How Americans basically refer to where they are from to non-Americans while abroad If they are not from a big city†
: (click to enlarge)
For Americans outside of the US, I decided to make a map based on regional names heard from my fellow compatriots in the often challenging process of trying to describe where your hometown is located, as an aid when you will inevitably be asked: “Where in America?”. Equally so, this is a great tool if you have ever been on the other side of that conversation politely nodding as your American friend tells you where they are from, and being sure that the south refers to the entire southern part of the US, which isn’t what he or she meant at all, actually.
When travelling, trying to communicate where you are from as an American is always a tricky endeavour. Those of you from New York, California, Texas, or Florida can rest on your geographic laurels of having well-known states– but even then you occasionally have to rely on faithful lines such as ‘about 4 hours from New York City” or “down near Mexico” or “Have you ever been to Disney World? Sorry, not Disneyland, that’s in California; Disney World. Yeah, it’s the one in Florida. Yeah, there, basically.”
However, if you’re not from one of these reliably known states, you have to do what the rest of us do: try to use vague outdated geographic regions to explain where Fort Wayne, Indiana or Omaha, Nebraska is. Even then, what we really mean is “I’m from a small farm town few people from my state have ever heard of but that is the city I would drive to when I wanted to go to the movies or the mall”. When you’re really grasping at straws, you start saying things like ‘about 5 hours west of Chicago’ to describe that you’re from Webster City, Iowa, which has nothing in common with the Chicagoland area other than you share the same national citizenship. We start to defeat the purpose, yet we trudge onward in our desire to share where we are from.
To keep the conversation flowing and awkward confusion at a minimum and bonding at a maximum with our newly found foreign friends, we resort to convoluted regions that make sense to mostly only those familiar with America in the first place. Because the truth is, in America, we take our regional pride far, far too seriously, and while it is a bit endearing, it ultimately makes no fucking sense to non-Americans, because taking the time to labour the point of not being from the West, but specifically the Pacific Northwest (opposed to the Atlantic Northwest?) just sounds stupid.
Although showing our global friends this map is a nice solution in the interim, what we should really do is save ourselves the time and effort, and do what all wise travelling Americans have been doing since 2000: tell them you are from Canada.
—-
The making of this map was the result of a ten minute conversation trying to explain where Pittsburgh is to a friend in the UK and each time realising no one knows what we’re talking about when we say ‘Midwest’. And no Americans will understand why this post was written in British English. And so it goes.
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What Americans mean when they say they’re from…
July 31, 2010
How Americans basically refer to where they are from to non-Americans while abroad If they are not from a big city†
: (click to enlarge)
For Americans outside of the US, I decided to make a map based on regional names heard from my fellow compatriots in the often challenging process of trying to describe where your hometown is located, as an aid when you will inevitably be asked: “Where in America?”. Equally so, this is a great tool if you have ever been on the other side of that conversation politely nodding as your American friend tells you where they are from, and being sure that the south refers to the entire southern part of the US, which isn’t what he or she meant at all, actually.
When travelling, trying to communicate where you are from as an American is always a tricky endeavour. Those of you from New York, California, Texas, or Florida can rest on your geographic laurels of having well-known states– but even then you occasionally have to rely on faithful lines such as ‘about 4 hours from New York City” or “down near Mexico” or “Have you ever been to Disney World? Sorry, not Disneyland, that’s in California; Disney World. Yeah, it’s the one in Florida. Yeah, there, basically.”
However, if you’re not from one of these reliably known states, you have to do what the rest of us do: try to use vague outdated geographic regions to explain where Fort Wayne, Indiana or Omaha, Nebraska is. Even then, what we really mean is “I’m from a small farm town few people from my state have ever heard of but that is the city I would drive to when I wanted to go to the movies or the mall”. When you’re really grasping at straws, you start saying things like ‘about 5 hours west of Chicago’ to describe that you’re from Webster City, Iowa, which has nothing in common with the Chicagoland area other than you share the same national citizenship. We start to defeat the purpose, yet we trudge onward in our desire to share where we are from.
To keep the conversation flowing and awkward confusion at a minimum and bonding at a maximum with our newly found foreign friends, we resort to convoluted regions that make sense to mostly only those familiar with America in the first place. Because the truth is, in America, we take our regional pride far, far too seriously, and while it is a bit endearing, it ultimately makes no fucking sense to non-Americans, because taking the time to labour the point of not being from the West, but specifically the Pacific Northwest (opposed to the Atlantic Northwest?) just sounds stupid.
Although showing our global friends this map is a nice solution in the interim, what we should really do is save ourselves the time and effort, and do what all wise travelling Americans have been doing since 2000: tell them you are from Canada.
—-
The making of this map was the result of a ten minute conversation trying to explain where Pittsburgh is to a friend in the UK and each time realising no one knows what we’re talking about when we say ‘Midwest’. And no Americans will understand why this post was written in British English. And so it goes.
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Filed in Cultural Commentary, Ideas, People
Tags: Expat, Map of the US, Possibly un-PC portrayals of America, Regions of America, Travel Aids