Re: CHAT: Ability of Americans & Europeans to locate each others cities (was Re: The [+foreign] attribute)

Roger Mills wrote:
>Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
>
> >Tim May wrote:
> >
> >>  I _can_ name most of the national capitals in Eurasia and the
> >>  Americas, though, so that's something.
> >
> >I used to know all in the Old World (the Caribean and Oceania are so
>packed
> >with mini-states that I never bothered trying the New World). However,
>since
> >you almost never talk of the capital of Niger (Niamey!) and similar
> >countries, I've forgotten many African ones. I still remember all the
> >European ones, and most Asian.
> >
>Same here.  I was quite a fragile child and spent a lot of time sick in
>bed,
>flu, bronchitis (nowadays we'd blame it all on my parents' smoking....) and
>my favorite reading was our World Atlas. (And yet, geography class in
>school
>was Really Booooring.)
I also found geography classes nigh-lethally boring. Mostly since I usually
knew all the answers ... if American geography tuition really is a much
worse than European as they say, I'll be surprised if the Average American
(tm) could find Washington DC on a map of the District of Columbia.

>  Consequently, most of my geo. knowledge is thus
>vintage-1940s, and I've barely kept up with the new countries (many of
>which
>have no business being "countries" ;-( anyway) and name changes.  Kiribati
>(Gilbert Is), Pohnpei (Ponape), Chuuk (Truk) etc.??  I once had _two_
>students from The Country Whose Capital is/was?  Ouagadougou, a beautiful
>word-- fascinating language too, More [mOre]-- and difficult (we used it in
>a Field Methods class).
Ouagadougou is the capital of Burkina Faso (which used to be called Upper
Volta). The place is frightfully poor even by Sahelian standards, wherefore
you (or I at least) hear about it alot more often than say Mali (the capital
of which I can't for the moment recall).

                                               Andreas

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