this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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Germany might be the worst European country for your example. I'm sure most Americans could name at least a few German provinces just from German prevalence in Western culture. France or Italy? No way.
US states also have considerably more autonomy than most of their European counterparts. It's not at all an exaggeration to say US states operate as their own nations while the federal government mostly just handles international matters.
This is true. Even as an American I doubt I could properly name all the Midwest and New England states on my first try.
I'm not American but I do live in Europe and I only know Bavaria as a province of Germany.
Can't compare all the 50 states to full blown countries as most of them have low population. California though has like 60 million people, so everyone should know that one (and people do, it's movies)
Sure you can. The least populated US state(Wyoming) has about 50,000 more people than the least populated EU country(Malta). Every single state absolutely can be comparable to at the very least small countries. California alone has one of the highest GDPs in the world.
I feel like the majority of Americans could name at least Bavaria, Saxony, or Hamburg if asked.
24 US states have populations of over 5 million, ten of which being over 10 million. Like you said, states like California, Texas, Florida, and New York all have populations in the tens of millions. It isn't like they're all just hollow areas of land
From the US: I know those names, I didn't know they were provinces. I thought they were cities to be honest.
I think you're really overestimating how much most Americans think about Germany. The first result on Google says only 20% of Americans can name all 50 of our own states, and a shockingly large amount of Americans really don't know anything about the world outside of 100 miles of where they were born.
I'm betting we're gonna run into a selection bias issue here, but can you name any Chinese provinces? Or Argentinian ones? I'd guess most Americans think about China more than Germany these days, and couldn't name any Chinese provinces besides the major cities at most, and even then I wouldn't be surprised if they knew none of those. Germany really doesn't come up in conversation any more than Argentina, other than many a few more people coming back from vacation in Germany.
I'm admittedly terrible at European geography, but I'm not exactly ashamed of not being able to name all the countries in Europe, since it's generally not relevant information for me. I'm sure I'll learn more about it when I plan to travel there.
Part of the problem, yes.