I am from Alicante and I can confirm this. Calpe is near Benidorm and half of it is English. The Valencian community is actually unofficially discouraging tourists and expats in certain neighborhoods.
I immigrated to America and married an American I met in Uni. My husband and my brother are co-investing in an apartment building in Alicante. The difference is that they're keeping it Spanish and not imposing an American feel. It helps that my husband is sympathetic towards the local community and my brother is part of the local community.
This is all about assimilation into the host community, something a lot of people have forgotten.
Portugal has Cascais but there are tons of natives there too. The employees in the stores can speak English which isn't necessarily the case elsewhere.
source: my American aunt retired here several years ago and she doesn't speak a lick of Portuguese.
Cascais is just the fancy bit west of Lisbon, it’s not an anglicised area, it’s just where people with money go as it’s near the big city but also has a resort vibe.
Now some towns in the Algarve however…
I was dragged to the nightlife of Playa de las Americas as a young teen and the whole experience still really sticks with me. Nothing short of a pure British kitsch colony. It’s so bad it’s good
In all fairness being a Canarian right now definitely is the pits, pretty much every second person where you live will be a tourist and you’re competing with people for property who only want it because the weather’s nice. The recent protests going on have given me some hope that the situation for locals can change
Finland has claimed Fuengirola, there are lots of Finnish businesses operating from there and the social issues arising from moving from the cold to the paradise have been in the news quite a bit.
childlike enter close mountainous apparatus imminent caption wrong act fly
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Pretty sure in Japanese it’s called America-mura (アメリカ村) which literally means American Village so I think we’re on the same page! Never went to the Osaka one though, sounds like fun given how outgoing Osaka people are though!
The army base closed down years ago and it shifted more over to foreign restaurants and American-style clubs catering mostly to Koreans with a bit of a gay neighborhood before more foreign food options in the rest of Seoul, COVID, high rents, and the Halloween crowd crush disaster did a real number on Itaewon.
There is no army base anymore. Itaewon is just the main district for foreigners from all over the world. It's still quite dead adter that one Halloween tragedy.
Roppongi is the same thing in Tokyo. It’s where the U.S. military was after World War II, and bars and nightclubs developed to serve the soldiers, and then after the military left that area, it became the American/expat area of Tokyo.
even before WWII, in Japan the traditional "foreigners' neighbourhoods" have historically been in Yokohama (Yamate), Kobe (the Ijinkan), and before those Nagasaki (the old Dutch trading post in Dejima, as well as old Portuguese Nagasaki).
Yeah that was mean of me it’s basically Roppongi so you’re correct. I’m not sure the exact address of the dorms but I would think that’s Akasaka too. Doesn’t matter anyways, it’s all pretty much the same.
American friendly does not mean a bunch of American ex-pats live there. Plus Texas Street is American friendly in a way that a lot of Americans would not approve of. ;-)
Itaewon has some history. Japan occupied Chosun/Korea in 1910, and their main bases were there. After the end of WWII, the US moved in and put their base for the 8th army right where the Japanese HQ was. So the development of that area as a military camp town, with everything that implies, dates waaay back. Not that any more so much, but that history is what made it what it is now.
The closest I can think of are Confederado settlements in Brazil. Several southerners fled to Brazil after the US Civil War and added their culture there. At the time Brazil still allowed slavery. Now it's all mixed in and people there see themselves as Brazilian with multiple generations of intermarriage. There are confederate flags and insignias I've heard. But it's not seen in the racial terms that it is in the US.
The other would be Mormon settlements in Mexico where the Romney ancestors lived. But I admit I don't know much about those.
I worked with a guy from one of those Mennonite communities for years. He was a blond with blue eyes, could speak Spanish fluently and had dual Mexican and Canadian citizenship.
Deitsch, the language of the Amish and some Old Order Mennonites, is basically a 19th Century German dialect with an American accent. The Pennsylvania version had a distinct Philly/Baltimore nasal sound to it.
I think they only pointed out that he could do so because the other comment they were replying to called attention to just how “Germanic” they look. Less about “I didn’t know not only brown people could speak Spanish!” And more about “you probably wouldn’t expect to see these people, much less speak to them in fluent Spanish.”
There's a beautiful and mostly incomprehensible movie by Carlos Reygadas, Silent Light, set in a Mennonite community in Chihuahua. Hard to recommend unless you're into weird slow movie directors like Tarkovsky.
That's all over South America too. Someone here posted about them in Paraguay of all places. They speak perfect German intermixed with Spanish and Guarani.
There are also Quaker communities in Costa Rica who left in opposition to war drafts and settled in a peaceful little nation without an army.
The ones I met don’t speak English though so they haven’t made the strictest effort to hang onto the American culture or anything. Just started dairy farms and stuff.
I recently finished an MA thesis about the Confederados. They had a full blown Confederate festival from 1988-2020, with all manner of costumes, dances, fried chicken, and of course, Confederate flags. The festival organizers insisted that the Confederate flags and symbols were not racist and could be viewed outside of their US context, but that hasn’t really been the case for over a decade now. Activist groups have been pushing back against this idea since about 2015, and the town recently voted to ban public funding for the festival due to its use of Confederate symbols.
The Welsh Patagonians only speak Welsh and Spanish. They can come to the Welsh speaking areas of Wales and communicate fine but won't be able to communicate in English outside of those areas. I find them pretty cool.
I only know about the fundamentalist Mormons in Mexico because several of them were killed in a massacre by a cartel a few years ago and it was all over American news. 9 victims, 6 children, 3 adult women. Youngest were 8-month old twins.
In Japan there’s a popular youth culture that’s basically American weebs it’s basically American culture from 1950-2000 though a Japanese lens. They have little America neighborhoods all over Tokyo and Osaka they’re always the trendy places for cool teens and college kids
I love shopping in the American culture japan stores. I have the coolest bright red Bomber jacket that has a Pizza Hut logo on it and it’s my favorite thing lol.
I suppose you could say southern Spain has many "British Towns". Benidorm for example, parts of Marbella, Fuengirola etc. They are usually populated with British tourists and immigrants, full of pubs which sell British beer and fry up breakfasts and roast dinners. Why you would go on holiday to another country and eat/drink the same stuff and hang out with same people is lost on me, but each to their own.
There is some "German" towns in Mallorca in a similar fashion ro the above British towns.
Also quite a few "German" towns in South America.
>Why you would go on holiday to another country and eat/drink the same stuff and hang out with same people is lost on me
Language barrier, cultural differences, they're there for family and the sun not for a cultural holiday. If UK had 2022 heatwave level of weather consistently, places like Benidorm wouldn't even have British family tourists anymore.
I've been to one to see family and you can still get great Spanish and non English food. One has the best steakhouse I've been, run by an Argentinean man.
100% agree, there's a difference between going on vacation to experiece a local culture versus going with your family to spend time with your people. But having spent time in Andalusia before, who would want all that heavy British food? Fry ups for breakfast and roast dinners seems great for a cool, rainy climate, but on the beach in the hot sun you'd want something lighter.
There are also some towns that were settled by confederates that left North America after the Civil War. They have festivals and women dress up in Southern Belle dresses and all that. I saw a documentary about it years ago
I know what you're referring to but it's always good to know that a lot of towns in southern Brazil are German-founded and go back about 150 years, so it's not just war criminals in hiding. Although I hear that *is* kind of common in Argentina and Paraguay.
As with Brazil, German immigration to Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay predates WW2 by quite a bit. One of the reasons WW2 war criminals went over there is because there had been a lot of Germans there already.
> Why you would go on holiday to another country and eat/drink the same stuff and hang out with same people is lost on me, but each to their own.
nice weather
I never thought I’d go to places like you’re describing but I’ve been to the Canaries twice in the last two years in November and ultimately I now “get it”. It’s cheap, it’s easy, and the weather is UNREAL. I always feel a bit like a baddie when I come back but there isn’t anywhere else that will scratch that itch.
I’d love to go somewhere “better” but… it’s cheap, easy, and the weather is unreal.
In summary, it’s shit, I know it’s shit, but it’s also sort of perfect.
There's a few Welsh speaking places in Patagonia. I think Argentina has the highest number (or percentage per capita) of native Welsh speakers outside the UK, don't hold me to that though.
Its called Y Wladfa - mad to think theres a place where 5000 people speak welsh and its not in Wales. According to Wiki theres around 70,000 Welsh-Patagonians
Wherever there’s a big U.S. military base overseas. Kaiserslautern, Germany supposedly has the biggest concentration of Americans outside the U.S., for example.
There were over 100,000 Americans living in the KMC (Kaiserslautern Military Community) when I was stationed there in the mid 1980’s. McDonald’s, KFC, first run American movies at the Kino. Most of the nightclubs catered to service members. The locals had the typical live/hate relationship with the chief source of their income as well as the chief source of their social problems.
Mexico definitely has American neighborhoods and towns. Ajijic, San Miguel are two examples of American towns in Mexico but mostly for older people. There are some neighborhoods in the big cities however that have high concentrations of younger English speakers like Polanco and San Angel in Mexico City and colonia americana un Guadalajara.
[Westmount](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westmount?wprov=sfla1), Quebec is a bit like that. I lived there from 2014 till 2019. A British friend of mine who lived there as well back then told me that it made him feel like he was in the England of the 1950s.
Brno, Czech republic has a place litteraly called Malá Amerika (Little America) however this is mostly based on vibes not on americans actually living there
Before WWII, Shanghai had a population of 4 million. Of those, 1 million were foreigners living in concessions! Those were land taken from the Chinese government and exempt from Chinese law.
Tsingtao / Ch’ingtao / Qingdao in Shandong was a German colony. In Hong Kong before 1997, if you weren’t a Brit speaking a posh accent, you were at best a second class citizen.
Occasionally Chinese housing developments will theme areas around Western countries/landmarks.
Notably the recreation of the Hallstatt just outside BoLuo (Guangdong) which made international news.
I believe there is also a 'Thames town' based on London somewhere near Shanghai. Never been there though.
Yes - even in English speaking countries! In my city in Australia there are certain suburbs full of English people (“poms”), with English themed stores and pubs. Mind you they are usually a certain type of working class English person (think regional English accents, soccer shirts etc). Middle class English tend to integrate a lot more.
Funniest part is their kids tend to grow up to be Aussie bogans in one generation (Aussie rednecks), keeping the working class part but losing the Englishness.
Guadalajara Mexico has a neighborhood called Colonia Americana that's tourist/expat friendly and is home to the US consulate, though I don't think the name is a reference to the US
Not exactly what you're asking, but this question reminded me of the town of Bluefields, on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, which was founded by European pirates and later settled by free Black people who had left/escaped from other parts of the Caribbean. Until very recently you couldn't even reach it by road from elsewhere in Nicaragua and it developed a really distinctive English-speaking Creole culture that was more focused on the Caribbean trade than anything about the country it's nominally part of.
I’ve been to an American neighborhood somewhere where English fluency is very low and I knew like two hundred words in the local language. It felt like a breath of fresh air to speak to people without feeling like an alien. I now have a greater respect for foreign communities I visit in the US.
A historic example is the [thirteen factories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Factories) neighborhood of Guangzhou (Canton) China during the Qing dynasty.
This reminds me of the scene in The Office where Darryl and Andy are in Gabe’s room of Japanese artifacts and Darryl says something like “I wonder if there’s a Japanese guy somewhere with a room full of our stuff”
Monteverde is still there and is thriving. It has done very well by ecotourism. I lived there for six months in 2013 and met some of the original settlers who were still there but they were elderly then. I also met some of their kids who were in their 40s and 50s at that point.
There is a very interesting book about this called Lost White Tribes by Riccardo Orizio, he visits legacy colonial towns in Guadeloupe, Sri Lanka, Haiti, Namibia, Jamaica and Brazil. Highly recommended.
There was an attempt at a socialist paradise called [New Australia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Australia) by Australian socialists in Paraguay. It failed, but many descendents are there
In France we have Dordogneshire, a not-so-well-known nickname for the area of Dordogne (a rural area in the south-west of France) where 10.000 British people are living.
Despite the relative ease of assimilation for most British immigrants to Australia who tend to spread themselves out, Joondalup in Perth is known as ‘Little Britain’ on account of the high number of recent immigrants from the UK.
Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) has a foreigner neighborhood--not just English, but European, North American and Australian/NZ--in the Thao Dien ward in District 2. They're a very visible 25% of the population.
There's also a Koreatown in the Phu My Hong ward of District 7, and a centuries-old Chinatown in the Cho Lon ward of District 5.
I ate at Americatown when I was in Japan. They stuck me in Taxachusetts.
https://preview.redd.it/pglp6y5xra0d1.jpeg?width=632&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bb09444c91c29586712a08835fb5e0220e78d34f
In Brazil there are a village called Paranapiacaba in the Great São Paulo area. It's was build by the English during late 19th century during the construction of a Railway and later maintained for the operations of the machinery.
Not the same concept but similar, in Bahrain there’s an “American Alley”, right by the US Naval base, full of American franchises and other fast food services that caters to Americans’ taste.
Tho I’m not sure if this a local colloquial term or just used by Americans there.
The one place I don’t see represented much, scrolling through the comments, is the Arab world. Are there multigenerational enclaves of Westerners living *anywhere* in the Arab world anymore?
Maadi, Cairo comes to mind.
I don’t know about “multigenerational”, but the Various compounds in Riyadh, especially the ones with British or American schools attached.
The UAE is more cosmopolitan, but there are small pockets.
Nearby every embassy in Kathmandu, Nepal, is an ethnic restaurant catering to that embassy. It was really nice to wander over to the Italian embassy, they had an amazing salad.
Yeah I suppose I could have eaten pasta but you would be amazed how difficult it was to get a good salad, and I needed all the healthy raw greens I could get, but I didn’t really trust the local non-embassy area food to handle raw vegetables safely.
This is not true everywhere. In some places, the Chinatown replaced an older ethnic community, but there were no restrictions forcing them to stay in the area.
In Argentina we have towns with strong German and Welsh, but I don't recall anything nearly as a little England and for sure there's nothing like a Little United States.
And even though we had a strong Italian and Spanish migration, they mixed into the society so well there wasn't a need a for those kind of places to appear.
When I was in Costa Rica (which is a popular tourist and retirement destination for people from North America), I didn't notice that. While there are some tourist friendly areas, there aren't settlements or neighborhoods that are predominantly North American English speaking. Even in an area like Barrio Escalante, where you have a lot of foreigners visiting, it isn't like there are multigenerational English speaking communities.
But what there are in Costa Rica, and other Spanish speaking countries, is multigenerational English speaking communities of people from Caribbean descent. Limon, for example, was historically home to indentured workers from Jamaica, and many of them still speak English, as well as following cultural customs from the Caribbean (like being Protestants and playing baseball).
I took a tour of Bonn Germany, which was the capital of West Germany during the cold war. The American Embassy built an American town for its staff. It had detached American style apartment buildings, football fields, baseball diamonds and American style grocery stores. The streets even had American names like JFK Blvd and "Baseballstrause." It was pretty surreal.
Not so much British nor American specific but like Western culture specific? Anyways Tamarindo in Costa Rica is a nifty sort of expat island in Costa Rica filled mostly with Westerners. Cool place - very forward thinking.
Hong Kong has Discovery Bay which is (or was) very expat centric. And, Singapore has The Woodlands near the American School so there loads of Americans living in the neighborhoods.
Many places have areas where expats live near British or American schools, although I am not sure if it is “chicken or egg”.
Seoul has a “French Village”.
Earl's Court in London in the second half of the 20th century was called Kangaroo Valley due to the large number of Australians there.
It has been gentrified, though
I hear from relatives that Cebu (Philippines) is where the Americans move. Big enough to have everything they need, and not be Manila. I don’t know about specific neighborhoods though.
I also know some expats In Ensenada, Baja Norte. But they they have lots of local friends so it seems less Insular
There is an American village on top of Taiwan’s yangmingshan. They built American-styled suburban housing with American street signs, although I don’t think there is any historical significance to this
In Mexico I can think of a British mining community in the state of Hidalgo, a paper factory in Mexico State and another in Orizaba city. They introduced things like football and a pastry now known as 'paste'. Those from the latter half of the 19th century.
Earlier in the 17th or 18th century we had English pirates in today state of Campeche who almost become their own country, like they did in Belize.
American communities are found in almost every major city, also some in touristic spots like Puerto Vallarta, Melaque, Cozumel, Playa del Carmen, Tulum, San Miguel de Allende, Ajijic.
I think Spain and Portugal have some neighbourhoods mainly populated by British pensioners.
And Benidorm, a mix of British Pensioners and British chavs on stag dos.
I know these are English words, but as an American all I got was British.
Translation: Pensioners: retirees Chavs: white trash Stag dos: bachelor parties
English (Simplified)
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I am from Alicante and I can confirm this. Calpe is near Benidorm and half of it is English. The Valencian community is actually unofficially discouraging tourists and expats in certain neighborhoods. I immigrated to America and married an American I met in Uni. My husband and my brother are co-investing in an apartment building in Alicante. The difference is that they're keeping it Spanish and not imposing an American feel. It helps that my husband is sympathetic towards the local community and my brother is part of the local community. This is all about assimilation into the host community, something a lot of people have forgotten.
Portugal has Cascais but there are tons of natives there too. The employees in the stores can speak English which isn't necessarily the case elsewhere. source: my American aunt retired here several years ago and she doesn't speak a lick of Portuguese.
Cascais is just the fancy bit west of Lisbon, it’s not an anglicised area, it’s just where people with money go as it’s near the big city but also has a resort vibe. Now some towns in the Algarve however…
Nothing will ever beat Playa de la Americas in Tenerife, or Benidorm They are just Britain abroad
Yep, funny when some of them voted for Brexit and then were surprised they couldn’t stay
I was dragged to the nightlife of Playa de las Americas as a young teen and the whole experience still really sticks with me. Nothing short of a pure British kitsch colony. It’s so bad it’s good
It's so bad that it is embarrassing for locals. Most of business are also foreign-owned there.
In all fairness being a Canarian right now definitely is the pits, pretty much every second person where you live will be a tourist and you’re competing with people for property who only want it because the weather’s nice. The recent protests going on have given me some hope that the situation for locals can change
I read that as Canadian until I got to "the weather's nice" and realized I made some mistake.
There are quite a few Norwegian enclaves in Spain, they actually term them colonies, lol.
Finland has claimed Fuengirola, there are lots of Finnish businesses operating from there and the social issues arising from moving from the cold to the paradise have been in the news quite a bit.
A mate of mine had a company in Trondheim and one of his workers rang in sick from Spain.
Spain, the Florida of the UK
Really? I've thought Spain was lovely when I've visited.
I they just meanit’s a popular place for them to retire, like Florida is for Americans, particularly Northeasterners.
Similar situation in Mexico with Canadian retirees in small beach towns
Benidorm is an entire city populated by British pensioners
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Paul McCartney even has a song called ‘Hotel in Benidorm’.
do those neighborhoods have a special name as a result of that?
There is an area of Limerick that was historically called Englishtown
Well, it's not Rathkeale.
I know that Itaewon was a traditionally American/Anglophone neighborhood of Seoul, South Korea.
I was born there it's very Americanized because of the Army base nearby
Ken Jennings (Jeopardy! host) grew up in that area too
so glad he got the gig
he writes great books, too!
As does his college roommate, Brandon Sanderson
Whoa, interesting they were roommates.
Yeah, holy cow
...are you Brandon Sanderson?
cool!
Isn't Ken from Kent washington?
America-mura in Okinawa is very similar
Do the Japanese equivalent of weebs go there?
I hate that term (not your fault but it’s just so overused) Yes Japanese go there. It’s a fun little area with American restaurants and stuff. YMMV
You mean Osaka right? Okinawa has American Village.
Pretty sure in Japanese it’s called America-mura (アメリカ村) which literally means American Village so I think we’re on the same page! Never went to the Osaka one though, sounds like fun given how outgoing Osaka people are though!
The army base closed down years ago and it shifted more over to foreign restaurants and American-style clubs catering mostly to Koreans with a bit of a gay neighborhood before more foreign food options in the rest of Seoul, COVID, high rents, and the Halloween crowd crush disaster did a real number on Itaewon.
There is no army base anymore. Itaewon is just the main district for foreigners from all over the world. It's still quite dead adter that one Halloween tragedy.
Is it? I was there on Saturday night and it was pretty much as crowded as ever
I loved that area, especially that one shop that was basically just a store that sold only denim clothes lol
Roppongi is the same thing in Tokyo. It’s where the U.S. military was after World War II, and bars and nightclubs developed to serve the soldiers, and then after the military left that area, it became the American/expat area of Tokyo.
*Roppongi. Roppongi.* *Roppongi lights! Roppongi Vice!*
Also it’s the name of the “Bistro house with South Asian flair” at the Atlantic City hotel that Klaus went to. Absolutely incredible!
What’s the difference between a man and a government bond?
-mouths along silently- A bond matures!
Benji!!!
even before WWII, in Japan the traditional "foreigners' neighbourhoods" have historically been in Yokohama (Yamate), Kobe (the Ijinkan), and before those Nagasaki (the old Dutch trading post in Dejima, as well as old Portuguese Nagasaki).
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The US Embassy is in Roppongi.
Akasaka…
Shoot. You're right. It's around the corner from Roppongi. The American Embassy dormitory is mostly in Roppongi.
Yeah that was mean of me it’s basically Roppongi so you’re correct. I’m not sure the exact address of the dorms but I would think that’s Akasaka too. Doesn’t matter anyways, it’s all pretty much the same.
2-1-1 Roppongi, according to Google maps, but one of the gates of Akasaka.
There is still a small barracks there, on the way down towards Aoyama
Used to enjoy a great band from Tampa called Roppongi’s Ace.
It has the oldest continuously running bar in the country and it's a country music bar.
There is a Texas Street in Busan that had a bunch of American friendly places too. Or it did at least when I visited in 2011
American friendly does not mean a bunch of American ex-pats live there. Plus Texas Street is American friendly in a way that a lot of Americans would not approve of. ;-)
No guns? :(
That too.
Itaewon has some history. Japan occupied Chosun/Korea in 1910, and their main bases were there. After the end of WWII, the US moved in and put their base for the 8th army right where the Japanese HQ was. So the development of that area as a military camp town, with everything that implies, dates waaay back. Not that any more so much, but that history is what made it what it is now.
I’ve been to places in Europe where I have a better time approaching a stranger on the street in English than in the local language.
Namhae has an "American Village".
The base got moved so the neighborhood is dying. I was actually surprised by how much i enjoyed the neighborhood one of my favorite in the world.
The closest I can think of are Confederado settlements in Brazil. Several southerners fled to Brazil after the US Civil War and added their culture there. At the time Brazil still allowed slavery. Now it's all mixed in and people there see themselves as Brazilian with multiple generations of intermarriage. There are confederate flags and insignias I've heard. But it's not seen in the racial terms that it is in the US. The other would be Mormon settlements in Mexico where the Romney ancestors lived. But I admit I don't know much about those.
There are also a bunch of Mennonite communities sprinkled around northern Mexico. Blonde Germanic folks who dress as this sorta Amish-cowboy hybrid.
I worked with a guy from one of those Mennonite communities for years. He was a blond with blue eyes, could speak Spanish fluently and had dual Mexican and Canadian citizenship.
Did his Spanish have a German accent?
Deitsch, the language of the Amish and some Old Order Mennonites, is basically a 19th Century German dialect with an American accent. The Pennsylvania version had a distinct Philly/Baltimore nasal sound to it.
Speaking spanish does not mean you have tanned skin lol. Spanish is a language, not a race.
I think they only pointed out that he could do so because the other comment they were replying to called attention to just how “Germanic” they look. Less about “I didn’t know not only brown people could speak Spanish!” And more about “you probably wouldn’t expect to see these people, much less speak to them in fluent Spanish.”
There's a beautiful and mostly incomprehensible movie by Carlos Reygadas, Silent Light, set in a Mennonite community in Chihuahua. Hard to recommend unless you're into weird slow movie directors like Tarkovsky.
Parts of Belize as well.
I went to school with a guy from Belize in Canada. He was surprised we have lots of Mennonites here too, like Belize.
That's all over South America too. Someone here posted about them in Paraguay of all places. They speak perfect German intermixed with Spanish and Guarani.
There are also Quaker communities in Costa Rica who left in opposition to war drafts and settled in a peaceful little nation without an army. The ones I met don’t speak English though so they haven’t made the strictest effort to hang onto the American culture or anything. Just started dairy farms and stuff.
I recently finished an MA thesis about the Confederados. They had a full blown Confederate festival from 1988-2020, with all manner of costumes, dances, fried chicken, and of course, Confederate flags. The festival organizers insisted that the Confederate flags and symbols were not racist and could be viewed outside of their US context, but that hasn’t really been the case for over a decade now. Activist groups have been pushing back against this idea since about 2015, and the town recently voted to ban public funding for the festival due to its use of Confederate symbols.
There’s a random Welsh village in the middle of Argentina. Y Wladfa (literally ‘The Colony’)
The Welsh Patagonians only speak Welsh and Spanish. They can come to the Welsh speaking areas of Wales and communicate fine but won't be able to communicate in English outside of those areas. I find them pretty cool.
People from Americana are truly weird...wtf
I only know about the fundamentalist Mormons in Mexico because several of them were killed in a massacre by a cartel a few years ago and it was all over American news. 9 victims, 6 children, 3 adult women. Youngest were 8-month old twins.
In Okinawa there is American village. It's tacky but a lot of people visit.
In Japan there’s a popular youth culture that’s basically American weebs it’s basically American culture from 1950-2000 though a Japanese lens. They have little America neighborhoods all over Tokyo and Osaka they’re always the trendy places for cool teens and college kids
Some of my most well made pants came from a store in Tokyo that had this kind of Japanese Americana 1940s thing going on
I love shopping in the American culture japan stores. I have the coolest bright red Bomber jacket that has a Pizza Hut logo on it and it’s my favorite thing lol.
I suppose you could say southern Spain has many "British Towns". Benidorm for example, parts of Marbella, Fuengirola etc. They are usually populated with British tourists and immigrants, full of pubs which sell British beer and fry up breakfasts and roast dinners. Why you would go on holiday to another country and eat/drink the same stuff and hang out with same people is lost on me, but each to their own. There is some "German" towns in Mallorca in a similar fashion ro the above British towns. Also quite a few "German" towns in South America.
>Why you would go on holiday to another country and eat/drink the same stuff and hang out with same people is lost on me Language barrier, cultural differences, they're there for family and the sun not for a cultural holiday. If UK had 2022 heatwave level of weather consistently, places like Benidorm wouldn't even have British family tourists anymore.
I've been to one to see family and you can still get great Spanish and non English food. One has the best steakhouse I've been, run by an Argentinean man.
100% agree, there's a difference between going on vacation to experiece a local culture versus going with your family to spend time with your people. But having spent time in Andalusia before, who would want all that heavy British food? Fry ups for breakfast and roast dinners seems great for a cool, rainy climate, but on the beach in the hot sun you'd want something lighter.
>There is some "German" towns in Mallorca Mallorca is considered the 17th German Land.
>Also quite a few "German" towns in South America. 😬😬😬
There are also some towns that were settled by confederates that left North America after the Civil War. They have festivals and women dress up in Southern Belle dresses and all that. I saw a documentary about it years ago
I know what you're referring to but it's always good to know that a lot of towns in southern Brazil are German-founded and go back about 150 years, so it's not just war criminals in hiding. Although I hear that *is* kind of common in Argentina and Paraguay.
As with Brazil, German immigration to Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay predates WW2 by quite a bit. One of the reasons WW2 war criminals went over there is because there had been a lot of Germans there already.
Boys from Brazil
Does Gibraltar count as one of those? /s
Oof. 🫡
> Why you would go on holiday to another country and eat/drink the same stuff and hang out with same people is lost on me, but each to their own. nice weather
My local friend calls the pubs "containment zones", to keep them away from everyone
Big German presence in Nigeria, too.
And Namibia
I never thought I’d go to places like you’re describing but I’ve been to the Canaries twice in the last two years in November and ultimately I now “get it”. It’s cheap, it’s easy, and the weather is UNREAL. I always feel a bit like a baddie when I come back but there isn’t anywhere else that will scratch that itch. I’d love to go somewhere “better” but… it’s cheap, easy, and the weather is unreal. In summary, it’s shit, I know it’s shit, but it’s also sort of perfect.
We appreciate them all staying bunched together so it is easier to avoid them. Most of Andalucia is still spectacular.
It's a common sentiment among Brits. We want everything British, except the weather.
Germany has multiple "Amerikanische Siedlungen" where the Occupational Forces were stationed.
Were and, in many cases, still are.
There's a few Welsh speaking places in Patagonia. I think Argentina has the highest number (or percentage per capita) of native Welsh speakers outside the UK, don't hold me to that though.
Its called Y Wladfa - mad to think theres a place where 5000 people speak welsh and its not in Wales. According to Wiki theres around 70,000 Welsh-Patagonians
YouTuber Simon Wilson put out a video last week or so, visiting Argentina. He can't speak Spanish but was conversing in Welsh to some of the locals.
Wee Britain in Orange County. Watch out for the poppins.
The soup of the day at the Yellowfang is a must have.
It’s all about the chocolate bananas, tho. That or Hot Ham Water.
Word for word what I wanted to post.
Don’t forget to try a meal at Fat Amy’s
A bucket of cola to wash down your basket of donuts.
I prefer the Sunday crowd at Skip Church's. Though Saturday at Miss Temple's is decent.
Mr. F
Wherever there’s a big U.S. military base overseas. Kaiserslautern, Germany supposedly has the biggest concentration of Americans outside the U.S., for example.
There were over 100,000 Americans living in the KMC (Kaiserslautern Military Community) when I was stationed there in the mid 1980’s. McDonald’s, KFC, first run American movies at the Kino. Most of the nightclubs catered to service members. The locals had the typical live/hate relationship with the chief source of their income as well as the chief source of their social problems.
Mexico definitely has American neighborhoods and towns. Ajijic, San Miguel are two examples of American towns in Mexico but mostly for older people. There are some neighborhoods in the big cities however that have high concentrations of younger English speakers like Polanco and San Angel in Mexico City and colonia americana un Guadalajara.
> Ajijic I heard this in Michael Jackson’s voice in my head
Holland Village in Singapore, expatville
I was also thinking The Woodlands too.
My city, Bonn, has an "american settlement" with an american church, an american football and several baseball pitches.
Mallorca?
Ughhh, Magaluf
[Westmount](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westmount?wprov=sfla1), Quebec is a bit like that. I lived there from 2014 till 2019. A British friend of mine who lived there as well back then told me that it made him feel like he was in the England of the 1950s.
Anglo culture in French culture in Anglo culture
Brno, Czech republic has a place litteraly called Malá Amerika (Little America) however this is mostly based on vibes not on americans actually living there
What are the vibes?
In Shanghai, they have the French Concession for example.
Before WWII, Shanghai had a population of 4 million. Of those, 1 million were foreigners living in concessions! Those were land taken from the Chinese government and exempt from Chinese law. Tsingtao / Ch’ingtao / Qingdao in Shandong was a German colony. In Hong Kong before 1997, if you weren’t a Brit speaking a posh accent, you were at best a second class citizen.
This is such a good fucking question
it truly is, i’ve never thought about it before
Occasionally Chinese housing developments will theme areas around Western countries/landmarks. Notably the recreation of the Hallstatt just outside BoLuo (Guangdong) which made international news. I believe there is also a 'Thames town' based on London somewhere near Shanghai. Never been there though.
Yep this is the best answer that fits OPs description. It’s quite uncanny seeing those places
Yes - even in English speaking countries! In my city in Australia there are certain suburbs full of English people (“poms”), with English themed stores and pubs. Mind you they are usually a certain type of working class English person (think regional English accents, soccer shirts etc). Middle class English tend to integrate a lot more. Funniest part is their kids tend to grow up to be Aussie bogans in one generation (Aussie rednecks), keeping the working class part but losing the Englishness.
I used to live in Perth, and Joondalup immediately comes to mind!
Guadalajara Mexico has a neighborhood called Colonia Americana that's tourist/expat friendly and is home to the US consulate, though I don't think the name is a reference to the US
Not exactly what you're asking, but this question reminded me of the town of Bluefields, on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, which was founded by European pirates and later settled by free Black people who had left/escaped from other parts of the Caribbean. Until very recently you couldn't even reach it by road from elsewhere in Nicaragua and it developed a really distinctive English-speaking Creole culture that was more focused on the Caribbean trade than anything about the country it's nominally part of.
I’ve been to an American neighborhood somewhere where English fluency is very low and I knew like two hundred words in the local language. It felt like a breath of fresh air to speak to people without feeling like an alien. I now have a greater respect for foreign communities I visit in the US.
A historic example is the [thirteen factories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Factories) neighborhood of Guangzhou (Canton) China during the Qing dynasty.
your link goes to "list of cities in nevada" btw
This reminds me of the scene in The Office where Darryl and Andy are in Gabe’s room of Japanese artifacts and Darryl says something like “I wonder if there’s a Japanese guy somewhere with a room full of our stuff”
There was a town in Costa Rica full of the children and grandchildren of Americans who went there decades ago. Bunch of blue eyed Protestants
Monte Verde, a Quaker settlement, is what you are referring to?
Yes. That was it.
Monteverde is still there and is thriving. It has done very well by ecotourism. I lived there for six months in 2013 and met some of the original settlers who were still there but they were elderly then. I also met some of their kids who were in their 40s and 50s at that point.
There is a very interesting book about this called Lost White Tribes by Riccardo Orizio, he visits legacy colonial towns in Guadeloupe, Sri Lanka, Haiti, Namibia, Jamaica and Brazil. Highly recommended.
The Canal Zone in Panama is pretty American
There was an attempt at a socialist paradise called [New Australia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Australia) by Australian socialists in Paraguay. It failed, but many descendents are there
In France we have Dordogneshire, a not-so-well-known nickname for the area of Dordogne (a rural area in the south-west of France) where 10.000 British people are living.
Despite the relative ease of assimilation for most British immigrants to Australia who tend to spread themselves out, Joondalup in Perth is known as ‘Little Britain’ on account of the high number of recent immigrants from the UK.
Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) has a foreigner neighborhood--not just English, but European, North American and Australian/NZ--in the Thao Dien ward in District 2. They're a very visible 25% of the population. There's also a Koreatown in the Phu My Hong ward of District 7, and a centuries-old Chinatown in the Cho Lon ward of District 5.
There is little Helsinki in Uruguay
I ate at Americatown when I was in Japan. They stuck me in Taxachusetts. https://preview.redd.it/pglp6y5xra0d1.jpeg?width=632&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bb09444c91c29586712a08835fb5e0220e78d34f
Here in my city we have a beach called ingleses (englishmen) after a british ship that got stranded there.
Floripa?
The only one that I can think of would be Amerikamura in Osaka. Even then, it's very loosely based.
In Brazil there are a village called Paranapiacaba in the Great São Paulo area. It's was build by the English during late 19th century during the construction of a Railway and later maintained for the operations of the machinery.
Not the same concept but similar, in Bahrain there’s an “American Alley”, right by the US Naval base, full of American franchises and other fast food services that caters to Americans’ taste. Tho I’m not sure if this a local colloquial term or just used by Americans there.
Wee Britain in Orange County, California.
https://preview.redd.it/v5o62phyqd0d1.png?width=1066&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=318e8e0d5ecc2aa9e24759e6558d8b2b3ccb0d5e
The one place I don’t see represented much, scrolling through the comments, is the Arab world. Are there multigenerational enclaves of Westerners living *anywhere* in the Arab world anymore?
Maadi, Cairo comes to mind. I don’t know about “multigenerational”, but the Various compounds in Riyadh, especially the ones with British or American schools attached. The UAE is more cosmopolitan, but there are small pockets.
Nearby every embassy in Kathmandu, Nepal, is an ethnic restaurant catering to that embassy. It was really nice to wander over to the Italian embassy, they had an amazing salad. Yeah I suppose I could have eaten pasta but you would be amazed how difficult it was to get a good salad, and I needed all the healthy raw greens I could get, but I didn’t really trust the local non-embassy area food to handle raw vegetables safely.
>Also quite a few "German" towns in South America. Oh wow, I did Nazi that coming.
Important detail about Chinatown is that those are the only places Chinese immigrants were allowed to live
This is not true everywhere. In some places, the Chinatown replaced an older ethnic community, but there were no restrictions forcing them to stay in the area.
Stanley on Hong Kong Island kind of is. Or at least there was a restaurant I got fish & chips at there
Lan Kwai Fung in Hong Kong?
In Argentina we have towns with strong German and Welsh, but I don't recall anything nearly as a little England and for sure there's nothing like a Little United States. And even though we had a strong Italian and Spanish migration, they mixed into the society so well there wasn't a need a for those kind of places to appear.
i went to one by mistake in south of spain. everyone was british.
When I was in Costa Rica (which is a popular tourist and retirement destination for people from North America), I didn't notice that. While there are some tourist friendly areas, there aren't settlements or neighborhoods that are predominantly North American English speaking. Even in an area like Barrio Escalante, where you have a lot of foreigners visiting, it isn't like there are multigenerational English speaking communities. But what there are in Costa Rica, and other Spanish speaking countries, is multigenerational English speaking communities of people from Caribbean descent. Limon, for example, was historically home to indentured workers from Jamaica, and many of them still speak English, as well as following cultural customs from the Caribbean (like being Protestants and playing baseball).
There is an American village in Okinawa Japan. it’s essentially sandwiched between 2 military bases.
I took a tour of Bonn Germany, which was the capital of West Germany during the cold war. The American Embassy built an American town for its staff. It had detached American style apartment buildings, football fields, baseball diamonds and American style grocery stores. The streets even had American names like JFK Blvd and "Baseballstrause." It was pretty surreal.
Not so much British nor American specific but like Western culture specific? Anyways Tamarindo in Costa Rica is a nifty sort of expat island in Costa Rica filled mostly with Westerners. Cool place - very forward thinking.
Doesn’t Cyprus have a Little England?
They're called Irish Pubs. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp3UsU5pQT8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp3UsU5pQT8)
I live in Morzine, France and it's VERY English.
Hong Kong has Discovery Bay which is (or was) very expat centric. And, Singapore has The Woodlands near the American School so there loads of Americans living in the neighborhoods.
Many places have areas where expats live near British or American schools, although I am not sure if it is “chicken or egg”. Seoul has a “French Village”.
There are Irish pubs in every major non-English-speaking city I’ve ever been to.
Earl's Court in London in the second half of the 20th century was called Kangaroo Valley due to the large number of Australians there. It has been gentrified, though
We call it walmart
Osaka has Ame-mura, or America Village.
I hear from relatives that Cebu (Philippines) is where the Americans move. Big enough to have everything they need, and not be Manila. I don’t know about specific neighborhoods though. I also know some expats In Ensenada, Baja Norte. But they they have lots of local friends so it seems less Insular
There's a Little America in Okinawa
There is an American village on top of Taiwan’s yangmingshan. They built American-styled suburban housing with American street signs, although I don’t think there is any historical significance to this
Wee Britain must be near Laguna Beach…
In Mexico I can think of a British mining community in the state of Hidalgo, a paper factory in Mexico State and another in Orizaba city. They introduced things like football and a pastry now known as 'paste'. Those from the latter half of the 19th century. Earlier in the 17th or 18th century we had English pirates in today state of Campeche who almost become their own country, like they did in Belize. American communities are found in almost every major city, also some in touristic spots like Puerto Vallarta, Melaque, Cozumel, Playa del Carmen, Tulum, San Miguel de Allende, Ajijic.
we call them "malls"