Re: CHAT: The [+foreign] attribute

Quoting John Cowan <jcowan@...>:

> Christophe Grandsire scripsit:
>
> > Well, most Americans wouldn't either to my knowledge, while most
> > Europeans can situate Paris and Prague. Also, Paris and Prague
> > are country capitals, not St. Louis nor Chicago, so you cannot
> > compare
>
> Indeed, they aren't even state (= provincial) capitals.  With the exception
> of Boston, Massachusetts, the large city in a state is almost never the
> capital: historically, capitals have been situated in secondary cities,
> because legislatures have been dominated by rural members who did not
> trust The Big City.
This is sometimes true, but often the state capital was located
well before The Big City was Big.  Certainly, Chicago didn't
start really growing explosively until well after Springfield was
made the state capital.  Especially in the West, many of the Big
Cities have experienced their greatest growth only in the last
50 years -- Houston, for example, had a population of about 300,000
in the 1960s, but is now about 4.7 million.

> > Nobody will deny that world geography is better taught in Europe than in
> > America :))) .
>
> Nobody will deny that geography is not taught at all in America.  :(((
I dunno.  I certainly can't say that my school district was
representative, but we had courses on it, and it was repeatedly
drilled into our heads most every year, it seemed.  We also spent
lots of time on English grammar too (I remember most of 6th grade
and 9th grade English classes consisting of this), although I'm
not sure how much good it did for most people.

(My entire pretertiary education was in the public education
system.)

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier            "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637

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