So tonight I went, as I have been doing regularly on Tuesdays for about three months, to “pub quiz” at a local pub. Basically, you go with a team, answer 7 rounds of 10 questions each, and the winning teams for each round, and for the entirity win a prize from whatever company’s sponsoring the evening.
My team has a few regular members and some transients, but we all have a good time. We haven’t won yet, but come consistantly in the top 5 or 6 teams.
Tonight one of the questions was: what language is spoken by the most people as a first language?
Now, we spent a lot of time and energy trying to decide amongst ourselves whether it was Mandarin, Cantonese, or some other language (Spanish was also bandied about).
So, eventually we decided on Mandarin, wrote it down, turned in the answer sheet.
Know what the answer was? Mandarin, “but we’ll also accept Chinese.”
WTF!?!?!?
Now, this ain’t about winning. We don’t play to win, we play to have fun, but what kind of game accepts wrong answers? Chinese is wrong. Don’t accept it just because you don’t know the difference! What if I had put “Indian”? I bet there are more people who speak “Indian” than who speak Mandarin. Oh, but wait, India is a country, not a language!
Lame rant perhaps, but I just can’t believe the ignorance being propagated here. Use this opportunity to tell the people who didn’t know the answer that they’re wrong, better luck next time bubs, instead of letting them believe that they know something that they don’t damn well know!!!