# Things you're shocked to find out some people don't know. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 10, 2010, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353 "2010-01-10T02:44:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![TheFaerie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c57346/32.png) [@TheFaerie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheFaerie)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/241 "2010-01-13T15:28:42Z")
RE: We Are the World, I knew off the bat 25 performers and looking at the list provided up thread, I knew every single one of the singers, but couldn’t immediately put names to faces. I’ll be 43 this year and this song was performed by my high school graduating class at our graduation ceremony. It gave me a warm fuzzy. As to the OP, I’m always surprised when older people, like my mother, don’t know anything at all about computers, not even how a QWERTY keyboard is setup. She’s 60, so it’s not like she ancient or something. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/242 "2010-01-13T15:31:01Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > You got whooshed. New England is a region, not a state, which is why it doesn’t appear. Presumably you’d get the same results if you tried to locate the West Country or Oop Norrrth on Google Maps UK. Ha! That’s funny. I had no idea New England wasn’t a state. Don’t suppose that’s too surprising, though - I’m not from the US and it does sound like a state. Still kinda funny that it’s not on Google maps - it’d make as much sense to be able to find an area as a state. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/243 "2010-01-13T15:38:38Z")
It’s the area comprised of Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire, in case you were wondering - basically the far Northeastern corner of the country. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/244 "2010-01-13T15:53:24Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > It’s the area comprised of Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire, in case you were wondering - basically the far Northeastern corner of the country. My GF was also wrong, since she thought it was three states. According to Wiki, the official name for that area was once New England, before it split up into the individual states. So I guess it’s kinda like looking for Middlesex in England - and that is on google maps. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/245 "2010-01-13T15:56:43Z")
Yeah, but Middlesex was still a county up until… the sixties or seventies? New England stopped being an administrative region sometime around 1700. I bet you won’t find Mercia on Google Maps. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/246 "2010-01-13T16:10:47Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Yeah, but Middlesex was still a county up until… the sixties or seventies? New England stopped being an administrative region sometime around 1700. I bet you won’t find Mercia on Google Maps. Surprisingly, Mercia’s there. Maybe Google maps is just prejudiced against New England. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![TheFaerie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c57346/32.png) [@TheFaerie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheFaerie)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/247 "2010-01-13T16:16:50Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > Agreeing with **scifisam** here, and I have a direct anecdote to demonstrate this misconception - above and beyond the fact that “arse” and “glass” rhyme perfectly in my southern English non-rhotic accent. > > I have an ongoing argument with a couple of my Irish friends about the RP English pronunciation of the French car manufacturer “Peugeot”. > > In England, most people pronounce it to an anglicized approximation of the French pronunciation. Thus I pronounce it “PEUH-zho”. > > So my Irish friends (a doper and a former doper, you know who you are) ask me “why are you putting an R in there? You’re saying ‘PER-zho’.” I reply "I’m not. “PEUH” and “PER” are pronounced the same in my non-rhotic accent. > > “But it’s evident that I’m not pronouncing the R in a syllable where there is no R, because there’s no fecking R in the syllable; alas, to confuse matters, nor do I pronounce the R in a syllable where there is a trailing R. It’s an identical syllable when spoken, and I am not pronouncing an R in either of them.” > > (To which they go “but you ARE pronouncing the R” and I get exasperated and say “no I’m NOT, and at least I don’t say ‘PEW-joe’” - which is how it’s said in Ireland. Then we have a big shouting match and then we have another pint and all is well again.) I’m quoting this just because it reminds me of how Her Majesty’s English speakers will add an ‘r’ sound to words that don’t end in the the letter ‘r’. For example, in the old TV show Xena, the Australian and New Zealand actors pronounced the title character’s name as ‘zener,’ at least that’s what it sounds like to my American Midwest English ears. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/248 "2010-01-13T16:21:00Z")
> [@TheFaerie](#): > > I’m quoting this just because it reminds me of how Her Majesty’s English speakers will add an ‘r’ sound to words that don’t end in the the letter ‘r’. For example, in the old TV show Xena, the Australian and New Zealand actors pronounced the title character’s name as ‘zener,’ at least that’s what it sounds like to my American Midwest English ears. Not this again. [Intrusive r](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linking_and_intrusive_R). ---
**Author:** ![TheFaerie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c57346/32.png) [@TheFaerie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheFaerie)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/249 "2010-01-13T16:34:08Z")
> [@scifisam2009](#): > > Not this again. > > [Intrusive r](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linking_and_intrusive_R). I honestly don’t know if you are trying to prove me right or wrong. I hear an ‘r’, I even heard the ‘r’ in ‘arse’ in the skit linked upthread. I really don’t care why, linguistically or phonetically. It was just an off-hand comment. I’m sure I talk funny, too. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/250 "2010-01-13T16:36:32Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Yeah, but Middlesex was still a county up until… the sixties or seventies? New England stopped being an administrative region sometime around 1700. I bet you won’t find Mercia on Google Maps. Eh? [I can’t find it on mine.](http://maps.google.com/maps?q=mercia&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wl) I’m talking about [this Mercia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercia), not those ones. ---
**Author:** ![filling\_pages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b9bd4f/32.png) [@filling\_pages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filling_pages)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/251 "2010-01-13T18:09:15Z")
> [@Not\_a\_Platypus](#): > > It still doesn’t make any sense. Do math teachers teach you how to add, subtract, multiply and do long division every single year? No! They move on with new concepts and figure you were taught these things in previous years. Why is it only history teachers go over the exact same ground year after year? The difference is that, at least in the public high school I attended in 90 - 94, you got a new math class every year. You took American history exactly once. And mine went pretty much the way others have described, starting with the “discovery” of America and hitting the highlights up until WWII, with maybe 4 - 6 weeks left at the end of the year for everything since. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/252 "2010-01-13T18:09:44Z")
> [@TheFaerie](#): > > I honestly don’t know if you are trying to prove me right or wrong. I hear an ‘r’, I even heard the ‘r’ in ‘arse’ in the skit linked upthread. I really don’t care why, linguistically or phonetically. It was just an off-hand comment. I’m sure I talk funny, too. 😉 You said that the cast of Xena said Xenar. They don’t. It’s the intrusive r - an r appears between a word ending in a vowel sound and a word starting in a vowel sound (eg ‘Xena (r) is’). So you don’t hear an r _every_ time an Australian or Brit says Xena - only in specific circumstances (this is explained in the link I gave you). This is about the 8th or 9th time I’ve seen an American on here stating as fact that Brits and Aussies talk that way; they usually argue their case even after multiple cites, anecdotes and audio examples. It’s not your fault - you’re not responsible for them - but it gets annoying having to correct the same misconception again and again and again. Which skit do you mean? If the speaker has a non-rhotic accent, then you won’t hear an r. There isn’t one. If they pronounced an r in the word arse, then it wouldn’t be a non-rhotic accent. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/253 "2010-01-13T18:12:17Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Eh? [I can’t find it on mine.](http://maps.google.com/maps?q=mercia&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wl) > > I’m talking about [this Mercia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercia), not those ones. Yes, it turned up on mine. I think the difference might be that I’m logged in to Google and it automically searches for Mercia near London rather than other Mercias. Wessex isn’t there though. Of course, there is a difference between those two examples and New England, in that New England is still used as an unofficial geographical term. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/254 "2010-01-13T20:23:20Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > Not to diss your cousin, but – wow. My three year old would never have that kind of misconception. Are you sure she’s not yanking your chain? Otherwise, that’s like down to the level of some kind of mental impairment. I know at least one person who shares that misapprehension. I suspect it starts with older siblings playing cruel jokes on their younger siblings, and the younger kids never getting the joke. It’s similar to my older sister telling me when I was four or so that spiders were baby octopodes and rabbits were baby kangaroos. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/255 "2010-01-13T21:57:27Z")
> [@Not\_a\_Platypus](#): > > It still doesn’t make any sense. Do math teachers teach you how to add, subtract, multiply and do long division every single year? No! They move on with new concepts and figure you were taught these things in previous years. Why is it only history teachers go over the exact same ground year after year? They don’t always. Did you really cover the same things in history class every year? Mine focused on different things entirely From memory, my history classes: 4th grade: California (state) history 5th grade: US History (Columbus-\>WWII) 6th grade: Don’t remember. 7th grade: Ancient history (Greece, Rome, etc. up through the Renaissance) 8th grade: Don’t remember. 9th grade: US History 10th grade: World History Industrial Revolution through WWII. Alternate historical interpretations (I remember reading Marx and Howard Zinn, for example) 11th grade: History of the Americas. This was mostly not US history; it was colonial history and Latin American history. 12th grade: History of the Americas + American Gov/Econ. The History of the Americas wasn’t a repeat, but a continuation. Yeah, we didn’t really talk much about post WWII, but there aren’t a lot of repeats there. And, to the extent that there are repeats, it’s because the level of discourse rises considerably in the intervening years. We studied Geometry in 4th grade and in 9th grade, but it wasn’t the same course any more than 5th grade US History and 9th grade US History were “the same thing.” ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/256 "2010-01-13T22:42:33Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > Not to diss your cousin, but – wow. My three year old would never have that kind of misconception. Are you sure she’s not yanking your chain? Otherwise, that’s like down to the level of some kind of mental impairment. No, she really is that stupid. Takes after both of her parents. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/257 "2010-01-13T22:58:33Z")
My brother knew that there was some guy called the Pope who was the head of the Catholic Church in Rome. He also knew that the Catholic Church was the dominant religion in Ireland. He was very surprised to learn that it was the same Catholic Church in both places. He thought it was two different ones. Normally he’s an extremely intelligent person, if somewhat lazy. ---
**Author:** ![Jamicat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c67d28/32.png) [@Jamicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jamicat)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/258 "2010-01-13T23:09:34Z")
> [@scifisam2009](#): > > I just tried too and couldn’t find it. New Hampshire, no problem, but New England (even adding USA) only takes me to a tiny town in North Dakota. You shoulda’ saw me looking up to see where Foxborough Stadium was for the Patriots one year…so I tried to look up New England. :dubious: …then I thought for a few min…isn’t Boston in Massachusetts. :smack: My brain still says there’s a New England though. ---
**Author:** ![rhubarbarin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eb9ed0/32.png) [@rhubarbarin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rhubarbarin)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2010, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/259 "2010-01-13T23:56:01Z")
> [@Harvey\_The\_Heavy](#): > > Yeah, the whole pop culture disparity with some of my younger co-workers just kills me sometimes. I couldn’t believe it when some of them had never even heard of the movie _Escape From New York_. That’s one I assume everyone on earth has seen. They can’t believe that I, a 40 year old unmarried male with no kids, haven’t seen _Twilight_. Pop culture disparity isn’t only age-related. I grew up with little media exposure and don’t have much now. I’m equally ignorant compared to my peer group (mid-20s), my BF’s generation (early 40s) and my parent’s generation (mid 50s). I just don’t talk about tv, movies and music with people. I’m left out of most ‘water cooler’ conversations.. and it’s often awkward when people quote commercials, tv shows, and movies and I’m expected to understand the context. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2010, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353/260 "2010-01-14T00:19:51Z")
> [@scifisam2009](#): > > Ha! That’s funny. I had no idea New England wasn’t a state. Don’t suppose that’s too surprising, though - I’m not from the US and it does sound like a state. Still kinda funny that it’s not on Google maps - it’d make as much sense to be able to find an area as a state. I tell you what else is weird: if you go to the Mirriam Webster online dictionary, the common English word “gullible” doesn’t have an entry. Seriously–go try and look it up! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-shocked-to-find-out-some-people-dont-know/524353.md?page=14)