this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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To be fair most Germans know where America is.
Yes this one is honestly a bit apples to oranges-ish, I can kinda understand though because Germany is about the size of a single US state.
Though it's very hard to fuck up western Europe if you ever looked at a world map. Western Europe only has a handful of countries.
Compared to a country of 50 or so states where only 3 have a memorable shape (California, Texas, Florida), one has a memorable location (Alaska) and NYC being a household name.
Includes Alaska but not Hawaii for memorable locations.
Completely disregards Michigan for memorable shapes.
Refers to NYC as a state.
I'm starting to think you may be an imposter.
Hawaii is way further away from the US than Alaska I forgot it belonged to the US because of that, I am sorry if that offended anyone.
I would consider Michigan a memorable shape if it wasn't cut in half. As someone that's not from the US, without specifically going out of my way to learn about Michigans shape I would have expected the shape that actually represents Michigan to be two different states.
And yes, technically NYC itself isn't a state but honestly it's close enough to the actual name, that if I told natives I'm going to the state of NYC they'd know I'm talking about New York and am just being ignorant, and knowing where NYC is, most people could point out the state of New York on a map.
And yes, I am an imposter because I am from Germany and not the US.
No worries! If you ever saw the Hawaiian flag that would be all kinds of confusing because they are clearly claiming to be a British Commonwealth state, despite never being part of the British Empire. They just liked the Union Jack so much that they slapped it in the upper left corner of the flag. That was back when they were still a kingdom though.
I was just poking some fun 😊
Hawaii and alaska are simply forgotten as states entirely, and in my experience the same goes for new mexico which blends together with texas and arizona.
Seriously who the fuck thought it was a good idea to have a state called "new mexico" right next to a COUNTRY called "mexico"?
In addition to Michigan and the three op named, I would also argue Minnesota and Louisiana (shaped like an L, the first letter of the state’s name) have distinctive/memorable shapes.
Europe has all those small weird countries. Trying to label them as an American is impossible.
Only just as hard as labeling the US states
The Animaniacs made that one easy. Do you have an animated bouncing song for just Europe? Cause their world geography song doesn't work nearly as well as the US state capital/location song.
https://youtu.be/MSvJ9SN8THE
We can't do New England much better than we can Eastern Europe. But at least we're relatively consistent. I wasted so many brain cells on Piedmont Sardinia, French Netherlands, Poland, Poland again, Poland the third, Prussia, and the UK but now none of them are part of Europe.
I agree, I have trouble labeling most south eastern european countries correctly as a European myself. Though I was specifically talking about western Europe in this case which isn't as fragmented.
Can you find Andorra on a map? What about without border outlines?
I doubt 90% of Americans know it exists.
Sure but that's only equivalent to an American knowing where Europe is, as a lot of US states are as large as a lot of European countries.
But they're still states. States are internal divisions and only meaningful within the US. From an outside perspective there are very few differences between states, nowhere close to the differences between different countries.
Similar to how we don't talk about states or other divisions of china, even though there are probably divisions with more people than half of Europe.
(some) Americans are so self-important when they mention states being the same size as other peoples' countries lmao. "Why should we have to point to Germany on a map if Germans can't even point to le bigger Montana?
"
It's like, do they feel the same about knowing other big countries' internal divisions? Canadian provinces? Russian federal subjects? Brazilian states? Chinese provinces? Australian states? Cuz the average subdivision in all those countries is larger than the average US state.
And people usually know the most important ones, anyways (Cali, Texas, Florida, NY)
fair enough, it's just that learning all countries in North America is a lot easier than those in Europe
Not that much easier, there's 23 countries not 3 lmao
You might not. As an American I've found it useful to know the difference between Sezchuan and Fouzhou. I do know and have worked for a fair number of Chinese immigrants though.
Not really, as a European I can tell you where all the countries in the north American continent are.
all 3 of em? wow what an accomplishment
lmao theres literally more than three countries in NA
You're forgetting 20 countries.
North America doesn't end at Mexico, it ends at Panama, and it also includes the Caribbean.
it was pointed out already thank you
I don't see that, maybe a de-federated post to my instance.
There's a third? Oh bugger 😝
Canada, US, Mexico, Cuba and apparently a bunch more I forgot about.
Oh damn. I thought there was Canada and Not Canada.
that also works