Kansas? Flat? Not the part I live in. The eastern third of the state can be quite hilly. KCK feels very much like a blue collar Pennsylvania hilltown, more like Scranton or Altoona in feel. The KCMO suburbs on the Kansas side look and feel very much like the hillier Washington DC suburbs. “Kansas is as flat as a pancake” is really a misconception.
I’d like to think I’ve got a better than average grasp of American geography (I’m Canadian). But I agree with what others said - the main problem Europeans have is understanding the scale of the North American continent. I don’t have this problem, since Canada’s the same. And travelling distances between large-ish cities are even more extreme here - larger land area and 1/10th the population.
I ran across this quote before that I think perfectly described the European vs. North American perspective:
Most of my students (teens and adults) in Japan, unless they’d travelled overseas, knew a fair number of American place names (New York, California, Florida, Texas and Seattle being the most common), but were usually pretty fuzzy on locations, other than knowing that New York is east, and Seattle and California are west. Several of them had some confusion over the fact that the city of Washington is on the east coast, but the state of Washington is on the west.
This Aussie’s knowledge of US geography, quickly:
The US, like Australia, is a large, roughly rectangular blob, flat at the top and bottom (apart from a few pointy and irregular bits), and with sides that bulge out.
You have two large mountain ranges, the Rockies, and the ahhh… is it Cascades?.. that run North-South, each inland a little from the west and east coasts respectively. Between those is lots of farmland, plains, SUVs, and guys named Hank. A few cities too. On either side of them are your large coastal cities, and a few more SUVs. The top left hand corner is snowy and beautiful, the top right is cold, bleak, watery, and urban. The bottom left is hot, dry, and arid, and the bottom right corner is green and steamy. Texas is your biggest state, and it has a square lump at the top, and a pointy bit at the botttom. California is banana shaped, and NY looks like Iraq. I could probably recognise a few more states from their outlines. I’d be able to give you a rough location for any state you cared to name: “West coast, east coast, in the middle bit somewhere, deep south, etc”.
I don’t think my level of knowledge of the US is in any way exceptional for an Aussie.
I could name upwards of 45 states right now, and probably the rest if you gave me a bit of time to think about it. I could name the states in which your most important cities are located.
To be fair, a lot of Americans make this mistake… I live in Rochester most of the year, and on September 11, 2001, a bunch of my relatives called my parents back in Ohio to ask if I was all right. Said parents then had to calmly explain to them that I was five hours from the city and had slept through most of it.
Well, I’m British and I can name all 50 states and their capitals (even the funny ones like Lansing and Frankfort) and find them on a map. But I do live in the US now. Conversely, I doubt whether I could name all the counties in England, and certainly not in the UK. And definitely not name the county towns.
The size differences can be difficult to grasp at first. For example, Georgia is bigger than England. To go to the beach from Atlanta is about a 6 hour drive. From almost all of England you cannot drive that far without falling off the edge.
Not bad. Nitpicks:
[ul][li] The eastern range is the Appalachians, not the Cascades. The Cascades are on the extreme west side, further west than the Rockies. The west coast is more mountainous than the east, with more separately-named ranges. The Rockies are much further inland than the Appalachians. There’s also another, smaller range in the south-central area, the Ozarks.[/li][li] Those “few” in between cities include Chicago, New Orleans, St Louis, Detroit, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Kansas City, and several other well-known ones.[/li][li] Alaska is our biggest state, over twice the size of Texas. Of course, only ~700k people live there.[/ul][/li]I agree with most of the posters above, that the thing most non-Americans don’t comprehend is the size of the US. You cannot fly for six or seven hours in Europe and remain in the same country. New York is several hours by car from DC, which is several days by car from LA.
Well Northern Ontario doesn’t register anywhere really. .and they like it that way. If anyone had any idea how beautiful it was up there… I would wager the same % of people don’t know you are a Yooper.
I would, but I was born and raised in Soo, Ontario. Though not many would know that Soo was short for Sault Ste Marie, or even that Sault was pronounced Soo.
To turn the tables a little bit, in German class I was expected to know where just about every state in Germany is. (I never did, not being all that interested.) What is really amusing is that Germany is only slightly larger than New Mexico and I don’t even know all the counties in New Mexico. (Never been that interested, to be perfectly honest. That’s what you get growing up in the biggest city in the state.) The other thing I’m still trying to figure out is how you’d fit 80 million people in New Mexico, and I’ve been to Germany. I’m still not sure how they do it. Population density for Germany is about 600 per square mile, while New Mexico’s population density is about 15 per square mile, with probably half the population concentrated in the Albuquerque metro area.
This thread is more anecdotal than factual, so I’ll move it to IMHO.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
That’s near Sioux Falls, isn’t it?
Someone pointed out the trivia that if you go south from Detroit, you hit Canada. Actually, that’s true of parts of 5 other states as well, although for most of them, it’s just small, out-of-the way bits.
Other trivia that may surprise many people:
Seattle is further north than Montreal and, for that matter, Quebec City.
Portland OR is further north than Toronto.
Thought I’d drop in some density stats…
USA, people per square km, 29
Germany, 234
France 107
Japan 371
England 376 (UK 239)
We need to build an extension…
It’s pretty damned crowded over here;)
Okay, I know this may seem like a stupid question, but I notice that a lot of non-US people know most of our States. I know that Australia has 6 states and two territories (cuz I happen to be from there), I also know that Canada has (11-ish, I think) provinces, but what does England have? Provinces? How many, and what are they?
I presume you meant the UK, not England? The UK is built from two Kingdoms (England and Scotland), one Principality (Wales), one Province (Northern Ireland). There are numerous autonomous Crown Dependencies (e.g. Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney) that are technically not part of the UK but are partly governed by it.
England has 36 counties. Scotland has 32 sub-divisions, variously described as regions and counties IIRC. Wales has 9 counties, although the government keeps changing their administrative status and boundaries. Northern Ireland (not to be confused with Ulster) has 6 counties.
My stomping grounds of Northern Ontario: 1
A friend from Germany visited for a canoe trip. She was surprised at our having to bring along gas cans for the drive to the river, and found paddling so far away anyone a little unnerving at first, but she eventually got used to it, that is until we continued on out into the arctic ocean, which she found “stunning.” The immensity of the unpopulated wilderness of Northern Ontario was difficult for her to wrap her mind around.
**
Well, that’s pretty gosh-darned confusing. :o
So far, so good.
Appalachian. The Cascades are a sub-range of the Rocky Mountains.
Some of which cities are larger than most coastal cities. Indeed, Chicago is a seaport, even though it’s hundreds of miles inland. We do canals big.
Northwest: Not that much snow. Very rainy and “beautiful” if one really adores mold and damp or only sees it from the distance afforded by a photograph.
Northeast: Nope, the corner is very green, not that cold at all, not at least bleak, I have no idea what is meant by “watery” (we have rivers all over the country) and the “urban” is at least 100 miles (160km) south of the actual northeast corner.
There is an arid chunk in the southwest, but the actual “bottom left” corner is very heavily urbanized. Ever hear of “Los Angeles”?
As for “steamy”–not when I visited my mother or went to Disney World. Real serious “steamy” is a bit west of there, around the Delta region and up the Big Muddy.
Get your Brittanica and look up “Alaska”. You’re welcome.
Your knowledges is pretty good.
However, Australians are more like Americans than they are like anyone else, like it or not…
Snap quiz:
Alaska is the northern-most state, so what is the second northern-most state?
When answering, please indicate generally where you live.
Hell, I’m an American and I’d be amazed if you told me it would take you two days to get to New Orleans from Savannah, as they’re only about 700 miles apart (1100 kms for our non-Merkin readers). Were you using horses or something?
You should be able to do Savannah to New Orleans in about 11 hours. 12 hours at the most.
Minnesota.
Grew up in CA, live in DC now.