State Names

I was doing some searches on cultural facts from around the world and found this website directed towards kids.  While it has some interesting facts, what I found most fascinating was its description of U.S. state names.  According to the site, the origin of twenty six different states’ names come from Native American words.  Here is the grid, courtesy of kulturekids.org:

Is it "color" or "colour"?

When identifying the similarities between the United States and the United Kingdom, language is often one of the key characteristics.  However, while we do speak the same language, isn’t it interesting how there are so many differences?

I think as Americans, we are almost mystified when we hear British people talk about the “loo,” “queuing up,” and “football” games (meaning soccer).  To us, it seems like words out of an old fairy tale, but to them it’s completely natural.  I haven’t had a chance to ask a British person what they think of American English and would be really interested in hearing their perspectives.

How good is your knowledge of British English?  Take this Sporcle quiz to find out.

Still want more?  The Wikipedia site of American and British English differences is very informative.

How well do you know North America?

Let’s start this post out with a quiz (no peeking below):

1) Who is the president of the United States?

2) Who is the prime minister of Canada?

3) Who is the president of Mexico?

My guess is that you can probably answer the first question, but without a Google search number 2 and 3 may elude you.  I find it interesting that in reality, we generally don’t know too much about the governments of our closes neighbors.

As I’ve traveled abroad, one thing I’ve noticed is the people of other countries are often more international.  What I mean by this is that news focuses more on what’s happening in the world and people generally have an idea of the workings of other countries.  Here in the U.S., we generally seem to focus on what’s happening here domestically and any international stories are generally tied to our foreign interests.

It’s hard of course to make a snap judgment here, because the U.S. is the world’s superpower and what happens here often affects the rest of the planet.  I remember one time in Spain the news started out with a story of how it was snowing in Texas (I remember laughing at the fact that U.S. weather took precedent over other stories).

You can make of this post what you wish, but I thought it was an interesting characteristic of American society to point out.

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Now, if you knew the answers to all the questions above, congratulations!  You are very international!  If you didn’t, look below for the answers.

1) Who is the president of the United States? Barack Obama

2) Who is the prime minister of Canada? Stephen Harper

3) Who is the president of Mexico? Felipe Calderón

Digital Death

Even though it’s not always something we like to talk about, death is the natural progression of human life here on earth.  But after reading a blog post on ZDNet’s tech news site, I encountered another aspect to death: digital death.  While this may seem like it’s going in a gruesome direction, I can ensure you it’s not; what the article talked about was the various online accounts such as Hotmail, Facebook, and Twitter and what happens to them once someone dies.

In retrospect it seems logical, but I never thought that these companies would have policies for users who pass away.  According to Facebook’s policy, next of kin may request that the site be removed or remain in place as a memorial.  Hotmail offers next of kin access to the deceased person’s account as long as the request follows certain guidelines.

As we become continuously dependent on technology (not only in the U.S. but across the globe) I only expect this will become a more pressing issue.  These online tools we use can often be very personal and the question must be asked, what if a person doesn’t want that information shared.  Conversely, a record of someone’s Facebook or email can provide significant insight into the lives of that person that we’ve never had access to in the past.

I’d like to end this post with a cute video I saw about how technology can be used in creating memories:

U.S. Coins Have Names

Can you name these coins?  Most likely you can.  From smallest to largest: dime, penny, nickel, and quarter.  We use the names for these coins without even thinking about it, but that's not the case in every country.

For example, with these euro coins, they are only identified by their denomination ("20 cent coint", "50 cent coin", etc.):

I think this in an interesting part of our culture that we often overlook.  In fact, we don’t even notice our coins don’t have numbers on them.  The euro coins above all have large numbers that show their value, but ours are written out: “one cent”, “five cents”, and “quarter dollar”.  If you look at the dime, you’ll see it doesn’t even tell you it’s worth ten cents; instead, it says “one dime.”

The next time you throw your change down on your dresser, think about the cultural character they represent. :)