Once had an American refuse to believe that the castle in Norwich was Norman and over 900 years old, thought we were basically still in the stone ages back then, same bloke wouldn't believe that democracy was Greek, the tank was a British invention, the gun was Chinese or the Russians were most responsible for winning WW2, basically seemed to think that the whole world was backwards until America came along and invented everything. American education is very…nationalistic. The only way to get the truth is to go to college and/or watch a lot of documentaries 🙃. Russians: most responsible for helping to start WW2 by allowing Germans to train and then partnering with them in Poland. Kind of nullifies the later bleed out. I heard once a story about an American tourist in Italy, that was convinced that Ferrari was an American brand. A friend of mine have years ago been in Disneyworld (or land), where Denmark had apparently been placed as the capital of Sweden with Norway as a province in their overview of countries 😄 Needless to say, she was a bit offended. Living in a semi-large town in Denmark, my mom was once asked by a tourist for guidance to get to Stockholm. And she was like "yeah, you need to get to Sweden first"
My aunt worked for the state department. An email received from an Italian tourist was circulated. The Italian wanted to know if she went to see the Grand Canyon in the morning if she would still have time to tour the Smithsonian that afternoon.
International ignorance isn’t limited to one country.
You can find all sorts of ignorance anywhere, not only in the US. When I was in America I noticed that the usage of "near and far" as well as "old and new" are different from their use in Europe. Here in Europe a 200-year-old church is new, for example. It would be very old in America, of course.
Even within the United States, people from the state of New Mexico sometimes are treated as if they are not US citizens, because others think they are from Mexico. This happens sometimes when applying for passports, or applying to colleges and being told to fill out the international student application.
@AnneHoney There’s a Versailles near me as well and, confusingly it’s on a river named Thames. Versailles is pronounced “Ver-Sales” and Thames is pronounced to rhyme with “James”.
Another fun activity is to listen to Europeans trying to pronounce Native American place names in the US. As in why doesn’t Arkansas rhyme with Kansas. Near me is a park named “Mashamoquet” and a village named “Pocquonock”.
I’ll bet no European guessed “mash-MUCK-it” or “po-KWAN-ik”
I’ll leave you to puzzle over Quinnipiac, even most Americans get that wrong.
Place names ending in “wich” like Norwich, Southwich, Northwich, Middlewich, Nantwich, Droitwich, Netherwich, and Shirleywich once had royal licenses to produce sea salt.
Fucking kings! Who would ever think you’d have to have a license to take salt from the sea?
@TexChik Your education system sucks . Most people hardly know anything beyond the state the live in , not no mention the rest of the world. Its not political as education is also for yourself .
