In latin, the U and the V were the same letter, so each language adapted it their own way. In Spanish, it's "V doble", English went for the "doble U".
Also I believe the old accent challenge is still alive? I think? It's just a matter of cp'ing the questions anyway.
Oh and I just noticed this:
Speaking of Germans, I was talking to a girl from Germany just yesterday, & I told her I was half German. My father's ancestors were from Germany. She said that because I lived in America, that I was 100% American. Now correct if I'm wrong, but do people really view things like that, ignoring ethnicities? America doesn't even have their own outside of Native Americans, am I not correct?
The concept of ethnicity is SO VERY DIFFERENT in Europe and the US. In Europe, you are from the country where you were born, or where you have spent so many years of your life. If you were born in Italy and lived in France for 20 years, you are rightfully a French-Italian. Maybe if your parents were immigrants, you also claim your parental heritage is from X country. But we are very keen in integration, and there are so many plans to get second-generation African immigrants to say they are Spanish, or French, and feel like so, instead of saying they are "Moroccan" or "Algerian" like their parents.
For us, a person whose parents are American, who was born in America and who has never seen anything other than the US is American, period. Saying that you are "German" because your grandgrandgrandparents were German feels like cheating to us, because you (as a generic) probably know like zero about Germany, at least about modern-day Germany. And maybe if you act stereotypically German and live in a full-German neighborhood and speak German we could accept you are from a German family who has integrated very poorly in the US, but that's it. Also take into account that we don't tend to keep track of our heritage either (also because there have been so many countries disappearing or being born in the last Century that maybe those countries don't even exist anymore).
That has nothing to do with being conservative or progressive, in fact we tend to say how our left-wing parties, who tend to get loads of seats in our elections, would be banned from the US for being too communist.