Re: OT: baloney and cheese

Quoting Carlos Thompson <chlewey@...>:

> Andreas wrote:
>
> > I used to believe that the jokes about Americans whose only knowledge
> of
> > Sweden is that Switzerland is the capital of Stockholm were quite
> unfair,
> but
> > life has tought me otherwise. Is there any particular explanation for
> this
> in
> > my eyes very strange confusion? Are there similar confusions about,
> say,
> > Portugal and Poland?
>
> I can understand how people, in my Spanish-speaking environment, would
> counfuse Suecia with Suiza (Peninsular /"sweTja/ vs. /"swiTa/, change
> /T/
> into /s/ for American dialects), but "Sweden" and "Switzerland" look
> and
> sound quite different to me.
>
> I am trying to figure out if there is another such doublete in Spanish
> but
> none as common and consistent as Suecia/Suiza.  Well, probably
> Lituania/Letonia (Lithuania/Latvia) but the fact they are less know,
> ex-Soviet neighboring countries... You could even add Estonia and most
> people I know will probably fail the test.  I am not sure about
> Paraguay/Uruguay, I can tell them appart very easily, but I am not
> sure
> about my fellow countrymen (I mean, further than knowing that Uruguay
> has a
> skyblue shirt and Paraguay's red and white, in soccer uniforms, I
> mean).
> Hmmm, the Guayanas: Guyana, Suriname and French Guayana... they are not
> even
> in Conmebol...
>
The one I hear most frequently (here in Sweden) is Iran vs Iraq. My mother
regularly confuses them, and she's otherwise considered to have a decent grasp
of basic geography etc. How anybody can have failed to learn to tell them appart
during the last couple decades is beyond me, but she's certainly not unique in
this respect.

                                                              Andreas

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