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Is there such a thing as a "National Culture"?

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Bletchleyite

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I have worked with Indian IT people and the embarrassing bit (for me) is the accents - they are speaking what seems to be perfectly grammatical English but in very thick accents.

There are some quirks to the vocabulary used, though, which is a bit archaic and can cause misinterpretation.

One of the ones I've noticed most is that an Indian person saying "Kindly try rebooting your PC and let me know if it works properly after that" is simply asking you very politely if formally to do so, whereas an English person saying the same thing would probably be being more than a little sarcastic with a definite undertone of "you really should have done that first, why are you wasting my time?"
 
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cb a1

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We had a conference call with a customer facing Indian and a specialist back in India - the former ended up translating for me despite all three of us speaking English. I am surprised they understand each other as their accents vary so wildly (think how British accents vary then upscale it to the vastness of India!)
My two grandfathers (born c. 1900) lived less than 80 miles apart but could barely understand each other. One was a Geordie, one was a Yorkshire Dalesman.
 

Meerkat

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The Indian helpdeskers extreme grammatical politeness is rather amusing.
 

70014IronDuke

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I have worked with Indian IT people and the embarrassing bit (for me) is the accents - they are speaking what seems to be perfectly grammatical English but in very thick accents.
We had a conference call with a customer facing Indian and a specialist back in India - the former ended up translating for me despite all three of us speaking English. I am surprised they understand each other as their accents vary so wildly (think how British accents vary then upscale it to the vastness of India!)

More than once when in India I'd get talking to someone and the conversation would start:

What is your native place?

England.

Oooh. Acha.

[conversation continues for 3-5 minutes on random subjects, often including British rule if with older person, then.... ]

If you are coming from England, how is it you are not speaking very good English?

:)

Curiously, I don't think this ever happened in Pakistan, but I did spend more time in India.

About half of people in India speak Hindi as the majority language.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-most-widely-spoken-languages-in-india.html

Hmmmm. I'd seriously question that claim, whatever the world atlas says (unless I felt it was backed up by serious research) given the vast rural populations where they will surely speak their local languages as a matter of course. OK, in the north, many of these languages have links to Hindi, and many people will have a passive knowledge, even if they don't speak it regularly, but in places like Bengal and the south, in the Dravidian language states, I can't believe it is true at all.
 
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Robin Edwards

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Hmmmm. I'd seriously question that claim, whatever the world atlas says (unless I felt it was backed up by serious research) given the vast rural populations where they will surely speak their local languages as a matter of course. OK, in the north, many of these languages have links to Hindi, and many people will have a passive knowledge, even if they don't speak it regularly, but in places like Bengal and the south, in the Dravidian language states, I can't believe it is true at all.

I'd be very interested in your sources if you believe these to be inaccurate 70014? This data is seemingly sourced from census data.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism_in_India
 

Sad Sprinter

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Yes, there is. I simply can't see how a group of people living together does not eventually adopt their own traditions and mannerisms.

Britain does have a culture, it's just harder to define because its four nations in one. I mean, how would use describe the culture of a hyperthetical Federal Europe? There would be some kind of similarities between the different european nations-or states, but largely the cultral differences would be within the ex-European states. That means whilst a Federal Europe won't have a culture per se, because they aern't one people, it would still havea national culture, just its culture would be made up of many different kinds of cultures. Such a system is common in African countries. Where many tribes and ethnic groups have their own strong culture and as such "Nigerian culture" may apply to which ever localised culture the particular individual invoking Nigerian culture may belong to.

The trouble with British culture is, in the past 30 years or so we have downplayed the importance of English culture. Why-I don't know, but perhaps it was an attempt to psychologically incorporate the rest of Britain into national thinking. For example, abroad, people think "British accents" are those of Stephen Fry or Jeremy Irons, when these are simply English accents. "British food" is often mistaken for particuarly English dishes. Yet it has become unsavoury in recent years to think proudly as oneself as English as a Soct would consider themself a Scot. I believe this has fuelled the rise of Scottish nationalism in recent years. If English culture is now transplanted onto British culture, then by asking the Scots to be British, we are asking them to become English. What it means to be British, in my view, is the belief as an Englishman, a Scotsman, Welshman or Northern Irishman, these four different peoples are the same as your own, despite being cultrally, and in some cases linguistically different. By constructing a Britishness, mainly from the government which represents England, we risk pushing the other three nations of the UK away because that's not what true Britishness is per se.

So to conclude, yes Britain has a national culture. It's just complicated and diverse. More importantly, England has a rich culture, but it is the fusion of the four nations that make an English culture. I am sure there are personality similarities between the four UK nations that would differ say, to continental nations, and of course there is the overarching similarities such as language, faith, views etc. But generally speaking, I think the United Kingdom has a great culture and we should be happy of it.
 

70014IronDuke

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I'd be very interested in your sources if you believe these to be inaccurate 70014? This data is seemingly sourced from census data.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism_in_India

Apologies - I thought it was clearly my opinion and experience in India. No sources other than that.

Various Indian governments have been pressing for Hindi to be the 'official' language of India since independence, including the very first supposedly 'liberal' government of Nehru. (This almost led to an idepedence movement by the Dravidian south in the mid-50s, which only died because of the Chinese incurrsion across the former British Indian lines in the Himalayas.)

So, frankly, I'm very sceptical of any 'official' data, which I strongly suspect is worded to enhance the status of Hindi. BICBW, of course.
 
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