The best one is when two people were talking in a foreign language in a store and a Karen said SPEAK ENGLISH this is America. The person replied were speaking Navajo if you want to speak English go to England.
Yeah that one gets me too "YoU'rE iN aMeRiCa, SpEaK eNgLiSh", bitch you're in the stolen lands of the North American continent, speak the native language and stop butchering ours!
Had a similar Experience in Wales 🏴 two American ladies commented to me about you got immigrants everywhere too. She was Talking about the girls behind the counter talking to each other in Welsh wich I pointed out to these lovely people. To my surprise they carried on wittering on about how these people should be talking English as Wales was part of England 🏴. I left it there as it was becoming an uphill struggle for me. By the way the girls spoke English to the customers
Don’t privatize Education too much. America’s investments should be higher quality of Education in Public schools a d affordable education. No student loans like in Europe.
@@marierocher4422 . You think the costly loans US students take out to go to college, are any better. Some European countries have no charge for higher education and even in the UK where students do have loans, they only pay according to income and the loan is written off after a certain number of years.
When you're abroad and someone asks you where you're from, it's usually implied that they are asking about the country. If I, an Italian, responded to an American asking that question with "I'm from Friuli Venezia Giulia/Basilicata/Marche" or any of the 20 regions that make up Italy instead of just saying "I'm from Italy" I would sound pretentious and they would probably have no clue about what I said anyway. So for Americans to expect everyone else in the world to know all of their states, when many of those same Americans can't even locate Europe or Africa on a world map, it just looks like you think you're more important than others. This is not meant as criticism by the way, just trying to explain how it looks like to someone from outside the US
To be fair most US States are larger than all European countries (maybe excepting European Russia). I know the UK is smaller than 30 odd States. Saying you come from Friulli or Lombardy would be equivalent to an American telling you which county they lived in rather than which State.
@@bfcmik To be fair and please forgive me if this comes out as an insult, but nearly no-one of the rest of the world cares how many, how big or what the names of your states are... just a friendly reminder about arrogance. Thank you...
@@bfcmik To be fair, most Australian States and territories are bigger than all American ones (perhaps excluding Alaska) and since there are only 8, there aren't a lot to remember...... but it would be a rare thing for an Australian abroad to answer with the name of their state when asked where they are from, even though Western Australia is bigger than 20 East Coast US states put together!
@@bfcmik To be fair also, the region of France where I live has more population than 30 of US States … Am I supposed to answer I come from Nouvelle Aquitaine when asked ?
Years ago, on my first visit to the States, the first people we spoke to asked where we were from. I said Manchester, England. They said they were from Manchester, New Hampshire. As they walked away I heard the woman say, "why do the English copy our place names?" I couldn't be arsed running up to her and putting her straight!
Could of agreed but after hearing a lot of stuff going back to the 1700s their governments just don't tell them the truth and never have, it's only when they go on holiday/ vacation / university abroad/ work abroad or join the forces that they hear that someone has been telling them fibs , but now the internet is the big leveling up in education . I assume you know about their health organisations do a little research about how many people actually get holidays / vacations it's shocking
@@rammsteinrulz16 I doubt he was being self-deprecating or even ironic. Assumptions like this,and there are many,are dangerous in the long run. Ignorance is the enemy’s weapon.
@@Trebor74 Ypu also can't be a Leader of the Free world who's supporting Dictatorships across the globe, Unjustified Invasions, US Led Coup'd Etats, Mass War crimes against Humanity, etc
I remember that my father was in the army for six years in WWII and it was out of the country for four years in the Middle East. He actually left whilst the USA still had more than half a year left at peace and he returned in 1945 a month or two after VE Day. He therefore missed the entire spread of years in which the Americans were “rescuing” us. It is unnecessary for any US reader to remind me that the USA still had heavy and hard fighting left in the Pacific; I do come from a generation that learnt about the war which ended not too long before I was born.
|I once started a massive melt down on the chat in a online game, because an American told some one they needed to "go back to school and learn to spell, there is no U in armor" . I said that the British authorities were getting pretty sick and tired of the American abuse of our language, and the way they thought they could remove letters from words, like armour and colour and worse yet make letters silent that had no business being silent like the H in herb. After I allowed them to rant about that (joined by other Americans) I dropped in that the British were seriously considering revoking the Americans license to use English. It was incredible how many people thought I was serious!
I lived in the US for a while, my eldest son attended school over there... He hated it, he was well ahead of every one and was bored, until it came to English. His English teacher kept downgrading him for his spelling. (He was previously schooled in England). I went in and she gave me such attitude, the American way of spelling is proper English, I told her to go to England and try that... His history lessons he started to have trouble with as in the USA school he was taught a completely different version of the history books he previously had. In the end I gave him the option, US or England, we left back to England, never been back and never want to. I just found living there myself was hard, there wasn't the friendliness, caring and be good to each other attitude. So much discrimination, so much racism and the health care insurance scam is shocking...
@@MugenHeadNinja I work in the NHS (UK National Health Service) and an American friend of mine is the nurse in charge of foreign recruitment for our operating theatres and she said the applications from American nurses has jumped by 700% in the past 8 years. A huge jump occurred after the Roe Vs Wade reversal.
15:31 I agree that it is, not selfish but perhaps very self-centered. When you are among people from other countries, and somebody asks where you are from, just mention the country. It is enough. Not everyone in the world know the names of states in the US. When they ask further questions, like where in the US are you from, then you can go to details.
@@MugenHeadNinja oh your not a career victim are you! Ffs her comment is her experience nobody alive today had anything to do with whatever went on all over the planet! Get over it and move on! It’s so old now and pathetic!
Back in 2018 I had an American 'internet friend' come and stop over for a visit where I live in England, prior to commencing an around Europe trip. Whilst showing her around my home city of Lincoln she was amazed to see so many George Cross' (the flag of England for those that might not know) flying everywhere during what was the then World Cup. After seemingly pondering this for some minutes whilst we were walking about she turned to me and said.. ''I'm surprised, there are all these flags flying here and not one of them is the stars and stripes, that's not right, you see them all the time back home''. The next stop for us was the pub, because I very much needed a drink.
@@Em-ih5du Of course I explained it, but that would somewhat kill the anecdote. Needless to say it was all resolved with humour, however, I confess it momentarily boggled my mind.
I seriously had it out with a woman on Twitter who was pissed that I told her the rest of the world laughs when they hear Americans call the president "the leader of the free world". She was insistent that they do and demanded to know if I've ever actually been to any other countries. "Ummm, yeah Karen, a lot of them."
We heard an American lady in a shop in Cologne Germany say to her husband - there are so many foreigners around here, she was shocked when my wife pointed out that she was the foreigner - much to the amusement of a few other nationals near by...
And still she was correct... as tourists bringing money and people living in a country without learning the language properly and adhering to local customs are completely different.
When I was Turkey, we went to a local, traditional pottery craftsman and his shop. There were maybe ten of us, from multiple different countries, and the potter asked us where we came from. So everybody is answering, Canada, France, Germany, etc, until one american girl names her State. We all collectively rolled our eyes and the potter looked at her straight in the eyes and said ''American!'' I've travelled around the world, and Americans almost always answer with their States. Listen, I don't know your states and I don't care to learn them either, you are not the center of the world!
@@Finnec123 Acquiring knowledge is a good thing, of course; but the expectation many Americans have that people from other countries ought to know their states when said Americans could not hope to reciprocate that knowledge demonstrates a lack of awareness that is, frankly, bizarre. I've never met an Australian, Canadian or South African abroad who identifies by state/province, expecting people from other countries to know which country it's in!
@@Finnec123 Would an american know what I mean if I say I'm from Newfoundland or Yukon? Do americans know every single province/state of all European countries? Why should they expect the world to bow down to them?
We’re from Scotland. My teenage daughter was in Alabama she went into a school. The kids asked her so many dumb questions but one of the dumbest was - have you got TV in Scotland. Imagine their reaction when she said “Scotland invented television “ 😂
@willswomble7274 that's interesting on the ATM and PIN. New Zealand had that facility way before the UK...or at least I saw chip & PIN in NZ before I saw it here in the UK.
In the early days of internet chat (late 1990's), I often encountered incredible ignorance from Americans regarding Scotland. Many held the perception that the UK and England are the same thing, and Scotland is a hilly area in England. I was once asked whether we had seasons. I also know of a guy who was asked whether we had cars. No, we still get around on horseback. 🙄
I used to work at a big tourist place here in Germany. I'm a state-certified translator for English so I guess my command of English is pretty decent. An American couple (super friendly, really) asked me where I was from. I said "oh, I'm actually from around here, born and raised", the lady goes "But where did you learn to speak English so well?" I say "well they teach it at school here and later i studied at university" and she says "oh, i thought they'd teach German in schools here" And I've not figured out her thought process to this day. It's baffled me for 6 years so far.
I “think” I understand what she was thinking. We teach “English” courses in school which are grammar and writing centric. She was more than likely thinking along those lines instead of learning a foreign language which is generally taught in our high school systems.
@@thewhiskyscout1238 well, we have German classes, too, for grammar, writing, essays and so on... it still felt like she got something really wrong there It felt like she thought that maybe I didn't speak German, hehe
@@thewhiskyscout1238 The American woman asked where Budgies learned to speak English... which means learned as in a foreign language. So it does imply that when she went on to refer to teaching German she meant teaching it as another language rather than teaching grammar. A bit like the stories we hear about US tourists being amazed that dogs in Germany understand commands in German, as though all dogs are born understanding English but have to be taught another language. Actually the first time I went to Germany as an exchange student I do remember being asked, when I got back to the UK, if I had had any problems with the language. I replied that I didn't dare because there were all these small German children wandering around and they spoke German all the time so if a two-year-old could do it I didn't like to admit that I couldn't. Fortunately I'm British so everyone knew I was just poking fun at myself. 🙃
@@colinp2238 No, they teach English. They must, why else would so many Americans compliment Brits on their excellent English and ask, where they learned it....
While living in the US I was asked the question about what we (UK) did for Thanksgiving. I explained that while we didn’t celebrate it, we were nonetheless very grateful for the reasons behind it. The other memorable question I was asked was “In England, do you have black people?”. I explained that it was made illegal to be black in public in 1896 but that in these more enlightened times if you bought an annual licence you were allowed to be black. Saying these things deadpan produced thoughtful nods on both occasions.
When an American asked a Syrian friend who was Christian if they converted when they came to America. And my friend said no they were always Christian. Oh, your parents converted. The American asked "No" my friend replied "My family was always Christian" "Really, for how long?" he was asked "Two thousand years" he replied My friend asked me later if Americans didn't know what region Christianity originated. I could only reply "I think many of them assume it was in America"
I can't help thinking that the guy who was confused by European history continuing after the establishment of the US, hadn't quite grasped that history. In saying, 'when we rescued them in WW2' he clearly has a prejudice view of his own countries history, and such a phrase suggests he still has something of the same mindset as when he was ten years old.
@@andyt8216 Especially as they joined in Dec 1941 a full two years after Europe had been struggling against Nazi Germany. The US had profited very well in those two years, selling arms and equipment.
I was writing the exact same thing then thought why bother the American view of WWII is based on the Hollywood versions, it’s tiresome hearing it from Americans
anyway, i am pretty sure they were paid to turn up so they were mercs. and it was of strategic benefit to fight a war on someone else's soil, especially if you are going to get paid to do it. its was a win-win for the US
Well, for Europeans, the thing is, when you ask someone "where are you from?" you are generally expected to say the country, not the state! Not everyone knows the American states, if you said something like, I dunno "I'm from Virginia" a few years ago to me, I'd literally not know where that was? as in, where *that country* is and god forbid an American says "I'm from Georgia" to a European, considering the *actual country of Georgia*
Yeah, literally every1 not American, not just Europeans, when asking "where are u from?" means which country! If we give a damn about their state/city, we will ask a follow-up. On the positive side, its a pretty good way to weed out, which Americans are worth ur time, with a few follow-up questions u can find out pretty quick, if theyre the clueless, selfabsorbed sort, that will sooner or later (usually sooner) stop being funny in their ignorance and selfcenteredness and become just plain insulting. In which case u might as well find a polite excuse and move on!
You might be shocked at how many Europeans think I mean the US state of Georgia when I tell them I live in Georgia (I actually live in Tbilisi). The crazy thing is, I meet them online, and I'm one or two hours away from them by time zone, and they STILL think Georgia in the United States.
@@theskintexpat-themightygreegor georgia isnt a country a lot of people are familiar with, not sure why but the only times i hear it mentioned is conversations like this or jokes about people with the same name as the country
we dont say "im european" we say "im german" or whatever. they should say their state. america is a continent spaning nation, so we should know from where on the continent they come from. ritgh now, we are dissrespecting their history, not accknowlaging the american states, as the nations they where meant to be ( thats americas fault for not maing them nations, but still)
@@eirikarnesen9691 ... Sigh, so... have you heard about Russia, Canada, and China? I wonder what states people say they are from in those countries, I wonder indeed... The point here is, America is "big" sure, but China is larger, and has way more people, but they still say they are from China, not any specific region
I’m British. Visiting America I was asked “Do you have a 4th of July in England?” The only answer I could give was “No. we skip from the third of July to the fifth.”
HAAAAAAAA fkin belter good on ye , they probably didn't get the sarcastic joke tho. What part of Britain because Britain is an algimation of 4 separate individual countries Scotland northern Ireland Wales and England, me I'm British aye but I'm Scottish a scotsman from the country of Scotland
From one American to all the Americans traveling abroad, stop looking for the American flag in other countries and stop carrying the attitude of American superiority with you everywhere you go. The rest of the world does not have to bend a knee to America or you. The secondhand embarrassment I've felt from hearing stories of other Americans acting up in other countries, behaving like entitled trash just makes me so disappointed in my fellow countrymen. Our education system is partly to blame for the ignorance, we only learn one way and it's the way our government approves of and social media like tik tok has only been making the population here dumber and more irrational than they were just ten short years ago.
If you don't think it's odd for Americans to say, "I'm from Indiana" and expect everyone to know it's in the United States, imagine meeting someone who says, "I'm from Maniema" and expects you to know what country it's in.
I get why that part was dismissed, she did make it sound like it had been established beforehand that the people were American. But I’ve been through several of those conversations and know the majority answer with the state name before ever it being clear they are Americans. And god help you if you’re chatting by text, they will send you the abbreviation of the state with no clue of what country they are from. (Well, the clue is usually two capital letters in answer to « where are you from » Americans are pretty much the only people to assume that is a normal response when getting to know people internationally)
I know someone who’s first job was guiding tourists around Lincoln Cathedral in England. She was asked by an American visitor if Lincoln Cathedral was named after Abraham Lincoln😂
My two favourite anecdotes were when my friend went to the states for the first time. A woman asked him if Australia has American dollars for currency. My most favourite one of all was when I was travelling in former Yugoslavia and a couple of people from the states behind me on the bus said “do you know why it’s so beautiful here? They’ve never had any wars here“ the funniest shit I’ve ever heard
"No wars here". LMAO. The wars kinda shaped the modern balkans, and it goes back a millenia. My grandfather was even stationed as a national guardsman just prior to WW2 there.
The best one I have heard is when an American found out that Germany were 6 hours ahead of New York Time wise. The American said and I quote "Why didn't Germany tell us that 9/11 was gonna happen if they are 6 hours ahead of us. All I can say is WOW
I once was in a group chat where some girl posted "Is there really such a place as Nigeria? That sounds racist." I replied, gee if only there was some way to find that out if it is a real place. Like some amazing system you could type in "Nigeria" and see what happens. That would be awesome. Why doesnt someone invent such a magical system. Silence after that.
Not an American, but when I studied in Japan(I’m Norwegian), my Russian friend came to me after 3 months of university and asked me to teach her world history because she noticed she had been taught a very bias worldview. I respect her to this day.
I second that. History class in Russia (both 'Russian History' and 'World's History') is very saturated with information, that in fact, people are given so much of it, that they can't see a bit of lies and bias here and there. But, I feel like this problem is very common in a lot of countries. I graduated school in Ukraine and had the same problem with history there. I know so much about history of France and UK, but can't trust half of the history of my own country. It's bizzare...
50-70% of Russian History curriculum is USSR curriculum. What I remember distinctly is that studying history you became proud of Empire, USSR and RF, despite them being very very different. (Empire was good, but then revolution happened civil var killed a lot of people, bolsheviks won and that was good)
I had a summer job working in a hotel in Germany back in the 80's. An American guest complimented me on my English, I smiled and said that I was from the U.K. just working at the hotel for the summer. They replied that not withstanding, my English was very good, almost fluent!
I am born and bred English, I can trace my family back at least 400 years and when I have visited America I have often been asked where I am from. I of course said I was from England and I have been accused of lying on multiple occasions because I didn't sound English (many Americans seem to think we sound posh like Stephen Fry or have a thick cockney accent like Danny Dyer). I have showed my passport on many occasions and been told again I'm a liar because my passport says "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". I have even had several girls accuse me of putting on a bad English accent to pick them up! I must say this was mostly in the big cities, the more rural areas were polite and in my experience didn't live up to the stereotype of of being full of ignorant people. The south of the country was especially polite.
I've noticed 5he same thing too as truck, or I guess lorry for you, driver. The coasts are the worst, and the more you go towards the center of the country the people are nicer and things, generally are better. The south is also nice , in stark contrast to the stereotype, and the southwest is truly unique. Long story short, if you wish to see the remnants of what America used to be avoid the coasts and most of the major cities.
On my first trip to America, I was sitting with a group of friends from the UK in a conference. At the beginning of the session, everyone stood up, hand on heart and sang "oh say can you see... etc." We stopped speaking as a matter of respect, but stayed seated. After they finished singing, two ladies rounded on us and asked if we were some kind of communists for not pledging allegiance. We tried to explain that the USA was not our country and that we didn't even know the words. Eventually someone intervened and told them that they needed to start the session. They still didn't get it though.
@@annettewalter2273 Okay. And this makes you stand up WHENEVER somebody sings a national anthem, even if you don't understand the language, meaning or don't know the country?
@@annettewalter2273 Diffrence is: People from other countries doesnt care about the national anthem nearly as much usa care about thiers... I dont even know the words nor do i remember the last time i heard it (not even on our national day)
A few years ago I was hired by an American guy (I'm in Australia) as a camera operator, to help him do a vlog" expose" about how rude Australians are. We tend to call it like we see it. I followed the guy around, filming. He would do things like hire a convertible, race through school zones (where the speed limit is 40km/hr when children are arriving or leaving) at 180km/hr, calling random people fat, stupid etc, cussing out homeless people, all sorts of things. He had no clue that when people called him a d*ckhead they were reacting to his bad attitude. He thought that since he came from America, the greatest country in the world, that the world owed him respect. Dear reader, he did not get any.
For the woman who thought it was selfish to be told Indiana and not the United States, I think what she means is it's selfish to assume by mentioning a state, people outside the US are automatically going to know the states of the US and therefore know the person who said Indiana, is from the US. Whereas how many people in the US would know the different states or provinces of other countries. For example, if someone said they were from Noord-Brabant instead of just saying, I'm from the Netherlands : D
As someone from northern England, i used to deal with a lot of post from people in London area in southern England. It forever made me think how arrogant they were because they would nearly always provide minimum addresses that consisted of just a street name like 'bridge street' and part of the postal sector like 'N2' . They just assumed we'd know where that was because it was London. Sure enough we did, because no one else in the country would be that lazy or arrogant to assume their address was that unique.
As a Brit (Scottish), something that really annoys me is websites that only offer the translation option "US English". If you don't want to offer 'UK' or 'British' English, fine but at least give us the option of 'Proper English' with the correct spelling and grammar. Just saying 🤣
Years ago, a friend of mine had the opportunity to go on a Student Teacher Exchange to America. She told me, on the wall of her classroom hung a huge map, showing America in all her glory. Above the map, in beautiful cursive writing it said ... Map of the World :)
It was a bit arrogant for them to assume that someone would know they were American just from talking to them. Most Americans can't tell the difference between a US and a Canadian accent. They usually can't even tell the difference between a British and Australian accent, which is far easier - or recognise anything other than RP as being British at all. What makes you think that someone who doesn't even have English as a first language (and that girl, whilst able to make herself understood, clearly did not speak English fluently - let alone as a first language) would be able to identify accents? Your American arrogance was showing there. If a foreigner, whist in a foreign country, asks where you're from they mean WHAT COUNTRY. If they already know you're American then they'll say 'where in America are you from'.
Thought the same. If I meet someone in let's say Italy and they asked where I was from I wouldn't answer with North Rhine-Westphalia, which is the German state I currently live in. I would simply answer Germany as that is someone a lot more people know and allows one to askfor more precise Info without having to feel stupid because they just might not know the state you named. Hell I knew Washington DC was a city but it was only called Washington in school and I was super confused when I first heard someone talk about the state of Washington. I was like "wait you have a whole state as your capital?" yeah not my brightest moment sure but I was like 12 or so and US geography was not something I was taught at that age, it came a few years later... You shouldn't just assume that everyone knows the States of your country even IF they can recognise you are from a certain country.
@@iriscollins7583 as someone born and raised in germany who never even visited america I can't answer your question. Maybe ask any American in the comments ;)
Most Americans cant even hear the difference between German and Dutch ... That girl you talk about could tone down a little bit of the sass she is having there, eventhough im European, Belgian, it's a common thing world wide to say where you from in the form of country or state ( in case of America that is ) Imagin us saying " yeah im from europe " well woopty fucking do, there is 44 countries in Europe, go figure out wich one im from ... no, i say " yeah im from Belgium " there, easy and normal. Same goes for America, yeah 50 states, enjoy figuring out where im from ... The only " easy " english accents over here that you can recognise is due to films and shit, you got the posh british accent, the thick german accent, the singing italian accent, good luck figuring out if someone is from Belgium or The Netherlands when both speak the same language but different accent/dialects. She KNEW they were American, go figure why it's a common thing to say which state they were from when asked.
Most Americans will be more accustomed to traveling within their own country since it is so massive and so isolated geographically from other countries. To give them the benefit of the doubt, it might just be a force of habit. There are also lots of people who would be offended that the word "American" is being used in the context of a nationality to begin with. If I say my state, many foreigners would go "how dare you!" and if I said my nationality in English, many foreigners would also say "how dare you!" (I would usually ask them what they mean, but sometimes I just say "New York" out of habit. I haven't come across anyone internationally who is offended by this answer, but they could just be seething with rage on the inside and not letting their deep-seated hatred for my countrymen show) To be honest, it's quite tiring, which is counterproductive to traveling while on vacation. I am an American of Chinese descent. I already get some hate inside my country, I'd rather not get hate outside of it, too.
I'm English and have visited the US. I found it hilarious when my American friend was irritated one day by Mexicans speaking Spanish. She said "why can't they speak American instead of Mexican?" Lol. I just smiled.
I was sitting at a poker table in Vegas. To my left two guys where having a conversation. After a while an American across the table asked "What language are you guys speaking". "English?" they said. The American looked puzzled and asked "but what country are you from?". I really had to focus hard not to start laughing, the guys looked at him in total confusion before saying "err England".
I was on a Mediterranean cruise and the first stop was in Italy. We were having a meal in a restaurant when an argument broke out. It was an American couple complaining to the owners that they didn't take Dollars in payment!! It was funny watching everyone in the restaurant pissing themselves laughing apart from the two Americans.
My 1st time in Rome i got my Coloseum tour's ticket refunded cause an American went on a loooooong rant against the guide for saying how old the Coloseum was and he would not drop it. Acording to him nothing could be older than some town (i dont remember the name) in the US.
@@VRDejaVu - oh gawd...LOL! I wish I could have been there! I could have completely broken his entire world view in only a few mins, lol! Where did he think Americans came from TO BEGIN WITH??? Or did they just spring magically into being one day? :P That must have been a double face palm moment :P
Back in the 80s, my wife and I from Australia visited Hawaii and met a lovely US couple from one of the southern states. We were gobsmacked when they said that we spoke "real good American" as they thought Australians spoke French!
I remember seeing an interview with a college student whose college was hosting the World Double Dutch championship . She was hugely excited and told the interviewer how proud they were and what an honour it was to be hosting this event !!. After all , she said , " These are the WORLD Championships and we have teams here today from as far away as Ohio " . I kid you not . I was SO dumbstruck it is still clear in my mind after almost 40 years .
My dad was American, mum was British. After retiring they moved to England. Once when visiting the Potteries my parents were mixed in with a group of Americans going through the Wedgwood factory tour. My dad was so appalled at their behaviour that he wouldn't speak in their presence! He didn't want to be associated with them!
What's your point? That Americans can be badly behaved? Apart from the fact that that's not what this video is about, have you ever seen the behavior of Brits abroad?
@@mikelheron20 Americans definitely take the cake for being the most arrogant and worst behaved when they go overseas. Not all of them but a very high majority.
When I go overseas, I don't go telling everyone I'm from New South Wales, unless I want them to get confused as to why I have an Aussie accent instead of a Welsh accent😅
There're two videos here that I want to touch on: 1) "I'm educated now" and then proceeds to claim that "we rescued Europe in WW2" (the he.. you did!) 2) The couple who was asked where they're from and answering with the state rather than country. That's like me, a European, going to Australia, answering that I'm from Jutland and expecting them to know in which specific country this is a region. 🤦♀️ The common thread in these two statements is arrogance. The suggestion of the US as the almighty savior and the assumption that everyone knows the location of different parts of a country that isn't theirs, that's what is giving *US citizens* the reputation of being arrogant (and the use of "America" and "American" about a specific nationality when that litterally applies to every other country in the American continents as well). Through my work with Red Cross Youth I've met people from India, Nepal, Zambia, South Africa, Iran, USA, Mexico, Brazil and many more and I can honestly say that only the ones from the US displayed this kind of "superiority" so I'm saying this based on personal experience as opposed to just prejudice. 🤷♀️
I love the story about the one who did not want to be among foreigners when traveling outside the US, and the young lady's "advice" back to go to Florida. As for the immigration thing... when I was younger I spent a month in California and Arizona. I loved the trip, but I had one embarrassing moment, when I realized that an otherwise nice couple from LA, had in their mind (I don't know why) the idea that I was interested in staying there, even offered to help me find a job, and I had to make it clear that I was in the US as a tourist only, and that I didn't have the slightest intention to immigrate. Sorry, we Euuropeans usually are perfectly happy on our side of the ocean, even if we like visiting other parts of the world.
Another funny thing to consider with the 'don't want to be around foreigners' is that they themselves would be the foreigner. So I guess have them in a nice rural area full of locals where the other foreign tourists don't go. ;)
The last time I was in LA, I was in the company American and Canadian citizens who had permanently moved to my country, and they had it easy convincing other rich Americans to buy properties and move there too... The possibility that my boyfriend and I might be interested in moving to the US wasn't even mentioned: it was the opposite way around. And we were staying in a huge mansion in Beverly Hills... LOL
This thing about Americans saying their state for the question "where are you from" is a real weird thing, and even though, Eclectic Beard, you are clearly a very smart guy, this is a normalized part of who you are because after all you're American. That's why you might not agree or empathize much with the criticism. The problem is everybody knows that when one is abroad and someone asks where they're from, they mean to ask the country. Everybody answers from which country they come from. Americans are the only ones who say their state. And that is exactly where the trick is. Americans are so used to the idea that they are the best country, that everybody knows their History and of its greatness, that they comand the world, and all this ideas make them feel comfortable about being more specif than only saying the country. it's like, "of course I'm an American, everybody knows that! Look at me! if someone asks where I'm from they must be asking where I'm from IN America", as if America was the world. I'm not saying that everybody who does that thinks like that. But many people end up internalizing these social cultural behaviors.
English is definitely the most spoken language in the world. It does not have the most native speakers, but that is a different question - it is still the most widely spoken. Around 1.13 billion with Mandarin very close at around 1.11 billion. Spanish is 0.53 billion.
I was part of one of the biggest online worlds some years ago and we had several Americans in the group i was in. Often i had to listen to how USA invented everything. I had to one day tell a man in his 30´s, that Americans did not invent the car and the train and he literally broke down and had to take a few days break before he came back...When he did come back he told me he could not believe it at the time, and had to look it up to make sure i did not mess around with him. Points i guess for him to look it up afterwards..You should have seen/heard him later on when he also realized how young America is compared to the rest of the world....it was both kind of funny and sad at the same time and that´s usually how many conversations have gone...
@@JH-fv1gq lol i should have, but his breakdown and shock was quite real which in a way was a bit shocking for me at the time...but i guess it´s all down to how people are tought...
@@JH-fv1gq America invented the internet. A Brit invented the address system to easily access it and even then it was an accidental byproduct of connecting colleagues in the Large Hadron Collider project at CERN
@@0utcastAussie But he came up with WWW, enabling the use of the internet. He could have patented it, but didn't, gave it to the World for free. Edison must have been crying, wherever he was. Sir, Berners-Lee, by the way.British.
I may have made this comment before, but your European style education has equipped you with a curiosity and desire to keep learning. Education should not be about testing and forgetting, rather learning how to learn (it should be regarded as a life skill). You are a credit to yourself, your parents and your country. Keep up the good work.
@@silviamunoz6863 apologies. Have been watching too much U.S.based content and fell into the USA=America trap. I am normally so pedantic on such matters. I need to take a break, perhaps. Thank you for pulling me up on this.
@bubba842 What a pity. No curiosity leads to ignorance. Ignorance makes people easy to believe in every lie diffused to control them. Like the well-known "country of freedom" 😅
Years ago I was playing world of warcraft with friends, also english, we needed an extra player for a raid. The guy who we invited turned out to be American, he joined our chat server and was asking where we are from, naturally we all answered England, what followed was this guy ranting about how much he hates England because we stole all of our cities names from America and gave the example of new york. At that point we gave him a history lesson, informing him that most cities in England are older than America. He wasn't very happy about that and ended up rage quitting. On another note, even in primary school between ages of 4-11 I was learning about the ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks. It baffles me that the US don't teach much apart from American history.
Not enough time to tell him then where the "new" came from in New York/New Amsterdam, New Jersey or New Brunswick (the city, not the Canadian province …) I've heard in one video about some american not knowing where New Mexico belongs to.
@@Cau_No I live in a city called Lancaster - in the UK... it baffles a lot of people in the US that the bridge I walk across into town is only 1 year younger than when the US was first recognised as a country (and the castle is a few centuries older than that... and the roman ruins are a good 1.5k years older). Still I think the US has 5 places called Lancaster? Can't hold a candle to the original :)
@@warailawildrunner5300 Yeah, when people visit my hometown, I like to show them the oldest street we have, next to the station chapel. It was laid out by the Romans. That city is Cologne, about 2K years old, not counting the earlier germanic villages of that area we have relics of in the musem right next to that street. And with 'station chapel' I mean the Cathedral that is next to the main station and that museum. There's also an old Roman gate in front of it, that is, what's left of it. The whole city centre is full of Roman artifacts. And then I went visiting a site in Ireland once that is double that old - Newgrange.
@@Cau_No have walked along that road in Köln, looks like a very nice city to live lots of history everywhere. Unfortunately only had the chance to look around for a day, but took a fair amount of photos of the place, the outside of the cathedral is impressive but no offence the inside of trier cathedral was better than inside Köln. Got the day courtesy of ryanair for cancelling our flight and the next flight being the morning after so they put us in the maritim hotel which was rather nice of them.
I lived in Kentucky for nearly a year when I was a teenager, my first day at school and one of the teachers asked me where I was from, I said the UK...I shit you not the guy asked me "oh...would you like to tell everyone how to say hello in English". Also, with reference to the bit in the vid about being told the location inside the US when being asked where you are from. How confused would an American get when I told them I was from Norfolk rather than the UK? there are a lot of places in the US that are named after places in other countries so it could get a little confusing for you guys.
LOL, some friends of mine live in Norfolk and once said that to an American online, who thought they meant Norfolk, Virginia and promptly fired endless questions at them about the US Naval base about which they knew absolutely nothing and he began to get quite irate at what he thought was deliberate BS on their part. At this point, I jumped into the conversation and said that my nephew was stationed at one of the Strategic NATO bases in Norfolk and the American began to calm down... until I said that my nephew was in the Royal Navy and was seconded there to teach the US Navy about some specialist topics. That naturally made him go ballistic as he was the sort of American who believes that no one else can teach them anything. We never got round to telling him that Norfolk, Va, takes its name from Norfolk, UK... the top of his skull might have blown off.
I live in a town called Hillsdale. In my travels as a truck driver I've encountered several different cities, all in different states, with the same name and spelling. The fact that some, not all, but some Americans just assume you know exactly what they're referring to is mind blowing .
I know there's a Richmond in Virginia, I know there's also one in the UK, but I was born in one of the three, yes three, Richmond's in Australia - Tasmania, New South Wales and Victoria all have places named Richmond. And I'm aware there's a Victoria in Canada, New South Wales is clearly derivative. If you're travelling outside of your own country and you're asked where you're from the questioner wants your country.
It is actually really common for American to answer their states instead of their country when they are aboard. I live in Thailand and we do notice that a lot of American do not response that they are from the America or US but rather the state. It like people from Japan went to the US and said we are from Sendai.
I was in Salina Oklahoma visiting my Mum and a teenager in the store serving me heard our accents and asked "can you guys understand us?" I replied "yes, im from England and we invented English so I speak it just like you do." she didn't understand the point I was making hahaha. 😂
Haha, I visited the US a few years ago when I was still a teenager, and I remember the trauma of trying to order a glass of water. Ended up having to use "h20". We're definitely divided by our common language :p
Thats really funny tho, becuase im from Sweden and they never asked why i was so good at english. They allways asked where im from first because of accent ofc. I wonder why it happens to UK and Australians so much but not to Nordic people. Hahahahaha
I've been asked what they do in England on the 4th July. They looked confused when I said "go to work." Same for Thanksgiving. Then it was "so do they celebrate Christmas in England?" Lol
I lived in America for 22 years and have now returned to the UK the most common question I was asked.,. So how do the British celebrate independence Day? My response would be the same way you celebrate the withdrawal from Vietnam !
I want to share a small story to this topic, which I found very funny (and sad): A met a guy a couple of years before, who lived in the US his whole life. His mother was german and he never got american citizenship. He married, got kids, got divorced and went bankrupt. He tried to rob a gas station, got caught and sentenced to 8 years in prison. After seven years he came out and the Obama- Administration set up a law during that time, that immigrants, which got criminal had to be deported to their home country. The day, he got out, he got deported to germany and his german mother in her late 80s followed him and he had to start a new life in Germany and is still here. Now the funny part: One day his kids visited him and were dumbstruck, when they realised that almost every church and many building were far older than the United States. He told afterwards that they couldnt wrap their head around this for whole time they were on visit and felt kind of intimidated of almost every piece of german history they learned during their time there. :)
I was in Atlanta, Georgia visiting my friend when she said she would take me down Governors Road as there were some really old house there, I am a UK citizen. I expect the paint is still wet on the Governors house.
I went to school in Japan at a military base, public school in America, boarding school, and a Christian private school. The best education I received was boarding school. It had a self study program. I still had to learn the basics of what all American school requires, but I was able to go beyond that and choose what I learned. I learned American history, but I got to learn world history in depth. I loved it. When I went to private school, no one knew who Nelson Mendela was or what the apartheid was when I mentioned it in cards against humanity. It was a card I played. I was born in the 90's.
I’m English and was with an English friend in Vegas. We were in an elevator talking and a girl asked us what language we were just talking to each other. We just looked at each other and started laughing. We have strong accents and when we talk at a regular speed to each other, Americans find it difficult to understand us so I do kind of understand why she asked.
I'm from the UK. My boyfriend's mum is American; his dad is British. They've lived here for several decades, and my boyf and his brother were born here. About 6 months into our currently 5 year relationship, my boyfriend said that when I meet his American fam, I will have to slow down my very fast speech with the majority of them. Also, I'll have to rein in my very, very, very sarcastic sense of humour because only about 20% of them will understand it (those that naturally have that sense of humour and those that have travelled abroad).
Yeah I used to work in a call center years ago. Ended up telling a customer to "Fuck right off, you absolute bellend". In my defense he was an absolute bellend. Surprisingly I didn't get fired but I left shortly afterwards because, as you can probably guess, I am not built for customer service.
For a short time, a long time ago, I worked in a call center and our client was a big U.S cell phone provider. This chick called in because she explicitly refused insurance on her new phone and 3 months later she dropped it in a lake. She wanted an immediate replacement... of the next generation of Iphone, with more storage to make up for her "trauma". I stayed on the phone with her for 3 hours (and didn't get to take my break or lunch). She let out a sob and said "You don't know how it feels to see your entire life sink to the bottom of a lake" So I let out a sob and said "My entire family drowned in a boating accident. I was the only survivor". It wasn't true, but it got her to hang up immediately. I didn't even get a goodbye!
Hello Ben, I'm another call centre veteran, used to work for the national rail information service, boy did we get some real pearlers, and not all were American. I remember speaking to an American lady who explained she was only in london for 24 hours, and could I recommend anywhere interesting to visit, I directed her to Hampton Court Palace. One of my colleagues had an irate american who was not happy that it took so long to travel to Ireland via Holyhead, they were even less impressed when told there were no direct services, and they needed to change at Holyhead, to which she replied what happens when I get to Holyhead. My colleague had a black belt in sarcasm, and he replied, well you run out of land at Holyhead, and if you don't change you'll get wet feet.
@@firstsurname7099 Sorry. I worked for another U.S employer for a decade and old habits die hard. For about the first year I was sending cheques out to Americans, and now I've spent the last year sending checks to Canadians.
^ I've got a little place in spain, nice quiet place nearish the coast, about 30min walk to the beaches. The atmosphere in Spain is on another level, its relaxing an chill, the idea of, work to live not live to work. I'm heading back out there for another three weeks to do some work on the house an I love our neighbours, they've been teaching me how to speak spanish, since she's a teacher in the local high school. I'd much rather live in Spain than in the US, one, the people actually give a crap about their area and two.. it costs like nothing to live out there. My bills in total are like 240 Euro's.. WTF! I can go out to eat every day at nice places and spend barely 10 euro's for a really nice meal. Then you have the bulveard, I've gotten lost like a dozen times in that place. This is Alicante, though our place is further away from the touresty areas an in the more spanish areas. Why would someone from spain wanna green card for the US? when living in the US is beyond expensive compared to Spain.
Given the fact that the spanish passport is the third powerfull in the world giving you visa free access to 190 countries while the us passport is number 7 with 186 counties. (Although those 4 countries are properbly countries you dont want to visit anyway 😂)
Not to mention the amount of people that asked me some of the most stupid questions about the UK and EU when I last went to the US. I legit had a woman ask me how I became so fluent in English.. and I had previously told her I come from England. Her fiancé was facepalming.. Then he faired no better saying dear, they were tribes 300 years ago. I froze up in abject astonishment. How could I meet two of the typical stereotypical sorts? They didn't even know where the UK was. I've also had an American think the UK was a tropical island.. that made me depressed, I friggen wish.
As an African, it often amazes me that most Americans think that Africa is one country. Africa is a huge continent with over 50 countries! That level of ignorance is appalling, which makes me wonder what they actually teach in American schools because by age 7, I already knew all the countries in the world along with their capital cities. Then the most annoying one is most of the time when you speak to Americans the first thing they say is, "Oh your English is so good" Then I tell them, "But, we also speak english in our country." I think the average American mind can't fathom the fact that English is spoken in other countries outside America or the fact that the average African speaks more than 2 or 3 languages fluently.
I wish it was compulsory in schools that they had to watch David Attenborough. At least they'd see that there's not only a different world out there but amazing animals and birds and sea creatures too. It would, at least, be a start.
In my own view, David Attenborough paired with Carl Sagan's Cosmos series. I'm pretty sure there was a healthy respect between the two for the other's work.
@@liamfitzgerald7217 Ha ha! Well, I'm pretty sure a degree of respect between scientific specialists would be there! An entertaining transferral of smart comments anyway.
I remember I was on holiday in Florida with my family and when on a boat trip the guide asked each person where they came from and every one before me were from the USA when I spoke I said from Jersey, his immediate reply was” you don’t sound like you come from Jersey” and dismissed anything else I had to say not giving me the opportunity to say Jersey in the Channel Islands UK.
The problem with just giving your state, is that they may NOT realize you're from the United States. It would be the equivalent of someone from the UK saying they were from Essex. Say Indiana, USA and they for certain won't be confused. People also get confused because America names places things like Columbia, which is another country's name or famous cities like Athens, Rome and Paris, so it's not unreasonable for them to ask us to say we're from America, because we would prefer for them to name their Country.
If not 'selfish' it's at least weird. Ask a Russian where he's from, he'll immediately say Russia. He won't give out city or town names like Ufa, Perm, Samara or Krasnodar and expect you to get from those that he's from Russia. Same thing with Germans, Czechs, Australians etc.
In the second clip, usually the opposite is true. Usually website translations have the USA flag for English. Brazilian flag for Portuguese, and Mexican flag for Spanish are also used but less common. Annoys the hell out of everyone in UK/Portugal/Spain.
I had an American ask me if we could play some baseball or basketball instead of "soccer" in the bar I was working in. This was in France, during Euro 2016, the nerves on that guy haha, the Irish lads watching the match gave him a lot of shit for it.
I met a US marine in Helsinki a few years back, he was on shore leave. He told me in no uncertain terms that the US would crush Finland in a war. (Great to know buddy, you’re the best) No idea why he said it but there you go 😅😅😅 He proceeded to insult my Kenyan friend but that’s a separate story…
When you ask someone where they are from, in an international setting, they answer with the country, because that's what the question is referring to. The only people who don't say which country they are from (and this is from personal experience, having lived in over 5 different countries and having met so many different people from all over) are: 1. People that were born in capital cities. 2. People from the USA, who will usually say "city, State". Not everyone in the world knows the states of another completely different country, from the other side of the world. People tend to know because they are educated, but people from the USA aren't able to do the same for them... Once, a guy from the USA answered this question with Georgia. We literally didn't bat an eye. We thought he was from Georgia, the country. After all, everybody HAD ANSWERED with their countries. In most international working spaces people can have very good English, so his accent wasn't even considered odd. It was only after he called a Polish person a Scandinavian that we heard alarm bells ringing in our heads and asked him "Wait, you're not Georgian, you're from the US?" to which the guy insisted he was from Georgia... The state.
I am quite liking these videos, brings back memories. I use to work in England for a US Air Force base about ten years back. I remember one time a plane came in and we had to go out and retrieve one of the crew to come back in and sign some paperwork. When I managed to find one, they refused to get off the plane because they thought there was a realistic risk of them catching small pox. I had to stand on a plane and explain to this young American that the UN world health organisation did a global vaccine in the 1970s and by 1980 it became officially extinct. She kind of just gave this embarrassed giggle.
@@MrDunkycraig I was at Lakenheath from 1984 to 1987. When I was outprocessing to leave, the guy behind me in line asked where I was going next. I told him Cannon, AFB, New Mexico. He responded with, "Oh... a consecutive overseas tour, huh?" I'm originally from Ohio, and even I knew that NM was between Texas and Arizona.
The one that always makes me giggle is when US Tech people call imperial measurements 'Freedom Units'. I mean they’re literally a remnant from your former colonial history, that even your former Colonial rulers have abandoned 🤦
During the Costa Rica one, I was thinking, "You don't have to worry about being around foreigners, because when you're in Costa Rica, you'll be the foreigner." Also I loved taking AP European History in high school. That's where I learned my favorite word in the English language: defenestration.
@@melissacourchesne2121 fenetre is French. Defenestration is English. Try using the word in France, like the word encore at the end of a concert, not used in France.
@@handlesarefeckinstupid Encore is used in France, not in that specific way anymore. Défenestration is absolutely used, just not in your everyday conversation, unless you work at Carglass.
Oh come on, he was being sarcastic - pointing out how he used to think! Like our history ended when the US was founded and then the next thing he heard about European history was how they 'saved our asses' in WWII. Many Americans still think that and he's clearly pointing out how ignorant it was 😳😅 come on man.
@@iemand2612 It's always funny when people completely fail to understand something and then make out like someone else is stupid lol and at least 27 other people also didn't understand and liked his comment 😅🤦♀️
I am a gamer in europe and I play a lot of games with people all over the world. It is. .so odd to me how often Americans gets shocked it is not "american time" in other places in the world. They happily want me to START to game with them 5 am my time. Tell them what time it would be for me they are always surprised! (they still somehow. .want me to do it at 5 am.. takes about 3 hours for them to forget it, like a slow goldfish!. And so it repeats. .lol. Ask them to start anything 5 am their time and they faint! It is like they don't really believe it is five am here.
You wouldn't believe how many get confused, or simply don't believe me when I tell them it's Saturday and Winter in Australia when it's Friday in the Summer in the US!
Just because I'm boring and I want to kill your comparison, the memory of a goldfish is pretty good, lasting for at least a couple of weeks. So we can turn it around and say that your friends have *worse* memories than goldfish!
I found it even more surprising than the OP here - I ran an Everquest 1 international guild and found that the only people who wouldn't automatically reference time zones were the Americans despite them being the only people in the guild whose country has 4 mainland time zones - so you'd assume they are used to this. When I pointed this out to one of them he argued they only had three time zones. He'd forgotten mountain time even existed.
Some years ago an American girl who was working in the company i was contracting at asked me - "Don't you think that you foreigners have been in Britain long enough?". To say that this was an AMAZINGLY stupid and racist question was an understatement, but, i played along. I replied - "What exactly do you mean, by long enough". Feeling confident she got into her stride - "Well, from what I've read you foreigners have be n here since the 1950s". I smiled as i was about to give her a 'wog' history lesson and it went thus - (1) Asians and Africans were trading with Britain many centuries before the Romans invaded Britain in 126AD. (2) Asians and Blacks settled in Britain long before the Romans invaded - Emperor Hadrians chronicler wrote - "There are Asiatic and African people who have settled in this land as traders". (3) In the Domesday Book the Mayor of Yorkshire is named Bhutt and his racial origin is stated as Indian and the Domesday Book was compiled in 1085. When you add Hadrians Chroniclers details and the Domesday Book then Asians and Blacks have been over here for over 2000 years. (4) You so-called Americans have only been in America for 350 years and you've accounted for the extermination of 25m Native Americans - the Asians and Blacks of Britain have been here for over 2000 years and in ALL that time we haven't exterminated ANYONE!!. We may have played a lot of cricket and opened many Curry Houses in the 2000 plus years we've been here, but, we DEFINITELY haven't exterminated ANYONE!!. For some strange reason she went quiet and got on with her work - it's nice to teach an idiot the facts.
The whole "I'm from Indiana" thing. Think of it this way. If I told you I'm from Pohjois-Savo. Would you know what country I'm from? That would be the equivalent of someone telling the state they are from to someone that has no idea about US geography. They just presume that we all know the states. I personally understand that you are from US if you say the state, but I couldn't list all 50 from the top of my head. Some people have no idea what the state names are
I could name a fair few, but would a Yank be able to name the 17 autonomous regions of Spain? The counties of England? Of course not. Most of them don't even understand that Scotland and Wales are countries in their own right. My father once got asked in Edinburgh 'Dude, what is that Blue flag we keep seeing everywhere?' Imagine if I went to America and asked 'What is that stripey thing with the stars on it?' So it is arrogance.
@@hogwashmcturnip8930 I'm wondering how many Americans could name _any_ of the States and Territories of Australia or the Provinces of South Africa or Canada? If I introduce myself to a Yank as being from Victoria, how many would even have a clue which hemisphere to look for it in?
On the subject of English…English and American…English. In a Hotel Lobby in Prague my mum and I encountered a group of septics blocking the way to the lift and stairs. The group was babbling away in American English….catching on to this I spoke in a load voice using English English “ excuse me please… we’d like to get to the lift please …thank you “ the group look at me in a slightly disconcerting way but did not move, I repeated the request but alas…no go! Loosing my Savoir-fair just a little I said “thank you!!! just so you can stay standing here like a colony of Emperor penguins… we’ll go outside, round the back and use the fire escape to get to our rooms “ the Czech receptionist got their tour guide to move them outside thus preventing an international incident. Love from UK(no need to mention I live in Suffolk…..me thinks…)
The girl from Columbia didn't say that she knew that they were Americans - she mentioned that as the integral part of the telling of her story. Her native tongue isn't English ( though it is pretty articulate) so she naturally could conceive of the people in question being either American, Canadian, English, Australian. Plus many Europeans spoken English is exceptional in comparison to many native speakers. So yes she wanted to know the Country. One of the best lines that I heard when l lived in the US : A man say to a Japanese guy, ' You speak English good.' To which he received the reply ' No, l speak it well.' Kudos amigo 😆
Man this is the third video of yours that I have seen and I just love your laugh!!! It’s so hearty(I hope I’m using that right)! As a language nerd the funniest observation I’ve made about is that in the US you spell the opposite of attack as defense and not defence. To understand why this is funny because how this word is come up with is of a French model for example defenestration; the act of throwing somebody out of a window because de = out and fenestration from fenettre, french for window. Defence comes from when you are in your castle defending it you are actually throwing the foes over the fence. Why is this funny because even though you spell defense with an s you still spell fence with a c.
I didn't know that, good one. We Brits still spell defence correctly then 👍 I have no idea why Yanks meddle with the English language. I hate gotten, no such word, it's got.
@@andrewdking how about "ill-gotten gains". That phrase demonstrates the existence of "gotten" in the English language from many hundreds of years ago (first recorded use during the C14th, although probably in spoken use from much earlier). The etymology seems to be from Old Norse which the vikings left for us. The best guess is that early settlers in the Americas brought the word with them, and whilst if has virtually faded into obscurity in true English, American English has kept it as common use language.
@@coltsfoot9926 you may be right. We would call it archaic I suppose. Its similar to Canadian French vs French French. The French just hate the olde French as spoken by Quebec people. There was a time back in the 1960s & 70s when Yanks had a period for shortening words e.g. Hello became Hi and now stretched to Hay or is it Hey 🤷
When travelling overseas, if anyone is asked where they are from, you have to understand that every single person is going to say Australia, or France, or Italy, or Sweden. No one is going to say Broken Hill, or Bordeaux, or Stockholm etc. Only Americans skip over “America” and narrow it down to a state, or even a city. It’s the same in Facebook groups etc. Someone might post a “Where are we all from?” Question, and every single person is go*ng to name a country, or maybe a city “and” a country, but 90% os Americans will just put “IL”, or”AZ”, or “DE”, or “HI” etc. They have absolutely no understanding that nobody outside the US has a single clue what the US state abbreviations are. They just expect that everyone around the entire globe instinctively knows them all. The fact that you, as an American, don’t understand this just proves her point.
I think it's kind of logical. If they just said USA We would be asking 'wich state'. If they aks us where we're from and we just said Europe, Afrika, ect. They would want you to narrow that down. At least to the country.
@@ilonkagootjes858 Did you read your own comment? USA is a Nation, but Europe and Africa are Conintens. If someone said he came from North America. I would like to know if from Mexico, USA or Canada. But if you told me already the Nation you are from? Why would i ask for the state or City with a Citizen from the USA but not from for example Canada?
@@eduardmierau2733 exactly.. I remember when I was like 12-13 and someone online told me they were from Georgia and I asked if they meant in Europe or The USA. They had no clue what I was talking about. Fair enough I guess, but yeah we don’t know all the abbrevations or even for the cities in the US. Please write the full state name or just write The US. I would never write the name of my city if I were to write which country Im from. I don’t think it’s selfish to give more context by writing the state, but just dont assume all of the world know your exact location by abbrevations. If I were to write country «NO», I don’t think everyone would have gotten the abrevation.
@@davidking9222 Australia IS a continent, and we don’t say we are from Adelaide. We say Australia, just like the entire rest of the world states a country.
I'm not an American but one of my closest friends is an American and I once dated someone American (two of the most intelligent people I have ever known) but..I can't say the same about the other Americans I have known. An American friend of mine (an amazing human being) genuinely thought that English was an American language, that people around the world celebrated Thanksgiving, the 4th of July and Halloween and that pizzas and sandwiches were made by Americans. I mean... 😐😐😐
I live in England, Lancashire to be exact, and in my humble opinion the best county (better than those Yorkshire wankers anyway). I majorly digress, I used to travel every year (since 1987) to the US to visit my family. As I got older, into my teens, I realised how little my cousins knew or understood about the rest of the world. As in they knew next to nothing. They were ignorant about basic global geography, international history, geopolitics, different cultures and religions etc the basics just weren't there. It still boggles my mind that the focus of the US education system is just on the US, to the exclusion of the rest of the world. Hell, even when global history is covered, it's only about what the US did to "save" everyone; which is factually wrong and just pure self-serving propaganda.
We're not Yorkshire wankers ya southern fairy lol. But I can understand what your saying as I have family in America too. A few friends who play destiny as well. I think the problem is the vast majority don't care about anything not of the U. S. A. There own government are ruining them.
This is a result of needing to delude themselves about the basic foundation of their country. It was built on genocide and slavery, but that would make them face some uncomfortable truths so they whitewash everything. Hell up until the last few decades history books in the south made out the blacks we're grateful to their "masters" for giving them work, feeding and housing them. And now as America is regressing back to to golden age of the 50's they want to replace the word slavery with the phrase "forced relocation" 🤦
Shout out to the US woman who recently complained to an Australian news channel that the Western Standard Time the host gave out was incorrect by a couple of hours.....because she thought only the US has a west coast and timezones 💀
I love my cousins from across the pond, It is not them to blame, but there government, they are like a child that as been brought up by a bad ignorant parent who taught them nothing of the real world, but remember not all are blind to what happens outside of the US, my American friends are well aware that this big rock we live on as more to it then just America :) Keep up the great work EB loving your channel and the content.
I was in the British army and based at a joint site with US marines I won a ten pound bet (10 dollars) that England had once controlled over 50% of the world. I showed him the small islands in the pacific with little Union Jacks flags next to them. It was only a officer from West Point in the officers mess pointed out I was telling the truth. Made my day 😂😂
@@TheAmericanCatholic actually it was 60% check out videos on you tube. And also nuked America twice on two separate occasion when it was put to the test back in the sixties but was kept a secret by America.
Some years ago, I worked in a travel agency, and had many lovely U. S., Australian, Asian clients,and then the US students would come... Straight from their transatlantic flight, half asleep and stinking of booze.... Seriously, dude - take a shower and a coffee... They'd arrive in gangs of five or more... Sit in the waiting area and just leave their McDonald's shit everywhere... I'd call them over to be served, and they'd ignore us completely because they were so absorbed talking amongst themselves.... You work out their whole trip...and they're amazed to hear there's somewhere in France that's not Paris... . And say, "Ok that's £xxx please..." and the reply, "How much is that is dollars....? "?!! 😠 Followed by, "When we go to Monte Carlo, will they speak English there?"??!!! WTF??!!!
Love when people say I hope there isn't loads of foreigners!! Don't they realise when they go to another country, you're the foreigner. Also saved us 🇬🇧 , educated mmmmmm not to sure !!
Concerning your last comment, about your country's education. It is very true, it's easy to blame lackluster education systems for everything, but a problem involves two or more parties involved, and on one end, one doesn't teach, while the other doesn't care to learn. Reminds me of a quote by Thrawn: "His chief failing is a lack of curiosity.” “I’d have said no imagination.” “All beings possess imagination to varying degrees,” Thrawn said. “It can be encouraged and nurtured, or can sometimes shine out in moments of stress. But curiosity is a choice. Some wish to have it. Others don’t."
Some years ago I went on a tour of the Gettysburg Battle Field. Our tour leader gave us a detailed explanation of the 3 day battle. The Anerican tourist next to me (an Englishman) and asked which side George Washington fought on during the Civil War. Talk about face palm! I thought, how ironic - here is an Englishman having to explain American history to an American.
Yeah, Ive tried that many times too. Honestly, I didnt feel, we learned that much in history class in school here in Denmark, it was mostly the most important happenings in our countrys history and around us and a short introduction to world history. Like a baseline and hopefully giving us a desire to learn more on our own, which I definitely did. But still Im flabbergasted, whenever I make the mistake of talking history with an American, even US history, coz they are mindbogglingly ignorant of the history of their own country, even as short as it is. Nevermind non US history, seems most of them think, the world came into existence, when the US did. Just consider, how exhausting it can be to try to explain, that no, pizza wasnt invented in New York. And no, WWII didnt start in 1941. And so on. But that George Washington story, thats a new 1 for me!
Being from the UK tends to prompt Americans to ask "Oh hey, I know someone from Britain! His name's Mike and he lives [100 miles from my location]. Do you know him?"
Don't forget the constant piss poor attempts at our accents, then saying we don't speak proper english because, [insert some weird ass reason] Ah yes, I totally know that guy that lives on the otherside of our obviously one mile long island! yea, every brit knows eachother! yep! its not like 80million people live here! nah, its only a dozen people and two dogs.
I graduated from a rural high school in Nebraska in 1983. I got an excellent education and I cringe at the ignorance and want to cry at the sad level of ignorance of our country.
The most spoken languages in the world English (1,132 million speakers) Native speakers: 379 million. ... Mandarin (1,117 million speakers) ... Hindi (615 million speakers) ... Spanish (534 million speakers) ... French (280 million speakers) ... Arabic (274 million speakers) ... Bengali (265 million speakers) ... Russian (258 million speakers)
I've worked in a Call Center and I grew up in a City located right by the border we are basically separated by a Bridge so I have a lot of stories. The things I've heard Americans say about Mexicans or the rest of the world it astonishes me. For example, I answered a call in English and this person automatically said "I don't speak taco", once in a US Website I was trying to locate México on their map and it was under SOUTH AMERICA! , also one guy once asked me if we had Google/UA-cam or AC over here. And when trying to arrange a meeting this pero said "I don't want to get in trouble with the Police if you cross the border" I asked what does that mean? And answered "well, do you have papers?" 😒🙄.... Hahaha the idea that we are all after the green card and we are undocumented hahaha
Haha, I'm from the UK (England), and was dating an American. One if the first things one if her friends said, was I after a green card. As if we're a third world country and that everyone wants to move to the US.
I had that happen once when living in Minnesota. Got told I spoke really good English. Suppose I'm not too bad at speaking English considering i'm a British citizen from the UK. Pat on the back indeed.
To me something stranger once happened: After a talk where I said a German music title correctly, being a native speaker, later someone came to me and congratulated me on my German pronunciation. I thought is was funny so I asked "Was it better than my English?" to which I only got a puzzled look. Still I am not sure what their thoughts were, my accent could not have been that faint, could it?
@@Cau_No accents can be interesting. I had two Americans in Missouri argue with me that I was not Irish as I don’t sound “Irish”. I’m from Northern Ireland so we have a northern Irish accent as opposed to the stereotypical “southern” Irish accent. I had to explain that Minnesota had a different accent then Texas so forth and they still didn’t believe me. Also completely blows their mind that the UK is not England alone but actually four nations combined. Some argued I was Australian for some weird reason.
@@northernsegageorge6510 I've read or heard often that US Americans try to 'correct' the Irish on their accents … either because they are 'part Irish themselves' or they've heard it in the movies … Slán agat.
@@Cau_No When I first moved to the US it confused me so much why people kept saying they were Irish when they had not been born there and had no connection to Ireland let alone having been there either. My ancestry is Scottish and Greek but I don't go around claiming to be either of those. One guy once heard my accent and said hey I love your accent where are you from? I said Ireland and he said oh I'm Irish too. I was like yeah you're so Irish you don't even know the accent. Just be proud to be American. I met many many ignorant people there but I also met some truly wonderful people. There is good and bad people in every country around the world.
No I know this is going to trigger some people, in America, but the comments that always make me laugh, "we saved you", "we rescued you", "if it wasn't for the US, you'd all be speaking German", going by the attitude of a lot of Americans you think you were the only country involved in the second world war, FYI,, only 2 million American soldiers served in Europe, just for context, 1 million Canadian soldiers served in Europe, and yes you seem to forget that 13 million Americans served in the Pacific, and yet most of you bang on and on about your involvement in Europe, learn your own history guys
I was in Kazakhstan and there was a group of people from the USA they had a bunch of maps in Russian and asked me for info about nearbye countries. They asked about Uzbekistan first pointing out Ukraine or Poland I show them where Uzbekistan is and after few minutes I realize it is better for them if I just wrote the nearbye country names in English they said it will be great. I started writing all nearbye countries names on to the map they asked me if I can wrote down more including EU countries, far east countries and so on. They were surprised and asked me Where I learned Russian so well? I told I don't know Russian they were surprised and wanted to learn how I managed to translate country names. I told that it is simple knowledge to know about world map and that we learn world map at primary school that was a real shock for them. But the real shock for them was later when I started talking about Holland, France etc with French, Dutch people. That was a bit frustrating as you can imagine trying to explain why I know about other countries to a bunch of good hearted ill educated professors from USA. But my favorite encounter was an old man from England who happened to visit one of my businesses as a tourist in a nontouristic area and asked me why I speak good English and how did I learn English. He was trying to question me in my own country in my own business as a customer in a hostile way. I think it is not just Americans sometimes many Europeans can react to simple knowledge cause they are biased.
When people ask where are you from they normally mean the country. Accents don't really matter since I know that I can't tell the difference between Austrian and German accents or Ukrainian and Russian most of the time
When people (who are not from the USA) ask where are you are from they often mean the country. When people (who are from the USA) ask another American where they are from they usually reply . Besides most American states are larger than most Eurpoean Nation States. If an Non-Brit asks me where I'm from I often say that I grew up near Stonehenge - because it is kind of well known. If I ask someone whith an Indian heritage where they are from I'm keen to know which state because I have a basic understanding of some Indian states
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The best one is when two people were talking in a foreign language in a store and a Karen said SPEAK ENGLISH this is America. The person replied were speaking Navajo if you want to speak English go to England.
Yeah that one gets me too "YoU'rE iN aMeRiCa, SpEaK eNgLiSh", bitch you're in the stolen lands of the North American continent, speak the native language and stop butchering ours!
I think that was my wife. She has some sass. :D
Had a similar Experience in Wales 🏴 two American ladies commented to me about you got immigrants everywhere too. She was Talking about the girls behind the counter talking to each other in Welsh wich I pointed out to these lovely people. To my surprise they carried on wittering on about how these people should be talking English as Wales was part of England 🏴. I left it there as it was becoming an uphill struggle for me. By the way the girls spoke English to the customers
Don’t privatize Education too much. America’s investments should be higher quality of Education in Public schools a d affordable education. No student loans like in Europe.
@@marierocher4422 .
You think the costly loans US students take out to go to college, are any better. Some European countries have no charge for higher education and even in the UK where students do have loans, they only pay according to income and the loan is written off after a certain number of years.
When you're abroad and someone asks you where you're from, it's usually implied that they are asking about the country.
If I, an Italian, responded to an American asking that question with "I'm from Friuli Venezia Giulia/Basilicata/Marche" or any of the 20 regions that make up Italy instead of just saying "I'm from Italy" I would sound pretentious and they would probably have no clue about what I said anyway.
So for Americans to expect everyone else in the world to know all of their states, when many of those same Americans can't even locate Europe or Africa on a world map, it just looks like you think you're more important than others.
This is not meant as criticism by the way, just trying to explain how it looks like to someone from outside the US
To be fair most US States are larger than all European countries (maybe excepting European Russia). I know the UK is smaller than 30 odd States. Saying you come from Friulli or Lombardy would be equivalent to an American telling you which county they lived in rather than which State.
@@bfcmik To be fair and please forgive me if this comes out as an insult, but nearly no-one of the rest of the world cares how many, how big or what the names of your states are... just a friendly reminder about arrogance. Thank you...
@@bfcmik Why the hell does that matter? Not everyone knows all the states... To assume that is arrogant.
@@bfcmik To be fair, most Australian States and territories are bigger than all American ones (perhaps excluding Alaska) and since there are only 8, there aren't a lot to remember...... but it would be a rare thing for an Australian abroad to answer with the name of their state when asked where they are from, even though Western Australia is bigger than 20 East Coast US states put together!
@@bfcmik To be fair also, the region of France where I live has more population than 30 of US States … Am I supposed to answer I come from Nouvelle Aquitaine when asked ?
Years ago, on my first visit to the States, the first people we spoke to asked where we were from. I said Manchester, England. They said they were from Manchester, New Hampshire. As they walked away I heard the woman say, "why do the English copy our place names?" I couldn't be arsed running up to her and putting her straight!
Oh dear. I would cringe so bad and would have definitely gone over to correct her
Obviously "New England" never registered
@@markbernier8434 or New Hampshire
That is shameful
@@slantedframes2334 New York and Boston .
The whole "rescued them in ww11" thing offends most Europeans. That's just how egotisstic the Americans are.
that one get me evey time also
@@charpost62 3years late for ww1 and 2 years late for ww2
@@neptuneblood6916 Two years late for WW2...
Could of agreed but after hearing a lot of stuff going back to the 1700s their governments just don't tell them the truth and never have, it's only when they go on holiday/ vacation / university abroad/ work abroad or join the forces that they hear that someone has been telling them fibs , but now the internet is the big leveling up in education .
I assume you know about their health organisations do a little research about how many people actually get holidays / vacations it's shocking
Jokers ain't they 🤣
“When we rescued them in WWII”
Good…..fucking……grief.
He was 11~!
You cant expect him to know better 😅
@@rammsteinrulz16 I doubt he was being self-deprecating or even ironic.
Assumptions like this,and there are many,are dangerous in the long run.
Ignorance is the enemy’s weapon.
You can't be "the leader of the free world" without doing some "freeing", stands to reason
@@Trebor74 Ypu also can't be a Leader of the Free world who's supporting Dictatorships across the globe, Unjustified Invasions, US Led Coup'd Etats, Mass War crimes against Humanity, etc
I remember that my father was in the army for six years in WWII and it was out of the country for four years in the Middle East. He actually left whilst the USA still had more than half a year left at peace and he returned in 1945 a month or two after VE Day. He therefore missed the entire spread of years in which the Americans were “rescuing” us. It is unnecessary for any US reader to remind me that the USA still had heavy and hard fighting left in the Pacific; I do come from a generation that learnt about the war which ended not too long before I was born.
|I once started a massive melt down on the chat in a online game, because an American told some one they needed to "go back to school and learn to spell, there is no U in armor" . I said that the British authorities were getting pretty sick and tired of the American abuse of our language, and the way they thought they could remove letters from words, like armour and colour and worse yet make letters silent that had no business being silent like the H in herb. After I allowed them to rant about that (joined by other Americans) I dropped in that the British were seriously considering revoking the Americans license to use English. It was incredible how many people thought I was serious!
Yanks will often believe anything (and everything) you tell them.
I lived in the US for a while, my eldest son attended school over there... He hated it, he was well ahead of every one and was bored, until it came to English. His English teacher kept downgrading him for his spelling. (He was previously schooled in England). I went in and she gave me such attitude, the American way of spelling is proper English, I told her to go to England and try that... His history lessons he started to have trouble with as in the USA school he was taught a completely different version of the history books he previously had. In the end I gave him the option, US or England, we left back to England, never been back and never want to. I just found living there myself was hard, there wasn't the friendliness, caring and be good to each other attitude. So much discrimination, so much racism and the health care insurance scam is shocking...
If only it was that easy for natives to just leave.
The teaching is usually not to good here in the US. It’s really a shame since we could be so much better than we are.
@@MugenHeadNinja I work in the NHS (UK National Health Service) and an American friend of mine is the nurse in charge of foreign recruitment for our operating theatres and she said the applications from American nurses has jumped by 700% in the past 8 years. A huge jump occurred after the Roe Vs Wade reversal.
15:31
I agree that it is, not selfish but perhaps very self-centered. When you are among people from other countries, and somebody asks where you are from, just mention the country. It is enough. Not everyone in the world know the names of states in the US. When they ask further questions, like where in the US are you from, then you can go to details.
@@MugenHeadNinja oh your not a career victim are you! Ffs her comment is her experience nobody alive today had anything to do with whatever went on all over the planet! Get over it and move on! It’s so old now and pathetic!
Back in 2018 I had an American 'internet friend' come and stop over for a visit where I live in England, prior to commencing an around Europe trip. Whilst showing her around my home city of Lincoln she was amazed to see so many George Cross' (the flag of England for those that might not know) flying everywhere during what was the then World Cup. After seemingly pondering this for some minutes whilst we were walking about she turned to me and said.. ''I'm surprised, there are all these flags flying here and not one of them is the stars and stripes, that's not right, you see them all the time back home''.
The next stop for us was the pub, because I very much needed a drink.
Don't just stop there. What did you tell her? Did you try to explain? Did she have a surprised pikachu face?
@@Em-ih5du Of course I explained it, but that would somewhat kill the anecdote. Needless to say it was all resolved with humour, however, I confess it momentarily boggled my mind.
Should have brought her up to Scotland,see Saltire flags, they don't have a clue..
Stupid is as stupid is..
So sorry for your friend. But the only visitor we get different flags out for is the Queen. :)
🤦
I seriously had it out with a woman on Twitter who was pissed that I told her the rest of the world laughs when they hear Americans call the president "the leader of the free world". She was insistent that they do and demanded to know if I've ever actually been to any other countries. "Ummm, yeah Karen, a lot of them."
I- We- Even America's allies don't do that. Ever. Have never. geez.
American for president is," leader of the free world "
English is, "totally complete and utter fucking loony with finger on nuclear button".
👏👏👏
We heard an American lady in a shop in Cologne Germany say to her husband - there are so many foreigners around here, she was shocked when my wife pointed out that she was the foreigner - much to the amusement of a few other nationals near by...
And still she was correct... as tourists bringing money and people living in a country without learning the language properly and adhering to local customs are completely different.
When I was Turkey, we went to a local, traditional pottery craftsman and his shop. There were maybe ten of us, from multiple different countries, and the potter asked us where we came from. So everybody is answering, Canada, France, Germany, etc, until one american girl names her State. We all collectively rolled our eyes and the potter looked at her straight in the eyes and said ''American!''
I've travelled around the world, and Americans almost always answer with their States. Listen, I don't know your states and I don't care to learn them either, you are not the center of the world!
Why not learn their states? That's knowledge.
But I agree, it would make more sense if an American answered e g. "Indiana, the US" or just "the US".
@@Finnec123 Acquiring knowledge is a good thing, of course; but the expectation many Americans have that people from other countries ought to know their states when said Americans could not hope to reciprocate that knowledge demonstrates a lack of awareness that is, frankly, bizarre. I've never met an Australian, Canadian or South African abroad who identifies by state/province, expecting people from other countries to know which country it's in!
@@Finnec123
Would an american know what I mean if I say I'm from Newfoundland or Yukon? Do americans know every single province/state of all European countries? Why should they expect the world to bow down to them?
@@anserbauer309
So you're saying that you want to be as ignorant as those Americans?
@@howlingbeast3x6
What part of my comment didn't you understand?
We’re from Scotland. My teenage daughter was in Alabama she went into a school. The kids asked her so many dumb questions but one of the dumbest was - have you got TV in Scotland. Imagine their reaction when she said “Scotland invented television “ 😂
Also the telephone .
@@robertclark2253 Also pneumatic tyre, bicycle, MRI scanner, logarithms, mammal cloning, penicillin, refrigerator, condensing steam engine, vacuum flask, Encyclopaedia Britannica, hypodermic needle, macadamised roads, ATM & Pin, Maxwell - 3rd greatest physicist of all time.
We gave Americans a tea towel listing the dozens of things Scotland has invented/discovered 🏴👍
@willswomble7274 that's interesting on the ATM and PIN. New Zealand had that facility way before the UK...or at least I saw chip & PIN in NZ before I saw it here in the UK.
In the early days of internet chat (late 1990's), I often encountered incredible ignorance from Americans regarding Scotland. Many held the perception that the UK and England are the same thing, and Scotland is a hilly area in England. I was once asked whether we had seasons. I also know of a guy who was asked whether we had cars. No, we still get around on horseback. 🙄
I used to work at a big tourist place here in Germany. I'm a state-certified translator for English so I guess my command of English is pretty decent.
An American couple (super friendly, really) asked me where I was from. I said "oh, I'm actually from around here, born and raised", the lady goes "But where did you learn to speak English so well?" I say "well they teach it at school here and later i studied at university" and she says "oh, i thought they'd teach German in schools here"
And I've not figured out her thought process to this day. It's baffled me for 6 years so far.
I “think” I understand what she was thinking. We teach “English” courses in school which are grammar and writing centric. She was more than likely thinking along those lines instead of learning a foreign language which is generally taught in our high school systems.
@@thewhiskyscout1238 well, we have German classes, too, for grammar, writing, essays and so on... it still felt like she got something really wrong there
It felt like she thought that maybe I didn't speak German, hehe
@@thewhiskyscout1238 The American woman asked where Budgies learned to speak English... which means learned as in a foreign language. So it does imply that when she went on to refer to teaching German she meant teaching it as another language rather than teaching grammar. A bit like the stories we hear about US tourists being amazed that dogs in Germany understand commands in German, as though all dogs are born understanding English but have to be taught another language.
Actually the first time I went to Germany as an exchange student I do remember being asked, when I got back to the UK, if I had had any problems with the language. I replied that I didn't dare because there were all these small German children wandering around and they spoke German all the time so if a two-year-old could do it I didn't like to admit that I couldn't. Fortunately I'm British so everyone knew I was just poking fun at myself. 🙃
@Kimi Timoskainen Surely in the US they teach Murican and not English?
@@colinp2238 No, they teach English. They must, why else would so many Americans compliment Brits on their excellent English and ask, where they learned it....
While living in the US I was asked the question about what we (UK) did for Thanksgiving. I explained that while we didn’t celebrate it, we were nonetheless very grateful for the reasons behind it.
The other memorable question I was asked was “In England, do you have black people?”. I explained that it was made illegal to be black in public in 1896 but that in these more enlightened times if you bought an annual licence you were allowed to be black.
Saying these things deadpan produced thoughtful nods on both occasions.
Love it!
I once told an American girl that if you didn't like your astrological sign, in the U.K.you can change it by signing a form at the town hall.....
Oh brilliant
?
@@nektekket852 Wow! I'll be using that from now on. 🤣🤣
When an American asked a Syrian friend who was Christian if they converted when they came to America. And my friend said no they were always Christian. Oh, your parents converted. The American asked "No" my friend replied "My family was always Christian" "Really, for how long?" he was asked "Two thousand years" he replied
My friend asked me later if Americans didn't know what region Christianity originated. I could only reply "I think many of them assume it was in America"
That’s when Jesus came to lil ol’ us of a and founded the Mormon religion. He lived in a condo in Salt Lake City, Utah.
😂
Well.... The bible is in English, duh
I can't help thinking that the guy who was confused by European history continuing after the establishment of the US, hadn't quite grasped that history. In saying, 'when we rescued them in WW2' he clearly has a prejudice view of his own countries history, and such a phrase suggests he still has something of the same mindset as when he was ten years old.
Yes. That comment of his made me wince.
@@andyt8216 Especially as they joined in Dec 1941 a full two years after Europe had been struggling against Nazi Germany. The US had profited very well in those two years, selling arms and equipment.
I was writing the exact same thing then thought why bother the American view of WWII is based on the Hollywood versions, it’s tiresome hearing it from Americans
anyway, i am pretty sure they were paid to turn up so they were mercs. and it was of strategic benefit to fight a war on someone else's soil, especially if you are going to get paid to do it. its was a win-win for the US
Britain didn't need rescuing.
Well, for Europeans, the thing is, when you ask someone "where are you from?" you are generally expected to say the country, not the state! Not everyone knows the American states, if you said something like, I dunno "I'm from Virginia" a few years ago to me, I'd literally not know where that was? as in, where *that country* is
and god forbid an American says "I'm from Georgia" to a European, considering the *actual country of Georgia*
Yeah, literally every1 not American, not just Europeans, when asking "where are u from?" means which country! If we give a damn about their state/city, we will ask a follow-up.
On the positive side, its a pretty good way to weed out, which Americans are worth ur time, with a few follow-up questions u can find out pretty quick, if theyre the clueless, selfabsorbed sort, that will sooner or later (usually sooner) stop being funny in their ignorance and selfcenteredness and become just plain insulting. In which case u might as well find a polite excuse and move on!
You might be shocked at how many Europeans think I mean the US state of Georgia when I tell them I live in Georgia (I actually live in Tbilisi). The crazy thing is, I meet them online, and I'm one or two hours away from them by time zone, and they STILL think Georgia in the United States.
@@theskintexpat-themightygreegor georgia isnt a country a lot of people are familiar with, not sure why but the only times i hear it mentioned is conversations like this or jokes about people with the same name as the country
we dont say "im european" we say "im german" or whatever. they should say their state. america is a continent spaning nation, so we should know from where on the continent they come from. ritgh now, we are dissrespecting their history, not accknowlaging the american states, as the nations they where meant to be ( thats americas fault for not maing them nations, but still)
@@eirikarnesen9691 ... Sigh, so... have you heard about Russia, Canada, and China? I wonder what states people say they are from in those countries, I wonder indeed...
The point here is, America is "big" sure, but China is larger, and has way more people, but they still say they are from China, not any specific region
I’m British. Visiting America I was asked “Do you have a 4th of July in England?”
The only answer I could give was “No. we skip from the third of July to the fifth.”
Lol, how did they respond?
Lol that's brilliant 😂
HAAAAAAAA fkin belter good on ye , they probably didn't get the sarcastic joke tho. What part of Britain because Britain is an algimation of 4 separate individual countries Scotland northern Ireland Wales and England, me I'm British aye but I'm Scottish a scotsman from the country of Scotland
@@jimmyboynottknown7713 Technically, Britain is three countries. The UK is four.
@@Crusty_Camper but the Americans education system lack of has taught them that its apparently just england and London is the only city
From one American to all the Americans traveling abroad, stop looking for the American flag in other countries and stop carrying the attitude of American superiority with you everywhere you go. The rest of the world does not have to bend a knee to America or you.
The secondhand embarrassment I've felt from hearing stories of other Americans acting up in other countries, behaving like entitled trash just makes me so disappointed in my fellow countrymen.
Our education system is partly to blame for the ignorance, we only learn one way and it's the way our government approves of and social media like tik tok has only been making the population here dumber and more irrational than they were just ten short years ago.
It takes a strong minded American with good knowledge to admit the truth about a lot of their American colleagues. 👍
Thank you for that, didn’t want to say it
Indoctrination. All countries do it through their education system.
Lovely British names thank you. 👍🏼🇬🇧🇬🇧✌️🍺🍺🇬🇧🇬🇧☝️
Dude as a brit I whenever I travel, I walk in the trail of the booze fuelled destruction of my fellow countrymen, the pain is real LOL
If you don't think it's odd for Americans to say, "I'm from Indiana" and expect everyone to know it's in the United States, imagine meeting someone who says, "I'm from Maniema" and expects you to know what country it's in.
Stand-by. I'll have to google that one. Thank-you, now I know.
I get why that part was dismissed, she did make it sound like it had been established beforehand that the people were American. But I’ve been through several of those conversations and know the majority answer with the state name before ever it being clear they are Americans. And god help you if you’re chatting by text, they will send you the abbreviation of the state with no clue of what country they are from. (Well, the clue is usually two capital letters in answer to « where are you from » Americans are pretty much the only people to assume that is a normal response when getting to know people internationally)
@@juliepandora I think a lot don’t even know there is a world outside their phones, let alone ‘Merica.
Maniema Congo 🇨🇩❤️
I am from Nordrhein-Westfalen! Hope you know it!
I know someone who’s first job was guiding tourists around Lincoln Cathedral in England. She was asked by an American visitor if Lincoln Cathedral was named after Abraham Lincoln😂
My two favourite anecdotes were when my friend went to the states for the first time. A woman asked him if Australia has American dollars for currency. My most favourite one of all was when I was travelling in former Yugoslavia and a couple of people from the states behind me on the bus said “do you know why it’s so beautiful here? They’ve never had any wars here“ the funniest shit I’ve ever heard
"No wars here". LMAO. The wars kinda shaped the modern balkans, and it goes back a millenia. My grandfather was even stationed as a national guardsman just prior to WW2 there.
sarajevo 1914 :D
I hope it was sacarms or a internal joke
And most of wars in the balkans are America's fault 😂😂
The best one I have heard is when an American found out that Germany were 6 hours ahead of New York Time wise. The American said and I quote "Why didn't Germany tell us that 9/11 was gonna happen if they are 6 hours ahead of us. All I can say is WOW
The correct answer would be: we did tell you, but you couldn't be bothered to take a call this early ^^
@@brag0001 Perfect response! As an Australian I've been asked for the lotto numbers - our clocks are even further "ahead".
@@A_nony_mous 🤣
I once was in a group chat where some girl posted "Is there really such a place as Nigeria? That sounds racist."
I replied, gee if only there was some way to find that out if it is a real place. Like some amazing system you could type in "Nigeria" and see what happens. That would be awesome. Why doesnt someone invent such a magical system. Silence after that.
"I want to make sure that I am not around foreigners"
My answer:
"Don't worry Sir, I can assure you, that there will be only locals" 😉
Not an American, but when I studied in Japan(I’m Norwegian), my Russian friend came to me after 3 months of university and asked me to teach her world history because she noticed she had been taught a very bias worldview. I respect her to this day.
I second that. History class in Russia (both 'Russian History' and 'World's History') is very saturated with information, that in fact, people are given so much of it, that they can't see a bit of lies and bias here and there. But, I feel like this problem is very common in a lot of countries. I graduated school in Ukraine and had the same problem with history there. I know so much about history of France and UK, but can't trust half of the history of my own country. It's bizzare...
@@elrennot у вас фашисткая история, вы бандеру славите. все ещё уверена, что ваша история норм?
то была либерда тупая.
50-70% of Russian History curriculum is USSR curriculum. What I remember distinctly is that studying history you became proud of Empire, USSR and RF, despite them being very very different.
(Empire was good, but then revolution happened civil var killed a lot of people, bolsheviks won and that was good)
@@elrennot Typical russian propaganda, even in school, nothing new.
I had a summer job working in a hotel in Germany back in the 80's. An American guest complimented me on my English, I smiled and said that I was from the U.K. just working at the hotel for the summer. They replied that not withstanding, my English was very good, almost fluent!
I am born and bred English, I can trace my family back at least 400 years and when I have visited America I have often been asked where I am from. I of course said I was from England and I have been accused of lying on multiple occasions because I didn't sound English (many Americans seem to think we sound posh like Stephen Fry or have a thick cockney accent like Danny Dyer). I have showed my passport on many occasions and been told again I'm a liar because my passport says "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
I have even had several girls accuse me of putting on a bad English accent to pick them up!
I must say this was mostly in the big cities, the more rural areas were polite and in my experience didn't live up to the stereotype of of being full of ignorant people. The south of the country was especially polite.
Where are you from in England?
@@mdx7460
England is as specific an answer as I will be giving.
@@laughingachilles don’t worry, wasn’t about to come find you. Just wondered what accent people were confused by.
@@mdx7460 he's lying, he's Canadian
I've noticed 5he same thing too as truck, or I guess lorry for you, driver. The coasts are the worst, and the more you go towards the center of the country the people are nicer and things, generally are better. The south is also nice , in stark contrast to the stereotype, and the southwest is truly unique. Long story short, if you wish to see the remnants of what America used to be avoid the coasts and most of the major cities.
On my first trip to America, I was sitting with a group of friends from the UK in a conference. At the beginning of the session, everyone stood up, hand on heart and sang "oh say can you see... etc." We stopped speaking as a matter of respect, but stayed seated. After they finished singing, two ladies rounded on us and asked if we were some kind of communists for not pledging allegiance. We tried to explain that the USA was not our country and that we didn't even know the words. Eventually someone intervened and told them that they needed to start the session. They still didn't get it though.
Very disrespectful not to stand for a National Anthem. You don’t have to sing but I would NEVER sit down for anyone’s Anthem
@@annettewalter2273 Really? 🤣
@@zahgurim7838 absolutely. The way I was brought up. Respect, good manners and being polite. Those 3 things we were taught from a very young age.
@@annettewalter2273 Okay. And this makes you stand up WHENEVER somebody sings a national anthem, even if you don't understand the language, meaning or don't know the country?
@@annettewalter2273
Diffrence is:
People from other countries doesnt care about the national anthem nearly as much usa care about thiers...
I dont even know the words nor do i remember the last time i heard it (not even on our national day)
A few years ago I was hired by an American guy (I'm in Australia) as a camera operator, to help him do a vlog" expose" about how rude Australians are. We tend to call it like we see it. I followed the guy around, filming. He would do things like hire a convertible, race through school zones (where the speed limit is 40km/hr when children are arriving or leaving) at 180km/hr, calling random people fat, stupid etc, cussing out homeless people, all sorts of things. He had no clue that when people called him a d*ckhead they were reacting to his bad attitude. He thought that since he came from America, the greatest country in the world, that the world owed him respect. Dear reader, he did not get any.
If he endangered the kids(driving way too fast), you should have called the police on him!!
For the woman who thought it was selfish to be told Indiana and not the United States, I think what she means is it's selfish to assume by mentioning a state, people outside the US are automatically going to know the states of the US and therefore know the person who said Indiana, is from the US. Whereas how many people in the US would know the different states or provinces of other countries. For example, if someone said they were from Noord-Brabant instead of just saying, I'm from the Netherlands : D
I was thinking exactly this. No American will know what we are talking about if we do that xD "Where are you from?" "Yeah I'm from Friesland".
As someone from northern England, i used to deal with a lot of post from people in London area in southern England. It forever made me think how arrogant they were because they would nearly always provide minimum addresses that consisted of just a street name like 'bridge street' and part of the postal sector like 'N2' . They just assumed we'd know where that was because it was London. Sure enough we did, because no one else in the country would be that lazy or arrogant to assume their address was that unique.
@@redf7209 all of them? Half of them?
@@YasashikuT That's where my father and his ancestors are from ❤
I am from European union
As a Brit (Scottish), something that really annoys me is websites that only offer the translation option "US English". If you don't want to offer 'UK' or 'British' English, fine but at least give us the option of 'Proper English' with the correct spelling and grammar. Just saying 🤣
They are selling early learning aids for kids now with American terms like Ladybug and calling it 'English'
Just "English" and "Colonial English" perhaps? 😂
@@nektekket852 Best comment EVER.
English (Traditional🇬🇧) and English (Simplified🇺🇸). 😀😀
@@alisoncramer1481 underrated comment 👍
Years ago, a friend of mine had the opportunity to go on a Student Teacher Exchange to America. She told me, on the wall of her classroom hung a huge map, showing America in all her glory. Above the map, in beautiful cursive writing it said ...
Map of the World :)
Just... wow. 🙄
Well, that explains a lot.
It was a bit arrogant for them to assume that someone would know they were American just from talking to them. Most Americans can't tell the difference between a US and a Canadian accent. They usually can't even tell the difference between a British and Australian accent, which is far easier - or recognise anything other than RP as being British at all. What makes you think that someone who doesn't even have English as a first language (and that girl, whilst able to make herself understood, clearly did not speak English fluently - let alone as a first language) would be able to identify accents?
Your American arrogance was showing there. If a foreigner, whist in a foreign country, asks where you're from they mean WHAT COUNTRY. If they already know you're American then they'll say 'where in America are you from'.
Thought the same.
If I meet someone in let's say Italy and they asked where I was from I wouldn't answer with North Rhine-Westphalia, which is the German state I currently live in. I would simply answer Germany as that is someone a lot more people know and allows one to askfor more precise Info without having to feel stupid because they just might not know the state you named. Hell I knew Washington DC was a city but it was only called Washington in school and I was super confused when I first heard someone talk about the state of Washington. I was like "wait you have a whole state as your capital?" yeah not my brightest moment sure but I was like 12 or so and US geography was not something I was taught at that age, it came a few years later...
You shouldn't just assume that everyone knows the States of your country even IF they can recognise you are from a certain country.
@@titaniaxixi4346 Do most Americans know what the DC stands for?
@@iriscollins7583 as someone born and raised in germany who never even visited america I can't answer your question. Maybe ask any American in the comments ;)
Most Americans cant even hear the difference between German and Dutch ... That girl you talk about could tone down a little bit of the sass she is having there, eventhough im European, Belgian, it's a common thing world wide to say where you from in the form of country or state ( in case of America that is ) Imagin us saying " yeah im from europe " well woopty fucking do, there is 44 countries in Europe, go figure out wich one im from ... no, i say " yeah im from Belgium " there, easy and normal. Same goes for America, yeah 50 states, enjoy figuring out where im from ... The only " easy " english accents over here that you can recognise is due to films and shit, you got the posh british accent, the thick german accent, the singing italian accent, good luck figuring out if someone is from Belgium or The Netherlands when both speak the same language but different accent/dialects. She KNEW they were American, go figure why it's a common thing to say which state they were from when asked.
Most Americans will be more accustomed to traveling within their own country since it is so massive and so isolated geographically from other countries. To give them the benefit of the doubt, it might just be a force of habit. There are also lots of people who would be offended that the word "American" is being used in the context of a nationality to begin with. If I say my state, many foreigners would go "how dare you!" and if I said my nationality in English, many foreigners would also say "how dare you!"
(I would usually ask them what they mean, but sometimes I just say "New York" out of habit. I haven't come across anyone internationally who is offended by this answer, but they could just be seething with rage on the inside and not letting their deep-seated hatred for my countrymen show)
To be honest, it's quite tiring, which is counterproductive to traveling while on vacation. I am an American of Chinese descent. I already get some hate inside my country, I'd rather not get hate outside of it, too.
I'm English and have visited the US. I found it hilarious when my American friend was irritated one day by Mexicans speaking Spanish. She said "why can't they speak American instead of Mexican?" Lol. I just smiled.
I was sitting at a poker table in Vegas. To my left two guys where having a conversation. After a while an American across the table asked "What language are you guys speaking". "English?" they said. The American looked puzzled and asked "but what country are you from?". I really had to focus hard not to start laughing, the guys looked at him in total confusion before saying "err England".
I was on a Mediterranean cruise and the first stop was in Italy. We were having a meal in a restaurant when an argument broke out. It was an American couple complaining to the owners that they didn't take Dollars in payment!! It was funny watching everyone in the restaurant pissing themselves laughing apart from the two Americans.
Did they notice that everyone else was laughing at them?
My 1st time in Rome i got my Coloseum tour's ticket refunded cause an American went on a loooooong rant against the guide for saying how old the Coloseum was and he would not drop it. Acording to him nothing could be older than some town (i dont remember the name) in the US.
@@VRDejaVu - oh gawd...LOL!
I wish I could have been there!
I could have completely broken his entire world view in only a few mins, lol!
Where did he think Americans came from TO BEGIN WITH???
Or did they just spring magically into being one day? :P
That must have been a double face palm moment :P
Back in the 80s, my wife and I from Australia visited Hawaii and met a lovely US couple from one of the southern states. We were gobsmacked when they said that we spoke "real good American" as they thought Australians spoke French!
I bet she thought Australia is Austria... and in europe, everybody is supposed to speak french or something.
When I moved over to America from Ireland a girl asked me if I came here to learn English because I had a Dublin accent 🙃 🇮🇪
I remember seeing an interview with a college student whose college was hosting the World Double Dutch championship . She was hugely excited and told the interviewer how proud they were and what an honour it was to be hosting this event !!. After all , she said , " These are the WORLD Championships and we have teams here today from as far away as Ohio " . I kid you not . I was SO dumbstruck it is still clear in my mind after almost 40 years .
USA has many of these examples of 'world' events, where only they (and sometimes a few Canadians) are participating.
And then they ask "what's cricket?"
🤦♀️ What does she think the World is?
My dad was American, mum was British. After retiring they moved to England. Once when visiting the Potteries my parents were mixed in with a group of Americans going through the Wedgwood factory tour. My dad was so appalled at their behaviour that he wouldn't speak in their presence! He didn't want to be associated with them!
What's your point? That Americans can be badly behaved? Apart from the fact that that's not what this video is about, have you ever seen the behavior of Brits abroad?
@@mikelheron20 Americans definitely take the cake for being the most arrogant and worst behaved when they go overseas. Not all of them but a very high majority.
@@mikelheron20 American whataboutism.
@@GrandduchessAnastasia-ko5rg Thinks it must be Joe’s fault.
@@mikelheron20You sound absolutely triggered 😂 typical yank
When I go overseas, I don't go telling everyone I'm from New South Wales, unless I want them to get confused as to why I have an Aussie accent instead of a Welsh accent😅
There're two videos here that I want to touch on:
1) "I'm educated now" and then proceeds to claim that "we rescued Europe in WW2" (the he.. you did!)
2) The couple who was asked where they're from and answering with the state rather than country. That's like me, a European, going to Australia, answering that I'm from Jutland and expecting them to know in which specific country this is a region. 🤦♀️
The common thread in these two statements is arrogance. The suggestion of the US as the almighty savior and the assumption that everyone knows the location of different parts of a country that isn't theirs, that's what is giving *US citizens* the reputation of being arrogant (and the use of "America" and "American" about a specific nationality when that litterally applies to every other country in the American continents as well).
Through my work with Red Cross Youth I've met people from India, Nepal, Zambia, South Africa, Iran, USA, Mexico, Brazil and many more and I can honestly say that only the ones from the US displayed this kind of "superiority" so I'm saying this based on personal experience as opposed to just prejudice. 🤷♀️
"as opposedtojust prejudice", I like that. That's funny.
@@johnhaye1822 Let me take a guess, you're american.
I love the story about the one who did not want to be among foreigners when traveling outside the US, and the young lady's "advice" back to go to Florida.
As for the immigration thing... when I was younger I spent a month in California and Arizona. I loved the trip, but I had one embarrassing moment, when I realized that an otherwise nice couple from LA, had in their mind (I don't know why) the idea that I was interested in staying there, even offered to help me find a job, and I had to make it clear that I was in the US as a tourist only, and that I didn't have the slightest intention to immigrate. Sorry, we Euuropeans usually are perfectly happy on our side of the ocean, even if we like visiting other parts of the world.
It would be very hard to avoid immigants being a tourist, must have an aneurysm looking in the mirror in the morning.
Another funny thing to consider with the 'don't want to be around foreigners' is that they themselves would be the foreigner. So I guess have them in a nice rural area full of locals where the other foreign tourists don't go. ;)
I was screaming "Lady, YOU are the foreigner"
The last time I was in LA, I was in the company American and Canadian citizens who had permanently moved to my country, and they had it easy convincing other rich Americans to buy properties and move there too... The possibility that my boyfriend and I might be interested in moving to the US wasn't even mentioned: it was the opposite way around. And we were staying in a huge mansion in Beverly Hills... LOL
This thing about Americans saying their state for the question "where are you from" is a real weird thing, and even though, Eclectic Beard, you are clearly a very smart guy, this is a normalized part of who you are because after all you're American. That's why you might not agree or empathize much with the criticism. The problem is everybody knows that when one is abroad and someone asks where they're from, they mean to ask the country. Everybody answers from which country they come from. Americans are the only ones who say their state. And that is exactly where the trick is. Americans are so used to the idea that they are the best country, that everybody knows their History and of its greatness, that they comand the world, and all this ideas make them feel comfortable about being more specif than only saying the country. it's like, "of course I'm an American, everybody knows that! Look at me! if someone asks where I'm from they must be asking where I'm from IN America", as if America was the world. I'm not saying that everybody who does that thinks like that. But many people end up internalizing these social cultural behaviors.
I suspect North Koreans might do the same.
You forgot when they answer the origin of their ancestry with percentages.
@@WaddleQwacker HAHAHAHAHAHA
Imagine a Brazilian saying to an American "I'm from Sergipe". I can only imagine their follow-up questions.
English is definitely the most spoken language in the world. It does not have the most native speakers, but that is a different question - it is still the most widely spoken. Around 1.13 billion with Mandarin very close at around 1.11 billion. Spanish is 0.53 billion.
Yeah it wasn't really relative to what she said. It was that the uncle thought the only reason to learn English was for America... Amazingly dumb.
basically english is a common global language, like esperanto was supposed to be
I think he was commenting on what eclectic beard said about the most spoken language
English i about 1.3 - but I have heard up to 2 billion when you take into account pidgins and people who can just about get by in the language.
@Hronis Kostopoulos And English also has a lot of words from other languages, especially French, Latin and Greek.
I was part of one of the biggest online worlds some years ago and we had several Americans in the group i was in. Often i had to listen to how USA invented everything. I had to one day tell a man in his 30´s, that Americans did not invent the car and the train and he literally broke down and had to take a few days break before he came back...When he did come back he told me he could not believe it at the time, and had to look it up to make sure i did not mess around with him. Points i guess for him to look it up afterwards..You should have seen/heard him later on when he also realized how young America is compared to the rest of the world....it was both kind of funny and sad at the same time and that´s usually how many conversations have gone...
You should have told him a Brit invented the internet and watched as he had a full fake crying meltdown
@@JH-fv1gq lol i should have, but his breakdown and shock was quite real which in a way was a bit shocking for me at the time...but i guess it´s all down to how people are tought...
@@JH-fv1gq
America invented the internet.
A Brit invented the address system to easily access it and even then it was an accidental byproduct of connecting colleagues in the Large Hadron Collider project at CERN
@@0utcastAussie But he came up with WWW, enabling the use of the internet. He could have patented it, but didn't, gave it to the World for free. Edison must have been crying, wherever he was. Sir, Berners-Lee, by the way.British.
@Buck Rothschild it would be indeed
I may have made this comment before, but your European style education has equipped you with a curiosity and desire to keep learning. Education should not be about testing and forgetting, rather learning how to learn (it should be regarded as a life skill). You are a credit to yourself, your parents and your country. Keep up the good work.
It's not just European educational style, the rest of the Americas has this way too. We are taught to think, to be curious, to love to learn more.
@@silviamunoz6863 apologies. Have been watching too much U.S.based content and fell into the USA=America trap. I am normally so pedantic on such matters. I need to take a break, perhaps. Thank you for pulling me up on this.
"Education" is what's left after everything that has been taught has been forgotten. The best teacher is a curious mind
@@silviamunoz6863I can't say the same for alot of people in Canada.
There is alot of apathetic learning here.
@bubba842 What a pity. No curiosity leads to ignorance. Ignorance makes people easy to believe in every lie diffused to control them. Like the well-known "country of freedom" 😅
Years ago I was playing world of warcraft with friends, also english, we needed an extra player for a raid. The guy who we invited turned out to be American, he joined our chat server and was asking where we are from, naturally we all answered England, what followed was this guy ranting about how much he hates England because we stole all of our cities names from America and gave the example of new york. At that point we gave him a history lesson, informing him that most cities in England are older than America. He wasn't very happy about that and ended up rage quitting.
On another note, even in primary school between ages of 4-11 I was learning about the ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks. It baffles me that the US don't teach much apart from American history.
Not enough time to tell him then where the "new" came from in New York/New Amsterdam, New Jersey or New Brunswick (the city, not the Canadian province …)
I've heard in one video about some american not knowing where New Mexico belongs to.
@@Cau_No I live in a city called Lancaster - in the UK... it baffles a lot of people in the US that the bridge I walk across into town is only 1 year younger than when the US was first recognised as a country (and the castle is a few centuries older than that... and the roman ruins are a good 1.5k years older). Still I think the US has 5 places called Lancaster? Can't hold a candle to the original :)
@@warailawildrunner5300 Yeah, when people visit my hometown, I like to show them the oldest street we have, next to the station chapel. It was laid out by the Romans.
That city is Cologne, about 2K years old, not counting the earlier germanic villages of that area we have relics of in the musem right next to that street. And with 'station chapel' I mean the Cathedral that is next to the main station and that museum. There's also an old Roman gate in front of it, that is, what's left of it. The whole city centre is full of Roman artifacts.
And then I went visiting a site in Ireland once that is double that old - Newgrange.
@@Cau_No have walked along that road in Köln, looks like a very nice city to live lots of history everywhere. Unfortunately only had the chance to look around for a day, but took a fair amount of photos of the place, the outside of the cathedral is impressive but no offence the inside of trier cathedral was better than inside Köln. Got the day courtesy of ryanair for cancelling our flight and the next flight being the morning after so they put us in the maritim hotel which was rather nice of them.
One of the state county capitals (Latah, Idaho) is called Moscow. The nerve of the damn Russians, stealing it for their own capital!! :D
I lived in Kentucky for nearly a year when I was a teenager, my first day at school and one of the teachers asked me where I was from, I said the UK...I shit you not the guy asked me "oh...would you like to tell everyone how to say hello in English".
Also, with reference to the bit in the vid about being told the location inside the US when being asked where you are from. How confused would an American get when I told them I was from Norfolk rather than the UK? there are a lot of places in the US that are named after places in other countries so it could get a little confusing for you guys.
LOL, some friends of mine live in Norfolk and once said that to an American online, who thought they meant Norfolk, Virginia and promptly fired endless questions at them about the US Naval base about which they knew absolutely nothing and he began to get quite irate at what he thought was deliberate BS on their part. At this point, I jumped into the conversation and said that my nephew was stationed at one of the Strategic NATO bases in Norfolk and the American began to calm down... until I said that my nephew was in the Royal Navy and was seconded there to teach the US Navy about some specialist topics. That naturally made him go ballistic as he was the sort of American who believes that no one else can teach them anything. We never got round to telling him that Norfolk, Va, takes its name from Norfolk, UK... the top of his skull might have blown off.
I live in a town called Hillsdale. In my travels as a truck driver I've encountered several different cities, all in different states, with the same name and spelling. The fact that some, not all, but some Americans just assume you know exactly what they're referring to is mind blowing .
I know there's a Richmond in Virginia, I know there's also one in the UK, but I was born in one of the three, yes three, Richmond's in Australia - Tasmania, New South Wales and Victoria all have places named Richmond. And I'm aware there's a Victoria in Canada, New South Wales is clearly derivative.
If you're travelling outside of your own country and you're asked where you're from the questioner wants your country.
@@A_nony_mous You forgot the Richmond in Queensland - so that's at least four!
It is actually really common for American to answer their states instead of their country when they are aboard. I live in Thailand and we do notice that a lot of American do not response that they are from the America or US but rather the state. It like people from Japan went to the US and said we are from Sendai.
I was in Salina Oklahoma visiting my Mum and a teenager in the store serving me heard our accents and asked "can you guys understand us?" I replied "yes, im from England and we invented English so I speak it just like you do." she didn't understand the point I was making hahaha. 😂
Haha, I visited the US a few years ago when I was still a teenager, and I remember the trauma of trying to order a glass of water. Ended up having to use "h20". We're definitely divided by our common language :p
Thats really funny tho, becuase im from Sweden and they never asked why i was so good at english. They allways asked where im from first because of accent ofc.
I wonder why it happens to UK and Australians so much but not to Nordic people. Hahahahaha
Oh course she didn't!
You missed a perfect "I'm sorry, I don't understand you, can you speak English?" Moment.
Hahaha. Ask a Frisian or and Angle
I've been asked what they do in England on the 4th July. They looked confused when I said "go to work." Same for Thanksgiving. Then it was "so do they celebrate Christmas in England?" Lol
I lived in America for 22 years and have now returned to the UK the most common question I was asked.,. So how do the British celebrate independence Day? My response would be the same way you celebrate the withdrawal from Vietnam !
I want to share a small story to this topic, which I found very funny (and sad): A met a guy a couple of years before, who lived in the US his whole life. His mother was german and he never got american citizenship. He married, got kids, got divorced and went bankrupt. He tried to rob a gas station, got caught and sentenced to 8 years in prison. After seven years he came out and the Obama- Administration set up a law during that time, that immigrants, which got criminal had to be deported to their home country. The day, he got out, he got deported to germany and his german mother in her late 80s followed him and he had to start a new life in Germany and is still here. Now the funny part: One day his kids visited him and were dumbstruck, when they realised that almost every church and many building were far older than the United States. He told afterwards that they couldnt wrap their head around this for whole time they were on visit and felt kind of intimidated of almost every piece of german history they learned during their time there. :)
I was in Atlanta, Georgia visiting my friend when she said she would take me down Governors Road as there were some really old house there, I am a UK citizen. I expect the paint is still wet on the Governors house.
Wow, what a story!
@@peterdurnien9084 great punch line matey 😄
I went to school in Japan at a military base, public school in America, boarding school, and a Christian private school. The best education I received was boarding school. It had a self study program. I still had to learn the basics of what all American school requires, but I was able to go beyond that and choose what I learned. I learned American history, but I got to learn world history in depth. I loved it. When I went to private school, no one knew who Nelson Mendela was or what the apartheid was when I mentioned it in cards against humanity. It was a card I played. I was born in the 90's.
I’m English and was with an English friend in Vegas. We were in an elevator talking and a girl asked us what language we were just talking to each other. We just looked at each other and started laughing. We have strong accents and when we talk at a regular speed to each other, Americans find it difficult to understand us so I do kind of understand why she asked.
I'm from the UK. My boyfriend's mum is American; his dad is British. They've lived here for several decades, and my boyf and his brother were born here. About 6 months into our currently 5 year relationship, my boyfriend said that when I meet his American fam, I will have to slow down my very fast speech with the majority of them. Also, I'll have to rein in my very, very, very sarcastic sense of humour because only about 20% of them will understand it (those that naturally have that sense of humour and those that have travelled abroad).
Yeah I used to work in a call center years ago. Ended up telling a customer to "Fuck right off, you absolute bellend". In my defense he was an absolute bellend. Surprisingly I didn't get fired but I left shortly afterwards because, as you can probably guess, I am not built for customer service.
For a short time, a long time ago, I worked in a call center and our client was a big U.S cell phone provider.
This chick called in because she explicitly refused insurance on her new phone and 3 months later she dropped it in a lake. She wanted an immediate replacement... of the next generation of Iphone, with more storage to make up for her "trauma". I stayed on the phone with her for 3 hours (and didn't get to take my break or lunch).
She let out a sob and said "You don't know how it feels to see your entire life sink to the bottom of a lake"
So I let out a sob and said "My entire family drowned in a boating accident. I was the only survivor".
It wasn't true, but it got her to hang up immediately. I didn't even get a goodbye!
@@b.w.6535 and Ben, centre please
Hello Ben,
I'm another call centre veteran, used to work for the national rail information service, boy did we get some real pearlers, and not all were American.
I remember speaking to an American lady who explained she was only in london for 24 hours, and could I recommend anywhere interesting to visit, I directed her to Hampton Court Palace. One of my colleagues had an irate american who was not happy that it took so long to travel to Ireland via Holyhead, they were even less impressed when told there were no direct services, and they needed to change at Holyhead, to which she replied what happens when I get to Holyhead. My colleague had a black belt in sarcasm, and he replied, well you run out of land at Holyhead, and if you don't change you'll get wet feet.
@@firstsurname7099 Sorry. I worked for another U.S employer for a decade and old habits die hard. For about the first year I was sending cheques out to Americans, and now I've spent the last year sending checks to Canadians.
Was it because his lack of the English language? Hmm maybe that is your DEFENCE, as we say in English not defense.
Lol as if someone from Spain would want a green card for the US… 😂😂😂
^ I've got a little place in spain, nice quiet place nearish the coast, about 30min walk to the beaches.
The atmosphere in Spain is on another level, its relaxing an chill, the idea of, work to live not live to work.
I'm heading back out there for another three weeks to do some work on the house an I love our neighbours, they've been teaching me how to speak spanish, since she's a teacher in the local high school.
I'd much rather live in Spain than in the US, one, the people actually give a crap about their area and two.. it costs like nothing to live out there. My bills in total are like 240 Euro's.. WTF!
I can go out to eat every day at nice places and spend barely 10 euro's for a really nice meal.
Then you have the bulveard, I've gotten lost like a dozen times in that place. This is Alicante, though our place is further away from the touresty areas an in the more spanish areas.
Why would someone from spain wanna green card for the US? when living in the US is beyond expensive compared to Spain.
ik right? im romanian but i wouldnt move to that stupid country even if i was paid for it lmao🤣
Given the fact that the spanish passport is the third powerfull in the world giving you visa free access to 190 countries while the us passport is number 7 with 186 counties. (Although those 4 countries are properbly countries you dont want to visit anyway 😂)
Are you sure? Lots of people to scam.😋
Not to mention the amount of people that asked me some of the most stupid questions about the UK and EU when I last went to the US.
I legit had a woman ask me how I became so fluent in English.. and I had previously told her I come from England. Her fiancé was facepalming..
Then he faired no better saying dear, they were tribes 300 years ago. I froze up in abject astonishment. How could I meet two of the typical stereotypical sorts?
They didn't even know where the UK was.
I've also had an American think the UK was a tropical island.. that made me depressed, I friggen wish.
As an African, it often amazes me that most Americans think that Africa is one country. Africa is a huge continent with over 50 countries!
That level of ignorance is appalling, which makes me wonder what they actually teach in American schools because by age 7, I already knew all the countries in the world along with their capital cities.
Then the most annoying one is most of the time when you speak to Americans the first thing they say is, "Oh your English is so good" Then I tell them, "But, we also speak english in our country."
I think the average American mind can't fathom the fact that English is spoken in other countries outside America or the fact that the average African speaks more than 2 or 3 languages fluently.
They do a similar thing to Asians, where most Americans assume that we are Chinese.
I wish it was compulsory in schools that they had to watch David Attenborough. At least they'd see that there's not only a different world out there but amazing animals and birds and sea creatures too. It would, at least, be a start.
In my own view, David Attenborough paired with Carl Sagan's Cosmos series. I'm pretty sure there was a healthy respect between the two for the other's work.
@@josefschiltz2192 David actually once said that he thinks space is boring. It was on the Johnathan Ross show.
@@liamfitzgerald7217 Ha ha! Well, I'm pretty sure a degree of respect between scientific specialists would be there! An entertaining transferral of smart comments anyway.
I remember I was on holiday in Florida with my family and when on a boat trip the guide asked each person where they came from and every one before me were from the USA when I spoke I said from Jersey, his immediate reply was” you don’t sound like you come from Jersey” and dismissed anything else I had to say not giving me the opportunity to say Jersey in the Channel Islands UK.
The problem with just giving your state, is that they may NOT realize you're from the United States. It would be the equivalent of someone from the UK saying they were from Essex. Say Indiana, USA and they for certain won't be confused. People also get confused because America names places things like Columbia, which is another country's name or famous cities like Athens, Rome and Paris, so it's not unreasonable for them to ask us to say we're from America, because we would prefer for them to name their Country.
If not 'selfish' it's at least weird. Ask a Russian where he's from, he'll immediately say Russia. He won't give out city or town names like Ufa, Perm, Samara or Krasnodar and expect you to get from those that he's from Russia. Same thing with Germans, Czechs, Australians etc.
In the second clip, usually the opposite is true. Usually website translations have the USA flag for English. Brazilian flag for Portuguese, and Mexican flag for Spanish are also used but less common. Annoys the hell out of everyone in UK/Portugal/Spain.
Amen to that!
And some websites list Brazilian as a language option. Newsflash, there's no such language, it's PORTUGUESE!
I had an American ask me if we could play some baseball or basketball instead of "soccer" in the bar I was working in. This was in France, during Euro 2016, the nerves on that guy haha, the Irish lads watching the match gave him a lot of shit for it.
During LiveAid the UK said "Feed the world" to which the US responded by saying "We are the world". Thanks for another great post.
I met a US marine in Helsinki a few years back, he was on shore leave.
He told me in no uncertain terms that the US would crush Finland in a war.
(Great to know buddy, you’re the best)
No idea why he said it but there you go 😅😅😅
He proceeded to insult my Kenyan friend but that’s a separate story…
Sounds like a sixth grade bully saying he can beat up a first grader. Well sure, he probably could, but is that something to boast about?
Yeah, not like you guys are one of the very few countries to have absolutely destroyed a full scale Russian invasion or anything...
@@brendanm6921 I agree that they would crush us, I just think that's a weird flex and also we're supposed to be friends 😂
"US would crush Finland in a war." - I wouldn't be too sure of that - Finland fought off Russia wen it invaded
@@Pippins666 They would but gladly we are long time friends 😅
When you ask someone where they are from, in an international setting, they answer with the country, because that's what the question is referring to. The only people who don't say which country they are from (and this is from personal experience, having lived in over 5 different countries and having met so many different people from all over) are:
1. People that were born in capital cities.
2. People from the USA, who will usually say "city, State".
Not everyone in the world knows the states of another completely different country, from the other side of the world. People tend to know because they are educated, but people from the USA aren't able to do the same for them...
Once, a guy from the USA answered this question with Georgia. We literally didn't bat an eye. We thought he was from Georgia, the country. After all, everybody HAD ANSWERED with their countries. In most international working spaces people can have very good English, so his accent wasn't even considered odd. It was only after he called a Polish person a Scandinavian that we heard alarm bells ringing in our heads and asked him "Wait, you're not Georgian, you're from the US?" to which the guy insisted he was from Georgia... The state.
I am quite liking these videos, brings back memories. I use to work in England for a US Air Force base about ten years back. I remember one time a plane came in and we had to go out and retrieve one of the crew to come back in and sign some paperwork. When I managed to find one, they refused to get off the plane because they thought there was a realistic risk of them catching small pox. I had to stand on a plane and explain to this young American that the UN world health organisation did a global vaccine in the 1970s and by 1980 it became officially extinct. She kind of just gave this embarrassed giggle.
Hey there were you at Mildenhall/lakenheath?
At least she believed in smallpox.
Now it would be monkey pox or polio
@@MrDunkycraig I was at Lakenheath from 1984 to 1987. When I was outprocessing to leave, the guy behind me in line asked where I was going next. I told him Cannon, AFB, New Mexico. He responded with, "Oh... a consecutive overseas tour, huh?" I'm originally from Ohio, and even I knew that NM was between Texas and Arizona.
And the small pox vaccination was discovered by British physician Edward Jenner.
The one that always makes me giggle is when US Tech people call imperial measurements 'Freedom Units'. I mean they’re literally a remnant from your former colonial history, that even your former Colonial rulers have abandoned 🤦
Actually that's wrong. As a Brit we use metric and imperial.
@@Trebor74 yeah and that's weird just choose dude lmao
@@flextape7323 we're not American,were intelligent enough to use both
@@Trebor74 You're letting the side down mate and confusing your children. It's nothing to do with the EU, there's no shame in going fully metric.
We will never abandon the pint (because it gives us 67 ml more alcohol than the replacement, a 1/2 litre glass, would).
During the Costa Rica one, I was thinking, "You don't have to worry about being around foreigners, because when you're in Costa Rica, you'll be the foreigner." Also I loved taking AP European History in high school. That's where I learned my favorite word in the English language: defenestration.
The word "défenestration" come from french language....LOL
@@melissacourchesne2121 Which in turn comes from Latin.
@@melissacourchesne2121 fenetre is French. Defenestration is English. Try using the word in France, like the word encore at the end of a concert, not used in France.
@@handlesarefeckinstupid Encore is used in France, not in that specific way anymore. Défenestration is absolutely used, just not in your everyday conversation, unless you work at Carglass.
Cringed at the guy who called himself educated then said "we rescued them in WW2". YOU ARE NOT EDUCATED, YOU ARE AMERICAN. THERE IS A DIFFERENCE
that was a joke...
Oh come on, he was being sarcastic - pointing out how he used to think! Like our history ended when the US was founded and then the next thing he heard about European history was how they 'saved our asses' in WWII.
Many Americans still think that and he's clearly pointing out how ignorant it was 😳😅 come on man.
@@iemand2612 It's always funny when people completely fail to understand something and then make out like someone else is stupid lol and at least 27 other people also didn't understand and liked his comment 😅🤦♀️
that's the biggest lie, in the states, about WW2... "we rescued them in WW2"
@@spyro257 To be fair they did crack the enigma code, I know this because I saw it in a Hollywood movie, so it has to be true.
I am a gamer in europe and I play a lot of games with people all over the world. It is. .so odd to me how often Americans gets shocked it is not "american time" in other places in the world. They happily want me to START to game with them 5 am my time. Tell them what time it would be for me they are always surprised! (they still somehow. .want me to do it at 5 am.. takes about 3 hours for them to forget it, like a slow goldfish!. And so it repeats. .lol. Ask them to start anything 5 am their time and they faint! It is like they don't really believe it is five am here.
You wouldn't believe how many get confused, or simply don't believe me when I tell them it's Saturday and Winter in Australia when it's Friday in the Summer in the US!
It's strange considering that the "lower 48" states span four time zones. Have they never noticed that local times vary when they watch satellite TV?
Just because I'm boring and I want to kill your comparison, the memory of a goldfish is pretty good, lasting for at least a couple of weeks.
So we can turn it around and say that your friends have *worse* memories than goldfish!
@@mulrich watching SciManDan? 😉
I found it even more surprising than the OP here - I ran an Everquest 1 international guild and found that the only people who wouldn't automatically reference time zones were the Americans despite them being the only people in the guild whose country has 4 mainland time zones - so you'd assume they are used to this. When I pointed this out to one of them he argued they only had three time zones. He'd forgotten mountain time even existed.
Some years ago an American girl who was working in the company i was contracting at asked me - "Don't you think that you foreigners have been in Britain long enough?". To say that this was an AMAZINGLY stupid and racist question was an understatement, but, i played along. I replied - "What exactly do you mean, by long enough". Feeling confident she got into her stride - "Well, from what I've read you foreigners have be n here since the 1950s". I smiled as i was about to give her a 'wog' history lesson and it went thus -
(1) Asians and Africans were trading with Britain many centuries before the Romans invaded Britain in 126AD.
(2) Asians and Blacks settled in Britain long before the Romans invaded - Emperor Hadrians chronicler wrote - "There are Asiatic and African people who have settled in this land as traders".
(3) In the Domesday Book the Mayor of Yorkshire is named Bhutt and his racial origin is stated as Indian and the Domesday Book was compiled in 1085. When you add Hadrians Chroniclers details and the Domesday Book then Asians and Blacks have been over here for over 2000 years.
(4) You so-called Americans have only been in America for 350 years and you've accounted for the extermination of 25m Native Americans - the Asians and Blacks of Britain have been here for over 2000 years and in ALL that time we haven't exterminated ANYONE!!.
We may have played a lot of cricket and opened many Curry Houses in the 2000 plus years we've been here, but, we DEFINITELY haven't exterminated ANYONE!!.
For some strange reason she went quiet and got on with her work - it's nice to teach an idiot the facts.
The whole "I'm from Indiana" thing. Think of it this way. If I told you I'm from Pohjois-Savo. Would you know what country I'm from? That would be the equivalent of someone telling the state they are from to someone that has no idea about US geography. They just presume that we all know the states. I personally understand that you are from US if you say the state, but I couldn't list all 50 from the top of my head. Some people have no idea what the state names are
I could name a fair few, but would a Yank be able to name the 17 autonomous regions of Spain? The counties of England? Of course not. Most of them don't even understand that Scotland and Wales are countries in their own right. My father once got asked in Edinburgh 'Dude, what is that Blue flag we keep seeing everywhere?' Imagine if I went to America and asked 'What is that stripey thing with the stars on it?' So it is arrogance.
@@hogwashmcturnip8930 I'm wondering how many Americans could name _any_ of the States and Territories of Australia or the Provinces of South Africa or Canada? If I introduce myself to a Yank as being from Victoria, how many would even have a clue which hemisphere to look for it in?
I always just say I'm from London. Unfortunately nobody can understand my accent.
I would 😂 But I don't know about US states
On the subject of English…English and American…English. In a Hotel Lobby in Prague my mum and I encountered a group of septics blocking the way to the lift and stairs. The group was babbling away in American English….catching on to this I spoke in a load voice using English English “ excuse me please… we’d like to get to the lift please …thank you “ the group look at me in a slightly disconcerting way but did not move, I repeated the request but alas…no go! Loosing my Savoir-fair just a little I said “thank you!!! just so you can stay standing here like a colony of Emperor penguins… we’ll go outside, round the back and use the fire escape to get to our rooms “ the Czech receptionist got their tour guide to move them outside thus preventing an international incident. Love from UK(no need to mention I live in Suffolk…..me thinks…)
Another Suffolk here! " . . standing here like a colony of Emperor penguins . . " I love that! Just my sort of humour.
The girl from Columbia didn't say that she knew that they were Americans - she mentioned that as the integral part of the telling of her story.
Her native tongue isn't English ( though it is pretty articulate) so she naturally could conceive of the people in question being either American, Canadian, English, Australian.
Plus many Europeans spoken English is exceptional in comparison to many native speakers.
So yes she wanted to know the Country.
One of the best lines that I heard when l lived in the US : A man say to a Japanese guy, ' You speak English good.'
To which he received the reply ' No, l speak it well.'
Kudos amigo 😆
Man this is the third video of yours that I have seen and I just love your laugh!!! It’s so hearty(I hope I’m using that right)! As a language nerd the funniest observation I’ve made about is that in the US you spell the opposite of attack as defense and not defence. To understand why this is funny because how this word is come up with is of a French model for example defenestration; the act of throwing somebody out of a window because de = out and fenestration from fenettre, french for window. Defence comes from when you are in your castle defending it you are actually throwing the foes over the fence. Why is this funny because even though you spell defense with an s you still spell fence with a c.
I didn't know that, good one. We Brits still spell defence correctly then 👍
I have no idea why Yanks meddle with the English language. I hate gotten, no such word, it's got.
@@andrewdking how about "ill-gotten gains". That phrase demonstrates the existence of "gotten" in the English language from many hundreds of years ago (first recorded use during the C14th, although probably in spoken use from much earlier). The etymology seems to be from Old Norse which the vikings left for us.
The best guess is that early settlers in the Americas brought the word with them, and whilst if has virtually faded into obscurity in true English, American English has kept it as common use language.
@@coltsfoot9926 you may be right. We would call it archaic I suppose. Its similar to Canadian French vs French French. The French just hate the olde French as spoken by Quebec people.
There was a time back in the 1960s & 70s when Yanks had a period for shortening words e.g. Hello became Hi and now stretched to Hay or is it Hey 🤷
When travelling overseas, if anyone is asked where they are from, you have to understand that every single person is going to say Australia, or France, or Italy, or Sweden. No one is going to say Broken Hill, or Bordeaux, or Stockholm etc. Only Americans skip over “America” and narrow it down to a state, or even a city.
It’s the same in Facebook groups etc. Someone might post a “Where are we all from?” Question, and every single person is go*ng to name a country, or maybe a city “and” a country, but 90% os Americans will just put “IL”, or”AZ”, or “DE”, or “HI” etc. They have absolutely no understanding that nobody outside the US has a single clue what the US state abbreviations are. They just expect that everyone around the entire globe instinctively knows them all.
The fact that you, as an American, don’t understand this just proves her point.
I think it's kind of logical. If they just said USA We would be asking 'wich state'. If they aks us where we're from and we just said Europe, Afrika, ect. They would want you to narrow that down. At least to the country.
@@ilonkagootjes858 Did you read your own comment? USA is a Nation, but Europe and Africa are Conintens. If someone said he came from North America. I would like to know if from Mexico, USA or Canada. But if you told me already the Nation you are from? Why would i ask for the state or City with a Citizen from the USA but not from for example Canada?
@@eduardmierau2733 exactly.. I remember when I was like 12-13 and someone online told me they were from Georgia and I asked if they meant in Europe or The USA. They had no clue what I was talking about.
Fair enough I guess, but yeah we don’t know all the abbrevations or even for the cities in the US. Please write the full state name or just write The US. I would never write the name of my city if I were to write which country Im from. I don’t think it’s selfish to give more context by writing the state, but just dont assume all of the world know your exact location by abbrevations. If I were to write country «NO», I don’t think everyone would have gotten the abrevation.
America is like half a continent.
French, German, and Italians wouldn't say they were from the EU.
US Population = 329m
EU Population = 447m
@@davidking9222
Australia IS a continent, and we don’t say we are from Adelaide. We say Australia, just like the entire rest of the world states a country.
I'm not an American but one of my closest friends is an American and I once dated someone American (two of the most intelligent people I have ever known) but..I can't say the same about the other Americans I have known.
An American friend of mine (an amazing human being) genuinely thought that English was an American language, that people around the world celebrated Thanksgiving, the 4th of July and Halloween and that pizzas and sandwiches were made by Americans.
I mean... 😐😐😐
Learning history is very important, because if you don't remember your history, you are doomed to relive it.
I live in England, Lancashire to be exact, and in my humble opinion the best county (better than those Yorkshire wankers anyway). I majorly digress, I used to travel every year (since 1987) to the US to visit my family. As I got older, into my teens, I realised how little my cousins knew or understood about the rest of the world. As in they knew next to nothing. They were ignorant about basic global geography, international history, geopolitics, different cultures and religions etc the basics just weren't there. It still boggles my mind that the focus of the US education system is just on the US, to the exclusion of the rest of the world. Hell, even when global history is covered, it's only about what the US did to "save" everyone; which is factually wrong and just pure self-serving propaganda.
We're not Yorkshire wankers ya southern fairy lol. But I can understand what your saying as I have family in America too. A few friends who play destiny as well. I think the problem is the vast majority don't care about anything not of the U. S. A. There own government are ruining them.
This is a result of needing to delude themselves about the basic foundation of their country. It was built on genocide and slavery, but that would make them face some uncomfortable truths so they whitewash everything.
Hell up until the last few decades history books in the south made out the blacks we're grateful to their "masters" for giving them work, feeding and housing them. And now as America is regressing back to to golden age of the 50's they want to replace the word slavery with the phrase "forced relocation" 🤦
Still not over the war
You know white is a nicer colour on a rose right :)
Yorkshire is God's own country just sayin.
Yep, no blood on our rose.
We all have our cross to bear, but imagine being Lancastrian, those poor sods, I almost feel sorry for them.
Shout out to the US woman who recently complained to an Australian news channel that the Western Standard Time the host gave out was incorrect by a couple of hours.....because she thought only the US has a west coast and timezones 💀
When I was visiting friends in Massachusetts, I was asked what part of Ireland I came from. The girl was baffled when I said Scotland
I love my cousins from across the pond, It is not them to blame, but there government, they are like a child that as been brought up by a bad ignorant parent who taught them nothing of the real world, but remember not all are blind to what happens outside of the US, my American friends are well aware that this big rock we live on as more to it then just America :) Keep up the great work EB loving your channel and the content.
I would agree with u most of the way. Except u dont get to choose ur parents. They do choose their government.
@@dfuher968 not really....you have no other choice than reps and dems and they serve the same masters.
I was in the British army and based at a joint site with US marines I won a ten pound bet (10 dollars) that England had once controlled over 50% of the world. I showed him the small islands in the pacific with little Union Jacks flags next to them. It was only a officer from West Point in the officers mess pointed out I was telling the truth. Made my day 😂😂
The uk controlled 25% of the world at its peak so you are wrong
@@TheAmericanCatholic actually it was 60% check out videos on you tube. And also nuked America twice on two separate occasion when it was put to the test back in the sixties but was kept a secret by America.
@@TheAmericanCatholic and America controlled fuck all. And don’t start me on the Albanians.
Some years ago, I worked in a travel agency, and had many lovely U. S., Australian, Asian clients,and then the US students would come... Straight from their transatlantic flight, half asleep and stinking of booze.... Seriously, dude - take a shower and a coffee... They'd arrive in gangs of five or more... Sit in the waiting area and just leave their McDonald's shit everywhere... I'd call them over to be served, and they'd ignore us completely because they were so absorbed talking amongst themselves.... You work out their whole trip...and they're amazed to hear there's somewhere in France that's not Paris... . And say, "Ok that's £xxx please..." and the reply, "How much is that is dollars....? "?!! 😠 Followed by, "When we go to Monte Carlo, will they speak English there?"??!!! WTF??!!!
Love when people say I hope there isn't loads of foreigners!! Don't they realise when they go to another country, you're the foreigner. Also saved us 🇬🇧 , educated mmmmmm not to sure !!
It's like characters on _Star Trek_ calling those they meet on their home planets "aliens".
Concerning your last comment, about your country's education. It is very true, it's easy to blame lackluster education systems for everything, but a problem involves two or more parties involved, and on one end, one doesn't teach, while the other doesn't care to learn.
Reminds me of a quote by Thrawn:
"His chief failing is a lack of curiosity.” “I’d have said no imagination.” “All beings possess imagination to varying degrees,” Thrawn said. “It can be encouraged and nurtured, or can sometimes shine out in moments of stress. But curiosity is a choice. Some wish to have it. Others don’t."
Good teachers feed curiosity. Bad teachers kill curiosity.
Some years ago I went on a tour of the Gettysburg Battle Field. Our tour leader gave us a detailed explanation of the 3 day battle. The Anerican tourist next to me (an Englishman) and asked which side George Washington fought on during the Civil War. Talk about face palm! I thought, how ironic - here is an Englishman having to explain American history to an American.
Yeah, Ive tried that many times too. Honestly, I didnt feel, we learned that much in history class in school here in Denmark, it was mostly the most important happenings in our countrys history and around us and a short introduction to world history. Like a baseline and hopefully giving us a desire to learn more on our own, which I definitely did. But still Im flabbergasted, whenever I make the mistake of talking history with an American, even US history, coz they are mindbogglingly ignorant of the history of their own country, even as short as it is. Nevermind non US history, seems most of them think, the world came into existence, when the US did. Just consider, how exhausting it can be to try to explain, that no, pizza wasnt invented in New York. And no, WWII didnt start in 1941. And so on. But that George Washington story, thats a new 1 for me!
Being from the UK tends to prompt Americans to ask "Oh hey, I know someone from Britain! His name's Mike and he lives [100 miles from my location]. Do you know him?"
They do this in ireland too, we must all know each other
@@Naoise1000 Yeah I had that a few times in Vegas. In Washington DC most people asked me what part of Australia I was from?
Don't forget the constant piss poor attempts at our accents, then saying we don't speak proper english because, [insert some weird ass reason]
Ah yes, I totally know that guy that lives on the otherside of our obviously one mile long island! yea, every brit knows eachother! yep! its not like 80million people live here! nah, its only a dozen people and two dogs.
"Do you know the queen?"
@@dasmoools606 Oh God, every time someone attempts a British accent I cringe.
I graduated from a rural high school in Nebraska in 1983. I got an excellent education and I cringe at the ignorance and want to cry at the sad level of ignorance of our country.
Rescued them in WW2 oh dear, not very well educated then
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I've worked in a Call Center and I grew up in a City located right by the border we are basically separated by a Bridge so I have a lot of stories. The things I've heard Americans say about Mexicans or the rest of the world it astonishes me. For example, I answered a call in English and this person automatically said "I don't speak taco", once in a US Website I was trying to locate México on their map and it was under SOUTH AMERICA! , also one guy once asked me if we had Google/UA-cam or AC over here. And when trying to arrange a meeting this pero said "I don't want to get in trouble with the Police if you cross the border" I asked what does that mean? And answered "well, do you have papers?" 😒🙄.... Hahaha the idea that we are all after the green card and we are undocumented hahaha
Haha, I'm from the UK (England), and was dating an American. One if the first things one if her friends said, was I after a green card. As if we're a third world country and that everyone wants to move to the US.
I had that happen once when living in Minnesota. Got told I spoke really good English. Suppose I'm not too bad at speaking English considering i'm a British citizen from the UK. Pat on the back indeed.
To me something stranger once happened: After a talk where I said a German music title correctly, being a native speaker, later someone came to me and congratulated me on my German pronunciation. I thought is was funny so I asked "Was it better than my English?" to which I only got a puzzled look.
Still I am not sure what their thoughts were, my accent could not have been that faint, could it?
@@Cau_No accents can be interesting. I had two Americans in Missouri argue with me that I was not Irish as I don’t sound “Irish”. I’m from Northern Ireland so we have a northern Irish accent as opposed to the stereotypical “southern” Irish accent. I had to explain that Minnesota had a different accent then Texas so forth and they still didn’t believe me. Also completely blows their mind that the UK is not England alone but actually four nations combined. Some argued I was Australian for some weird reason.
@@northernsegageorge6510 I've read or heard often that US Americans try to 'correct' the Irish on their accents … either because they are 'part Irish themselves' or they've heard it in the movies …
Slán agat.
@@Cau_No When I first moved to the US it confused me so much why people kept saying they were Irish when they had not been born there and had no connection to Ireland let alone having been there either. My ancestry is Scottish and Greek but I don't go around claiming to be either of those.
One guy once heard my accent and said hey I love your accent where are you from? I said Ireland and he said oh I'm Irish too. I was like yeah you're so Irish you don't even know the accent. Just be proud to be American. I met many many ignorant people there but I also met some truly wonderful people. There is good and bad people in every country around the world.
No I know this is going to trigger some people, in America, but the comments that always make me laugh, "we saved you", "we rescued you", "if it wasn't for the US, you'd all be speaking German", going by the attitude of a lot of Americans you think you were the only country involved in the second world war, FYI,, only 2 million American soldiers served in Europe, just for context, 1 million Canadian soldiers served in Europe, and yes you seem to forget that 13 million Americans served in the Pacific, and yet most of you bang on and on about your involvement in Europe, learn your own history guys
and 14m Russian troops died plus 10m Russian civilians
I was in Kazakhstan and there was a group of people from the USA they had a bunch of maps in Russian and asked me for info about nearbye countries.
They asked about Uzbekistan first pointing out Ukraine or Poland I show them where Uzbekistan is and after few minutes I realize it is better for them if I just wrote the nearbye country names in English they said it will be great. I started writing all nearbye countries names on to the map they asked me if I can wrote down more including EU countries, far east countries and so on. They were surprised and asked me Where I learned Russian so well? I told I don't know Russian they were surprised and wanted to learn how I managed to translate country names. I told that it is simple knowledge to know about world map and that we learn world map at primary school that was a real shock for them. But the real shock for them was later when I started talking about Holland, France etc with French, Dutch people. That was a bit frustrating as you can imagine trying to explain why I know about other countries to a bunch of good hearted ill educated professors from USA.
But my favorite encounter was an old man from England who happened to visit one of my businesses as a tourist in a nontouristic area and asked me why I speak good English and how did I learn English. He was trying to question me in my own country in my own business as a customer in a hostile way. I think it is not just Americans sometimes many Europeans can react to simple knowledge cause they are biased.
When people ask where are you from they normally mean the country. Accents don't really matter since I know that I can't tell the difference between Austrian and German accents or Ukrainian and Russian most of the time
When americans say Indiana is also like assuming everyone must know the US states
When people (who are not from the USA) ask where are you are from they often mean the country. When people (who are from the USA) ask another American where they are from they usually reply . Besides most American states are larger than most Eurpoean Nation States.
If an Non-Brit asks me where I'm from I often say that I grew up near Stonehenge - because it is kind of well known.
If I ask someone whith an Indian heritage where they are from I'm keen to know which state because I have a basic understanding of some Indian states
@@philipdrew1066 they weren't being asked by another American though and from the sounds of it weren't even in America at the time
Also it's not always in spoken conversations that you're asking.