Now, ask 1000 Londoners to name a City in Illinois other than Chicago.
Lots of people in Chicago can't name a city in Illinois other than Chicago.
I Asked 1000 Americans to Name a British City Other Than London
31–40 of 104 posts
Re: I Asked 1000 Americans to Name a British City Other Than London
#32I don't know what the author's real motives were (Was it really to beat on the theme that 'Americans are ignorant?), but I personally think this is a good exercise to humble yourself - 'My country/city is not as important as I think it is'. Frankly, Britain is not as important as it once was and hasn't been for half a century. And it's not particularly notable. You would have better luck with Germany, France, Greece,…
'Americans are ignorant'
You know he was dying for results that would support this. Why else would they ask such an inane question?
Re: I Asked 1000 Americans to Name a British City Other Than London
#33Now, ask 1000 Londoners to name a City in Illinois other than Chicago.
As a belgian european I often wonder if the United States seems as big to americans as Europe seems big to me. I wonder if it feels different to be a citizen of a small country or a citizen of a continent-wide country such as the United States. Or maybe americans feel they are californians or new-yorkers before being american ?
It's less by state and more by region. A rough "region guide" would include Northeast, Mid-west, South (geographic Southeast), Southwest, California, Pacific Northwest, and the Great Plains. But this is a huge over-generalization and doesn't really include places like DC, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, or southern Florida, which have their own microcultures.
People from the Northeast definitely feel differently than people from California.
Re: I Asked 1000 Americans to Name a British City Other Than London
#34When I saw the headline I tried to think of one and failed. Then I saw the list in the article and recognized most of the names, and could even say a few things about them. And with those as priming, could name a few more. Brains are weird.
I guess our database reverse index is short thus prone to lose content while the data is still there. Once I give you the key, data flows out easily. It's annoying though.
Another memory graph glitch, a minute ago I couldn't remember the name of the file browser[1] .. for 20 seconds I kept thinking about Thor.. Thor.. then Fubar. This happened to me enough to know that these aren't unrelated answers. Answer was Thunar.[2]
[1] First time I boot this machine since a month, it has no desktop environment per se, I run some graphical programs through bash.
[2] Phonetic hints are the most common of this partial answers, at least in my brain, all of them shares a bit of the final answer.
Re: I Asked 1000 Americans to Name a British City Other Than London
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a belgian european I often wonder if the United States seems as big to americans as Europe seems big to me. I wonder if it feels different to be a citizen of a small country or a citizen of a continent-wide country such as the United States. Or maybe americans feel they are californians or new-yorkers before being american ?
I would say the culture here is fairly homogenous, so most people feel like Americans before they feel like a citizen of their home state.
Looking in from the outside, US culture is substantially less homogenous than Australian culture.
Cultural variety arises from isolation. The US was founded sufficiently long ago that there was time for each region to establish distinct cultural flavours, in no small part contributed by waves of immigration being unevenly spread throughout the country.
Re: I Asked 1000 Americans to Name a British City Other Than London
#36I don't know what the author's real motives were (Was it really to beat on the theme that 'Americans are ignorant?), but I personally think this is a good exercise to humble yourself - 'My country/city is not as important as I think it is'. Frankly, Britain is not as important as it once was and hasn't been for half a century. And it's not particularly notable. You would have better luck with Germany, France, Greece,…
'Americans are ignorant' You know he was dying for results that would support this. Why else would they ask such an inane question?
He is a she. There's a big picture of her, and she's called Stacey. Or did you not notice as the page doesn't have a pink background and it's about stats?
Re: I Asked 1000 Americans to Name a British City Other Than London
#37As a Welsh man I'm fairly sure that Wales isn't a city :)
It's a city, but not in the UK. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wales_(disambiguation)
Re: I Asked 1000 Americans to Name a British City Other Than London
#38Now, ask 1000 Londoners to name a City in Illinois other than Chicago.
As a belgian european I often wonder if the United States seems as big to americans as Europe seems big to me. I wonder if it feels different to be a citizen of a small country or a citizen of a continent-wide country such as the United States. Or maybe americans feel they are californians or new-yorkers before being american ?
Having lived in both, the U.S. feels larger and also more homogeneous. When I lived in Belgium I was 90 minutes from Amsterdam, London, Paris and Cologne. In Chicago I'm 90 minutes from Milwaukee (if I speed.)
There is a lot of state pride in the U.S. but not many people put their love of their state before the love of their country (except for perhaps Texas.)
Re: I Asked 1000 Americans to Name a British City Other Than London
#39Now, ask 1000 Londoners to name a City in Illinois other than Chicago.
As a belgian european I often wonder if the United States seems as big to americans as Europe seems big to me. I wonder if it feels different to be a citizen of a small country or a citizen of a continent-wide country such as the United States. Or maybe americans feel they are californians or new-yorkers before being american ?
I also imagine it has something to do with how much American culture is exported in the world. As a Belgian, you probably won't be able to go your whole life just watching Belgian movies and TV and reading Belgian books. But it's quite possible and I'd imagine very common to do that as an American.
Re: I Asked 1000 Americans to Name a British City Other Than London
#40Now, ask 1000 Londoners to name a City in Illinois other than Chicago.
I'm British and I couldn't name any cities in Illinois other than Chicago and Springfield. (For some reason I know all the state capitals). However, the UK is five times the size of Illinois.
~1.6x the size if you go by area rather than by population.