What nationality are you? Are there clues you give in avatar/username or signature?

‘Mercan.


May all of the necro threads rise again!

 

Have you read about what the progeny of the English did to Native Americans, and Africans?

 

Yes and it's unforgivable. I've also read about how Britain sacrificed its Empire to fight fascism in two world wars. Giving up its hegemony to fight evil regimes.
The British Empire also brought rule of law, universal education, healthcare and infrastructure such as the railways to many of the nations it colonised.
I'm not going to deny the bad things done in the name of the British Empire but I'll not ignore the positive influences of the largest Empire the world has ever seen either.
An Empire which gave itself up without a fight after the war and granted independence to a third of the worlds nations with barely a drop of blood spilt.

 

Yeah well, I do not forgive them for what they did to Native Americans - and I never will. And I'll tell you the same thing you are telling every society you erased for the sake of The Crown - get over it.

1 bad deed undoes 100-good deeds. If any society on Earth should pay reparations, it should be England.

 

Neither will I but it has to be noted that the British treated the Native Americans better than they were treated after Independence.
The British opposed the expansion westward into 'Indian' territory. They didn't round them up and banish them to reservations to starve to death.
They didn't renege on treaty after treaty.
They didn't wipe out the buffalo to deprive them of their way of life and they didn't massacre them in genocidal wars of extermination like rodents.
It wasn't British troops who massacred 200 women and children at Wounded Knee.

It was however the British who were instrumental in the abolition of the slave trade.

If you can be a proud American after what you've done in the name of progress then I can be a proud Englishman despite what my ancestors did.

 

Homie, where do you think the people that annihilated Native Americans came from?

The British STARTED the slave trade in North America - America had to go to WAR to end it.

Lets not continue to waste each other's time, and thank you for raining on my post, the same as the Brits have rained on every brown person they ever "colonized."

 

No, that would be the Mongolians. Genghis Khan wreaked much more havoc is his day. His armies slaughtered many of my ancestors and I will never forgive the Mongolians.

 

No, it's the Beaker people
Coming over here with their new fangled Bronze Age technologies replacing our native Neolithic population, the very people who built Stonehenge and made the country what it is today.
...and don't get me started on the Romans, massacring the ancient Druids in Anglesey and putting down the glorious revolt of my East Anglian Queen Boudica and her brave Iceni warriors.

 

American. Italian. I am a dual citizen of the USA and Italy and I carry both passports, in virtue of having been born in America, of (legal) immigrant Italian parents. America recognizes the jus solis (where you are born); Italy recognizes the jus sanguinis (the blood ties); so voilà, I got both citizenships.

The one clue I give of being American, is the obvious reference to baseball in my username (although these days it is no longer my favorite sport, but it was when I was growing up - also, these days baseball is much more of an international sport than it used to be, with several countries like Japan, Cuba, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic etc. having baseball as their most popular sport).

I did not give clues of the Italian component of my citizenship in my avatar/username or signature. I used to keep this part of my identity private, to avoid too much disclosure of personal information that might eventually lead to doxxing (I've seen it happening). However, after my passionate rooting for the Italian National Team in soccer threads posted to the Sports sub-forum, the cat is out of the bag so I stopped withdrawing this information.

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I should leave it at that, but if one wants to learn a bit more about this issue, here it goes.

I feel very much a citizen of both countries. I vote in elections in both countries. I live in America but visit Italy frequently. Still, my primary allegiance is to the United States. In the very unlikely event that Italy and the United States were to engage in a conflict, I'd side with the United States.

I don't feel like I'm "Italian-American." I'm American. And Italian. I don't know if you get the subtle difference. I'll explain.

I see "Italian-American" as a person who is thoroughly and almost exclusively American, but of Italian ancestry. That person typically is only a citizen of the United States (in many cases would be eligible to apply for Italian citizenship but has never done it, out of a lack of interest; or if the person does carry the additional Italian citizenship, it is of no psychological importance to the person). This person has spoken English as a primary language at home since forever, as the Italian language drifted away from the person's family and community. Immigration of the original Italian ancestors to the USA may have happened generations ago. It's still an ethnic group with some Italian traditions, but it's a group that is way more American than Italian.

A dual citizen of Italy and the United States like me, genetically 100% Italian, whose parents were both recent Italian immigrants who spoke Italian as the primary language at home, is closer to being a real Italian citizen.

Now, just one generation removed from that, my children, it's already a different matter and it even varies among my two children. My wife is not Italian so my kids are only 50% genetically Italian. The primary language in our home is English because if I spoke Italian with my kids, I'd leave my wife out of the loop since she doesn't speak it. And culturally my two children differ among themselves. They both have Italian citizenship given that I did register their births with the Italian Consulate, and they both own Italian passports too.

But while both my children are legally dual citizens, my son is culturally much more of a dual citizen than my daughter. My son was interested in his Italian heritage, and he asked to be sent to Italy to spend three consecutive summer vacations there with the family, immersed in the culture and the language, and he also took AP Italian in high school and then in college. He speaks fluent, grammatically correct, beautiful, and unaccented Italian, a language he and I routinely use to communicate, when not in the presence of his mom and his sister. He is also a passionate fan of the Italian National Team (the Squadra Azzurra), and of AC Milan (one of Italy's most important soccer clubs; the one I support, too).

My daughter on the other hand, while not denying that she is of Italian ancestry, took only a small interest in it. She has visited Italy much less frequently, choosing not to go when she had a choice and was busy with something else. She speaks only rudimentary Italian. She couldn't care less for Italian soccer.

So in my nuclear family, we have:

Me, American and Italian.
My wife, only American.
My son, American and Italian.
My daughter, Italian-American.

I could add, capisce? Except that this would be Italian-American parlance. Because in real Italian, the correct conjugation for asking "do you understand?" would be capisci?, the second person singular present indicative of the verb capire, while capisce is the third person.

Io capisco (I understand)
Tu capisci (you understand)
Lui, lei, Lei capisce (he/she/formal he/she understands)
Noi capiamo (we understand)
Loro capiscono (they understand)

In Italian we often omit the pronoun, so it would just be capisci?

So just with a simple word, depending on the grammatically correct ending with a letter i, versus the jargon ending with the letter e, you can tell if someone is really Italian, or Italian-American.

 

As an American, I'm grateful for the white man, especially for the explorers who circumnavigated the earth and opened the America's to colonization by the Brits, French and Spanish. It is a glorious thing. And I harbor no grudges.

 

Mit der elves?

That comes from the funniest bumper sticker I ever saw , It was on a Saab Sonnet, quite an unusual car in 1965, and it said " MADE IN DER BLACK FOREST, BY DER ELVES"

 

One would think that the vaunted Anglo Saxons would have learned from the preceding thousands of years of history, instead of mimicking it.

The root of all you list, and more, is the belief that the perpetrator is "better" than their victims.

Only the worst of humanity rises to the top.

 

Yes - surely there are elves in the Schwarzwald!

 

I like that!

 

Why not?
I would not object!

 

A geographically incorrect bumper sticker though since Saabs were actually made in Sweden not Germany. /pedantry off

 

The Anglo-Saxons?
More violent invaders of the motherland replacing the native population and changing the culture irreversibly.
Where's my reparations handout?

 

Ha, I never even twigged the baseball reference in your username.
Not so obvious to a Limey cricket fan.
I only saw the reference to your political position.
Duh, sometimes I'm as slow as a retarded snail.

 

American through and through. Father's side, American since the 18th century. Mother's side, Hungarian, emigrated to the U.S. in 1905.

 

Half English, one quarter Ulster (Northern Irish) and one quarter Gibraltan.
100% British.
Diversity is our strength.

 

I did consider both ideas when I picked my username; baseball, and a moderate/centrist political position.

These days though, I like American football and soccer way more than baseball. Basically I watch some baseball playoff games and the World Series and that's it; I don't really follow the baseball regular season, while I do follow the entire NFL season and all AC Milan games.

 

I can't watch any cricket or club soccer without giving Sky about 60 quid a month so I mostly watch hockey these days. Fortunately international rugby is still on free TV as are England soccer games.

Watching the Leafs right now 2-0 up with 3 mins to go in the 2nd.

 

I like hockey too. I watch some regular season games and I do regularly watch the Stanley Cup playoffs; sometimes I go in person to the Arena (or used to, before Covid)

 

Bowerbirds are only found east of the Wallace line(look it up )

Basically only Papua and Australia



Satin Bowerbird - he builds his bowers out of blue things




It is the female who is attracted to males that collect junk - story of my life really