germans and slavs, celts and romans

Simon, you never know how much you made me feel happy. I'm really glad to know, at least, one English person on earth thinks that way. I'm more confident about myself. Thank you, Simon.

Simon, a little while ago, I did not want to refer to myself as American, English-American, and anything else but "Christian." I am a Christian, and I felt that in the eyes of God, we are all just His creations. But then I realised that I was more content saying that I am "English." I do agree with all that you say, I am just saying that the terms "blood, ethnicity, etc." really only mean where one's ancestors have come from.

But you said yourself that Belgium is part of you. For me, England has that same purpose! That is all that I am trying to say! You see, you do have "Belgian" blood in you!

All right, I keep modifying where I stand on this matter, so I am going to stop here. I will end with saying that I am proud of my English heritage and family, and I think that everyone should be proud of where their family come from and where there ancestors came from.

You raise an interesting point, Clark. Nationalities were created a couple of centuries ago, along with the nation state, e.g. France, England. Before then in Europe people knew their locality plus the fact that they were a Christian.

The concept of nationality is an interesting concept for me. It creates a lot of hatred sometimes. But on the other hand, it can be a symbol of pride. I wish that nationality did not exist, and instead, base what "group" one belongs to along linguistic lines. If someone wanted to marry outside of their linguistic grouping, then so be it! IT would be much easier. But then again, that would just be nationalism all over again, without the borders--the only borders would be linguistic ones!

I think in the past language formed around communities and if people moved into one community they adopted the language to fit in. The society we live in nowadays has become more complicated and languages are relatively stable. So identity seems to survive loss of language. E.g. the Irish. But up and till the protestantisation of English led to their rejection by mainland English society, English-speakers (Catholic) in Ireland (e.g. the Pale) considered themselves English.

All nationalities seem to be formed negatively too. They seemed to be created in a way that "I'm this because I'm not that".

Simon, I agree. As humans, I think that we need a sense of belonging. Be it to a football club or a country, we need to belong to something. I admit that I like being a part of something, but as far as nationality goes, I feel as though I hava got a raw deal. I do like the fact that I come from California though; but with America, ...um, not really.