I believe that the English world and the Spanish world are going to merge because of the USA ethnic transformation taking place. Spain better move fast if it wants to benefit as it potentially might. So I agree with the idea that Europe will have a main central core, with important branches into Eastern Europe, Scandanavia, England and its friends, Spain and its friends. The USA will have some Pacific reach for sure and would be foolish to ever become far apart from 350-400 million Franco-German centered core Europeans who have shared so much, and are powerful. The Mediterranean and Arab lands are of interest to Europe-East, the Core of Europe, the English and Spanish speaking areas.They will all seek alliances, and Arabs should skillfully use these competing alliances, to benefit their own group.

Amazing statement — the sort of thing only a Dutch internationalist would say. Social structures in Italy and Germany are the same? I suspect the writer knows nothing of Italian family life for a start. If he had said “institutional arrangements” he might have had more of a point.

And I think the discussion here is among largely polyglot people. Most of the Anglosphere speaks only English however so I think the importance of language has been much underestimated in this discussion. For 98% of the Anglosphere, language is almost an ABSOLUTE barrier. Write what you like in French and you might as well be pissing into the wind as far as almost all of the Anglosphere is concerned.

I’m from Detroit… my State’s Governor is Canadian (ex-Canadian, that is). Do you imagine that there’s a magical force field across the Detroit river that keeps us from receiving Canadian radio or tv signals? Or perhaps the Nationalist sentiment in Windsor is so strong they’re not Red Wing fans! (yeah, right.)

Furthermore, The claim about Canadian units of money seems at odds with the Royal Mint (1830, indeed). It’s a petty argument between Canadians and Americans, true. But I find it very hard to believe that Canadians don’t know what their own nickels and quarters look like (Queen Beth II is the face on both, the ‘noble’ beaver’s on the nickel, and an elk is on the quarter). Bahhh! Canadians!

I seem to recall that phrase becoming popular in my part of the U.S. in connection with the “Wayne’s World” movie…

Britain is certainly not European in the sense that the rest of Europe is. I can’t tell if language really is the key issue. I don’t know Ireland or Scandinavia much, and it would be there that the claim should be tested.

I disagree about Ireland, given the strong cultural similarities with mainland Britain. Scandinavia would be the appropriate venue, I suspect.

As for the rest – Europe is not really homogenous for any kind of institutional characteristic, but there is a sort of Wittgensteinian “family resemblance” going on. I would argue that Spain and Italy certainly fit the resemblance better than the UK, and that eastern European aspirations fit it as well. The facts on the ground east of the old Iron Curtain may be quite different.

That’s my general impressions from this side of the Atlantic. It’s open to question, of course, just how big the gap is between ideal and actual norms.

Question: Is East Germany part of this core area of Europe?

Alexander – Canadian units of money date back to the 1830′s, I think. Nowadays, Canada has no penny and has 1 and 2 dollar coins. Like I said, we are growing more different, not less.

Quite right about the coins, but my change from my Tim Horton’s coffee says that we’ve still got pennies.

” even as benign a Canadianism as “he shoots, he scores!” doesn’t even get recognised in much of the US”

The Hell you say! I use it all the time, didn’t even realize it was a Canuckism.

Bernard Guerrero, Devils fan

I did say that I think Bennett is on to something, although I’m not convinced that it’s what he thinks it is. The “Anglosphere” does represent something real, although precisely what is unclear to me. If I say “I didn’t do it, nobody saw me do it, you can’t prove anything” anywhere in it, people usually get the whole cultural effect. Even in Belgium, people don’t get it. (Although, I should note that an English professor of English lit who I was talking with last night didn’t get “I’m having some difficulty with my lifestyle.”) On the other hand, even as benign a Canadianism as “he shoots, he scores!” doesn’t even get recognised in much of the US. I fear that what Bennett is seeing is more the domination of American discourse in the “Anglosphere” (and it’s diminishing dominance outside of it) rather than a real community forming.

Britain is certainly not European in the sense that the rest of Europe is. I can’t tell if language really is the key issue. I don’t know Ireland or Scandinavia much, and it would be there that the claim should be tested. As for the rest – Europe is not really homogenous for any kind of institutional characteristic, but there is a sort of Wittgensteinian “family resemblance” going on. I would argue that Spain and Italy certainly fit the resemblance better than the UK, and that eastern European aspirations fit it as well. The facts on the ground east of the old Iron Curtain may be quite different.

Alexander – Canadian units of money date back to the 1830′s, I think. Nowadays, Canada has no penny and has 1 and 2 dollar coins. Like I said, we are growing more different, not less.

Well… Italy was in NATO as well, as well as holding the others hands through the rebuilding process after WWII. The Italians have a language base and cultural environment that’s at least as integrated into the European concept as the UK. Italy had the same euphoria as Germany, and suffered more destruction than France when it fell. And at a deeper cultural level, Spain and Italy and France have more basis for intuitive cooperation than France and Germany.

The fluency of the political elites is a common military and structural cooperation that extended into rebuilding and technological cooperation. All of these required a shared basis for communication and established/reinforced the most natural networks that presented themselves to each culture. On another hand, the ideological choices were limited by circumstance and depended on an ease with double talk the Russians think is hilarious and the Americans take over seriously.

So the shared trauma of mutually getting dragged along as bit players in a tragedy-comedy forced them to concede where previously each was unwilling. The Tom Stoppard play (“Gildenstern and Rosenkranz are dead” (sp) illustrates their positions in a weird way, including the double talk (probably counter productive at this stage).

A question I’d put forth to an English contributor would be to ask what the language used translates like to their “ear”? To an outsider, the shared English lexicon is that of those latin root words that are most commonly used easily by French, rather than German or Spanish or Italian. But it’s not clear that the definitions carry the English rather than French implications.