All right a question to all Americans reading this.
How good is your knowledge of European geography?
Hopefully a little (or should that be a lot) better than someone over at CNN, the US cable news channel with of course its well-known international counterpart.
The channel has deployed, what the French weekly news magazine Le Point calls, "its usual army of journalists and technicians" to cover the G20 summit.
You know, the talkathon currently taking place in Cannes - hosted by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy with guest of honour his US counterpart Barack Obama.
The two men are to appear in a 15-minute pre-recorded interview on prime time news in France on Friday evening - apparently more than enough time to cover all the world's issues and any questions on re-election they might both face next year. But that's an aside.
Er - so where were we? Oh yes - G20 summit, Cannes on the French Riviera and ergo in France...well not quite it appears.
Because someone back home at CNN HQ responsible for putting together world maps managed to place the city, world famous for its annual film festival, not just several hundred kilometres away but in a completely different country - Spain to be precise.
Now we all know that Americans can have a rather - how to put this politely? - tainted view of the world, geographically speaking but really!
The blunder didn't go unnoticed on the Net of course with comments ranging from "CNN exclusive - northern Spain has been ceded to France" to the suggestion that "when the US invades Iran, best make sure that CNN are not embedded with the military."
Click here to see one of many images of CNN's latest take on European geography.
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4 comments:
the first word in your article should be "alright" not "all right" so americans need to learn geography and you need to learn english.
I'd like to see an American writing in french as well he is writing in english... I'm australian myself and I think that Americans aren't good in geography..
Many people in the US couldn't even find France on a map, Italy is easy, for obvious reasons. I've met people who don't know where the United Kingdom is. Many people can't even find most of the US states on a map.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YS1xzjy0sQ
To the first anonymous. Thank you for your comment but both forms are acceptable!
alright |ôlˈrīt| |ˈˈɔlˈraɪt| |ɔːlˈrʌɪt|
variant spelling of all right .
USAGE The merging of all and right to form the one-word spelling alright is first recorded toward the end of the 19th century (unlike other similar merged spellings such as altogether and already, which date from much earlier). There is no logical reason for insisting that all right be two words when other single-word forms such as altogether have long been accepted. Nevertheless, although found widely, alright remains nonstandard.
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