Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 12:20 am Post subject: Europeans' familiarity with American cities and locations
It seems that we as a country are the center of everyone's attention. So much so, that most American feel that they don't have to learn anything about the world outside our borders, as if we are the world. Naturally then, Europeans seem to know a lot more about America and us, than we do about them.
So, I was wondering. How familiar is the average European with American geography and the location of major cities, or the geographical position of certain states like California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois? To what extent do they know about the climatic and cultural variations between different regions in the U.S., like the West Coast, the South, the Midwest, etc.?
And how familiar are they with major American cities, other than the most famous ones like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles? Do they know where less famous cities like San Diego, Seattle, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Houston are? Most Americans couldn't name more than one major city in most European countries. The only major British city the average American adult can name is London. The average American's familiarity with major cities in Germany is limited to Berlin, if that. And you're lucky to find an American off the street that can name cities like Bonn, Frankfurt, and Stuttgart, or much less identify where in the country they're located approximately. _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Favorite languages = English/Spanish
Followed by Italian/French/Dutch
I'd like to add Canada to the topic, if you don't mind, Porthos. How many provinces can you name, for example? (No cheating!) _________________ L'homme est comme Dieu l'a fait et un peu pire/ L'homme est le seul animal qui détruit pour le plaisir
Well, fortunately for me, I do happen to know a little geography. How very un-American of me.
Off the top of my head, Canadian cities that I can think of are Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto. And off the top of my head, provinces I know are are BC, Alberta, Yukon, Newfoundland, Ontario, and Quebec. And I can think of one province in Central Canada that sounds like the Indian woman, Sacajawea. And there are some other ones that are named after native peoples. But, those are the only ones I can name, because like most Americans, I don't really give any thought to Canada. Sometimes I forget it's even there! _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Favorite languages = English/Spanish
Followed by Italian/French/Dutch
I memorized all the provinces a few years ago, when I started to become obsessed with maps. You've got Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan (haha, Porthos), Alberta, and British Columbia, plus Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. Some cities that I know off the top of my head are Halifax, Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Windsor, Edmonton, and Vancouver. I think it's a pity that Americans aren't more familiar with Canada.
Last edited by Lazar on Tue Aug 07, 2007 2:35 am; edited 1 time in total
I was hoping to get more European input, but that's OK. There was this segment called "Talking to Americans" on a show here called This Hour Has 22 Minutes a few years ago, where they would go through the US and ask people their opinion on all kinds of ridiculous questions meant to show their ignorance of Canada (like our Parliament buildings being an ice-sculpture version of the White House). Obviously it was heavily edited, by I was just wondering how much the average American knows about Canada. That said, there was a bit of a scandal a few weeks ago when some think tank released a study showing that only about 40% of Canadians could pass the citizenship test they give to immigrants, so maybe Americans know as much about Canada as Canadians do! (I'm proud to say that I got perfect on the test.) _________________ L'homme est comme Dieu l'a fait et un peu pire/ L'homme est le seul animal qui détruit pour le plaisir
Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 5:20 am Post subject: Re: Europeans' familiarity with American cities and location
Porthos wrote:
So, I was wondering. How familiar is the average European with American geography and the location of major cities, or the geographical position of certain states like California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois? To what extent do they know about the climatic and cultural variations between different regions in the U.S., like the West Coast, the South, the Midwest, etc.?
Not a lot, in all honesty. I think people usually have some vague idea about where New York, California, Texas and Florida are, but that's about as far as it goes. Probably most Europeans would not be able to tell you where Pennsylvania and Illinois are.
Porthos wrote:
And how familiar are they with major American cities, other than the most famous ones like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles?
Not very familiar at all.
Porthos wrote:
Do they know where less famous cities like San Diego, Seattle, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Houston are?
New Orleans is different for obvious reasons, but I suspect that few Europeans could have told you where it is before Hurricane Katrina. I'd imagine that people have usually heard of at least some of San Diego, Seattle, Philadelphia and Houston, but would not really have much idea about where they are or what they're like.
You're right that the whole of Europe is essentially obsessed with America, but that doesn't mean that we really know very much about it. However, I wouldn't say that the United States is the centre of attention for most Europeans though.
Ironically, I think most Americans are probably more familiar with a greater number of cities and their locations in Europe than in Mexico, or even Canada, except for those who live closer to Canada in the northern parts of the U.S. I asked white people at work today to name as many cities as they knew in Mexico, and the most people could name were 4 cities. They knew the capital (Mexico City), and three major U.S. tourist destinations - Cancun, Cabo San Lucas, and Acapulco.
But a suprising number of people I meet don't know that Britain is an island. Very few people here know where Iraq is on the map, even though we're in the middle of a war there. Afghanistan? Forget about it. (And people wonder how politicians like Bush are able to pull fast ones over the American people ).
About half of American teenagers I talk to often think of Paris as a country. About 1/4 of teenagers I meet can't name all the continents. Most people here tend to think of and speak of the African continent as if it were one political entity, or one country. I don't think anymore than 5% of the population here could name more than 3 countries in Africa, much less tell you where in Africa they're located. When it comes to Asia, Latin America, and Africa, Americans' geographical knowledge is appalling.
Asking people to name more than a few countries in Eastern Europe, their locations, and/or their capitals is a joke. Most Americans just think of Eastern Europe as one entity, "behind the Iron Curtain".
I can name the capitals of all the East Asian, European, North and South American, and Australasian countries, and usually along with at least two major cities. And I have a vivid picture of the globe in my mind, because I've had a globe in my bedroom for as long as I can remember, and I've always taken to looking at it since early childhood. But I'm a rare exception here, especially among my age group. I haven't however, memorized all of the capitals in the Middle East and Africa, nor can I name a lot major cities in these regions, probably because they're so poor and underdeveloped, and sorry to say, but politically insignifcant countries (the latter only applying to sub-saharan Africa). In the Middle East for instance, the only capitals I can name off the top of my head are Tehran, Baghdad, Kabul, Riyadh, Islamabad, Jerusalem, Damascus, Kuwait City, and Beirut. I don't know the capitals of a lot of the Central Asian states or the tiny countries on the Arabian peninsula, other than Kuwait of course because of the Persian Gulf War.
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Not a lot, in all honesty. I think people usually have some vague idea about where New York, California, Texas and Florida are, but that's about as far as it goes. Probably most Europeans would not be able to tell you where Pennsylvania and Illinois are.
I think that most European know the names of many American cities and states because they have heared or saw them in American movies. But knowing where they really are is a different question. I think it really depends of each person and its cultural level and/or his interest for the question.
I'm often shocked to ear some people thinking that NewYork is the American capital. This is due to the fact that it is the biggest and most known city - and in general in Europe the biggest city is the capital.
Most European would know where is about California - and that cities like LA, San Francisco and San Diego are in California (we also associate Spanish sounding names with it). This state is known to be in southern US because the image we have of it is full of palm-trees and sunny beaches.
the smaller cities and medium and small less known states would be not known. Most of the time we have heard the name but not able tosay where it is (such as Oklahoma, Montana, etc)
the people who have been to US or have an interest in geography as I am have usually a bertter knowledge of the US.
Josh, voici les provinces que je peux citer de tête (sans tricher ) : Québec, Ontario, Nouveau-Brunswick, Nouvelle-Écosse, Terre-Neuve, Île-du-Prince-Édouard, Manitoba, Saskatchéouane, Colombie-Britannique, Alberta, Territoires-du-Nord, Nounavout, Youkon. J'en oublie sûrement. Mais pas l'Acadie, une ancienne province qui jamais canadienne ne fut.
Location: San Francisco, Noord-Kalifornië, Noord-Amerika
Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 7:56 pm Post subject:
fab wrote:
Most European would know where is about California - and that cities like LA, San Francisco and San Diego are in California (we also associate Spanish sounding names with it). This state is known to be in southern US because the image we have of it is full of palm-trees and sunny beaches.
Even though much of California is at the same latitude range as much of the southern US (the southernmost border is at about the same latitude as Charleston, South Carolina), the northern border is at about the same latitude as Boston, which is in New England. FYI, despite the southerly latitude of much of California, here in the US, we don't refer to anything west of Texas as the South or even the southern US. There's the Southwest and the Pacific Coast.
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For exemple, what french cities outside of Paris are widely known in your respective country (and by yourself)
I can't speak for the rest of the country, but I can think of Lyons (which I think is either the 2nd or 3rd largest city), Nantes, Bordeaux, Chartres, Marseilles, Nice, Cannes, Nancy, Nimes, Orleans, Arles, Toulouse, Toulon, Calais, Le Havre, Amiens, Rouen, Avignon, Perpignan, Grenoble.
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would you be able to quote the french cities that you think are the biggest (an the ones you know) ?
Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Nantes (after Paris, not necessarily in that order).
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What about the different regions names ?
Ile de France, Bretagne, Normandie, Provence, Rhones-Alpes, _______-Pyrenees(?), Alsace, Lorraine, Savoie, Bourgogne, Bordeaux, Picardie, Aquitaine, Languedoc-Rousillon (I only learned this one from someone on langcafe supplying information about regional dialects), and there must be something about the Loire, but I don't know it's full name.
I'm often shocked to ear some people thinking that NewYork is the American capital. This is due to the fact that it is the biggest and most known city - and in general in Europe the biggest city is the capital.
For all intents and purposes, it is the capital. It's the financial, and cultural capital of the country, and the most populous city, so it's easy to see why so many would mistake it for being the capital. The political capital is in Washington (itself an artificially constructed city), but a lot of power politics which determine the route of economic and foreign policy in this country take place behind closed doors in boardrooms on Wall Street anyway, so one could say that New York is the capital in all but name only.
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concerning the European cities I think that most Americans would know the main capitals ? but how it is for the smaller cities ?
I'm afraid not. Indeed, Deborah, Elaine, and I are very rare exceptions to the general rule. I would say that only about half of American teenagers could name two capital cities in Europe, and those would probably be Paris and London.
About half of adults here could probably name London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, and Rome, and perhaps Madrid. But capitals like Warsaw, Vienna, Brussels, Bern, Athens, Stockholm, Budapest, Amsterdam, and Lisbon would most likely not be named. It's very scary. _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Favorite languages = English/Spanish
Followed by Italian/French/Dutch
For exemple, what french cities outside of Paris are widely known in your respective country (and by yourself)
I'm not sure if you just wanted Americans to answer this, but I think that most people here would know Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Calais and Boulogne, and possibly also places like Dunkerque, Cherbourg, Saint-Malo, Brest, Bayeux, Caen, Cannes, Lille etc.
I also know Clermont-Ferrand, Vichy, Riom, La Rochelle, Villefranche, Adjaccio, Toulon, um... there's probably a lot of other places I'd recognise as being in France if I heard them.
fab wrote:
would you be able to quote the french cities that you think are the biggest (an the ones you know) ?
Largest cities — Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Lille...
fab wrote:
What about the different regions names ?
Seems to be of limited importance here — apart from Brittany (Bretagne), Normandy (Normandie) and Provence.
That's surprising. I thought Europeans were a lot more familiar with U.S. geography.
Not really...
The Europeans aren't more intelligent than others...
Even, French themselves don't know the name of all French regions and big cities or European countries... Why those of United States?
deborah, it is curious you said Chartres, since it is a very small city compared to the others, which a lot of french people would be not able to know where it is ! Maybe you visited it, and its famous cathedral.
Benjamin, it is interesting you noticed Calais. I think this city is really overestimated in the English imaginary to be the first city they meet when they go in the continent.
it is interestin also you thought to Bayeux...
I always had the impression when I asked that question that Normandy almost always come to mind to most English-speakers. This is interesting because for an average french person Normandy is probably not the first region we thing of, excepted if we come from there. I think the exposure of Normandy have been much more important in UK and USA than in France itself due to WW2, and, in the case of UK to the myth of William the conquerant.
most of you have good ideas of the 5 main cities which are, in the order:
Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Nice
In taking in count the agglomeration Lyon would be 2nd.
Location: San Francisco, Noord-Kalifornië, Noord-Amerika
Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2007 3:34 am Post subject:
fab wrote:
deborah, it is curious you said Chartres, since it is a very small city compared to the others, which a lot of french people would be not able to know where it is ! Maybe you visited it, and its famous cathedral.
You're right. But even if I hadn't visited it, I would have remembered it from the pictures in my French textbooks.
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Benjamin, it is interesting you noticed Calais. I think this city is really overestimated in the English imaginary to be the first city they meet when they go in the continent.
...which is why I remembered it.
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I always had the impression when I asked that question that Normandy almost always come to mind to most English-speakers. This is interesting because for an average french person Normandy is probably not the first region we thing of, excepted if we come from there. I think the exposure of Normandy have been much more important in UK and USA than in France itself due to WW2, and, in the case of UK to the myth of William the conquerant.
Yep.
I should have remembered Cherbourg, because of having seen "Les parapluies de Cherbourg"; I suppose I forgot about it because I thought the movie was so forgettable.
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