To be denied their Dutchness (Auster)

From Paul Auster's memoir, The Invention of Solitude:

“Nearly everyone speaks excellent English in Amsterdam. This ease of communication, however, was upsetting to him, as if it would somehow rob the place of its foreignness. Not in the sense that he was seeking the exotic, but in the sense that the place would no longer be itself – as if the Dutch, by speaking English, would be denied their Dutchness.” (p. 83-84)

Exactly!

And the Italians indulging their sudden mania for English are denied -- are denying! -- their Italianness.

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