WEBlue

Oh no, you've opened up that whole "anti-duelling" history in New York state since 1804! Remember Lyman Beecher's speechifying against the evils of duels, anyone?.... Now how are we duels supposed to feel?

robin1234

I'm with him on the evils of duels. Temperance I'm not so keen about though.

robin1234

I think another aspect of it is the vexed question of what it means to be an American. Aged about 14 and 12, we brought our children to a small town in northern New York State from suburban Boston. Our "American" identity was atheist/Jewish, "The Nation" if you will, party affiliation Working Families Party, in an area where the Fox News and Christian identities seem to dominate. I feel there's a sort of Stalinist desire to conform in America that makes it hard for some people to feel they belong. We all know this is particularly difficult for school aged children. Perhaps this threw my children back on their British identity as a safe haven ...

WEBlue

Well, it was a bit of a problem in the early 1800s. Americans just couldn't handle their liquor back then. (They still distrust it IMO.)

He was right about the evils of slavery, but not about the evils of Catholicism. So many evils that man fought, not just duels.

robin1234

Hmm .. In my book, the jury is still out on that. Still, anti-Catholicism in MA in the C19 was a bit over the top.

Bob

My kids are a bit to young but with both growing up with English versions of kids shows my mother sent over like Thomas the Tankengine etc, they have picked up a lot of English mannerisms and sayings.

The eldest sounds quite English, but the youngest, bit hard to say but I think sounds more local, which is weird.

Either way some things are a bit tough. I've noticed the eldest kid looking right before looking left when we cross the street for instance. I've been here long enough, but it's a habit I can't break and she seems to be picking it up from me to.

WEBlue

Yes, and like any "anti-group" movement it was dangerous. Very few Americans today realize that anger against the Irish and German Catholic immigrants pouring into the colonies led to acts of terror which would be called 'pogroms' when the Russians acted similarly against the Jews just a few decades later.

Sorry for the hijack!

Karrie72

My kids had English accents until they started school and people would always comment on how cute they sounded. It's amazing when you take them back to visit how quickly their accents change too. Have you taken yours back yet?

Bob

I haven't no...but since the eldest has started kindergarten, she has certainly picked up a lot of American words and some local accent, but it is mixed with English words and sounds.

It's quite odd

SultanOfSwing

I don't really 'promote' it as such, I just am that way. My daughter isn't old enough to really understand what it means that I'm British, to her I just talk funny.

She'll pick up what she picks up and will ignore the rest. I'd be fighting a losing battle with that one if I tried to do otherwise.

robin1234

We happen to live within 50 miles of several humiliating American defeats in the War of 1812, the Battle of Cryslers Farm being the most glorious Canadian victory, so we did visit battlefields a lot. Beyond that, I let the kids figure it out for themselves.

jeffreyhy

I agree with md. Your response about being "half British" seems based on genetics, yet your question and the tone of this thread deals with culture.

If you want to introduce genetics into it, I am 100% WASP (well, maybe not the 'P' part any more), as is my ex-wife and thus our children. Yet, my ancestors immigrated from [what is today] the UK to the USA in the mid to late 1700s. My ex-wife's family on her father's side were also early immigrants but her mother was a war bride who naturalized.

In no way is my ex-wife any percent British - born and raised in the USA of a British mother, she is culturally 100% American.

Regards, JEff

S Folinsky

Just as an aside, on a trip to Cornwall some years back, I had occasion to talk to not one, but two, U.S. born Cornish. Both had been conscripted into the U.S. military during the Vietnam war. One had been a Marine at Khe Sanh and felt perfectly justified in dissing George W since he was a combat veteran. The other had ended up in the Navy but stationed ashore in Tennessee [long story]. He was amused that US civilians had trouble relating to a man in a US Cracker Jack suit who spoke with a Cornish accent.

MostlyYank

My 02, while it is perhaps true that raised in the US really makes you more American, being 'half and haff' automatically makes one genetically & intellectually superior to everyone else.

I can also outdrink my peers.

Pete

SultanOfSwing

Are you intellectually superior to those who know that expressing 'my two cents' numerically is 0.02, though