andersa@kuling.UUCP (Anders Andersson) (11/29/85)
In article <52200001@hpcnof.UUCP> lrb@hpcnof.UUCP writes: >How does the list change if the criteria is changed from "(generic)-speaking" >to "(generic)-heritage". For instance, I have heard that there are far more >"Norwegian-Americans" in the States than there are Norwegians in Norway. It's also said that there are about 10 million inhabitants in the USA with Swedish origin, while the population of Sweden is "only" 8.3 million. The reason for this is quite natural - and there is probably some fancy word to denote the phenomenon. Swedes in Sweden marry each other, while Swedes in the USA marry other inhabitants of the USA, not necessarily of Swedish origin. If you compile a list of "Number of People in the USA with Specific Origin" for most nationalities of the (old) world, the sum would by far outnumber the actual amount of people in the USA (is it 200 or 300 million?)... -- Anders Andersson, Dept. of Computer Systems, Uppsala University, Sweden Phone: +46 18 183170 UUCP: andersa@kuling.UUCP (...!{seismo,mcvax}!enea!kuling!andersa)
sra@oddjob.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson) (11/30/85)
In article <856@kuling.UUCP> andersa@kuling.UUCP (Anders Andersson) writes: >In article <52200001@hpcnof.UUCP> lrb@hpcnof.UUCP writes: >>How does the list change if the criteria is changed from "(generic)-speaking" >>to "(generic)-heritage". For instance, I have heard that there are far more >>"Norwegian-Americans" in the States than there are Norwegians in Norway. > >It's also said that there are about 10 million inhabitants in the USA with >Swedish origin, while the population of Sweden is "only" 8.3 million. > >The reason for this is quite natural - and there is probably some fancy >word to denote the phenomenon. Swedes in Sweden marry each other, while >Swedes in the USA marry other inhabitants of the USA, not necessarily of >Swedish origin. Anders is probably correct here, but there are many places in the US where you can still find "full-blooded" Swedes -- in Wisconsin and Minnesota, in particular. My father is an example: his grandparents/ great-grandparents all came from Sweden. That makes me of Swedish heritage, but not Swedish. (Don't ask me about my other half -- what a mixture that side is!) Another example is here in Chicago; there are neighborhoods where you can easily get by speaking Polish alone. The people really are Polish, many are second- or third-generation Americans, and there are a lot of them (as I previously posted). Probably the best example are the Jews: there are a *lot* more outside of Israel than inside of Israel, and nobody doubts that they're full-blooded (:-). In any case, there are a lot of places here where cultural ties keep people from marrying outside of there own communities; the US is not a perfect melting pot. And there may be reasons why families have many more children here than in the "old country" (e.g. they have more money to support a large family). But if you're going to go comparing the number of Norwegians to the number of Norwegian-Americans, you had better either limit your count to "full-blooded" Norwegians, or else count in fractions (I'm a 1/2 Swede :-) -- Scott Anderson ihnp4!oddjob!kaos!sra
ecl@mtgzz.UUCP (e.c.leeper) (12/03/85)
[Referring to a non-melting pot:] > Probably the best example are the Jews: there are a *lot* more outside > of Israel than inside of Israel, and nobody doubts that they're > full-blooded (:-). Well, let's just say nobody makes distinctions when the time comes to go after us. (I did note the smiley-face.) As for "full-blooded," I'm Puerto-Rican-Polish-Ukranian-Jewish, and if you think that doesn't make it difficult to fill out those blasted affirmative action checklists, you've got another think coming. And since this is (was) net.nlang, where *does* the construction "if you think x, you've got another think coming" come from? Evelyn C. Leeper ...ihnp4!mtgzz!ecl