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I Asked 1000 Americans to Name a British City Other Than London
- Jakob 13y agoParis :)
- junto 13y agoYou'd think that 'York' might be quite an obvious choice.
- officemonkey 13y agoNow, ask 1000 Londoners to name a City in Illinois other than Chicago.
- buro9 13y agoMcHenry.
- johnchristopher 13y agoAs a belgian european I often wonder if the United States seems as big to americans as Europe seems big to me. I wonder if it feels different to be a citizen of a small country or a citizen of a continent-wide country such as the United States. Or maybe americans feel they are californians or new-yorkers before being american ?
- marknutter 13y agoI would say the culture here is fairly homogenous, so most people feel like Americans before they feel like a citizen of their home state.
- mumbi 13y agoUnless you're from Mississippi raises hand
- jacques_chester 13y agoLooking in from the outside, US culture is substantially less homogenous than Australian culture. Cultural variety arises from isolation. The US was founded sufficiently long ago that there was time for each region to establish distinct cultural flavours, in no small part contributed by waves of immigration being unevenly spread throughout the country.
- wreckimnaked 13y agoFrom my experience of meeting US citzens, even outside North America, it's fairly normal to get something like "Ohio", "Pensilvania" or "Wisconsin" when asking where they come from, as if I'd _of course_ know where those places are (I do).
- daraul 13y agoWe're definitely American first, but we do generally have a somewhat strong sense of state identity as well.
- dalek_cannes 13y agoCitizen of small country adjoining a very large country here. People of small countries tend to understand that other cultures exist, because when they travel a couple of hundred miles (or less) in any direction they're in another country. I suppose for people living in the central regions of a very large country, it's your country and your people in every direction for as far as you can imagine. Then you tend not to be concerned too much about other cultures. But of course, I'm speculating here.
- ryusage 13y agoAs an American in a relatively small Midwestern city, I think that's pretty much it. I'm interested in what happens elsewhere in the world, but it feels impossibly far away, and ultimately it doesn't affect me here (at least not directly). Whenever I've checked, a roundtrip ticket anywhere out of the country has cost about $2000 and it takes a full day to get there. Then you're jet lagged. So, short vacations are out of the question. But it also takes me a full year of work to earn just 2 weeks vacation time, assuming I don't use any for special occasions. I didn't even bother getting a passport until two years ago, and I still haven't used it. So yeah, even if an American desperately wants to travel somewhere out of the country, it's expensive and vacation time is scarce. So most never will. And at that point, knowing a list of English cities is purely trivia.
- keiferski 13y agoIt's less by state and more by region. A rough "region guide" would include Northeast, Mid-west, South (geographic Southeast), Southwest, California, Pacific Northwest, and the Great Plains. But this is a huge over-generalization and doesn't really include places like DC, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, or southern Florida, which have their own microcultures. People from the Northeast definitely feel differently than people from California.
- officemonkey 13y agoHaving lived in both, the U.S. feels larger and also more homogeneous. When I lived in Belgium I was 90 minutes from Amsterdam, London, Paris and Cologne. In Chicago I'm 90 minutes from Milwaukee (if I speed.) There is a lot of state pride in the U.S. but not many people put their love of their state before the love of their country (except for perhaps Texas.)
- rayiner 13y agoI also imagine it has something to do with how much American culture is exported in the world. As a Belgian, you probably won't be able to go your whole life just watching Belgian movies and TV and reading Belgian books. But it's quite possible and I'd imagine very common to do that as an American.
- officemonkey 13y agoI don't know. A lifetime of Tintin comic books and "Septante et un" sounds pretty good.
- smallegan 13y agoTo be fair, Canada and Mexico are also part of the continent :-) Although you did say continent-wide and the US does span the entire width...
- spatulon 13y agoI'm British and I couldn't name any cities in Illinois other than Chicago and Springfield. (For some reason I know all the state capitals). However, the UK is five times the size of Illinois.
- MaulingMonkey 13y ago~1.6x the size if you go by area rather than by population.
- Jacqued 13y agoWell more honestly you'd have to ask them to name another city in the states than NYC. I'm not sure that many people outside the US would have even been able to cite Chicago when asked for a city in Illinois
- brey 13y agoand then ask 1000 Americans to name a city in Cambridgeshire other than Cambridge. what's your point?
- kd0amg 13y agoCambridgeshire? In that case, we're changing it from "Illinois" to "Cook County, IL"!
- officemonkey 13y agoEvanston, Cicero, Blue Island, Park Ridge, Stone Park, River Forest, Harwood Heights, Steger, Worth, Palos Park. I can go all week.
- Shish2k 13y agoI'm British and could name many American cities (some I could even place on a map), but I have absolutely no idea which cities are inside which states -- I never seem to come into contact with state boundaries in every day life or in the media...
- jacques_chester 13y agoIf memorising state capitals worries you, might I recommend Australia as a beginner's challenge? We only have six. Seven, if you count the Northern Territory.
- Kiro 13y agoIllinois is not a country. You should be glad people outside the US even know the name of the states at all. Do you know any county in Britain?
- officemonkey 13y agoYorkshire.
- officemonkey 13y agoIllinois has more people in it than Belgium or Greece and is larger than Bulgaria. If you compare the U.S. to the E.U., you'll see that many of our states are bigger than your states. 13 U.S. states are bigger than Britain by size.
- Kiro 13y agoAnd 28 provinces in China have more people than Illinois. Can you name one?
- rayiner 13y agoLots of people in Chicago can't name a city in Illinois other than Chicago.
- raldi 13y agoOr a city in the District of Columbia other than Washington.
- vinceguidry 13y agoThey have those?? goes to check Google Maps
- raldi 13y agoThey used to -- e.g., Georgetown -- but they long ago merged into Washington.
- brixon 13y agoCamelot
- blutack 13y agoNot sure how Manchester could be beloved of anyone.
- wreckimnaked 13y agoas a foreigner: The Smiths, Joy Division (and then New Order), the Stone Roses, the Happy Mondays.
- zimpenfish 13y agoThe Buzzcocks, The Chameleons, James (before they went awful), Inspiral Carpets, The Fall, Crispy Ambulance, and millions* more. Plus the city itself is upmarket gentrified in the centre parts now. Just avoid the students and you'll be alright. * ok, maybe tens.
- moocowduckquack 13y agoWell, you gotta love Mozzer. Is the rules.
- lazyant 13y agoManchester United is the #1 or #2 football/soccer "brand" or club with more international recognition (and football is the most popular sport in the world). So to explain the results: The Beatles and soccer.
- officemonkey 13y agoManchester United is the #1 sports brand in the world. #2 is the New York Yankees.
- officemonkey 13y agoI watched "Life on Mars," does it still look like crap?
- cmdkeen 13y agoIntriguingly in the full list he's lumped "brighton" with "briton/england" - Brighton is actually a place, albeit not a city.
- gejjaxxita 13y agoBrighton is a city, technically it's "Brighton and Hove" but that's what everyone is referring to when they say Brighton (in roughly* the same way that Newcastle = Newcastle upon Tyne). Though not exactly, Hove is* a place too.
- tapworthtg 13y ago"he" is a "she" you sexist idiot.
- 67726e 13y agoI think you need to carry yourself a bit more like an adult. Whoever posted that comment probably didn't bother to check the gender of the author, and as in many languages, the pronoun people tend to default to is the masculine "he". There isn't anything inherently sexist about that, it's just how the language is.
- dspeyer 13y agoWhen I saw the headline I tried to think of one and failed. Then I saw the list in the article and recognized most of the names, and could even say a few things about them. And with those as priming, could name a few more. Brains are weird.
- fejr 13y agoRecognition memory [1] at work. Sometimes we also use Cued Recall [2] to retrieve events or information from memory. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recognition_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recognition_memory [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recall_%28memory%29#Cued_recall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recall_%28memory%29#Cued_recal...
- agumonkey 13y agoI guess our database reverse index is short thus prone to lose content while the data is still there. Once I give you the key, data flows out easily. It's annoying though. Another memory graph glitch, a minute ago I couldn't remember the name of the file browser[1] .. for 20 seconds I kept thinking about Thor.. Thor.. then Fubar. This happened to me enough to know that these aren't unrelated answers. Answer was Thunar.[2] [1] First time I boot this machine since a month, it has no desktop environment per se, I run some graphical programs through bash. [2] Phonetic hints are the most common of this partial answers, at least in my brain, all of them shares a bit of the final answer.
- mumbi 13y agoI'm not British(I'm American), but I'm going to start doing surveys like this to people in America. It looks to fun to see what we come up with.
- SteveMoody73 13y agoAs a Welsh man I'm fairly sure that Wales isn't a city :)
- eru 13y agoIt's a city, but not in the UK. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wales_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wales_(disambiguation)
- nmeofthestate 13y agoYou should be proud - it's a bigger city than Scotland.
- eksith 13y agoYou can cheat at this if you watch a lot of TopGear like I do.
- tapworthtg 13y agoHow is that "cheating"?
- e40 13y agoI've watched all eps of TG, but I don't recall them mentioning city names too often.
- moocowduckquack 13y agoI've watched all eps of TG You poor thing. Help is available if you only just ask.
- darasen 13y agoGiven I follow English football Manchester was my first thought. I'd have laughed if Midsomer made the list.
- jacques_chester 13y agoAustralian comedian John Safran (and all-round crazy person) made a pretty good point about this concept that Americans are uniquely ignorant of geography: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z27xVjXBbk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z27xVjXBbk
- coldtea 13y agoWell, compared to what Australians? They are similarly insular. A better comparison would be with Europeans. The things he mentions as extremely insightful stuff people wouldn't know, e.g Zaire, Congo, Republic of the Congo, the civil war there, etc are all quite common knowledge.
- jacques_chester 13y agoIf there was a way to lay a wager on this, I would bet you a thousand Euros that less than 10% of a randomly-selected sample of Europeans would be able to correctly identify that 1. Zaire changed its name to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2. where the DRC is, 3. that it is distinct from the RoC, 4. that there has been a civil war and 5. how many people have died in it.
- coldtea 13y agoOh, I agree with that: less than 10% (with variatons from country to country). Still plenty though, and (I'd say) more than would know the same thing in the states. As for knowing just simple facts about DRC, like where it is located and having a vague idea of it's past with Belgium etc, the percentage would be quite higher.
- keiferski 13y agoIt doesn't say why Liverpool is the most common choice, but here's my theory, as an American: the Beatles. Most Americans have heard of Liverpool in relation to them.
- buro9 13y agoAlso, history. Majority of UK emigration to the US was through Liverpool: http://www.european-emigration.com/uk/methods.html http://www.european-emigration.com/uk/methods.html Families would only need to know their family history to be vaguely aware of that city.
- kghose 13y agoI don't know what the author's real motives were (Was it really to beat on the theme that 'Americans are ignorant?), but I personally think this is a good exercise to humble yourself - 'My country/city is not as important as I think it is'. Frankly, Britain is not as important as it once was and hasn't been for half a century. And it's not particularly notable. You would have better luck with Germany, France, Greece, Russia or many countries in Asia which are much more interesting tourist destinations and have more name recognition. I see this in science a lot. There are people in a field who are very famous and who get a little spoilt by that fame. But if you happen to mention their name to someone from a slightly different field, its 'Who?' I think it is important to realize that.
- Dirlewanger 13y ago'Americans are ignorant' You know he was dying for results that would support this. Why else would they ask such an inane question?
- tapworthtg 13y agoHe is a she. There's a big picture of her, and she's called Stacey. Or did you not notice as the page doesn't have a pink background and it's about stats?
- 67726e 13y agoPlease grow up. It's common for people to default to "he" as when they do not know the gender of the person in question. I didn't even notice the author until you mentioned anything. If anything, your last comment is quite a bit more inflammatory than accidentally referring to a random blogger as a "he".
- tapworthtg 13y agoFuck you cunt.
- 13y ago
- luscious 13y agoThis screams of... did you not realize how unimportant you've become? This game is equally well-played with all the places we like to bomb. Watch it.
- agumonkey 13y agoI realize most of the British city names I know are from soccer teams (except for Arsenal etc). The rest is quite accidental : - music history (Beatles) - trips (Canterbury is a regular short visit for french schools) The interviewees could also cheat. New York : USA, York : England.
- peterjs 13y agoI found an interesting figure [1] for those of us who could name a few, but are not as well versed in the geography of Britain. It compares British cities to similar European cities by population. The scale is unnecessarily skewed, though. [1] http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/resources/figure1_tcm77-259156.png http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/resources/figure1_tcm77-259156.png
- minimax 13y agoIt's interesting to see Birmingham in 8th place given that it's the 2nd largest city in the United Kingdom. It would be weird if you saw a similar list of American cities and Los Angeles came that far down.
- coldtea 13y agoOnly Los Angeles can be seen in 70% of the movies playing in any cinema. And it's where those stars live. What's the equivalent Birmingham has to make it famous? UB40? The Selfridges? Even Ozzy Osbourne lives in Los Angeles nowadays (I pressume)
- sardonicbryan 13y agoA city like Phoenix (6), Jacksonville (12) or Columbus (15) would be a good analogue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by...
- mkr-hn 13y agoIt's reasonable that most people are assuming this is yet another boring jab at the ignorance that's somehow unique to us. I could do the same and ask people to name a city in Georgia other than Atlanta, Athens, or Savannah. A lot of people won't be able to do that. I don't think anyone in Bogart or Carl is going to lose sleep over it, and I don't think it would tell you anything about the people surveyed.
- carsongross 13y agoHow is it our fault that there is only one British city that matters? (Says the guy who lives in Sacramento)
- DanBC 13y agoSo ... people have mentioned "priming". If you stopped me and asked me to name a list of almost anything I guess the results would depend what I'd been doing. Sometimes I'd be great and reel off a nice list of lizards or Belgian scientists or words used by genetic scientists in their papers or whatnot. I also guess that most people would have similar results. So, unless you turn this into a game[1] I'm not sure what the point is. [1] (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2381/scattergories http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2381/scattergories) [1] (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4862/outburst http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4862/outburst)