It's all about making connections. People just do it in different ways in different places. Since you read this rather than hear it, you don't know that five years in the Midwest have modified my New Zealand accent only enough to be understood by the locals. There's enough of that vowels-swallowing-the-consonants New Zealand accent to let people know I'm "not from round here." (No, and neither were your ancestors, originally ...).
The accent precipitates regular conversations along one of the following lines
them: Where are you from?
me: New Zealand [if I'm out of Minneapolis, it gets funky ... I instinctively say "Minneapolis," and they look confused like you would if someone with what you think is a "British" accent says they are from Minneapolis.]
them, version 1: Oh, New Zealand, I hear it's beautiful there.
them, version 2: Oh, New Zealand, my girlfriend's sister's cousin was in Australia two years ago on Study Abroad and went to New Zealand.
me, version 1: Yes, I suppose so. [Isn't Minneapolis beautiful in March?]
me, version 2: [thinking WTF!!??] That's cool, where did they go?
them, version 2: Umm, I don't know. South Island. [sound of cash registers operating]
me: version 1 and 2: Thanks for the [groceries/coffee/gas/stamps]
I hoped that after five years of living here I'd be able to handle these conversations with more articulate responses than I do. When people say, "I'm thinking of going to New Zealand," that's easy -- I say that now is the time to go because the exchange rates has never been better (this worked about 2-4 years ago), or now I say "you should go before the U.S. dollar crashes."
But the "it's beautiful" and the "someone I know was once there" conversations exemplify both differences and similarities in the way we converse. It's not like I wasn't warned. Along with the top four things you need to know about America, we were also informed of how American casual conversation is often about searching for connections, even if they are really tenuous. By way of example, the American-born advisor related the story of going to dinner with someone who responded
"Oh, New Zealand, we were going to go there on vacation once, but we went to Rio instead." Great. Hope you liked Rio.
One of the first conversations I had with a fellow graduate student went like this
them: Did you say you were from New Zealand?
me: Yes
them: I have a friend who was with the Peace Corps in Tonga, and she was going to go to New Zealand for New Years, but she couldn't get a ticket
me: Oh, that's no good. [Elevator door mercifully opens for someone else's floor] See you in class next week! [thinking "they weren't joking about the tenuous connections conversation ..."]
How would you respond?! Consider that Tonga is about as far from New Zealand as Yellowstone is from Minneapolis, and here's your analogous conversation
them: Did you say you were from Minneapolis?
you: Yep.
them: I have a friend who worked for a summer at Yellowstone, and she was going to drive to Minneapolis for the Aquatennial, but her car broke down ...
you: ....
See what I mean!
So this discussion doesn't rely on New Zealand as the great, remote place people don't know about it. Minnesota will do just as well. In fact, out on the east coast I've had non-trivial numbers of people say things along the lines of "oh, Minnesota, I was in Milwaukee a few years ago" because that's the closest they can come to some connection with where you're from (whatever "from" means).
In New Zealand there is a distinct, but related, version of the drive to make a connection with newly met people. People from the Upper Midwest will be familiar with the genre. Since there are 4 million people in a small area, and [until recently] a relatively low rate of in-migration when people learn they hail from the same place the search for people known in common begins. (I'm told that in Iceland people discuss who they are commonly related to. It takes an island of 270,000 people for that to be worthwhile)
The search for connections is the same, but it doesn't work out quite as comically when it begins with the premise that you both grew up in the same place, and might plausibly have known people through school, work, sport or whatever social life you had.
But when you start from the position that you've never been somewhere and you don't know much about it, it's just silly. It's well meant and friendly, but it's still silly. (Not stupid, not idiotic. Silly. Comical. Amusing.) It would be better for the sake of the conversation to admit [implicitly] you don't know much and ask an open-ended question if you really are curious.
In fact that perennial proud, yet insecure, question of outsiders you hear in Minnesota and New Zealand, "Do you like it here?" is a far better conversation mover. (I do)
The difference, I think, is that the same motivation plays out quite differently once you get away from small populations and small areas. We're not all connected. America is a big country. Some well-traveled famous-on-the-internet people have scarcely visited the Midwest. Michael Froomkin managed to live in Illinois, and never visit Ohio. It's a big world out there, and since Johnny Cash died no one has been everywhere. (Here's a NZ adaptation of the song. I haven't been to half those places ...)
Posted by robe0419 at March 14, 2005 11:51 AM