5 Ways Living in the US Has Altered My Perception Of It

fact it's just occurred to me this is something that i've heard a lot since moving here press one for english para espanol or prima el dos [Music] hello this video is sponsored by the great crosses plus i'm laurence brown and i'm on a quest to uncover all of the memos that britain and america lost in the pond and one of those memos pertains to perceptions it's no secret that both britain and america have perceptions about one another for instance some americans will ask me ooh lawrence is it true that you all live in castles yes but to be completely fair before i moved to the united states i had my own wild perceptions of what this country was and today since my channel has more than doubled in size in the last year it's time to bring new subscribers old subscribers and yet to subscribers up to date here are five ways that my perception of the united states has changed since i moved here ah american history that wildly misunderstood beast in britain you'll occasionally hear remarks like ooh america doesn't have history in britain we've got churches older than dinosaurs and keith richards no no they say america is like the macaulay culkin of countries but this line of thinking overlooks one very important fact macaulay culkin is 40. but also human history on this continent dates back to before alfred the great was even in nappies diapers you see growing up in britain i was only given a kind of narrow view of native american history but the truth is millions of native american people lived on the north american continent thousands of years before sir walter rally laid his eyes on roanoke and when you live here evidence of this is all around you recently i paid a visit to cahokia mounds right here in illinois and on these mounds a thousand years ago a city of 20 000 mississippian natives lived and while by today's standards that number probably doesn't sound that big at the time that was more than the population of london humans not rats and that's relatively recent one story that really blew me away pun intended was that native americans were alive living in the area and likely witnessed the formation of crater lake in present-day oregon this occurred almost 8 000 years ago upon the collapse of mount mazama now of course when assumptions are made about america not having much history people are really referring to the united states of america but the thing i've come to realize about this is that it has a lot of history packed into a short time frame for context let's go back in time not literally i don't have a flying saucer but switch on the time circuits to a quarter of a century after the signing of the declaration of independence in 1800 the united states was home to just five million people that's less than present day london and the country has been busy in that time because today it stands at 330 million in 1800 the united states was basically a country only east of the mississippi river that'll be important in a moment in 1800 chicago the windy city the place that i currently live didn't exist and wouldn't for 35 years and even once it did it was located in the country's north west territory and actually this also explains the geographical classification of the midwest whenever i heard that term before moving to america i just assume that's where john wayne picked up his mail and have been dark times and hopeful times the expansion west the emancipation proclamation world war one world war ii the great depression prohibition women's suffrage tom hanks being born civil rights marches the civil rights act landing on the moon watergate vietnam star wars both the film franchise and the missile defense system you know that was a very basic list from the top of my head and it is one admittedly that you can pick up anywhere in the world but elements of that history and we should say very intense history is still felt today i mean it calls to my visit to the lincoln museum in springfield just a few weeks ago couldn't have done that in england not even online but i think the point is you know you can learn all of this history in a book but i think being in and around reminders of it physical reminders of it is probably the best method of learning that there is anyway before my upper lip becomes any less stiff let's move on to this listen i've talked a lot about how bloody big america is and it is i mean just look at the map behind me it looks like a giant shark there's the tail and there's the head never mind but there are so many more things i didn't know about america's geography until i moved here here are five of them weirdly enough i did know that the mason-dixon line was basically the separation between the north and the south but what i didn't know until i moved here was the role that the mississippi river played and plays in the division between east and west and this division somehow seems to come up in everything i research for this channel for instance hello everybody in the state of georgia how does it feel to be the largest state in the united states that is east of the mississippi river or hello to the wilshire grand in los angeles you are the tallest skyscraper that america ever saw west of the mississippi and one thing that i've noticed having visited multiple places either side of the mississippi is the large disparity between tree diversity i mean yes don't get me wrong california has some of the oldest trees in the entire world but owing to its terrain the western united states is way behind on trees whereas if you go out into the appalachian mountains of west virginia you can't see the mountains for the trees that's not the saying the third point is a four-sided one if you've watched this channel for a while you'll know it's not lost on me america is made of rectangles literally in the case of this map i'll never tire of the fact that the u.s flag hundreds of u.s counties most u.s streets several city parks and colorado and wyoming are all rectangles but living in their rectangular worlds are some decidedly non-rectangular people and because there are 330 million americans i always assumed that the population density of each state was similar to that of the united kingdom but something that i've learned since living and crucially working here in the united states is that several states out west do have a larger area than the united kingdom but might boast a hundredth of its population and these days this is something i can talk about until the cows come home and actually in some of these states this is quite likely because cows often outnumber people now to be fair states like rhode island fit 350 more people per square mile than the united kingdom despite being 175th its size traveling around the united states has given me a new perspective on how state clustering works east of the mississippi there are places where you can drive through a billion states in an hour in the west you might be in the same state for a billion hours and depending on where you start a reasonable drive from the east coast to the west coast can take you through as many as 14 states but as few as seven similarly driving from mexico to canada might take in 10 states or just three either way it's food for thought and at this time i'm going to turn my thoughts to food my perception of american food used to be that it was just hamburgers and pizza and sometimes both at the same time i was a student once i was only vaguely aware that america had its own desserts like pecan pie or that americans like to put one of about 58 million different sources on things or that while american cheeseburgers are noted for their plastic-like cheese states like wisconsin produce genuinely excellent cheeses so what would you say is the best cheese in the whole state of wisconsin oh the best cheese in the state of wisconsin is called musketeer mayhem actually that's case meister it's musketeer mayhem let's get one of those yeah we'll get one of those absolutely and while i think it was pretty common knowledge that american portion sizes were bigger than their british counterparts i had no idea back in the day that the united states was the land of the free refills see what i did there word play which brings us on to this the writer george bernard shaw once said that britain and america are two nations divided by a common language and he should know because he was irish but when i lived in britain it wasn't as clear to me just how deep this division was in hindsight it seems like there are certain well-known and popular differences like chips instead of fries color with a you or without and aluminium versus aluminum but as a british person living in the united states day in day out for 13 years you discover ones you didn't even know exist for example as recently as a few months ago i learned that americans pronounce centrifugal as centrifugal right because there are just some words like that that don't often present themselves in general conversation and so for years i might be pronouncing something in the british way and americans would have thought i was a right numpty and i would have had no way of knowing except by reading the comments section but to address american english specifically only by living here did i become aware of regional differences right how most of america says mary mary and mary all the same but some parts don't or how the country regionally differs on what they call a fizzy drink soda pop coke tonic or how midwesterners use the word ope and how the rest of america does not do that when i lived in britain and i thought about the united states it never really occurred to me that there was one other language in particular that's quite prevalent over here spanish whereas britain often has say instruction manuals in english french welsh american manuals and public information will usually include a spanish version of the text in fact it's just occurred to me this is something that i've heard a lot since moving here press one for english para espanol or prima el dos and of course now that i'm here all of this makes sense you know not only is the united states bordered with mexico but the country is home to more than 50 million hispanic or latino americans and funnily enough to tie this back to food because eventually everything comes back to food britain itself has begun to embrace mexican and tex-mex establishments seems like all of the good things happened after i left anyway amid all of this talk of language have you ever wondered how english took on a life of its own in america well now thanks to the great courses plus you can learn all about it i am thrilled to recommend a course that i've taken myself professor natalie schillings english in america a linguistic history the great courses plus is a subscription on-demand video learning service with brilliant lectures and courses from ivy league professors and experts from places like national geographic and the smithsonian through your subscription you'll get access to over 11 000 video lectures covering subjects that interest you visit thegreatcoursesplus.com lost in the pond right now to begin your free trial the link is in my description below additionally the great courses plus is always posting scintillating educational content on their social media platforms following them on facebook twitter and instagram and subscribing to them on youtube is a fast easy way to make your feeds a whole lot smarter links to those pages are also included below in the meantime you can't have a country without people americans when we british people think of americans what do we think of what do we picture as a child of the 80s i imagine that a large percentage of you were perfectly embodied by j.r ewing and sue ellen mind you i'm the same kid that thought the golden girls were set in new york city because the intro featured large buildings and also because different strokes were set there but i've since realized it's the most florida thing that ever florida but in many ways florida itself provides britain with a false view of americans and let's face it floridians because i think we think that something like you know one in two americans is a florida man and that's silly i think it's like anywhere else when you sit down with most americans in real life as opposed to twitter i think most americans are good-hearted and polite and curious and have i just been hanging around with the wrong americans maybe i should just go for a drink with chainsaw gym put it this way you know who's approachable and who's not you know who's your bag and who isn't i mean that in a metaphorical sense don't add me on twitter and yes uncle toby i hear you oh you have to like americans because your wife's one no that was no that was a theoretical conversation with uncle toby that is it for this video let me know in the comments below if you visited a country and whether your perception of it changed afterwards i'm laurence brown you can follow me on twitter at lost in the pond us and don't forget to subscribe to my channel so that my videos don't get lost in the pond a maine to california size shout out to my patrons who make these videos possible if you would like to become a patron of lost in the pond you can do so at lost in the patreon.com until the next video goodbye you

Channel: Lost in the Pond

Views: 595,296

Keywords: Laurence Brown, America, perceptions, Moving

Id: 5f9nYx2TGdw

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Fri May 28 2021