Responding to another thread got me thinking about my grandfather on my moms side. ( and about how out of shape i am! 27" waist indeed!) I am second gen american on my mothers side, her father being born and raised in scotland. And oddly on my fathers side, which is Danish (Nielsen) is found only about 4 or 5 generations ago, a Nielsen who married a MacKenzie. (weird huh?) But i digress. What i was reminded of, and started thinking was an odd mentality of my Grandpa's. He spoke frequently, and told stories about his childhood growing up and his time in the Scottish Military during WW2, but he never spoke in a specific way, or even a general one, about Scotland itself. None of it's history, it's myths, it's stories. The man knew Gaelic but hardly ever spoke it. He never taught it to my mom, and even refused to teach it to me when i asked him once. In fact he worked hard to even erase all traces of his accent. And was successful, unless he got really angry. Then his accent returned full force. In fact the man would sometimes yell at the TV and would be unintelligible which entertained my brother and me to no end when we were wee bairn's. I once asked him, shortly before he passed away, why he never spoke of Scotland or were he grew up, and his answer was " because i'm an American". " I came here to be an American, and American is what I will be! I didnt make sacrifices to come to america and be successful and raise your mother to be successful to be scottish in america." " This country has given me great opportunities and i owe it my full measure of loyalty". Now keep in mind i paraphrased that..the man didnt actually speak like that, but that was the gist of it. I always got the impression that he wasnt unhappy, or ashamed of Scotland, in fact i think he loved it very much, but that he chose to come to america, and so chose to BECOME American. I've noticed that immigrants frequently fall into one of 2 categories. Either they turn their homes and their lives into shrines to their birth country, even refusing to learn english...or they seem to almost reject their birth countries.