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I think on some level this is a rant about Americans, even if you didn't intend it to be one. My Indian and German friends are aware of the fact that not every
by rohsh 17y ago
I think on some level this is a rant about Americans, even if you didn't intend it to be one. My Indian and German friends are aware of the fact that not every country has states, even though their countries do. I would bet money on the same being true for Brazilians and Australians. I would bet money on Japanese people being aware of the fact that not every country is partitioned into prefectures.
Maybe this is because Indians, Germans etc. are not socialized to see their way of running a nation as the only way, at least not in the way Americans are. Maybe not. In any case it's a nice demonstration of how collective cultural ignorance leads to annoyed visitors and, one might presume, lost sales.
- Semiapies 17y ago"My Indian and German friends are aware of the fact that not every country has states, even though their countries do" Apparently not: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1232278 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1232278
- Vivtek 17y agoSee my post elsewhere, and maybe your German friends aren't Web designers, but I've had problems with addresses on German forms - just because I speak German doesn't mean I live there. So this is a universal problem, not an American one: internationalization is hard, because there is a tremendous amount of domain-specific knowledge that is not convenient to find.
- compay 17y agoBrazilian websites are just as bad, if not worse than American ones about this, probably because websites that do online sales in Brazil tend to cater to a primarily domestic clientele. If you happen to live in Argentina, as I do, entering your address when you buy things in Brazil can be comically frustrating. Americans definitely don't have a monopoly on ignorance when it comes to other countries' address formats.