There is a great variation in the United States. A country of 300 million people, where each state has a unique culture and identity. For some reason, "American" is often generalized to be a caricature that I, having lived in the Pacific Northwest my entire life, have never encountered.

You'll find the same level of cultural variation in almost any country. It's nowhere near the same level of variation you find between countries of Europe.

For example: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland each have unique cultural differences; distinct identities. The same goes for counties within England, e.g. Cornwall or Devon versus, say, Yorkshire.

"great variation"?

Really?

Show me a state that speaks 4 major languages.

Show me a state that is majority Catholic. Majority Muslim. Majority Atheist.

Show me a state where euthanasia is legal. Or where abortion is banned outright. Or where all drug consumption is fully decriminalized.

Show me a state that is led by a monarch. Or one that is a direct democracy.

Those are just some of the examples of variations between Europeans countries, and I would not even consider Europe particularly varied compared to other parts of the world.

have you ever actually traveled Europe? I mean really visited say 15 countries or more? It doesn't seem so. The diversity when comparing east to west, or north to south is striking.

I am not saying US is a monolithic culture all over, I've seen for example the difference (and lived for months) in LA vs small tourist/fishing place in Maine and quite a few places in between, but man... scale of differences in US is much, much lower compared to what we have here (indian reservations might add up a bit, but still - and those are just reminders of proper evil done by US not so long ago).

I've visited 5 continents and tens of countries, europe ain't my favorite place (that would be south east asia), but man we are way more diverse than anything I've ever seen or heard about considering size of this place (maybe one of the reasons EU will probably fail in long term)

wow, are u saying states in usa have same level culture difference like european countries?

just in spain alone we have 4 different OFFICIAL languages

If I walk into a government building in my state, I will pick up a pamphlet which has notices in English, Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese and Arabic. I can walk down a street and hear each of those languages being spoken. Are you really going to tell me that the Vietnamese experience in the United States is basically the same as the English experience?

If so, please come visit on of the top 30 cities in the United States and spend a few days walking around different districts and interacting with different people. Don't believe what our exported media is telling you, we are far from a monoculture.

There is a huge distinction between an official language and a language that is in common use by an immigrant community. Within the UK there are far more than five commonly used immigrant languages, and many are not European - Health and Safety documents come in 18 languages - mostly not EU languages.

To compare your five supported languages with a country that has four official languages, and significant cultural diversity within those - and then the immigrant communities from many more equally varied nations - which is just one part of the 28 nation polity that was originally mentioned (which combined have 24 official languages at the EU level, and many more at the national level) - is just really quite silly.

I guess it cant be compared at all since the US doesn't have any official languages. De jure != de facto

You seem to be missing the majority of my point, but I agree it's an arbitrary distinction as a technicality.

However, 32 US states do declare English as their official language. That's certainly more homogenous than the EU, the original point of contention. Just 2 of 28 EU states declare their official national language as English, and only one of these has English as their only official language (indeed, only the UK has English as their official EU language, which means English may no longer be an official language at the EU level after the UK leaves).

In the US, half of all states have English as their only official language.

This is all barely to the point, though (language is only a small part of culture). While the US may not be homogenous, it is clearly more homogenous than the EU, and by a large margin. The attempt to suggest otherwise was just absurd.

In the Brexit threads, it was discussed that the EU language selection is not really representative of populous or culture. Each country could only select one, and multiple entries didn't add anything. So many countries who may have potentially selected English didn't, because it was already selected by another country and it would be a "wasted" selection. For instance, Ireland has more English speakers than Irish speakers, yet it declared Irish as its EU language. It may very well switch to English when Brexit completes.

Your definition of "many" may need a revisit - this is simply not common. Ireland is the only egregious case, and I covered that in my comment. The Maltese population really does speak Maltese, as well as English. Every other language I can see in the official EU list is genuinely a primary tongue of one the nations in the EU.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio...

Just in Switzerland (which has only 8 million people) there are 4 official languages. Only 30k people speak Romansh, so let's ignore that one. But if you go to the German part, most people don't even understand French. Likewise, if you go to the French part, most people don't understand German. The Italian part is quite a bit smaller than rest of Switzerland, and most people there choose to learn French as a second language.

People from the north of Belgium don't speak the same language as people in the south of Belgium. The dialects of German spoken in the north vs. the south of Germany are so different that they struggle to understand each other. If you want an example of people speaking English, compare accents in Scotland or Wales to that of London, which is a melting pot of everything from Cockney to Received Pronunciation. Now, imagine what it is like in between countries.

Seriously, trying to say that the difference between the accents of Louisiana, Socal, New England and Chicago are a big deal, throw in the Mexican accent, hell even a good dollop of Spanish, it is still really homogeneous. Compared to Europe where there are places two hours drive away from you which share none of the languages you speak, and where you will find nobody who speaks any of the dominant languages in the area you currently are. And not just a village, or a suburb or cultural enclave, but whole cities of people.

It's absurd to use languages spoken as a proxy for cultural diversity. That being said, according to wikipedia there are 430 languages spoken in the US. There are 32 languages used by 100,000+ people.

And implying that simply because people speak the same language they have the same culture is nuts. People in Utah have the exact same language and accent as people in California but the two populations have very different attitudes about family, education, marriage, religion, and government.

In fact you don't even need to cross state boundaries. Compare Park City, Utah with St. George, Utah. Different cultures. Compare any metro area with any rural area.

You and salmon30salmon are missing the point. Language is an indicator of 4000+ years of local cultural differentiation. The rest of us europeans are just trying not to say something about 200years worth of adopting cultures. That does indeed create a unique multifaceted community, but surely you realise how much in common you have with most of the rest of the US population? In Europe these language barriers correspond to sometimes dramatic changes in climate, environment and lifestyle. Finns have very little in common with Italians as far as weltanschauung or culture goes, for instance. I doubt you could find as drastic and systemic difference on your side.

(Just to clarify, I don't mean to imply EU>US, just underlining the difference's depths)

But the point is that the US is 100-200 years of homogenization veneer on cultures ranging from Asian to African to European to indingenous.

In that sense, the US has a broader base of those enclaves within the country and less time to have built a coherent cultural identity between those populations.

Europe, by contrast, hasn't forced the veneer over all of the enclaves (eg, single language), but the enclaves share a more similar historic background.

It's different kinds of diversity, really. Stable multi-components versus broader partial fusion.

> Finns have very little in common with Italians

Yup. Consider that in the last world war italians and finns didn't even fight on the same side until a certain point in time.

Europe is a melting pot of cultures and to be quite honest I like it that way.

Right, which is why I am _not_ saying that the EU is in any way homogeneous. What I am saying is that _neither_ the EU or the US are homogeneous. And the same treatment that is applied to the EU when claiming that a certain culture describes "Europe" needs to be applied to the US.

No, it is not comparable by any measure. If I move 30 km from my home to the South, I won't be able to understand people and the culture is totally different, the meal hours are shifted by two hours, the food is different, the work times are different, the social system is different, the wages are vastly different, the prices are different, the family organisation is totally different, the religion could be different.

Why? Because there is a bloody border in between. These are different countries, they have evolved separately for centuries. Don't you get it? Those are not two states of the United States of Europa, those are countries forged with a millennium of historical evolution.

we have all sorts of people from all over the world in europe too, it is not an argument....

No but there is enough regional difference, between East Coast, South, West Coast and Pacific North West. Even though most of the suburbs look alike thanks to mono-cultures and business franchises. The general regional vibe if you observe has some stark contrasts.

Again USA is 300 million people, from Rio Grande Valley to Seattle. Spain has 4 different official languages, but more languages are spoken in US than Spain.

edit: I am not even counting the contrast of Native American Reservations to Metropolis like NY, LA.

New Mexico contains just as many languages and vaguely sovereign states as Spain, including our own language isolate.