# What should non-Americans be expected to know about the US?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-non-americans-be-expected-to-know-about-the-us/377735>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [October 24, 2006, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-non-americans-be-expected-to-know-about-the-us/377735 "2006-10-24T18:04:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\
**Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-non-americans-be-expected-to-know-about-the-us/377735/61 "2006-10-25T12:09:33Z")

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[QUOTE=Nava]  
Congratulations, did you place them correctly too? I get mixed up with all those square places…  
[/quote]

Nope, I wasn’t trying that - and it’s all the east coast ones that confuse me.

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**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\
**Post date:** [October 25, 2006, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-non-americans-be-expected-to-know-about-the-us/377735/62 "2006-10-25T12:12:05Z")

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There is more to our country than Disney and Vegas.

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**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\
**Post date:** [October 27, 2006, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-non-americans-be-expected-to-know-about-the-us/377735/63 "2006-10-27T00:13:50Z")

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Should in the sense of it’s a good thing to know rather than “one must”… Because this country is so large, there is **a lot** of regionalism. If you plucked a random person each from New England, the deep south, the mid-west and the west coast and compared them, you’d find they sound very different in both accent and word choice, different levels of education, they probably have different amounts/types of religion, have different cultural beliefs/activities/histories, very different diets, different laws and political views, and perhaps different career options.

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**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\
**Post date:** [October 27, 2006, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-non-americans-be-expected-to-know-about-the-us/377735/64 "2006-10-27T03:56:54Z")

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“Expected” to know? Not much, really. All I ask is a bit of humility.

I say that because it’s taken for granted in much of the world that Americans are ignoramuses (ignorami?) who don’t know anything about the rest of the world.  
And sadly, there are an awful lot of Americans who know little or nothing of the world.

Europeans, on the other hand, tend to think they know a LOT about the U.S.A. It just so happens that a huge amount of what they “know” is wrong.

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