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From: sra@oddjob.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Old World heritage in the New World
Message-ID: <1064@oddjob.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 30-Nov-85 15:33:27 EST
Article-I.D.: oddjob.1064
Posted: Sat Nov 30 15:33:27 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Dec-85 03:40:10 EST
References: <52200001@hpcnof.UUCP> <856@kuling.UUCP>
Reply-To: sra@oddjob.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson)
Organization: University of Chicago, Department of Physics
Lines: 42
Summary: 

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