The Off Topic Topic

[garbon]

To be fair speaking about "the English" as a group is always a great initial marker of wrongness.
Northerners have far more in common with Scots and Welsh than we do southerners.

Isn't that true of basically any grouping by geography?

[Josquius]

To be fair speaking about "the English" as a group is always a great initial marker of wrongness.
Northerners have far more in common with Scots and Welsh than we do southerners.

Isn't that true of basically any grouping by geography?

No.
You can make generalisations of the British for instance. But English specifically draws a line in the wrong place.

[Sheilbh]

Isn't that true of basically any grouping by geography?

Yes. And actually (whisper it) the differences even between English, Welsh, Scots and Irish, far less between groups of English people, are basically angels dancing on the head of a pin

I suspect that basically every single country has a similar difference of Northerner and Southerner.

[garbon]

To be fair speaking about "the English" as a group is always a great initial marker of wrongness.
Northerners have far more in common with Scots and Welsh than we do southerners.

Isn't that true of basically any grouping by geography?

No.
You can make generalisations of the British for instance. But English specifically draws a line in the wrong place.

To speak of Californians is always a great initial marker of wrongness. Northeners have far more in common with Oregon than Southern California. The eastern parts of California have more in common with Nevada and Arizona than they do the coast. And don't even get started on Los Angeles where you have the actual  Angelenos vs the people who moved there for the dream of "LA".

[Maladict]

Obviously Black Pete Or, in a similar vein, the Handelsblad illustrations and headline reviewing Ta-Nehisis Coates.

But specifically he was on the dating apps and saw a girl with "no blacks, no Arabs" in her bio. Him - and basically all of the other international students - thought that was wrong and pretty racist (especially because she can just swipe left). Maybe not all but definitely some Dutch colleagues defended it as basically just saying her preferences - people wouldn't swipe her so "waste" a swipe unless they were white and the end effect would be the same because she'd just swipe left anyway.

Fair enough. I haven't encountered any of that on dating apps but I'm sure it's there. And although it would be hard to remove all forms of discrimination from dating apps entirely, I agree outright racism should be.

[Josquius]

To speak of Californians is always a great initial marker of wrongness. Northeners have far more in common with Oregon than Southern California. The eastern parts of California have more in common with Nevada and Arizona than they do the coast. And don't even get started on Los Angeles where you have the actual  Angelenos vs the people who moved there for the dream of "LA".

I don't know much about Californians.
But I do remember in Japan the Americans definitely made a big deal of Nocal and Socal.
I suspect a similar thing might exist there with a lot of Americans in saying "Californian" when they mean LA, much like foreigners often do with London and England or even Britain, or northerners do with the south and London.

Isn't that true of basically any grouping by geography?

Yes. And actually (whisper it) the differences even between English, Welsh, Scots and Irish, far less between groups of English people, are basically angels dancing on the head of a pin

I suspect that basically every single country has a similar difference of Northerner and Southerner.

I can't think of many places that are too comparable on a country level. Maybe Sweden to an extent, and then obviously the mishmash countries like Belgium and Switzerland.
But are people in southern France more similar to the Spanish  than they are people of the north? Maybe historically, back in Eleanor's day. But these days I really don't think so.

[Sheilbh]

I think that just shows that you're English and not French

You're aware of our small differences and not others.

[Tamas]

There are (small) differences even between regions of a tiny country like Hungary.

[Josquius]

I think that just shows that you're English and not French

You're aware of our small differences and not others.

I'm aware enough of France to know however different north and south are to say the south has more in common with Spain than it does the north would have little basis in reality.
With Italy and the  south east  (continental. Corsica is a freak area of course.) there's a bit more of a case that can be made, the architecture is certainly there, but to say it's more like Italy than it is the rest of france even right at the border doesn't seem correct.

[garbon]

I think that just shows that you're English and not French

You're aware of our small differences and not others.

I'm aware enough of France to know however different north and south are to say the south has more in common with Spain than it does the north would have little basis in reality.
With Italy and the  south east  (continental. Corsica is a freak area of course.) there's a bit more of a case that can be made, the architecture is certainly there, but to say it's more like Italy than it is the rest of france even right at the border doesn't seem correct.

You've lost the plot. The point being made was what Sheilbh said, you are aware of some regional nuances but not aware of many of those in other countries. Ehat you presented as a fairly unique British thing is not all that unique.

[Sheilbh]

But my point is you feel the difference in England because you're English. You're get the differences because you're looking from the inside. If you were from Montpellier or St Jean de Luz, you'd feel their difference with say Gravelines.

I'm sure French people, say, are aware enough to think there's a difference in England but it's nothing compared to France: relaxing in the 30 degree heat playing petanque over a Pernod and some panisses v sitting in a bar next to a stone Gothic cathedral to get out the pissing rain while you drink a beer and eat some mussels. Don't know if you saw it but there's a French comedy exactly about this (can't remember the name but the ch'ti film ).

Everyone's differences are profound - but it's because they're theirs not because they're more or less different.

[Josquius]

You're wrong.
Its irrelevant how diverse a country is. We're focussing on Europe here but if we look broader than this to Asia and Africa you get countries where different parts have completely different cultures and languages.

The point you are arguing against however is that speaking of 'England' as a whole is iffy because the north is more like Scotland than it is the south. 'England' is a pointless group to generalise about. Talk about the north, talk about the south, talk about Britain as a whole, then that's fine. But England draws the line in the wrong place.

France has broad regional differences. However these do not mean that people in Bordeaux are more like Spanish people than they are people in Caen.
As said historically there was quite the case that could be made in this direction, but not today. The long centralisation and standardisation efforts of Paris have had a heavy impact.

In the UK too there has been quite the genericisation pull from London... but this has pulled Scotland in much the same direction as the north. There was no competing independent government in Edinburgh pulling things a different way to widen the gap across the border.

I'm sure French people, say, are aware enough to think there's a difference in England but it's nothing compared to France: relaxing in the 30 degree heat playing petanque over a Pernod and some panisses v sitting in a bar next to a stone Gothic cathedral to get out the pissing rain while you drink a beer and eat some mussels. Don't know if you saw it but there's a French comedy exactly about this (can't remember the name but the ch'ti film ).

I know it. The north east of France seems a very odd region with some stark regional differences standing out.
There we could well have a case of a similar phenomena going on (it helps that Belgium historically followed the Paris pull) but its a considerably smaller chunk of the country overall than the sweeping scope of north and south.

[Tamas]

Josq, surely it's not too difficult a point to concede that countries other than England have regional differences. Even if we reduce it to Europe only.

[Grey Fox]

    

[Sheilbh]

Josq, surely it's not too difficult a point to concede that countries other than England have regional differences. Even if we reduce it to Europe only.

As I say my real heresy is that while there are differences and particularly different historic experiences, I fundamentally think the people on these isles are pretty similar and there's not a vast difference between English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Manx etc