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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Except when it isn't. And it's not clear to me that the number of exceptions is falling.

Spain. Finland has a Swedish-speaking minority and is officially bilingual. (I learned this from a Swedish-speaking Finn who was at our house for Thanksgiving.) Aren't there plenty of Italian speakers in Italy and Austria?

But still Swiss German or Swiss French, as opposed to German or French. Their nationality means something, distinct from their language. And c'mon -- don't they all love chocolate and St. Bernard's?

I feel like I am saying Pumpkins tend to be Orange and you bring me a few brown pumpkins saying my assumption isn't true. Not all people of a certain tongue live in, or are born in the country bearing the same name. Yes there are exceptoins. But if you randomly chose the borders of Europe how close would these borders follow the linguistic borders? 95% of the people in Europe live in a country whose national langue is the same as their native tongue and they they speak the same language that 97% of the people in their country speak. If you are born in a European country the likelhood that your leaders will have the same native langue as you has to be around 95%.

And this is not how it is in the Middle East and central Asia. What language your native tongue is not determined by the name of your country. If you are born speaking Arabic are the odds good you will be born in a country named Arabia. No. If your are Azerbaijani there is a good chance you will be born in Iran. If you are Kurdish, you could be born in any of four countries but definitely not Kurdistan. If your native tongue is Persian, it is about fifty fifty whether you will be born in Persia. If you are Pashtun it is a fifty fifty chance of being born in Afghanistan for Pakistan. But not Pashtunistan. If you are turkish there is a good chance you will be born in China or Afghanistan.

Some states can have multiple languages. But the definition of nation I am using, a nation can only have one language. That is why I used the term ethnic nation so there would be no confusion what definition of nation I was using.

(an aggregation of persons of the same ethnic family, speaking the same language or cognate languages.

A people who share common customs, origins, history, and language)

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Yugoslavia worked longer than a lot of people thought it would.

But why were so many poeple convinced it wouldn't last. Because they agree with what I am saying.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Because ethnicity and nationality are two different things. They often overlap, but sometimes not. In many nations, ethnicity is a core party of people conceive the nation. In others, not. The United States does not share a common ethnicity.

Nation has different definitions. I am using the term as it is used in "nation state" I keep saying that. Under the definition I am using, the United States is not a nation. Its a nation of mutts that have all dropped their native languages to speak a common language. We are not pure breeds so we can't form a nation.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop Kurdistan is a funny case. Maybe they'll have a nation soon. Kurdistan is close, but not there yet.

Hopefully. Those people have been getting the short end of the stick for a while (Saladin was a Kurd and he was quite the stud).

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I was trying to point out that if you wind the clock back, Hawaii was much more Hawaiian that haole.

That is definitely true. Our grabbing Hawaii was an imperialist move. Same with the Phillipines.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I don't understand how you can look at Hawaii and think it supports the larger argument you are making.

I just don't think it goes against my argument. The whole new world is a weird case because it is a bunch of people that came to the New World, killed off the native population (who had national identities), threw away their own national identities by letting their language die (usually just in a couple of generations) and then melded into this huge ethnic soup. Some chunks haven't completely dissolved yet in the soup because of bigotry but eventually everyone starts to interbreed. Even if you can claim that for example, you are all Asian, or all Caucasian, in terms of nationality you are a mutt. How many American caucasians do you know that are all English, or all German, or all Danish. If your family is here a few generations, you become a mutt, it is unavoidable.

I think Hawaii would have eventually separated from the US like the Phillipines did, but we did to Hawaii what China is doing to Tibet. We filled it up with American mutts, putting them in the majority, thereby ending hope that Hawaii could form its own nation state.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
The American Revolution was more about American nationalism than WWI was about Serbian nationalism.

I think most "Americans" at that time though of theselves as English. And then after the war they saw themsevles as Virginians, Georgians, New Yorkers etc. It wasn't until the war of 1812 that people started calling themselves Americans. And using the term nationalism that I am using, these people did not have a common culture and language.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop Let me put it this way: Austria had been a country for a long time. Its residents perceived it as such.

It became a country right after WWI. Before then it was part of the Austro-hungarian empire. It lasted for only twenty years as a separate nation. And for hundreds of years it was part of the "German confederation".

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
People there weren't agitating (for the most part) to became part of Germany. Yes, Hitler occupied Austria, claiming to protect the ethnic Germans there.

Hitler didn't go into Austria to protect the "ethnic Germans" there. All Austrians were (and are) ethnic Germans. He went into Czeck to protect the Sudentenland Germans from the Slavik Czechs. Hitler was not from an ethnic German family living in Austria. He was an Austrian who considered himself part of the German nation (and again I am using the classical definition of nation) just like a Prussian would consider themselves German. Most people considered (prior to the formation of the political entity of Germany in 1876 or there abouts) all Bavarians, Hessians, Prussians and Austrians as German people who were part of the German nation. There is no Austrian language. Maybe an accent, possibly a dialect, but there is no such thing as the Austrian language. Austrians speak German.

Hitler didn't occupy Austria any more than he occupied Bavaria. There was a huge Nazi presence in Austria before he went in. At the end of the war Austria was occupied by the allies just like Germany. Austira was not considered a victim of Germany, but a co-conspirator. Austria was spit from Germany again to help keep it weak.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop But how can you claim that this was "about" German nationalism, as opposed to racial or ethnic identity?

Ethnic identity and national identity are the same thing. Hitler was a hyper nationalist. He did not consider Jews Germans because they were from (according to him) a different ethnic stock.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
OK, but Germany and Turkey were not fighting to suppress Serbian nationalism, and the British, French and Italians were not fighting for it.

No they were all backinig up their allies.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop

But you're not drawing a line "around" where Punjabi is spoken -- you've just acknowledged that it's spoken by minorities elsewhere in India. You're just drawing a line around the places where it's a majority.

Again you are pointing to one blue berry that is green and saying blue berries cannot be characterised as blue. Yes Punjabis live in other parts of India just like some French live in Germany. So would you say that Germans are only a majority in their state with the French because they are only 98% of the population? Punjab is like 99% Punjabi. Punjabis that live in other ethnic states probably never make up more that one or two percent of the population. India is not like Bosnia with a bunch of mixing ethnic groups. East Bengal is like 98 percent bengali. 98 percent of the people in Tamil Nadu speak Tamil as their native tongue. Some ethnic groups are split into two or three states but the states are usually solidly that ethnicity. Some of the some forty states contian more than one ethnic group, but if they have two each ethnic group but in those cases they are all grouped in one part of the state and are next to a state that is purely their ethnic group. In other words, it would be very easy to draw ethnic boundaries in India so everyone would live in a state that was 95% ethnically consistent. In other words India could be chopped up just like Europe.

India does not have a native language. There is no such language as Indian. Hindi is used as a universal trading language (like Swahili in East Africa or French used to be in Europe) but for very few people is it their native tongue. India is not a nation in the traditional use of the word.