Nationality Stereotypes

[Legs]

We touched on this recently on a couple of threads...


Americans are assertive, Italians are very passionate, and Germans are the picture of efficiency.

Right?

Such national stereotypes are common, but they are highly mistaken, a new study shows.

[viscousmemories]

Cool article, Legs. Can't say I'm really surprised though. Most people I've met don't fit all or even most of the stereotypes commonly associated with their race, religion, nationality, education, gender, etc.

Except Germans, of course.

[godfry n. glad]

Man, those people are really buzzkilling party poopers. If that gets out, the humor industry is going to have to append disclaimers to all the nationality/ethnicity jokes.

Didja hear the one about the sloppy German?

[Dingfod]

Was ist der deutsche Stereotyp?

[alphamale]

French:

- Paranoid
- Cowardly
- Obsessed with micro-aspects of food
- "Fight with their feet, make love with their mouthes, and eat what most people would throw in the garbage."
- Will sell any weapon to anyone with the cash.
- Sit with a demitasse and argue over fine points of pseudo-intellectual BS when they're supposed to be back at the office.
- Have bourgeois shop keepers who think customers should be grateful that the shopkeepers are there to take their money.

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by alphamale

French:


- Will sell any weapon to anyone with the cash.

This applies equally to Russians, Chinese, British and Americans...all five permanent member nations of the UN Security Council.

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by Warren

Was ist der deutsche Stereotyp?

They're perpetually bitter, even when ostensibly happy. It probably comes from the fact that you can't speak the language without spitting on the person you're talking to.

In all honesty my personal perception of Germans (from living there twice) was that they have a cultural aversion to expressing positive emotion in public. After reading Legs' article I suspect that my opinion is as unfounded as the other cultural stereotypes. And really when I think about it I can remember many instances of the opposite being true. It's more likely I just felt shunned because I wasn't there long enough to grasp the language and feel comfortable living in that environment.

[godfry n. glad]

In alphamale's format:


Americans:

- Paranoid
- Ignorant
- Obsessed with the velocity of food
- "Fight from a position of power and safety, make love with their guns, and eat what the French would throw out."
- Will sell weapons to anyone with the cash, or extend credit to those who don't have the cash
- Will sit for hours, sometimes days, over really crappy beer discussing brainless sports trivia when they should be doing something productive
- Have bourgeois shopkeepers who think of themselves as predators and their customers as prey

[Dingfod]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

They're perpetually bitter, even when ostensibly happy. It probably comes from the fact that you can't speak the language without spitting on the person you're talking to.

In all honesty my personal perception of Germans (from living there twice) was that they have a cultural aversion to expressing positive emotion in public. After reading Legs' article I suspect that my opinion is as unfounded as the other cultural stereotypes. And really when I think about it I can remember many instances of the opposite being true. It's more likely I just felt shunned because I wasn't there long enough to grasp the language and feel comfortable living in that environment.

I suppose my brother's German ex-wife fits the stereotype. No wonder, she's a German government bureaucrat.

[Ymir's blood]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

It's more likely I just felt shunned because I wasn't there long enough to grasp the language and feel comfortable living in that environment.

Or maybe it was the leather jacket with shoulder pads?

[Ymir's blood]

I wish the linked page in the OP had more information about how the study was conducted. It seems obvious that national stereotypes are going to be false. Any society will have those who fit and those who don't.

Did anyone look at the links on the right navigational bar? They had another study on finger length ratios, which always interest me as my index fingers are longer than my ring fingers, which is apparently rather unusual.

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by Ymir's blood

Or maybe it was the leather jacket with shoulder pads?

[Carlos]

At 1969 I was an exchanged student in USA.
I am from Ecuador , South America.

On my first week there , I went to a high school ( 10 th grade ) at Long Island , New York.

When my classmates ( all of them where white caucasic, rich ?/middle class people) knew from what country I was, they began to ask me questions:

Why are you dressed that way? ( I was dressing like everybody else)
Do you live in the line equator? Where the hell is Ecuador , at Africa?

I know , I know ! In your land you reduce heads !
It is difficult for you to dress that way since you live naked at the jungle?

Did you scare when you saw the airplane and when you flew over?

How come you know some basic English? Was your father a USA misionary on your lands?

Are you scare with electricity and tv?

Etc, etc.

At that point, one nice looking girl said : Carlos , you looks so cute ! come with me and don't listen to these assholes !

Thanks ,
Carlos

[Legs]

Originally Posted by Ymir's blood

Or maybe it was the leather jacket with shoulder pads?

[alphamale]

Originally Posted by godfry n. glad

This applies equally to Russians, Chinese, British and Americans...all five permanent member nations of the UN Security Council.

No. The U.S. does not sell to countries that will destabilize a region, unless it's in the direction of democracy or to head off a geo-political calamity. The french will sell to anybody at any time - one of the reasons they opposed the iraq war is because they had $15 billion due from Hitler-Lite.

[alphamale]

Originally Posted by Ymir's blood

Or maybe it was the leather jacket with shoulder pads?

That's the way they are. I read somewhere that before you could use their first name, you must know the person for many years, and then only by permission.

[alphamale]

Americans:

- Paranoid

Yaaa - we overreacted to Pearl Harbor, having thousands of Russian ICBMs pointed at every square inch of our territory, having Castro ask Khruschev to nuke us from Cuba, and having two skyscrapers blown up in the middle of our most important city. I can see how it would seem like paranoia to a very uninformed euroweenie, euros basically having sat out the defense of the democratic west for the last 60 years.

- Ignorant

Yaaaa - that's why we win most of the science nobel prizes and could send a man to the moon.

- Obsessed with the velocity of food

Don't have time to pick at it for three hours like euros because we've got stuff to do.

- "Fight from a position of power and safety, make love with their guns, and eat what the French would throw out."

??????

- Will sell weapons to anyone with the cash, or extend credit to those who don't have the cash

Simply false.

- Will sit for hours, sometimes days, over really crappy beer discussing brainless sports trivia when they should be doing something productive

Days? Maybe hours!

- Have bourgeois shopkeepers who think of themselves as predators and their customers as prey

Whaaaaaaaaaatttttt????

[alphamale]

Originally Posted by Carlos

At 1969 I was an exchanged student in USA.
I am from Ecuador , South America.

On my first week there , I went to a high school ( 10 th grade ) at Long Island , New York.

When my classmates ( all of them where white caucasic, rich ?/middle class people) knew from what country I was, they began to ask me questions:

Why are you dressed that way? ( I was dressing like everybody else)
Do you live in the line equator? Where the hell is Ecuador , at Africa?

I know , I know ! In your land you reduce heads !
It is difficult for you to dress that way since you live naked at the jungle?

Did you scare when you saw the airplane and when you flew over?

How come you know some basic English? Was your father a USA misionary on your lands?

Are you scare with electricity and tv?

Etc, etc.

At that point, one nice looking girl said : Carlos , you looks so cute ! come with me and don't listen to these assholes !

Thanks ,
Carlos

They were just raggin ya.

[Legs]

Hey Carlos, I have been to Quito - as the old saying goes 'nice place to visit but......."

I went on a galapagos cruise from there - awesome.

[Carlos]

Originally Posted by alphamale

They were just raggin ya.

Be sure they were not. All their qustions were answred and they were very polite and communicatives. They blamed the education they received at that time.

Thanks,
Carlos

[Stormlight]

Originally Posted by alphamale

Yaaa - we overreacted to Pearl Harbor, having thousands of Russian ICBMs pointed at every square inch of our territory, having Castro ask Khruschev to nuke us from Cuba, and having two skyscrapers blown up in the middle of our most important city. I can see how it would seem like paranoia to a very uninformed euroweenie, euros basically having sat out the defense of the democratic west for the last 60 years.

Yaaaa - that's why we win most of the science nobel prizes and could send a man to the moon.

Don't have time to pick at it for three hours like euros because we've got stuff to do.

??????

Simply false.

Days? Maybe hours!

Whaaaaaaaaaatttttt????

As this whole thread is about stereotypes, I'm sure we can do without your neo-con bullshit explanations and justifications.

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by alphamale

Yaaa - we overreacted to Pearl Harbor, having thousands of Russian ICBMs pointed at every square inch of our territory, having Castro ask Khruschev to nuke us from Cuba, and having two skyscrapers blown up in the middle of our most important city. I can see how it would seem like paranoia to a very uninformed euroweenie, euros basically having sat out the defense of the democratic west for the last 60 years.

Um... I was, like, eight when that happened. Let's talk about now. Try invading a sovereign nation on the pretext of completely phony information, with the UN and most of the allied nations saying there was no such evidence, and then claiming that Al Qaeda was using it as a base for terrorism.

Plus, many Americans don't feel safe walking their own streets. I'd even bet that the United States has the highest expenditure per annum for security services. Even per capita.

The United States has the largest number of people behind bars in the world and the largest percentage of its population, IIRC.

That's fucking paranoid and it's recent news.

And it's obvious you're oblivious to how much of the rest of the world views us. I certainly hope you don't travel much overseas, 'cause people like you could be the reason we have such a reputation.

[alphamale]

As this whole thread is about stereotypes, I'm sure we can do without your neo-con bullshit explanations and justifications.

Garsh, cool rebuttal. The poster I responded to lost the humorous spirit of the thread by going over the line to nastiness.

And "we"??

[alphamale]

Try invading a sovereign nation on the pretext of completely phony information, with the UN and most of the allied nations saying there was no such evidence, and then claiming that Al Qaeda was using it as a base for terrorism.

Well no, that's not true - the intelligence services of Israel, Russia, Britain, China, and France said they did or were likely to have WMDs - who didn't buy in - Lichtenstein? The info wasn't "completely phony" but rather poor intelligence.

And it's obvious you're oblivious to how much of the rest of the world views us. I certainly hope you don't travel much overseas, 'cause people like you could be the reason we have such a reputation.

I don't give a flying f__K how "the rest of the world" (= france and germany) views us, I DO travel overseas, and I do hope I leave that impression.

[godfry n. glad]

Originally Posted by alphamale

I don't give a flying f__K how "the rest of the world" (= france and germany) views us, I DO travel overseas, and I do hope I leave that impression.

As noted.

I rest my case.