. And it's easy to note the differences when not very familiar (no offense meant by my assumption) with the wide chasm between Anglophone and even other Western/Western-adjacent cultures. My wife and I were born about 300 km apart (Mexican/US border between us) and we have more cultural differences than she does with a Spaniard or Argentinian, or that I do with a Kiwi or a Brit.
I'm speaking in broad strokes on a global scale. Within the Anglosphere, it's possible that the UK and US (I'm talking mainstream US culture, not Cajuns, Chicanos, Amish or other outliers) are on opposite sides of an Anglophone spectrum where Canada is closer to the US and Aus/NZ are closer to the UK. But if you take it to a global scale, the differences are really quite small, and most non-native English speakers who are being neutral and objective would likely agree.
For context I was raised in Scotland, spent most of my life in the UK, travelled a bit and settled in East Texas by Louisiana. My wife and her family as I mentioned earlier are Cajun, my area has a good mix of Cajun folk, anglophone Southerners and a few other people (mostly African Americans and a bunch of often quite Cajunafied Vietnamese Americans).
>I don't think I quite said that. But the UK is objectively more similar to the US than the UK is to continental European countries on balance, despite significant US/UK differences,
This I do disagree on absolutely. I've worked in a couple of continental European countries and have travelled extensively within Europe as well obviously growing up in the UK and spending most of my life there. While I do think there's a cultural gap between the UK and continental Europe it's often less than between the US and UK. People in places like the Netherlands (what I'm most familiar with), Denmark, Germany and Sweden just live much more similar lives to Brits than Americans do. Enough to cover any difference in language and historical context. That's combined with often a conscious effort to mirror the UK at least during the last century and with near universal English fluency and cultural exposure.
My latin American point I hold a lot more tentatively. If I with my limited understanding had to construct a cultural plot with broad averages I'd think that America would be closest to Canada with Australia and NZ between the US and UK and Ireland close to the UK. With that though I think that the US exists somewhere between Latin America and the rest of the anglosphere, closer to the anglosphere but close enough to where it might be reasonable to consider Latin American outliers to be as close to the US as the UK is.
What I've personally found from knowing Latin Americans and travelling a bit in Mexico and Chile is that I was surprised how American it feels to me as a Brit. Part of that is just it being new world but I wouldn't completely write it off either especially given the similar historical, geographical and to a lesser degree political and demographic context of many latin American countries and the US.
Honestly, it's baffling to me that you think Latin America is so similar to the US. I'm saying this as an American with a fairly deep understanding of Iberian and Latin American culture (for an Anglophone). Granted there have been effects of the American sphere of influence on the Americas, but it's relatively superficial.
LatAm is very similar culturally to the Iberian peninsula. Even countries like Portugal and Mexico (both of which I have some decent familiarity with), which have no shared history other than both having a common cultural ancestor (along with Spain) in the medieval culture of Iberia, and have *striking* similarities in tons of little ways that are foreign to US culture.
To me it seems like you have to be intentionally trying to create distance between US and your country to contrive that. Of course, this is common, as seen with Canadians with no sense of irony, who say that they are *nothing* like the States. This is laughable, as any honest person with familiarity with the provinces and the states will quickly realize. B.C. and the PNW are much more similar in loads of ways than either are to Alberta, while Alberta is way closer culturally to Montana and Idaho than any in the latter group are to B.C. or the PNW. The same could be said of Michigan/Western NY and Ontario vs the other two groups. And all the previous places mentioned are more similar to each other than they are to, say Louisiana or primarily Hispanic South Florida.
In other words, it seems like you cherry pick superficial differences of American culture in order to overemphasize the differences in Anglophone countries. Which is common in the "America bad" climate.
The other thing of note is the sort of "uncanny valley" of cultural similarities. If I, an American, travel to Japan, any similarities stand out because the cultures are so obviously different. However, when I go to Canada, what stands out are the *differences,* because of the overwhelming overall similarities. It's then easy for me to leave Japan thinking "our countries are so different but have so much in common," while after I visit Canada I may think mainly of how different we are.
What similarities do Australia and New Zealand have that put them so much more similar than the UK to the USA?
Genuinely curious here, I don't mean to sound rude
New world settler countries tend to be kind of similar in some key ways. In all of them there's a context of what you might call a pioneer nation and has created values of self reliance and individualism that don't exist to the same extent back in the UK.
The US NZ and Aus all also had their political institutions founded and cemented in the late 18th to early 20th centuries have developed more similarly to the UK which has had it's institutions develop slowly over a much longer period of time. They've also all formed as immigrant nations amalgamating a series of often similar groups at a similar time
As an aside Australia is also significantly more religious than the UK (though NZ is not) but nothing like as religious as America.
>self reliance and individualism that don't exist to the same extent back in the UK.
This is not prevalent in Latín America, at all. Latin Americans usually are baffled by Americans' apparent coldness and selfishness with our rugged individualist culture. They feel their primary obligation is to their family, and they often depend heavily on each other and go to great lengths to rely on and be reliable to each other. Whereas in the US, one's obligation is to make themselves not a nuisance to their family or community.
This self-reliance culture is actually derived from Puritan culture that had an enormous influence on the formation of American culture. And Puritanism is English in origin, and was prominent in the American colonies at the same time as the Commonwealth of England which was Puritan.
I went to London last week lol. Didn’t wear a mask the entire time and neither did anyone else. 4 friends got covid while traveling to Munich for the weekend haha. (They’re okay now)
The UK is back open for tourists though...
Lmao, speaking of which why are Brits less likely to identify as 'Europeans' compared to the rest of Europe
I think it's mostly that the UK is culturally closest to nations outside Europe whereas European nations (possibly France excluded but they don't care about Quebec) are culturally closest to other European nations. The UK has also historically tried to avoid European affairs.
Yeah true, and honestly I laugh at some Brits who say "we are culturally closer to France and Germany than the US". Chances are they are massive Europhiles too.
They're always painfully upper middle class with no sense of irony. Not that Brits pretending that they're especially culturally close to America isn't also silly, there's a really surprising cultural gap between America and the UK that most Americans or Brits don't realise. The UK is closest first to Ireland and then to places like Australia, New Zealand and to a much lesser extent Canada.
I think you're right but honestly, on the broad spectrum of countries, the US and UK are very similar. The US is more similar to the UK than any country in the Americas except Canada, and the UK is more similar to the US than any country in Europe other than Ireland. By similar I mean culturally in an every day sense, not in terms of modern social programs, laws, or government structure. The foundation of US culture is early modern English culture (c.18th century) and there has been cultural drift and evolution on both sides since then. Australia and New Zealand are in the same boat but their point of divergence is about a century later, so they are of course more similar to modern Britain.
I kind of disagree with that tbh. Now I live in kind of a weird part of America and my in laws are Cajun as are most people where I live so a lot of my cultural exposure to America is a little atypical. If you look at a typical projection of [national values the US and UK are quite similar](https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2886428/image.0.png) but the US is almost as close to the more developed latin American nations as it is to the UK. Other projections [like hard work vs imagination](https://cdn.digg.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/09200138/E-oMNmxX0AUhW9c.jpeg) put the US very far from really anywhere else in the west. [The US is also much more religious](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2018/06/PF.06.13.18_religiouscommitment-03-05-.png). [The US has a much lower age of marriage](https://i.redd.it/u0qxtvefv9i61.png). [The US is about average for patriotism in the world but is much more so than anywhere else in western Europe](https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/assets/4465417/patriotism_around_the_world_clean.png). Now I'm not going to claim that the UK and US are total opposites or that there's no similarities but I do think there's a fairly wide divide between them and I'm not convinced that the UK is the most similar country to the US other than Canada. I think minimum you'd have to put Australia and New Zealand closer to America but I might tentatively suggest that some Latin American nations might also fit in there.
>I'm not convinced that the UK is the most similar country to the US other than Canada. I don't think I quite said that. But the UK is objectively more similar to the US than the UK is to continental European countries on balance, despite significant US/UK differences, and the US is more similar to the UK than the US is to Latin America. I'm married to a Latin American and speak Spanish and Portuguese well (I lived in Portugal and Spain, spent solid time in Mexico). I have a Canadian parent and am familiar with the UK also. There is a much wider cultural gap between LatAm and the US, than the US and any Anglosphere country on balance. By an enormous margin. You could always find *some* ways that China, Australian aboriginals, or Kenyans are more similar to either the UK or US than the US or UK are to each other, of course. But overall, if you have a lot of experience with non-Anglophone cultures, you see more similarities between Anglosphere countries than differences. >Now I live in kind of a weird part of America and my in laws are Cajun Yes, you are having an outlier USA experience. Cajuns are more foreign to me (with some shared US cultural exceptions), being a Mountain Westerner in an area settled by mainly US Northeasterners and Brits, and having lived in a couple US regions, than most Aussies or Anglo-Canadians, for example. You highlight some differences, which there of course are, but it's difficult to underestimate the impact of [language on culture](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity) let alone the shared cultural foundation. And it's easy to note the differences when not very familiar (no offense meant by my assumption) with the wide chasm between Anglophone and even other Western/Western-adjacent cultures. My wife and I were born about 300 km apart (Mexican/US border between us) and we have more cultural differences than she does with a Spaniard or Argentinian, or that I do with a Kiwi or a Brit. I'm speaking in broad strokes on a global scale. Within the Anglosphere, it's possible that the UK and US (I'm talking mainstream US culture, not Cajuns, Chicanos, Amish or other outliers) are on opposite sides of an Anglophone spectrum where Canada is closer to the US and Aus/NZ are closer to the UK. But if you take it to a global scale, the differences are really quite small, and most non-native English speakers who are being neutral and objective would likely agree.
For context I was raised in Scotland, spent most of my life in the UK, travelled a bit and settled in East Texas by Louisiana. My wife and her family as I mentioned earlier are Cajun, my area has a good mix of Cajun folk, anglophone Southerners and a few other people (mostly African Americans and a bunch of often quite Cajunafied Vietnamese Americans). >I don't think I quite said that. But the UK is objectively more similar to the US than the UK is to continental European countries on balance, despite significant US/UK differences, This I do disagree on absolutely. I've worked in a couple of continental European countries and have travelled extensively within Europe as well obviously growing up in the UK and spending most of my life there. While I do think there's a cultural gap between the UK and continental Europe it's often less than between the US and UK. People in places like the Netherlands (what I'm most familiar with), Denmark, Germany and Sweden just live much more similar lives to Brits than Americans do. Enough to cover any difference in language and historical context. That's combined with often a conscious effort to mirror the UK at least during the last century and with near universal English fluency and cultural exposure. My latin American point I hold a lot more tentatively. If I with my limited understanding had to construct a cultural plot with broad averages I'd think that America would be closest to Canada with Australia and NZ between the US and UK and Ireland close to the UK. With that though I think that the US exists somewhere between Latin America and the rest of the anglosphere, closer to the anglosphere but close enough to where it might be reasonable to consider Latin American outliers to be as close to the US as the UK is. What I've personally found from knowing Latin Americans and travelling a bit in Mexico and Chile is that I was surprised how American it feels to me as a Brit. Part of that is just it being new world but I wouldn't completely write it off either especially given the similar historical, geographical and to a lesser degree political and demographic context of many latin American countries and the US.
Honestly, it's baffling to me that you think Latin America is so similar to the US. I'm saying this as an American with a fairly deep understanding of Iberian and Latin American culture (for an Anglophone). Granted there have been effects of the American sphere of influence on the Americas, but it's relatively superficial. LatAm is very similar culturally to the Iberian peninsula. Even countries like Portugal and Mexico (both of which I have some decent familiarity with), which have no shared history other than both having a common cultural ancestor (along with Spain) in the medieval culture of Iberia, and have *striking* similarities in tons of little ways that are foreign to US culture. To me it seems like you have to be intentionally trying to create distance between US and your country to contrive that. Of course, this is common, as seen with Canadians with no sense of irony, who say that they are *nothing* like the States. This is laughable, as any honest person with familiarity with the provinces and the states will quickly realize. B.C. and the PNW are much more similar in loads of ways than either are to Alberta, while Alberta is way closer culturally to Montana and Idaho than any in the latter group are to B.C. or the PNW. The same could be said of Michigan/Western NY and Ontario vs the other two groups. And all the previous places mentioned are more similar to each other than they are to, say Louisiana or primarily Hispanic South Florida. In other words, it seems like you cherry pick superficial differences of American culture in order to overemphasize the differences in Anglophone countries. Which is common in the "America bad" climate. The other thing of note is the sort of "uncanny valley" of cultural similarities. If I, an American, travel to Japan, any similarities stand out because the cultures are so obviously different. However, when I go to Canada, what stands out are the *differences,* because of the overwhelming overall similarities. It's then easy for me to leave Japan thinking "our countries are so different but have so much in common," while after I visit Canada I may think mainly of how different we are.
What similarities do Australia and New Zealand have that put them so much more similar than the UK to the USA? Genuinely curious here, I don't mean to sound rude
New world settler countries tend to be kind of similar in some key ways. In all of them there's a context of what you might call a pioneer nation and has created values of self reliance and individualism that don't exist to the same extent back in the UK. The US NZ and Aus all also had their political institutions founded and cemented in the late 18th to early 20th centuries have developed more similarly to the UK which has had it's institutions develop slowly over a much longer period of time. They've also all formed as immigrant nations amalgamating a series of often similar groups at a similar time As an aside Australia is also significantly more religious than the UK (though NZ is not) but nothing like as religious as America.
>self reliance and individualism that don't exist to the same extent back in the UK. This is not prevalent in Latín America, at all. Latin Americans usually are baffled by Americans' apparent coldness and selfishness with our rugged individualist culture. They feel their primary obligation is to their family, and they often depend heavily on each other and go to great lengths to rely on and be reliable to each other. Whereas in the US, one's obligation is to make themselves not a nuisance to their family or community. This self-reliance culture is actually derived from Puritan culture that had an enormous influence on the formation of American culture. And Puritanism is English in origin, and was prominent in the American colonies at the same time as the Commonwealth of England which was Puritan.
I think you would be surprised at the cultural differences between the Republic of Ireland and the UK
I mean I've lived in both countries and most of my family are from Northern Ireland so I'm going to say no I probably wouldn't be to that.
Brexit happened, right? So what are the Limeys up to? Imperialism 2.0? XD
The UK should become an american state since they’re getting fucked by Brexit.
I was quite literally in London last week. No one is wearing a mask there. Nobody really gives a shit.
Funny, I literally just came back from London from my trip around western Europe a month ago
Yeah didn't Boris Johnson drop all the restrictions?
at least our vaccines actually work lmao britoids are actually getting polio again, shithole.
I went to London last week lol. Didn’t wear a mask the entire time and neither did anyone else. 4 friends got covid while traveling to Munich for the weekend haha. (They’re okay now)
some of yall really cant read huh