Fashion, beauty and animal loving language consultant from South Africa living in Stockholm, Sweden.
View all posts by Janet Carr
5 thoughts
Do you mean you’ve actually met people who confused the two countries? Were they from the USA? They are famous for their lack of knowledge in geography. I’ve seen videos in which they actually mentioned “the country of Asia” and “the country of Europe” (I think it was on Jimmy Kimmel).
Not all Americans are stupid…but sadly – yes, many of them have no idea of geography! I am an American – and I’m embarrassed to hear that people would confuse the two! Oh my goodness!
They are definitely not stupid. The impression I get is that not all Americans have had a good education. It’s a worldwide trend, sadly. In Europe it’s obvious that Grammar suffers greatly. I spot huge mistakes in written English and I’m not even a native English speaker, what’s worse I see them on newspapers’ portals. I speak two more languages and I see the same thing happening.
Having said all that, I don’t know if it’s because the USA is a huge country or because they don’t have many neighbouring countries (like most European countries do), but Americans often seem a bit naive when they interact with foreigners. Almost childlike, in that they leave an impression of amazement that “there is more out there”. It’s endearing in a way, but to me it’s also puzzling; we live online for two good decades now, that’s at least one generation, how is it that they ignore so much about the rest of the world?
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I didn’t know people made this mistake and I can’t think why. Now if you had said Austria/Australia…!
Do you mean you’ve actually met people who confused the two countries? Were they from the USA? They are famous for their lack of knowledge in geography. I’ve seen videos in which they actually mentioned “the country of Asia” and “the country of Europe” (I think it was on Jimmy Kimmel).
Not all Americans are stupid…but sadly – yes, many of them have no idea of geography! I am an American – and I’m embarrassed to hear that people would confuse the two! Oh my goodness!
They are definitely not stupid. The impression I get is that not all Americans have had a good education. It’s a worldwide trend, sadly. In Europe it’s obvious that Grammar suffers greatly. I spot huge mistakes in written English and I’m not even a native English speaker, what’s worse I see them on newspapers’ portals. I speak two more languages and I see the same thing happening.
Having said all that, I don’t know if it’s because the USA is a huge country or because they don’t have many neighbouring countries (like most European countries do), but Americans often seem a bit naive when they interact with foreigners. Almost childlike, in that they leave an impression of amazement that “there is more out there”. It’s endearing in a way, but to me it’s also puzzling; we live online for two good decades now, that’s at least one generation, how is it that they ignore so much about the rest of the world?
I didn’t know people made this mistake and I can’t think why. Now if you had said Austria/Australia…!
So many people think I live in Switzerland! And when Spotify was listed, the New York Stock Exchange put the Swiss flag up, not the Swedish one! https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spotify-ipo-flag/nyse-spotifys-market-debut-and-the-swiss-miss-idUSKCN1HA2N2