Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
^ I suspect that with the common language it's easier to absorb large amounts of news and information from the US. Imagine if the US was the same in every respect, except they spoke Spanish. Faced with a linguistic divide, there would be a lot more distance... the flow of imported culture and entertainment would decline dramatically, and we'd probably import a lot more from the UK, Australia, Ireland and other English-speaking countries instead of relying almost exclusively on the US.
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I'd say you need 1 of 3 things to effectively create a barrier for a unique culture to form:
1. Language barrier. You see this is Europe most dramatically - many small countries are effectively separated from each other culturally based on language. Sure, there is bleeding over on border regions, but you don't see Danes being swamped by Germans, despite the latter being an order of magnitude bigger in population.
2. Distance, especially in the pre-internet era. It's why Australia and New Zealand have their own thing going on, despite being newish English speaking Commonwealth countries. Without the means to absorb large amounts of cultural content (no, the printed word doesn't really count), you generally end up doing your own thing. Thus, the Aussies and Kiwis have retained their love of cricket, rugby and Aussie rules football along with their accents.
3. Size. The US dwarfs us - we're next door to a superpower who dominates the media landscape. So, yeah, the cultural exchange that will happen mostly one-way, whereas two more equal countries will tend to share a bit more back and forth.
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