What do you think determines a person nationality? It is determinded simply by where you were born?

I'm puertorican, but I wasn't actually born in Puerto Rico. My father was in the army, and he traveled a lot, so I was born in Alabama, my sister was born in Germany and my brother in Panama, and THEN we moved to Puerto Rico (When I was 4 years old). Oh, and my parents are from Puerto Rico too.
The 3 of us consider ourselves puertorrican, but some people find it hard to accept that we are.

I'm not sure if it has to do with this Orgullo Boricua (Puertorrican Pride) since there a lots of puertorricans in Ney York that can't even speak spanish and still use the famous (to us) phrase "I'll be puertorrican even if I'm born in the moon"

So.. what do you think about this topic?

You are who you are depending on the location, I guess. I'm an American...a SOUTHERN American.

I don't know what the most accepted defintion is but I believe the most useful defintion is that your nationality is regarding the country(ies) of your citizenship and your ethnicity is involving your ancestral line akin to ancestors ethnicities not nationalities.

That's what I always thought.

See, if you ask me my nationality I say French, because that's where my ancestors are from. Hell, my last name, Sanguinet, is French. So, that's what I consider myself.

Bonus points if you can translate 'sanguine'. Or, the more proper term, sanguinary.

To me nationality is different from heritage when you can separate the two by culture. I am native american but I don't speak anything but english, never lived on a reservation, and I definitely live as any other american.

My girlfriend is the same way. Her heritage is irish but she is not irish.

yeah, i'd wondered about that. Sanguine is 'blood', right? I assume sanguinary is 'bloody'? I remember thinking that was interesting, when i heard your surname.

yeah, well as for myself; i'm English, but i have very strong Irish roots. (Eire, not Northern Ireland. There's a world of difference. ^_^)

But i always loved;

"I am not a citizen of Athens, nor Greece, but of the world." - Socrates (apparently, though i've seen it credited to others)

^_^ sums it all up for me.

@Regal

Socrates may have thought that about himself, but that doesn't mean that Spartans or Persians would have agreed.

haha, God Damn You, Cypher.

stop punching neat little holes in my flowery world-view.



you have an unavoidably valid point.


... I'd say 'who cares about them', but, well, you don't say that to the Spartans.

Yeah, sorry about that.

Yeah, if 'sanguinary' has the same meaning as its almost-identical-sounding portuguese counterpart, it does mean 'bloody'. More in a 'that guy is cruel as hell' way as in 'that guy is covered in blood' way.

...nationality? What you identify yourself with. If you have french ancestors but never felt like a frenchman, what's the point in considering yourself from France? You can end up moving to Senegal at age 40 and blending so good with the country's mentality that you decide to consider yourself from Senegal. Your choice, really.

That's the humanist point of view. When you start considering the law, each country has a difference view on giving out passports. In Germany, I think, all it takes is a german parent or grandparent. In other countries the requirement may be living there for a certain amount of time.

Something interesting to notice in that aspect are table tennis tournaments. Notice how 90% of the table tennis players are chinese people who were brought over to a country and naturalized there to play the sport for the country. Many don't even speak the country's language. Lots of countries do this... I'm pretty sure the USA does it too.

Ah, I'm Canadian. 100% Canadian.

The only problem being I don't have a clue what that is.

Nationality, Heritage, Culture... mostly I don't really feel like I have any of it. I don't really know what my heritage is, either way I don't feel part of any culture in the world except Canada where I grew up, which is a mix of many different cultural groups, none of which I belong to. I was raised to belong to the church but I don't. So I dunno, got nothing but myself really. It's a bit of freedom in a way - cus I figure I could belong just as well to any culture since I can't be pinned by heritage. The fact that I'm white is my defining feature basically. *shrug*

I always liked Pumba's line 'Home is where your rump rests' ^____^ kekeke.

Regal & Gnasher= You're right. It means blood or bloody.

Clucking awesome last name

And about the table tennis point Gnasher made, the US is similiar in that regard. We're full of all sorts of nationalities, and you don't have to know the language. Hell, I'm French, but I couldn't give you one word in French.
[spoiler]I was going to say Si, but I realized that's Spanish. [/spoiler]


In the end, I believe you are whatever you think you are.

If you guys are using heritage and nationality the way you are, does everyone have an ethnicity, or only minorities?

Of course everyone has an ethnicity.
Since when does your culture not count just because you share it with a lot of people?

@The Gnasher,

So what is the difference between heritage and ethnicity?