I get surprised at how much trouble people have with the US 2-letter postal abbreviations. Especially the ones that start with the letter M. I am referring to other people in the US, of course. I can understand why these wouldn’t be known worldwide.
That could be. That’s the only thing I can think of that might explain what she was thinking. I would be nice to know that people aren’t that stupid.
Oh, and I keep being surprised by what words people don’t know. I read a lot, and I guess I have an unusually advanced vocabulary, but sometimes say something that sounds perfectly normal to me and no one knows what I’m saying. (I fondly remember a moment in tenth grade when the teacher came up with two words I hadn’t heard of yet).
Not that I’m one to judge. I mean, I still haven’t completely mastered spelling.
Okay, so where the hell do pineapples come from if not from a tree?
For some reason, I’m thinking that they come from a palm tree, but now that I think of it, I’ve never seen a pineapple in a palm tree.
And on second thought, that’s coconuts.
The old one sucked, so they figured they would give it another go elsewhere…the same thing happened with Braska.
Anyone who had to fill in multi-part forms, especially if they dealt with the government.
Why not? Oh, you mean your garage is heated? I wish my garage was heated. If it’s 20 below zero outside, it’s 20 below zero in my garage.
Enlighten me then. To me, they rhyme - but I’m not American.
Never heard of it.
At my old job, I worked with a girl who was a bit…clueless. I’d heard of some gems she’d come up with before, but was still caught off-guard when she came up to me and asked, completely out of the blue, “so, if all these people were poor during the Depression, why didn’t they just make more money and give it to them?”
I stared at her for a second (because, like I said, she’d caught me completely off guard), and then she said “…there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”
All I could say in response was “…Yeah.”
Then there was the girl in my Honors Our World class senior year of high school who, upon seeing a list of topics we could do our final presentation on, leaned over to her friend and whispered “what are landmines?”
I exchanged glances with the girl sitting next to me, and she whispered “did she seriously just ask that?” All I could do was nod.
I’m also shocked that so many people could argue against the theory of evolution when they don’t even know how it works. I’m talking about the “I didn’t come from a monkey!” and “okay then smartypants, how about we drop a cat into some water and see how long it takes for it to EVOLVE into a fish then, HMM??” school of thought. Just…what the fuck.
Eh, I didn’t recognize half of them at the time, when I first saw it in what, 1985? It seemed like a bunch of “older”, 60s-vintage artists (plus Dan Aykroyd 
) jumped on that bandwagon. Somebody had to tell me who Bob Dylan was and why he was talking so funny.
From the tropics. 
On the French version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”, the question is “What revolves around the Earth?”
The French contestant isn’t sure, and finally answers, “The SUN”! Worse yet, 56% of the French audience agrees!
And lots of people think France is superior to the USA!
Well, this isn’t as bad as thinking Hawaii or New Mexico are different countries (do people really think that…??) or not knowing where France is but…
When I was in college I studied abroad for a semester in Vienna. The semester before I left, I was stunned at the number of classmates who did not know where Vienna was. This was at a very “good” college, too (at least as ranked by US News - whatever that matters). I don’t think I expect a lot from people, cultural literacy-wise. I wouldn’t be surprised if they hadn’t heard of the Hapsburgs or the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or if they didn’t associate Freud with the city. But I would - and do - expect a college student in the US to be able to say something like “Vienna…Austria…lots of classical music there, right?”
And thier sausages are to die for 
Man. To look at that thing, who would thing there is such sweet, delicious heavenly bliss inside! Mmm, pineapple!
And who knew this?
Hell, I wouldn’t presume most people would know “viaduct”!
It’s a hard chalky candy that are shaped like tablets which you put in plastic dispensers with heads on them. The heads are usually of some fictional character.
I recognized most of the people in the WATW video. It took me a while to get Al Jarreau (if it was him), and there was a mess of Jacksons, the only one I could definitely identify (other than Michael) was LaToya.
To me, Vienna always seems to want to be in Italy. I have to think about it for a second every time.
There are quite a few immigrants and/or people living overseas who are firmly convinced that the US has 52 states. I always thought that odd: I mean, sure, it’s not your country, I couldn’t name the number of Canadian provinces or German Staaten and will freely admit that. But if I believed I did know something about a country’s number of subdivisions and had a fixed number in my head, and it was the wrong number – where does that come from?
Almost all American accents are non-rhotic, in contradistinction to most dialects in Britain. This is the reason why pawn and porn sound different to Americans.