Re: OT: baloney and cheese

From: "Joe Fatula" <fatula3@...>
Subject: Re: OT: baloney and cheese


> While I think there may be many Americans who know as little about
> Switzerland as this, I doubt it's nearly as bad as you say.  But not being
> every American myself, in fact, being less than 1 millionth of a percent
of
> them, I don't really know for sure.  So this weekend, I'm going to ask
some
> of the people I meet the following questions:
>
> 1) What country is something Swiss from?
> 2) Is Switzerland a real country?
> 3) Where is Switzerland?  (on a map without labels)
>
> I'm going to pick more or less random people, and I think I'll get a
pretty
> good cross section of Americans.  I'll let you know how it turns out.  My
> initial guess is that everyone I talk to will answer #1 and #2 correctly,
> but perhaps a third of them won't be able to find it on a map.  Maybe more
> than that many, but the first two seem perfectly obvious.
All right, here are the results so far.

I've talked to 11 people, all of them born and raised in America.  About
half were born in California (where I am now) and the rest were from other
parts of the country.  Most of them spoke English as a first language.  By
level of education, they went all the way from high-school drop-out to
doctorate degree.  Age varied from 12 to mid-60s.  Five were Christians, one
Muslim, two Jews.  By occupation, one policeman, one teacher, a hairdresser,
two high school students, a few salesmen, a manager, etc.

1) What country is something Swiss from?
All answered Switzerland.

2) Is Switzerland a real country?
All answered yes.

3) Where is Switzerland?  (showing them a map without labels)
9 out of 11 correctly picked Switzerland.  1 picked Slovenia.  1 didn't have
any idea.

4) Name one of the four languages of Switzerland.
10 out of 11 could name at least one.  All of those who named one knew of
German as one, most knew that French was one.  About half of them were aware
of Italian as one of the official languages.

I'll keep asking people, but I don't think the answers are likely to change
all that much.  For those who are interested in what Americans know, are
there any other questions I ought to be asking?

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