Canadian American RV Culture Difference

Veebyes wrote:
Not being either a citizen of the USA or Canada I have gone through most of this thread with some amusement. It is nice to be standing on the outside of the forest looking in sometimes.

How come citizens of the USA are known as Americans but citizens of Canada are not also known as Americans? Don't both countrys form North America? In fact Canada is much larger than the USA. Maybe Canadians have more claim to known as Americans???

Hmmmmm.

Ask any Canadian a string of general knowledge questions about the US & see how many are answered correctly. Ask the US citizen the same questions about Canada, Capital, Leader, sports etc & you will likely get silence. The only thing known about Canada is that cold air comes from there.

Heck, the Canadian most likely knows more the US, provided you don't ask about Hollywood celebrities or sports, than the US citizen.

A sad situation.

The US has Florida where very few speak English. Canada has Quebec where most of them know English but refuse to speak it. Don't those folks know that they lost a war 200 years ago & through the kindness of the English were allowed to stay. Show some respect & appreciation or go back to France or maybe a Louisiana swamp.

On the serious side, Canada is the very best friend of the USA, along with England. Be nice to each other & respect or smile at each others cultural differences when visiting each other.

Further to the American thing. Mexico is of course also part of North America but they are known as Mexicans.

You seem open minded so I'll point out a couple things. Many quebecers don't speak English or for that matter need to speak English. It is a French Canadian culture and day to day life is in French. I have spent significant time in Quebec during my career and it wasn't uncommon to find entire communities with very few English speakers. As far as refusing to speak, I haven't seen that although I have seen many times where the person was just too self conscience to try and then make a mistake. If you ever learn a second language you'll know this queasy feeling you get when you are about to speak in a language that you can't think in. Not fun.

Of the 11 million French speakers in Canada about 6 million live in Quebec. Many live in Canada's only bilingual province, New Brunswick. It is more common to find bilingualism in New Brunswick. PEI also has a high French speaking (Acadian) population. Manitoba as well as Alberta have some comunities that are predominantly french speaking . They are however of course bilingual. Quebec is different. It's history has always been French and the outcome of a war doesn't change that. It is not a bilingual province, it is officially a unilingual province. French.

French and Spanish have played huge roles in the development of North America and the evolution continues. Spanish moved to second place displacing english in the world as far as the spoken language goes. (Mandarin is still number 1). By 2050 it is expected that 40 percent of the US population will speak Spanish. As the Latin Anerican markets continue to open up it will be a necessity for business. Unilingual kids will have a limited job market in the future in the Americas. Functionality in English and Spanish is going to become real important in the future.

I speak 3 and a half languages (my German sucks but is getting better) and without a doubt I enjoy Spanish the most even though I am fairly certain I sound like a moron when I speak it.