The best question from an american to a german I've ever heard of was "Do germans have a dream too like we have an American dream?" The guys response was "We had one but nobody liked it."
A long time ago, my Canadian family was visiting the UK and we were at Windsor Castle. I guess we were on the "American" bus. For those who know, the castle is pretty close to Heathrow airport. One of the American tourist asked our guide, "Why would the build the castle so close to the airport?"...I was 8 at the time and thought that was the stupidest thing I ever heard an adult say!
LOL! I love Canada (GO Canucks 🇨🇦)! There pretty much the best of both Worlds (really mean that) 👍 ! But are they not also "North" Americans, and should have been on that bus 🤣 ? Being Danish (Scandinavian), I once met this person from Canada. Not able to place my Country on the map, I told here that we were one of the Viking countries. The question was, if our Vikings live on reservations, just like "Native-Americans" ? This person was so nice and I didn't have the Heart to tell him/her the truth (Vikings haven't been around for about a 1000 years, and that we're there Descendants, not the actual thing ) ! So I just answered "Yes, we keep them on there own Islands, around Denmark, and we've taken there ships away, so they don't run around, making a lot of trouble" 🤣🤣 ! But AquaB! Your story is SO funny 😁! I guess we ALL have our share of Ignorants 🙄 !
Asking why there are different words for "Germany", is like asking why there are different languages lol. Different languages just call different stuff different things. So it IS a pretty dumb question, but you seem like a really chill, nice guy so you are forgiven lol😊
@@gustavgnoettgen it is a stupid question. Especially saying "the rest of the world calls it Germany" - so English speakers are the rest of the world now? It's Alemania in Spanish and Allemagne in French, and something else in every other language.
I’m from Scotland and lived in Texas for a couple of years, the thing that I found astounding was that most Americans, that I met, thought that places and cities in the in the UK were named after places and cities in the US and Canada. 😳. My house in the UK was built before USA was formed. The British, French and Germans were the first to colonise the USA (not proud of that) but it’s history. The other thing that amazed me is that a lot of Americans think that nothing exists out with America, we all live without modern day conveniences. I understand the reason why this is is because a lot of Americans have not travelled out with America, you have no reason to, America has everything you need, sunshine and if you want snow for skiing you have that too. In Scotland if we want guaranteed sunshine we have to travel to another country such as Spain, Greece, France etc While in the US, an American girl said to me that when she gets married and has baby’s she wants to give birth in the UK, only give birth in the UK but live in America because she loves the British accent and wants her child to speak with a British accent. I had to explain to her that her child would have to live in the UK to have a British accent just being born there wasn’t enough. She did not understand 🤷♀️😳
@@milliechook7375 almost certain that is just a cultural group in America and not an ex colony from a German state. This does not mean Germany colonised the USA. The Dutch part comes from new Amsterdam.
@@maxdavis7722 OK none of the states that eventually became Germany colonised North America, but a lot of Germans moved to the US, much to the extent the German Language nearly became the official language of the US.
@@johnsimmons5951 I know but he specifically stated the Germans colonised the USA. Germany and “Germans” didn’t even exist back before the USA and as we have agreed no German state colonised the USA.
The thing about the German food is, that there is no traditional "German chocolate cake" in existence. Same goes for most other food items. We do have hundereds of recipes for chocolate cake all over the place, just like in the US. If you ask 100 German families, to bake a traditional chocolate cake, you'll get at least 50 different cakes out of it. So your example for a "German chocolate cake" is definitely not "traditional" German, but it's not impossible, that you'll find a cake like this somewhere in Germany. There are some "older" traditional foods in existence, that have a more universal tradition for all Germans, like the "Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte" (Black Forest cherry cake) for example, that basically every German knows, but there are plenty of regional differences when it comes to food, just like our different dialects.
@@helloweener2007 Ok, good to know, I guess. So there was a misinterpretation by James regarding this specific cakes name. Well, the rest is still true for basically every German food you can consume in Germany and in foreign countries.
This is out of the topic, I'm from England and since 2017 I've been working in the USA. One of my colleague once asked me " What language do you guys speak in England?" I died laughing and told him to ask that Question to every colleagues of ours.
As a german: Even I got asked a couple of times by americans in chats if Hitler is still alive - and in which city he currently lives! I mean ... come on! Really!? This guy was born in 1889!!! He would be the oldest man on earth ... But yes! He is still alive, living in Berlin and we are all invited to his next party, when he's celebrating his 133th birthday! :-) There will be a lot of warm (!) beer and this strange "German Chocolate Cake" (I never heard of - or tasted) as well! ^^+gg
What made me giggle was, when you said that our names are pretty normal. That's from the mindset of "what I know is normal, everything else is weird". Don't get me wrong, we all have it, but it came pretty much at the time you asked for the dumbest things to say, and that made it funny! And for the record, there still are those weird, hard to pronounce names. Like Jürgen, Günther, Hartwig, Joachim and much more. And to me it also is so funny, that this american actress is called Mädchen Amick. Because Mädchen is not a name, but means "little girl". xD
I was also asked the question about the refrigerator. The crazy thing was that they had a Bosch refrigerator and had previously said that German refrigerators are better than American ones. And then he asked whether we have refrigerators in Germany ...
German refrigerators are better than American ones? Never heard that one before. There are probably some German products that are better than their US counterparts but refrigerators? Why would those be any better? I think refrigerators are pretty much the same all over the world and in the end it depends on the price: If you buy cheap crap, you get cheap crap, no matter which country, right?
@@xcoder1122 mhm maby because of the better insulation (actually for a better energy rating since electric energy costs about 150% to 200% more in Germany than in the US) and therfore the motor don't start every 5 min or it is quiter because of the smaller compressor Or Bosh has a neat patent on same refrigerator technology But if it isn't the energy efficiency I would say it is just better because it replaced a older Refrigerator
A very ignorant thing Americans once said to me: while I was living in Japan an American couple asked for my help (only other western person around) in the supermarket because they couldn't find the right laundry detergent: "Why is every article here in this weird Japanese writing? How should people be able to read this? Wouldn't it be easier for everyone if they just write the English name on stuff?" I helped them and they told me they moved to Japan a few days ago. Sold everything back in the USA to move to Japan and teach English. They have never been to another country before and didn't speak any Japanese. "Thank you for helping us! The staff here doesn't seem to speak English, can you believe it? Strange people. We really have to teach them." They complained that in the days they had been to Japan, before me, they encountered only one person, who was able to speak (broken) English. This was not in Tokyo but a city with very few tourists. I adviced them to learn Japanese, but they had no plans of doing so. They "moved to Japan to teach English, not to learn Japanese. A language nobody understands anyway".
Oh dear 😆 I always get asked - Austrian myself - if I've personally seen kangaroos before. Or *I always thought you speak English over there, but you speak German, too? Wow!* and in Japan, in Japanese language class, there were a lot of nationalities in one room. Our Japanese teacher thought it would be fun to ask everyone to show on the world map in the classroom where I am from. Even my Italian classmate pointed to Australia 🙈
The Thing with AC Units is. Besides the fact that Germany and Austria are placed in a very mild climate. In Germany and Austria the houses are often built with very sturdy bricks. So the walls have a better insulation than most houses in the US. So we don't often have to use ACs because the rooms are cool enough from the insulation.
Yeah and on many older houses you will find a "weinkeller" or something basically a room in the basement which is completely top, walls and floor made out of bricks and in there is basically the whole year the same temperature
Yes, and I also live on.. Idk what to call or in English, but basically I live on the outside of the city, where you have to walk either 15 minutes or drive to get to the centre and we legit do not have sun here since there's a hill on the other side of the road and behind us, so whenever it does come it's only to the bottom floor of the house. Also yes, most houses are built with bricks so it's gonna be way hotter if you open a window than it would be of you keep it closed, which is why we don't use air conditioning. The other house I lived in, there was about 10-15°C in the hallway the whole year around so it was cold asf if you came in from the outside.... But it was also haunted so I'm glad we moved
we also use multiple layers of glass for the windows, Dreifachverglasung. It’s not just the walls, but also the windows and doors. And we know how to use our windows to cool the house.
@@tobyk.4911 The commenter above wasn't telling the whole story. In all Slavic languages (be it Polish, Russian or whatever) the word "němý" meaning "mute" (this one is in Czech but for versions in other Slavic languages it's the same etymology) didn't always mean just mute or silent. It also was a word used for someone who makes unintelligible noises/sounds. Eg. a foreigner speaking a different language. Slavs always somewhat understood eachother coz Slavic languages separated pretty late. However German was something that Slavs couldn't easily understand. Germanic tribes were just making weird noises, which Slavs didn't know what they mean. Idk where in Polish it became a synonym for "dumb" but I can tell you it's not like this in all Slavic languages (Czech, Slovakian, Slovenian or Croatian don't use "němý" as a synonym for "dumb") 😅
I think the weirdest question I heard as a German by an American was "So, why do you guys have Euro as a currency when you live in Germany not in Europe?" Geography really failed him in school I guess. Also, historically speaking, every country driving on the right side of the road is actually wrong. Until the French revolution and Napoleon's victories in the wars to come, all countries drove left. Napoleon ordered all defeated countries to switch from left to right hand driving including the French colonies and America. Some countries switched after world war 1 and some like Austria and Sweden a bit later.
“The rest of the world call it germany” 😂😂😂😂😂😂 no. In english you call it germany. And Surprise! Other countrys don’t call your country united states of america. Google why 😂
I've so many times watched English speakers talk about other countries, especially when it comes to Japan, when the topic is about words and language; they say how Japan has their own words for something and the rest of the world uses [English word]. Happens too often.
@James Bray One question from a german here: Why do you call the country you live in 'United States of America' when you could just say 'Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika'? 🤣
Ask yourself, in all honesty, would you want to hear an American try to say Vereinigten Staaten if they don't speak German? 🤣🤣🤣🤣 Now I think about it, that coukd be hilarious.
Haha. Thanks for your honesty, sir. My experience is that some Americans tend to be stunningly American-centric and assume that anything American is "normal" and know little about other countries
I mean, one example of that slipped into the video too. He said that he was surprised that the German names were "pretty normal", implying that anything non-English or non-American is not normal. Not a big deal but pretty funny.
Now I have to remember what a former classmate of mine was being asked during an exchange year in the US (Las Vegas suburban area) Dumb question number 1: Do you guys have cars in Germany? Nah, we only build them for you, we don't use them... Dumb question number 2: Do you have toilets and toilet paper in Germany? Nope. Sorry. We're some 80plus million people and we all shit in the woods. And depending on the season we either use leaves to wipe our butts, or squirrels... (That's also why our squirrels have a reddish brown color.) So, when it's winter and you need to take a dump, never forget your squirrel sling! Also, it's paramount to use them the right way, because those little monsters have sharp claws and teeth and they're hungry for nuts. Want me to teach you?
Thank you. I always wondered why some squirrels have a reddish brown and some a dark brown;) Btw Germans invented the automobil. Carl Benz did, not Ford.
My brother got asked the nazi question from an american and he played the reverse card and asked if you have to be american to by slaves in the US. His coworker avoided him after that conversation.
I can’t even travel to some parts in Germany without having problems understanding people SPEAKING GERMAN.. and I am German! The US „accents“ are a walk in the park compared
I spent a year in Germany and loved the place and I didn't have any problems with the different accents in Germany. I'm British and Scottish, but I honestly think the UK has the biggest variations of accents in Europe and maybe the world. Liverpool to Manchester is short in distance, but they are completely different in sound.
@@overthewebb actually in Germany we dont say accents. We call it dialects. And most Germans usually speak Hochdeutsch - so high German which is kind of the standard german. But i can promise you if you ever meet someone speaking for example Plattdeutsch you won't unserstand a single word. It is legit like another language 😂 like not exxagerated at all. If someone speaks plattdeutsch most native German speakers are not able to understand him. And there are quite a few different dialects. Some are easy to understand, some Impossible even for native Germans. A German dialect is a lot more than just an accent
@@marvinasas2060 when I said accent, I probably should have said dialect. Do you not think us Scots have a different dialect to our English neighbours? And there are lots of different dialects in Scotland. I would argue the UK has more than Germany due to the language. The English language is a bastardisation of the main European languages and due to the invasions of the UK, it's why it is so different. English comes from old German, French, Latin, Danish, Welsh and Scots
Same in The Netherlands. We have different dialects at every corner. But I've been asked by an American once 'you have dialects? But the country is so small? ' Sigh... But I agree, I don't have problems with American accents at all. Yeah, they use a couple of slang words here and there, but I think we kinda know those too.
trust me, for germans most americans sound almost the same when it comes to the dialects. Even the british are way more different then the us´ Scottish and Irish Accents (not the gaelic language, just the accents) are much more complicated to understand then any of the american. If you learn Italian, the language in the south of the country is a complete different language then in the north. they partly don´t understand each other and it´s the SAME country. and spanish... yeah. European spanish has many different accents and the Latin - american spanish is much worse. xD
Same in The Netherlands and this is a very small country. But let's say most people in the west don't understand those in the north, east or south, the south doesn't understand the north and vice versa and so on. Most people from north, east and south understand people in the west though. There is an accent but an understandable one. In short, I'm Dutch but I better understand English, German and even a little French than many of the accents in the north, east and south in my own country, lol.
German Chocolate Cake is called German Chocolate Cake because of its inventor, *Samuel German.* If Samuel's name had been _Italian_ instead of German, this (probably very delicious) cake would be called _Italian chocolate cake._
"Dumb" questions aren't unique to America, they are all a product of a country's education system. America is just unusual among developed nations for having an education system which doesn't include much education about the rest of the world. One time when I was in Malawi two teenagers there asked me which was bigger, London or Africa. I laughed in their faces before telling them, and then felt super-shitty about it because of course it wasn't their fault, and it had actually taken a lot of courage for them to approach me and ask that question. It's always good when people strive to learn more about topics they don't know about, including about foreign cultures, and we should never mock people who are trying to learn.
Yeah well, difference is those kids in Malawi not only were kids (as opposed to grown ass men) but also (I'm guessing) didn't have the access to education you can find in your average western country, or have the option to do a 5 second Google search before asking a really dumb thing.
People from the us don’t know shit about their own country as well, even that they call themselves Americans is kind of funny to me, it’s the same like me saying I’m eurasian when asked what country I’m from. Because America is not even one but two (or even three) continents with 35 countries. And it’s not like me saying I’m European, because if you ask them if they think people from Mexico or Brazil are Americans they would most likely say no.
About the warm beer confusion thing. I think this comes from the fact that we don't put ice cubes in our beer and just pour it from the tap in the glass but this taps have a cooling system inside so the beer have the perfect temperature of 7-8 ⁰C. 😁👍🍺
I think it mostly comes from the idear, that in some german families, warm beer is said to be good against colds and sickness. If I remember correctly it was even a legit Life-Hack untill 1925 or so. The last time I heared that was 4 Years ago, or so, that here in Germany it was common for many german men, to drink warm beer to support the immune system.
Nah, they're confusing us with the British again. Some kinds of British beers were traditionally served less or non-refrigerated during WW2, so the Americans brought that idea home.
The real question is... why the heck putting ice cubes in a beer. If you would do that here in Germany, most people will never drink with you again. (Sarcasm) We will teach them better of course 😉
A friend of mine (mom from Japan, dad from Germany) visited the US (both ex enemies in one 🤣) The host family was very kind showing him around: " ... And this is an escalator " 🤦🏼♀️
Why is Deutschland not just called Germany? Well, because Germany is the English name for it. Any other country has his own name for Germany. To assume the whole world has to speak English is ignorant.
@@grethi8110 yeah i had italien in school and you call it "germania" for the country but "tedesco" for the people which is completely different and confused me at first lol
I was a taxi driver in England and picked up a group of Americans. Driving along the M4 ( A freeway in American speak) and passing Windsor Castle in the distance which is hundreds of years old a voice in the back asked me why they built it so close to such busy freeway? I took pity and said it was so the Queen could get to London more quickly.
Heyooo, love the reaction, man. I got a dumb question in form of a joke about American stereotypes: Hey, Mr. German Man, why are there so many diffrent languages in Europe? Look, Tiffany (or Amber, Jennifer, who knows/cares), you wanna know why there are so many different languages in Europe? Because The Germans lost the war! ;-D Her answer: " I'm so sorry for you guys....." (Michael Mittermeier, German Comedian in New York, performing in English)
Found that piece some weeks ago.^^ After that i re-watched the part of his first or second programm, when he was in NY for the first time. I love that part when he try to ask the police officer for help. "WHAAAAT!!!?"""x ##" --- "Uhm...nassing?" :D
I'm sooo german and we actually don't use coconut in anything, it's like "an exotic thing" and we use caramel in stuff like caramel fried almonds or caramelised apples :D
Dumb questions I have heard from fellow Americans- "Do they have canned food in France?" "Who wrote Grimm's Fairytales?" "Do they have roads in Germany?" A few times while I was learning German I was asked if I was a nazi........ And recently after mentioning my ex-husband is from Greece, a woman said, "I'm scared of Greeks." Um..... why?
The decadent french would never go down so low as to consume canned "food", everything they eat is of the freshest and highest quality, prepared by master chefs, like on the court of the sun king Louis XIV at his palace in versailles. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Abraham Hitler both wrote Grimms Fairytales in the trenches of WW1. We do not have mere "roads" in Germany, what an insult! Everything is Autobahn!
@@NormanTheDormantDoormat ironically I believe canned food was first invented in France, during the Napoleanic Wars so the troops could easily carry meat. At least according to my French teacher.
Of course there are roads in Germany. There is the Autobahn, which is a single stretch of road and definitely not an entire motorway network, where there are no speed limits anywhere. No roads other than that, though - obviously.
LOL. You're forgiven 😂. I love these kinds of vids. You're funny man, and I can totally relate to these questions asked being from a tiny country in Europe as well. 🙏🇫🇮
About this thing "there are no stupid questions", for me there definitly are. Every Question that you could answer by yourself by just thinking for a moment about it, are stupid questions (being too lazy to think yourself is stupid). There are many people out there, that prefer to ask stuff instead of thinking about it by themselves. On the other hand, there are questions that might not sound stupid if you would ask it with less ignorance. So for example, instead of asking "why do you call your country Deutschland and not Germany" you should ask "where does the name Deutschland come from". It's the same question, but it sounds way better. There are many questions that are just asked the wrong way and sound dumb because of that. Overall, asking questions is allways good and at least for me, even if i'm annoyed of a question, i will allways answer it nicely, being curious about stuff is important. Just sometimes think about a question twice. It can make you look smarter by just asking questions the "right" way.
Right. By the way, answering the question yourself beforehand trains the brain in the most important points that are necessary for personality maturation. And you can tell very, very clearly when someone neglects that. There is a lack of logical understanding, problem-solving options and personal responsibility. But to be honest...most germans also don't know why it's called Deutschland.^^
This, or things you can answer with a 5 second Google search. I hate to be nitpicking and I'm always up for conversation specially with people from other places but come on, this could be far more interesting if we go past the 6th grade questions.
At least for me the dumbest question YOU ever asked was really "Why do you call it Deutschland". It's a different language, of cause, we call countries different and it's not like everybody else calles it Germany or something similar. Just look at our nabouring countries: The french call it "Allemagne", the dutch call it "Duitsland", the danish call it "Tyskland", the polish call it "Niemcy" and the czechs call it "Německo", they all have different names for it. "Germany" is just one of MANY names for our country xD
That is kind of unusual. Take Mongolia für example. In all languages I know, the vountry has some kind of "Mongol" in it's name, inkludiert the native language. Germany has a pretty diverse range of names
@@katrinam6795 we had a very moved history in central Europe the Name Germany goes about 2000 years back to times of the Roman empire and they called the lands north of the Reihn GERMANIA MAGNA and that should be enough The French Alemannia well a west germanic Population group called them self Alemannen and they were lokated in Schwaben and had more influence from France after the roman empire Eh also Mongolia is a very harsh land with almost no pollution (grupps) and no real industry, and isn't a unit out of many smaller countries with different population groups like Germany so not much movement like in central Europe
@@katrinam6795 The different names come from different group's names who lived in the area of modern Germany (or where called like that from others). "Germany" comes from the roman name "Germania" and "Germanen". It's what they called the people there. "Deutschland", the Dutch "duitsland", the nerwegian "Tyskland" and the Japanese ドイツ (doitsu) (which itself comes from the Dutch word) come from the name "Teutonen", another germanic group. And so on ...
@@TheLtVoss Interestingly, the German name for the country, Deutschland, and most of the closely related languages, such as Dutch and the Nordic languages, all come from the Old High German word diutisc, which means 'of the people'. So their names for the country literally mean 'land of the/(our) people'.
When I first came to Australia I was stopped in the street by a very friendly woman who asked me where I came from , I told her Scotland and then she asked me if I learned to speak English while in Scotland or did I learn it when I got into Australia
My parents both came from Holland and so my oldest brother did not know/learned English till he went to kindergarten. My parents realizing this was an issue stopped talking Dutch at home and only English, so when I came around, being the youngest of 5 I can only understand very basic Dutch if spoken slowly, which is a bummer.
Same story here with Russian, my family moved to Germany and taught me Russian until I went to kindergarten, and then I suddenly stopped talking Russian with my family and answered their russian formulated questions in german. Now I have a lot of russian friends and a russian crush, but can't really communicate with them. I thought it's okay, i will never need Russian anymore, but destiny showed otherwise
But, to be fair, not only Americans ask dumb questions. In 2011 I spent my semester abroad in France and my landlord ask me: "Have you ever been to East Berlin?" He was shocked when I told him that I have been to East Berlin and he couldn't believe that the wall wasn't a thing anymore...
Yeah, a few years ago I was working in a pub in London and a middle aged woman got very upset about the menu having hamburgers on it. She felt it was very misleading as the burgers were made from beef not from ham. I had to explain to her that the name was derived from their city of origin not from what they were made of. Sigh.
Fun fact: Orlando is the italian version of Roland which is a frankish name, but if u break down the name it turns out that originally it was constructed with the germanic words "glory" and "land". There is also an assumption that originally the name comes from scandinavia (scandinavian langauges are proto-germanic languages) and the true simplified meaning is "the men from the north". Anyway. Something that Americans dont take into account is that the only true american names are the names of the native americans. Everything else (at least the majority, gonna ignore made up names for people like Bronx :P ) are basicly different versions of names that already existed before Europeans colonized North America.
Having an accent inGermany means, that if you don't speak that accent yourself, even as a native german speaker, you won't know what they're talking about. When I hear americans talk about american accents, I didn't even realize they had one until they mentioned it. So, for american accents, you have to be american to even realize. Also, hoe germans actually talk, that's different in almost every town. I moved around a bit just within my own state and already came across some slang, that was confusing to me and I didn't know from back home. So, it's pointless to even try to learn all the different dialects, just learn standard german and then some local accents and dialects from the region you want to focus on. Seriously, as a heavy dialect speaker myself, speaking a dialect and then also high german feels like you already got to be bilingual. You have to code switch, just so that other germans can even understand you.
We have a saying here in the Bergstraße/Odenwald region: Die erscht Fremdsprooch wo du lärne duuscht is Houchdeitsch ( the first foreign language you will learn is standard german)
@@Son_Daughter_of_Slaanesh It's not a wrong saying as the south German dialects are so much farther "away" from Hochdeutsch that other actual different languages. Norwegian and swedish or polish and czech are linguistically much closer in how they are structured than for example Bavarian and Hochdeutsch 😊
I live in the middle of a "dialect triangle", which means every single village in the vicinity has a different dialect. In school you always knew which exact village your classmates were from because of how they spoke... 😅
I think the most annoying thing about those questions is the confidence that the US and Americans are superior while being so horrifyingly ignorant of the rest of the world. Soda or pop might be confusing the first time you hear it, but keep in mind that person has mastered an entirely new language (English) and can surely remember another name for the same item. Honestly, it's really no different than asking an American the same thing or a German if they get confused by Berliner or Krapfen - the first time might be unfamiliar, but people have the capacity to learn new words.
Especially because we mainly learn British English in school and already are used to different way more complex English accents. But probably the most of the Americans who ask these questions don’t know that they speak actually English in England as well so..
"what's it like driving on the wrong side of the road?" quite exiciting, gets your blood pumping, a real banger you might say, you even get shout outs on the radio!
After travelling to USA from AUS in February (to snow ski), as a single skier I got onto a triple chair with two American ladies. As part of the repartee I mentioned that it was over 100F when I left AUS the day before. One of them asked me "Oh, is it still February in AUS?". I had no answer to that, but if I had been quick enough I should have answered "No it's August". :face-plant:
It is not German chocolate cake but German's chocolate cake, named after a guy with the last name German. I don't know why she says Beercheese is not a German thing i have sold it for about 14 years at the cheese counter, it can be both either Austrian or German (although the most common ones are from Austria, with the rest mostly coming from Bavaria). Of course we use English words and not the original German ones because we are mostly accomodating and know that Americans have trouble saying/pronuncing them. Funny thing is that most misconceptions seem to either derive from things in Bavaria or Great Britain. Btw, another example besides Soda and Pop would be Dressing and Stuffing for your Thanksgiving turkey.
apparently you are confused. American "beer cheese" is not actually cheese. It is more like a cheese colored dipping sauce with a somewhat cheese like flavor. As a german i do not touch this stuff. as we say: net in de schuh!
I had a US couch surfer come to my place in Berlin and he was very excited to finally try some real German chocolate cake in Germany. Pretty rough awakening for him when I had no clue what he was talking about. He then learned there was no German chocolate cake in Germany. Coconut, caramel and pecan are also the most Ungerman ingredients, that could never be traditional here.
I used to live some time in Salzburg and guess what - there was a shop themed in the Sound of music style. I also asked some locals if they have seen the movie - no they didn't.
"Wer, wie, was, wieso, weshalb warum, wer nicht fragt bleibt dumm!" The German Sesame Street Song kept running through my head with many of those "oh my god are you serious?" Questions. Surely helped remaining calm when explaining to a man 15 yrs my senior why lifting his right arm and greeting me with HH! was about the last thing he should do. Right after I got over the shock of it.
I've always thought that anyone being greeted like that, particularly if you're German, should provide an appropriate response by sharply raising your knee to their groin with a suitable spoken rejoinder - "Verdammtes Arschlosch" perhaps?
@@michaelmclachlan1650 I turned it into a history lesson he couldnt escape from as long as I worked there I'd tell him some historic fact at least once a day.
The Germany/Deutschland question is odd to me, as an American…why wouldn’t a country have a different name in a foreign language? You don’t ask Italians why they say Italia and not Italy. You don’t ask Japanese people why they say Nippon and not Japan…
I think it's a natural thing to ask once you start learning about other countries and their languages. I actually remember asking my parents a similar question when I started learning English. Only I probably was like 6 or 7 at the time so nobody thought it weird. I guess many Americans don't see much incentive to learn a foreign language at a young age, so I think it kind of makes sense that they will never think about this until they are adults (or maybe never).
@@nekekaminger It's so useful to have ever rudimentary knowledge of different languages. I understand more than I speak, but I studied French, Greek and Russian in school, and I love Italian opera, so I picked up some Italian too. I am currently learning Welsh, because not many people speak it now, and I don't want it to disappear.
well, that´s not exactly true... he developed the heat exchange technology refrigerator as we know it today and therefor revolutionized refrigeration but William Cullen in 1756 was the one who invented the first artificial cooling Refrigerator, 2 Years prior to Benjamin Franklins Team...
As a dutch person I moved 4 miles and find myself talking with different accents and calling a lot of things, like a lot of baked goods, different things :p. So yes, depending on the baker I go to on my way home I have to call certain things differently. Things get funny if you go to one far away and you have no clue what to call half of the stuff. I know America has accents but it's so minor as to be silly. In European regions the traces of the local lords basically are still felt with how language evolved a bit differently in each region. And while we can all speak the national language at least for me as a dutch person it's not really a language you use outside of, I don't know, court cases. The English honestly speak very basic English most of the time with very little slang or anything imo. Basically almost all words used by somebody who's English could be found in a book. At least in my experience. Speaking the standard dutch language for me at least feels incredibly awkward.
True, I'm Dutch also and when I moved from the west to the east and had to answer the phone at work, I didn't have a clue what they were talking about. Also some words we use in the west have a completely different meaning in the east (for the Americans, that's about an hour drive..). Like when I asked for a piece of 'stuf' (vlakgom) in many parts of the country stuf is drugs, but where I came from (Rotterdam) stuf is an eraser, lol.
If I speak "normal", the same way my parents and so on talked with me, every german outside of bavaria looks at me like I'm from another planet. They understand more when I talk english with them, compared to bavarian xD
@@salatwurzel-4388 I've seen Flemish people talk with dutch people in English instead of trying to decipher their dutch. Not talking about Zeeland and East-Flanders but like, West-Flanders with somebody from Amsterdam can get tricky.
3:45 Actually, Germany/it's people has/have so many different names throughout the world as probably no other nation, at least no big one. Most of them come from the culture/tribe next to those nations (for our neighbours), that settled within todays German borders, but way before our nation was born (in some cases >1000 years before that). Germans, Allemagne, Tyskie, Niemcy, Szwabski, Saksa and all those just within Europe! Imagine having just in America (incl. South America) 10 different names for the USA and it's citizens, lol. There are btw several nice TH-cam videos about that, some rather short and just summarizing the names, some nicely detailed with a lot of history.
I have never seen such a chocolate cake here in Germany. But we also have German sweets named like that, for example, "Russisch Brot" (Russian bread) or "Russischer Zupfkuchen" (Russian tear/pinch cake), which are not Russian at all.
The 'Why is it called Deutschland, not Germany' could be rephrased into "Why isn't it called Estados Unidos (Portuguese), or Etats Unis (French), or Yhdysvallat (Finnish), or Bandaríkin (Icelandic), or Chủng Quốc Hoa Kỳ (Vietnamese) in the USA?" to really hit home that other languages simply have different words. Duuuh, next question. /edit: German Chocolate Cake: I've heard of it, but only from the USA. I have never ever seen any cake in Germany being called "Deutscher Schokoladenkuchen". First off, no German here would ever be dumb enough to claim to have made such a cake for the first time in Germany, AND have the termerity to call it all "German chocolate cake", because no-one would dare to claim that they were talking for the whole of Germany when it comes to cake. Second, that would never be called a 'Kuchen', a cake in German, as there is the descriptive distinction of Kuchen vs Torte. Anything large or high enough to have multiple layers, especially when at least one the major layers is cream-filled, is usually considered a Torte, a tart, for lack of a better English word. Third, chocolate cakes do exist in Germany, but there are dozens of local variations around the country, which again plays into the reason why no-one would claim to have made the one, true, singular 'German chocolate cake'. Just too many recipes over the last two hundred years or so for anyone to have laid claim to the 'original' recipe. Fourth: Germans tend to categorize their names by the major flavors in their foods, so what you have shown is both chocolate and coconut, so it would probably be called a "Kokos-Schoko-Torte" or something like that in German. Fifth: Pecans are still fairly rare in most German supermarkets. Yes, you can get them in most larger stores, but the pecan / Pekannuss is still somewhat of a rarer nut than others like hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts. So I have my very serious doubts that this type of nut would have been used decades ago, much less a century or two ago, anywhere in Germany on a regular basis. But regular use would be necessary to make a cake so traditional and widespread to take the (in my opinion) misnomer of being a 'GERMAN' chocolate cake. All of that being said about the German chocolate cake: I have no doubts that it is absolutely delicious and yummy, but, nope, that is not a traditional cake at all in Germany. Now that I've read some of the comments below I feel a bit stupid cause I stumbled across the origin for the name, as in the family name of the guy who invented it being German. Hah, talk about a know-it-all-German, right? 😁😌
Actually, I think the Germany Deutschland question is quite interesting. Because "Germany" in german would be "Germanien" or something like this. The latin speaking people called the people living north of the alpes "Germanen". So the latin name is Germania which was adapted into english. French people say "Allemagne" which comes from the people called "Allemannen" (meaning "every men"). Because the people living in Germany were a bunch of different smaller folks and not one huge folk in the past. The word "Deutschland" has its origin in the germanic language and is an adjective describing the folk one belongs to. But it's not like the different names for the US. That's just a word to word translation in every language. Though Germans like to say "USA" instead of "US"
the chocolate cake certainly can't be a traditional German recipe, as we have neither coconuts nor pecan nuts. Also, it is very , very difficult to become so fluent in a language to use it idiomatically.
We germans have no choice as to drink warm beer. Without refrigerators. 😂I think that it's perfectly okay to make mistakes as long as you are willing to learn. In France the people are very strict when one couldn't speak french. But if you try to speak a little bit they are very friendly.
When my american cousin came over to visit us, she was scared we would all be Nazis, and crawl through the bushes with a knife in our mouth. I found that heart-wrenchingly annoying... she also thought we would not have streets other than maybe gravel roads.
@@becheroteka9.a525 I once had a similar experience, maybe about 10 or 15 years ago ... I'm German, and was speaking with an American. When I mentioned that I had once been in Czechia for about a week a few years before (in the year 2000), he asked me: "But, wasn't that very dangerous?" My first reaction was probably "Why?" - because I first didn't understand what he meant, ... but quickly it became clear that obviously he had misunderstood the country name: While I remembered Prague, he apparently understood Grozny. ... "No no no, I don't mean that area in the Caucasus,. but that eastern neighbor country of Germany... between Poland and Austria..."
I see regional differences in the U.S. in regard to the specific words being used mainly as expanding one’s vocabulary. At some point learning a language turns into mainly being about expanding one’s vocabulary including terms of phrases.
My grandmother was from Berlin and I still have multiple family members living there, I wish I’d taken the time to visit more and learn the language, the country is so diverse and beautiful though I need to get out there soon!
this reminds me of a study that has shown, that about 55% of the americans think that the sun is a ctually a planet. ive met quite a few americans in my life due to university and watching a lot of videos like this one and it seems like all americans learn in school is about how great and superior their country is over others and nothing that is across their own borders.... this also reminds me of 1933 in germany. alos: tbh your question about the AC wasnt that stupid compared to many others that americans regularly ask. i mean, if u have never been to a country, espeically in europe with like every single weather condition zone there is, how are you supposed to know. theres certainly a reason why most households dont have them around here. if u have like 3 weeks of the year that would be great to have an AC, it doesnt really make sence from an economically point of view. as a german for example i really dont think that there are ACs in some countries in the world at all since some are simply that cold that it doesnt make sense.
Im from northern Germany more precisely from Ostfriesland and i was aware of the dialect thing because many people speak Plattdeutsch, but it really hit me how different German is spoken in a small area in Germany. My Coworker is from the Harz and she told us, that she noticed that we speak very different from her. I am not be able to notice that from her side and how she speak. For me its just normal High German but apparently its completely different. Its goes even further with Plattdeutsch. The Dialekt is spoken completely different in the neighbouring town than our Platt. I am be able to understand Platt but sometimes its so different, that i can't understand what they are saying. I don't know if its only for me. EDIT: The Platt thing really throws me off with another coworker of mine. He comes from one of the bigger Cities around here and their Plattdeutsch is so different, every time I have to remind myself that their Platt is different and that i don't have to correct him :D An example would be the word "diese". Sometime its "Disse" or "dese" "Anner Stadt anners Land"
As a somewhat sarcastic person from the UK when asked exactly "what is it like driving on the wrong side of the road" the response is normally "I don't know, what is it like driving on the wrong side of the car". Just an fyi on that the smaller % of the world that drives on the Left side of the Road but Right side of the Car is a bigger list than you may think: Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Australia Bahamas Bangladesh Barbados Bermuda Bhutan Botswana British Virgin Islands Brunei Cayman Islands Channel Islands (Guernsey & Jersey) Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Cook Islands Cyprus Cyprus, North (unrecognised, self-declared state) Dominica East Timor (Timor-Leste) England Falkland Islands Fiji Great Britain (GB) Grenada Guernsey Guyana Hong Kong India Indonesia Ireland (Eire) Ireland, Northern Isle of Man Jamaica Japan Jersey Kenya Kiribati Lesotho Macau Malawi Malaysia Maldives Malta Mauritius Montserrat Mozambique Namibia Nauru Nepal New Zealand Niue Norfolk Island Northern Ireland Pakistan Papua New Guinea Pitcairn Islands Saint Helena Saint Kitts and Nevis (officially the Federation of Saint Christopher and Nevis) Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa Scotland Seychelles Singapore Solomon Islands South Africa Sri Lanka Suriname (Surinam) Swaziland Tanzania Thailand Tokelau Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda United Kingdom (UK) United States Virgin Islands Virgin Islands (British) Virgin Islands (USA) Wales Zambia Zimbabwe
I refuse to call american football football when it's basically a variant of rugby and most of the game is carrying the ball around, and then have to call the game where youre literally not allowed to touch the ball with your arms or hands even on accident and 99% of the game is kicking the ball... something else, so that Americans don't get the two confused. It would make about the same amount of sense if handball fans insisted we call that football. I won't stop or criticize anyone else for calling it Soccer, call it what you want, but I'm going to call it what it is, and that means football is football, and american football isn't, as far as I will ever be concerned.
Up north in Finnmark where my sami grandparents lives, they heard a story about a foreign tourist that got angry. When he learned that the midnight sun on the north cape, was the same as rest of the world.
2 ปีที่แล้ว +38
As a Swede I was once asked by an American lady from Florida: "How do you celebrate Thanksgiving in Sweden? Do you eat Turkey like us? Or do you make Turkey meatballs or something?" Me: 🤨😑🤦♂
I'm English and had an American ask if I celebrate July 4th. I said if Britain celebrated every countries independence day we'd have a public holiday every other week.
Funfact: Do you know where the rule of right side driving coming from? To Answer that we need to go back to the medivial of the holy roman empire of german nations. Thats the time the german kaiser gets more and more powerfull, at the same time knighthood gets poor and some of them become to be something we called "Raubritter" translated thiefknights or robber barons- the roads in the german empire are not save any more- a lot of fight, violence etc. At this time u ride on the left side of the road cause in the right hand u have ur sword for quick attacks. The german kaiser changed that for prevention. When u ride on the right side u will encounter people with ur shield on the left side and its harder to hit an oponent through the horses head ;)
I heard, it was invented by the napoleonic wars. The french emperor demanded, that the middle of the street stayed free for soldiers rushing through and normal people had to walk on the right side. When he was gone - and traffic became so dense, that you needed a clear rule, the good experience with ships on channels: passing to the right, was copied for streets and made a law. Only countries, that were not conquered by the french revolutionary armies (UK, Sweden, ...) sticked to left-side-traffic.
Honestly, I don't think there are that many questions that are actually dumb. This video covers a few, but generally I feel it's better to ask than just to presume stuff based on ignorance. Ignorance =! Dumb. There are a few questions where I'd hope that common sense would be enough to answer them for yourself, but these are rather rare. Like "Do you guys have cars in Germany?", which I would consider a dumb question, considering Germany's very well known background of engineering and car manufacturing. Even if all you knew about Germany was Nazis, you could probably figure out that a nation that built military vehicles in the 1930s will probably have figured out cars by 2021. To me, a dumb question is a question that you could probably answer yourself with absolute barebones knowledge of the world. "Do you wear Lederhosen every day?" on the other hand is simply an ignorant question, but if the person in question knows next to nothing about the country it's not necessarily dumb.
"but generally I feel it's better to ask than just to presume stuff based on ignorance. Ignorance =! Dumb." it is not ignorance thinking that there are no cities outside of the US etc. I can almost guarantee that no European thinks that americans dont have cars or cities or refridgerators. That is just like 3 year old level of questions.
Agree and disagree. "Why don't you call your country Germany" is not a dumb question because it leads to the next question which is "well why don't we call it what you call it if you named it first" which leads to an interesting delve in world history. However "Is Hitler still alive?" is a DUMB question.
I can remember when you call Deutschland Duschland ( Showerland ) . I was laughing so hard . But you learned a lot since this time . When you ask me about the german food , we do have special food in every Bundesland . What you think it's real german food is most times bavarian . And we don't eat Sauerkraut every day . I remember we visited a german restaurant in London . When we came in there where a few people askeing us 'is this real authentic german food ?' No it wasn't . We don't put Sauerkraut on sausages and on every other dish. I'm from Baden Würtemberg and our traditional food is Käsespätzle Wurstsalat Maultaschen Zwiebelrostbraten and other delicious things. Other regions have different specials ( maybe this is the reason why there is no real german chocolate cake ) . We have a lot chocolate cakes .
Käsespätzle is great! I'm not actually German (only half) but my dad is, and he is a great cook (he likes to replicate the recipes his mom used to do)! He's Bavarian though, so I really don't know much about Baden Wütemberg traditional cooking, but I can bet it's awesome.
Questions like do Germans (or whomever) have airconditioning, washing machines, cars (yes really) etc. don't just show shocking ignorance, but also how deep this false idea of American exceptionalism runs, and disdain for other nations. It is no secret that US lower and middle education is generally not so good, but it's also indoctrination. At the very least to make Americans feel good about their nation, but I think also to keep them wilfully ignorant about how a lot of things could be (much) better. There would be a nationwide revolt if everyone really knew about e.g. universal healthcare in the rest of the civilised nations, their worker protections, how infrastructure is not collapsing, etc.
I think the warm beer question is about Americans often put ice cubes in any kind of drinks at restaurants and stuff, which would not happen in Germany. Beer needs to be cool and refreshing, but you wanna have the taste of the bee, not of cold sparkled liquid xD
Americans don't put ice in beer. That's as silly as the American who assumed Germans drink warm beer. We both drink beer the same way-- cold/cool from the fridge/tap/cellar.
Most beers in Northern Europe are served at room temp' of just below. there is no need for ice cold beer in moderate weathered countries, wanna quench a thirst and get drunk not freeze my nads off.
@@fasteddie406Idk where in Europe you're from? I'm from Norway and we serve our beer cold, also at home. I have one friend that like his in room temp, but that's really not how we serve it and it's not a common thing.
When it comes to stupid questions, the attitude is Everything so it sounds like you're cool even if you've asked the same things. I mean when people express dislike for Americans it's not even the ignorance (it's not really your fault you have what I like to call institutionalized ignorance) it almost always comes from the Attitude Many other countries also don't really learn about the rest of the world and so will be ignorant about a lot of things but their attitude about it is completely different (e.g. Japan comes to mind) which makes all the difference.
Hey There. First question i have is: Are there even AMERICAN names? Sure, some natives still have some, but i think the most common names in the US are of european origin. Of course i have air conditioning at my home, in fact i have it in every single room, it's a handle on every window you're able to turn 90 or 180 degrees to open it fully or partly. 🙂 I never heared about "German chocolate cake" but there are so many different recepies for chocolate cake in Germany, maybe it is of german origin, i don't know.
8:23 one of the funniest examples for this is "Gretchen" which clearly is derived from German, only absolutely no one in Germany is called "Gretchen". It's a diminutive of Grete which itself is an abbreviation of Margarete (the German equivalent of Margaret, which originates from Greek).
In the US, like other former British colonies, cars drive on the left. A truck in the middle lane is a free for all, find your way around. Driver conduct is absolutely shocking.
Ok, so this is admittedly not the...most complex of video topics, but the energy of such a mellow, likeable dude reacting to another mellow likeable person just honestly feels like a powerful, gentle balm for my poor, harried soul right now. Thank you, kindly, good Sir!
An Australian travel website had some funny people answering questions from world travellers about Australia, mostly Americans. My favourite question and answer went like this:- "Do they speak English there?" Answer:- "Yes, but you have to learn it first!" There seems to be much confusion by Americans about Austria and Australia...must be the first five letters causing such confusion....
Ive been to Germany, specifically Munich. Dude the roads out there so damn smooth, the strudels hit different too. The beer houses out there too smackin!!
Actually I doubt Germans do mind the "German chocolate cake" even though most might not ever heard of that recipe. Easiest traditional German dish is: Toast Hawaii. Legend says that after the war, a restaurant ran out of most ingredients. When new customers came, the chef said: I will make you something special. Arriving in his kitchen, only bacon, cheese , a can of pineapple and toast was left. So he created a new dish and served it as Hawaii-Toast. Next time the customers came, they asked for Hawaii-Toast again. The dish got really popular in all Germany in no time. So no - as Germans we really shouldn't mind the "German chocolate cake".
Yeah, not true, it was actually invented in a German cooking show, the inspiration was most likely the american grilled cheese sandwhich. Incidentally, the show was known for really questionable recipees, but this one stuck around (minus there really nasty cherry on top).
(12:00) "soccer" isn't really the "English" term, but the American/Canadian/Irish/African/Australian English term. "Football" is still used in many other parts of the world. But "soccer" can only refer to specifically ⚽, so it's good like that, but you can't then use "football" to refer to 🏈 if you want to keep it unambiguous. I think the term is "gridiron" if I'm not mistaken. Now, I've heard the argument that "American gridiron and Canadian gridiron aren't going by the same rules", yes, but it's basically the same sport. It's the same how English soccer, Swedish soccer, German soccer don't have the exact same rules either, but that's fine apparently.
i can absolutely understand the cake confusion: German chocolate cake is named after the inventor, someone named "german", but in Austria there is a very famous chocolate cake, the "Sacher Torte", Since German is the official language of Austria (even though austrian-german is different from the german used in germany), this might lead to confusion.
@The Faint Owl I know, but you know the famous "German Chocolate Cake" in America? Thats what this is about, and the only thing that is at least a bit similar to that is austrian, not german.
You need to learn Hochdeutsch first and foremost. The "lingo" is just very different based on where you are in Germany, how old the people are you are talking to and the social environment. Like, student lingo is very different from worker lingo. Nothing wrong with picking up some words, but be aware that there is no common "lingo" or "slang", and it can be confusing if you use certain words wrong. A well known example: What the whole of Germany calls "Berliner", are called "Pfannkuchen" in Berlin, while elsewhere "Pfannkuchen" is an entirely different dish, not to confuse with the American Pancakes.
Speaking Slang in Germany is easily described like this: When i`m casually talking to my friends vs talking to my parents i need to switch dialect to make them even understand what i´m saying every time i´m talking to them. My Parents also have their own kinda dialect, but less than our younger generation, we maybe mix things more up due to the internet. We also, at least in northern Germany, use a lot of english words or variations of them. I personally think the use of some english words makes the german language even more speakable and sometimes more accurate than using the correct german translations for it (at least for me and my friends hahaha)
the nother german (plattdeutsch) has alot of english words or sound similiarities, because they are low-saxon and english are anglosaxon. these languages are familiar.
And when you as a parent practice dictation with your elementary school children, you suddenly pronounce all the letters that you would otherwise "swallow" (G E H E N ~ "gehn" a.o.)
@@sarahmichael270244 yeah Plattdeutsch is very special, we had classes in School for it and some people still speak it, especially the older generations, but it is mostly high german with some leftovers from Platt in Hamburg now.
Just for the record (best regards from Czechia): we used to drive on left befor the WW II. The driving on the right side is based on the Paris International Traffic Agreement from 1926 and we were lazy to change it so we changed our laws at 1938 and we started to drive on right side by the start of our occupation. BTW: We have just 10,5 mil people but so many dialects and our speaking language is almost a different language at all sometimes - even in the written form.
I kinda want to find out if we can even get anything remotely close to a German('s) chocolate cake over here. I guess we can go the James route and just bake one ourselves...
21:50 I'm pretty sure that somewhere in Germany someone makes a cake like that. But it works just like "in India they don't have Indian food, they just call it food". Just like we just call "German potato salad", you guessed it...
Okay, so apparently the story about German Chocolate Cake being called that because its inventor's name ("yeah right" I thought at first) is not a joke/hoax. It used to be called "German's chocolate cake" and over time the "'s" was dropped. Or it's just a suuuper elaborate hoax...
![[UNCUT] The Loyal Pin ปิ่นภักดิ์ EP.15 (3/4)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/IVwR87OH0_A/mqdefault.jpg)
The best question from an american to a german I've ever heard of was "Do germans have a dream too like we have an American dream?" The guys response was "We had one but nobody liked it."
🤣😂😆😆
😂😂😂
😂
And some people say the Germans have no sense of humour.
Technically the truth...
A long time ago, my Canadian family was visiting the UK and we were at Windsor Castle. I guess we were on the "American" bus. For those who know, the castle is pretty close to Heathrow airport. One of the American tourist asked our guide, "Why would the build the castle so close to the airport?"...I was 8 at the time and thought that was the stupidest thing I ever heard an adult say!
LMAO!!!
LOL! I love Canada (GO Canucks 🇨🇦)! There pretty much the best of both Worlds (really mean that) 👍 ! But are they not also "North" Americans, and should have been on that bus 🤣 ? Being Danish (Scandinavian), I once met this person from Canada. Not able to place my Country on the map, I told here that we were one of the Viking countries. The question was, if our Vikings live on reservations, just like "Native-Americans" ? This person was so nice and I didn't have the Heart to tell him/her the truth (Vikings haven't been around for about a 1000 years, and that we're there Descendants, not the actual thing ) ! So I just answered "Yes, we keep them on there own Islands, around Denmark, and we've taken there ships away, so they don't run around, making a lot of trouble" 🤣🤣 ! But AquaB! Your story is SO funny 😁! I guess we ALL have our share of Ignorants 🙄 !
Never eat Nuts while reading YT comments...I choked on this while laughing
This is GOLD :D
It's like the apocryphal story of an American asking why the pyramids were built so close to Cairo.....duh!
" The rest of the world calls it Germany "
Me, a very french person : It's called Allemagne but okay.
me, a very Chilean person: it's actually Alemania.
Saksa in finnisch.
Niemcy in Polish.
We say Duitsland in Belgium 🇧🇪
In Denmark we call it Tyskland
Asking why there are different words for "Germany", is like asking why there are different languages lol. Different languages just call different stuff different things. So it IS a pretty dumb question, but you seem like a really chill, nice guy so you are forgiven lol😊
Yeah, it's like asking why it's called United States and not Vereinigte Staaten
@@shiva_689 That at least means the same.
I am German and I don't see how that's a stupid question.
@@gustavgnoettgen it is a stupid question. Especially saying "the rest of the world calls it Germany" - so English speakers are the rest of the world now? It's Alemania in Spanish and Allemagne in French, and something else in every other language.
@@saskewoo Oh, so much additional information! Maybe it's not a stupid question.
I'm pretty certain a lot of Americans think everybody outside the US speaks 'American'.
Just for the record, the rest of the world doesn't call it Germany. The English-speaking world calls it Germany.
Exactly! In Danish, we say Tyskland. The French call it Allemagne, the Finnish say Saksa, and the Chinese call it Déguó.
The great astonishment for those who consider themselves the center of the world: other languages exist - with other names for other countries!
I call it "Alemanha"...
In Dutch we call it Duitsland, so pretty close to the German word
Niemcy
I’m from Scotland and lived in Texas for a couple of years, the thing that I found astounding was that most Americans, that I met, thought that places and cities in the in the UK were named after places and cities in the US and Canada. 😳. My house in the UK was built before USA was formed. The British, French and Germans were the first to colonise the USA (not proud of that) but it’s history.
The other thing that amazed me is that a lot of Americans think that nothing exists out with America, we all live without modern day conveniences. I understand the reason why this is is because a lot of Americans have not travelled out with America, you have no reason to, America has everything you need, sunshine and if you want snow for skiing you have that too. In Scotland if we want guaranteed sunshine we have to travel to another country such as Spain, Greece, France etc
While in the US, an American girl said to me that when she gets married and has baby’s she wants to give birth in the UK, only give birth in the UK but live in America because she loves the British accent and wants her child to speak with a British accent. I had to explain to her that her child would have to live in the UK to have a British accent just being born there wasn’t enough. She did not understand 🤷♀️😳
The Germans colonised the USA? The ones who colonised the modern USA were: spanish, French, British, Russians and Dutch.
@@maxdavis7722 Pennsylvania Deutsch were German, not Dutch.
@@milliechook7375 almost certain that is just a cultural group in America and not an ex colony from a German state. This does not mean Germany colonised the USA. The Dutch part comes from new Amsterdam.
@@maxdavis7722 OK none of the states that eventually became Germany colonised North America, but a lot of Germans moved to the US, much to the extent the German Language nearly became the official language of the US.
@@johnsimmons5951 I know but he specifically stated the Germans colonised the USA. Germany and “Germans” didn’t even exist back before the USA and as we have agreed no German state colonised the USA.
The thing about the German food is, that there is no traditional "German chocolate cake" in existence. Same goes for most other food items. We do have hundereds of recipes for chocolate cake all over the place, just like in the US. If you ask 100 German families, to bake a traditional chocolate cake, you'll get at least 50 different cakes out of it. So your example for a "German chocolate cake" is definitely not "traditional" German, but it's not impossible, that you'll find a cake like this somewhere in Germany. There are some "older" traditional foods in existence, that have a more universal tradition for all Germans, like the "Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte" (Black Forest cherry cake) for example, that basically every German knows, but there are plenty of regional differences when it comes to food, just like our different dialects.
Well said
The German chocolate cake is named after the guy who came up with it.
German was his family name.
@@helloweener2007 Ok, good to know, I guess. So there was a misinterpretation by James regarding this specific cakes name. Well, the rest is still true for basically every German food you can consume in Germany and in foreign countries.
@Hellequin Maskharat Very true.
True...
This is out of the topic, I'm from England and since 2017 I've been working in the USA. One of my colleague once asked me " What language do you guys speak in England?" I died laughing and told him to ask that Question to every colleagues of ours.
Do you guys in England learn English as the first or second foreign language in schools?
@@kellymcbright5456 excuse me...what.🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@angshusarma8331 i just spinned other questions off the dumb question you got. How could i go on to ask stupidly in that manner?
I like sarcasm ^^
@@kellymcbright5456 I got that. 😂😂😂
@@angshusarma8331 that's perfection!
As a german: Even I got asked a couple of times by americans in chats if Hitler is still alive - and in which city he currently lives! I mean ... come on! Really!? This guy was born in 1889!!! He would be the oldest man on earth ... But yes! He is still alive, living in Berlin and we are all invited to his next party, when he's celebrating his 133th birthday! :-) There will be a lot of warm (!) beer and this strange "German Chocolate Cake" (I never heard of - or tasted) as well! ^^+gg
I am honestly starting to fear that Americans got the satiric book and movie "Er ist wieder da" as a real life document...(°ー°〃)
Wait a minute 🤔
Adi isn't in Argentina anymore 😅
@@Asendra01 No, he moved to Mexico ... as far as I know! But I don't know very much in general! XD
Yes he is still alive. He has changed his name to Trump an lives in Florida.
Fake News! I was about to write something, but I had to bite my fingers not to write it ... *arg
What made me giggle was, when you said that our names are pretty normal. That's from the mindset of "what I know is normal, everything else is weird". Don't get me wrong, we all have it, but it came pretty much at the time you asked for the dumbest things to say, and that made it funny! And for the record, there still are those weird, hard to pronounce names. Like Jürgen, Günther, Hartwig, Joachim and much more. And to me it also is so funny, that this american actress is called Mädchen Amick. Because Mädchen is not a name, but means "little girl". xD
I was also asked the question about the refrigerator. The crazy thing was that they had a Bosch refrigerator and had previously said that German refrigerators are better than American ones. And then he asked whether we have refrigerators in Germany ...
Nein, nein. Ze Kühlschrank is export-only.
@@MrHodoAstartes Ve *are* ze vorld champions in exporting all ze zings, after all!
German refrigerators are better than American ones? Never heard that one before. There are probably some German products that are better than their US counterparts but refrigerators? Why would those be any better? I think refrigerators are pretty much the same all over the world and in the end it depends on the price: If you buy cheap crap, you get cheap crap, no matter which country, right?
@ Vell, you Tschoermens are zo talented at zuch tsings.
@@xcoder1122 mhm maby because of the better insulation (actually for a better energy rating since electric energy costs about 150% to 200% more in Germany than in the US) and therfore the motor don't start every 5 min or it is quiter because of the smaller compressor
Or Bosh has a neat patent on same refrigerator technology
But if it isn't the energy efficiency I would say it is just better because it replaced a older Refrigerator
A very ignorant thing Americans once said to me: while I was living in Japan an American couple asked for my help (only other western person around) in the supermarket because they couldn't find the right laundry detergent: "Why is every article here in this weird Japanese writing? How should people be able to read this? Wouldn't it be easier for everyone if they just write the English name on stuff?" I helped them and they told me they moved to Japan a few days ago. Sold everything back in the USA to move to Japan and teach English. They have never been to another country before and didn't speak any Japanese. "Thank you for helping us! The staff here doesn't seem to speak English, can you believe it? Strange people. We really have to teach them." They complained that in the days they had been to Japan, before me, they encountered only one person, who was able to speak (broken) English. This was not in Tokyo but a city with very few tourists. I adviced them to learn Japanese, but they had no plans of doing so. They "moved to Japan to teach English, not to learn Japanese. A language nobody understands anyway".
Wow! How ignorant! Sounds like they should have just gone back home
@@toddie3910 With this mindset of them, I can't imagine that they're still living there.
@@riversong9333 True!
Holy fucking thats ignorant.
Were they Mormons, spreading "The Word"? :D
I am from Austria and I can’t count how often Americans immediately said something like:“G‘day mate!“
😂😂
Loool hey I'm not american but I also got confused by that when I was younger
Oh dear 😆 I always get asked - Austrian myself - if I've personally seen kangaroos before. Or *I always thought you speak English over there, but you speak German, too? Wow!* and in Japan, in Japanese language class, there were a lot of nationalities in one room. Our Japanese teacher thought it would be fun to ask everyone to show on the world map in the classroom where I am from. Even my Italian classmate pointed to Australia 🙈
LMAO!!!
Hey they tried right lol, its sort of progress.
The Thing with AC Units is. Besides the fact that Germany and Austria are placed in a very mild climate. In Germany and Austria the houses are often built with very sturdy bricks. So the walls have a better insulation than most houses in the US. So we don't often have to use ACs because the rooms are cool enough from the insulation.
Yeah and on many older houses you will find a "weinkeller" or something basically a room in the basement which is completely top, walls and floor made out of bricks and in there is basically the whole year the same temperature
Yes, and I also live on.. Idk what to call or in English, but basically I live on the outside of the city, where you have to walk either 15 minutes or drive to get to the centre and we legit do not have sun here since there's a hill on the other side of the road and behind us, so whenever it does come it's only to the bottom floor of the house. Also yes, most houses are built with bricks so it's gonna be way hotter if you open a window than it would be of you keep it closed, which is why we don't use air conditioning. The other house I lived in, there was about 10-15°C in the hallway the whole year around so it was cold asf if you came in from the outside.... But it was also haunted so I'm glad we moved
we also use multiple layers of glass for the windows, Dreifachverglasung. It’s not just the walls, but also the windows and doors. And we know how to use our windows to cool the house.
Wenn einen zu warm is dann leg dich in den keller. Der is immer kalt.
3:44 James: "The rest of the world calls it _Germany_ ..." - well, the *English-speaking* rest of the world, to be more precise
yup, we call it Alemania in Spanish speaking countries!
@@laurainathunderstorm sí ... and in many other countries (e.g, French speaking and Arabic speaking countries) it's very similar.
@@LunaMendax777 interesting... so, from the perspective of Polish (and Russian, etc.) people, Germans are unable to speak? :-D
@@tobyk.4911 The commenter above wasn't telling the whole story. In all Slavic languages (be it Polish, Russian or whatever) the word "němý" meaning "mute" (this one is in Czech but for versions in other Slavic languages it's the same etymology) didn't always mean just mute or silent. It also was a word used for someone who makes unintelligible noises/sounds. Eg. a foreigner speaking a different language. Slavs always somewhat understood eachother coz Slavic languages separated pretty late. However German was something that Slavs couldn't easily understand. Germanic tribes were just making weird noises, which Slavs didn't know what they mean.
Idk where in Polish it became a synonym for "dumb" but I can tell you it's not like this in all Slavic languages (Czech, Slovakian, Slovenian or Croatian don't use "němý" as a synonym for "dumb") 😅
Alemanha...
I like your honesty. Not many people admit when they "mess up" before... I respect that.
Very fun to watch
I concur whole heartedly. ( can I say so in English?)
I think the weirdest question I heard as a German by an American was "So, why do you guys have Euro as a currency when you live in Germany not in Europe?"
Geography really failed him in school I guess.
Also, historically speaking, every country driving on the right side of the road is actually wrong. Until the French revolution and Napoleon's victories in the wars to come, all countries drove left. Napoleon ordered all defeated countries to switch from left to right hand driving including the French colonies and America. Some countries switched after world war 1 and some like Austria and Sweden a bit later.
😂😂😂
Most of them can’t also separate the EU and the European continent
Not all countries drove left. In fact there wasn't a particular order.
American's started sort of on the left but they switched on their own for various reasons.
Thats quite interesting about the left and right side driving problem. I didn't know that cool thanks for sharing :D
“The rest of the world call it germany” 😂😂😂😂😂😂 no. In english you call it germany. And Surprise! Other countrys don’t call your country united states of america. Google why 😂
That shows exactly how americans think?!
Germans call the US of A "Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika"
In Czechia we say "Spojené státy Americké". But we call Germany "Německo" simmilar to how Poles call Germany, I think...
I've so many times watched English speakers talk about other countries, especially when it comes to Japan, when the topic is about words and language; they say how Japan has their own words for something and the rest of the world uses [English word]. Happens too often.
@James Bray One question from a german here: Why do you call the country you live in 'United States of America' when you could just say 'Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika'? 🤣
little more serious question: Why do even we in Germany call it "USA" for short instead of "VSvA"?
@@silkwesir1444 More like VSA, as it is not called USoA in English either.
Ask yourself, in all honesty, would you want to hear an American try to say Vereinigten Staaten if they don't speak German? 🤣🤣🤣🤣 Now I think about it, that coukd be hilarious.
@@admerin6961 "Werienigta Stäiten won Amerrica" 😁
@@tubekulose Very Nigten Stayathon. Lol
Haha. Thanks for your honesty, sir. My experience is that some Americans tend to be stunningly American-centric and assume that anything American is "normal" and know little about other countries
I mean, one example of that slipped into the video too. He said that he was surprised that the German names were "pretty normal", implying that anything non-English or non-American is not normal. Not a big deal but pretty funny.
Now I have to remember what a former classmate of mine was being asked during an exchange year in the US (Las Vegas suburban area)
Dumb question number 1: Do you guys have cars in Germany?
Nah, we only build them for you, we don't use them...
Dumb question number 2: Do you have toilets and toilet paper in Germany?
Nope. Sorry. We're some 80plus million people and we all shit in the woods. And depending on the season we either use leaves to wipe our butts, or squirrels... (That's also why our squirrels have a reddish brown color.)
So, when it's winter and you need to take a dump, never forget your squirrel sling!
Also, it's paramount to use them the right way, because those little monsters have sharp claws and teeth and they're hungry for nuts. Want me to teach you?
Bruhahahahaha!
Thank you. I always wondered why some squirrels have a reddish brown and some a dark brown;)
Btw Germans invented the automobil. Carl Benz did, not Ford.
Lol
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Loved the answers. Gave me a h*ll of good laughs
My brother got asked the nazi question from an american and he played the reverse card and asked if you have to be american to by slaves in the US. His coworker avoided him after that conversation.
He could have gone with the Hiroshima angle too. Plenty of material.
I can’t even travel to some parts in Germany without having problems understanding people SPEAKING GERMAN.. and I am German!
The US „accents“ are a walk in the park compared
The same in Italy
I spent a year in Germany and loved the place and I didn't have any problems with the different accents in Germany. I'm British and Scottish, but I honestly think the UK has the biggest variations of accents in Europe and maybe the world. Liverpool to Manchester is short in distance, but they are completely different in sound.
@@overthewebb actually in Germany we dont say accents. We call it dialects. And most Germans usually speak Hochdeutsch - so high German which is kind of the standard german. But i can promise you if you ever meet someone speaking for example Plattdeutsch you won't unserstand a single word. It is legit like another language 😂 like not exxagerated at all. If someone speaks plattdeutsch most native German speakers are not able to understand him. And there are quite a few different dialects. Some are easy to understand, some Impossible even for native Germans. A German dialect is a lot more than just an accent
@@marvinasas2060 when I said accent, I probably should have said dialect. Do you not think us Scots have a different dialect to our English neighbours? And there are lots of different dialects in Scotland. I would argue the UK has more than Germany due to the language. The English language is a bastardisation of the main European languages and due to the invasions of the UK, it's why it is so different. English comes from old German, French, Latin, Danish, Welsh and Scots
Same in The Netherlands. We have different dialects at every corner. But I've been asked by an American once 'you have dialects? But the country is so small? ' Sigh... But I agree, I don't have problems with American accents at all. Yeah, they use a couple of slang words here and there, but I think we kinda know those too.
trust me, for germans most americans sound almost the same when it comes to the dialects.
Even the british are way more different then the us´ Scottish and Irish Accents (not the gaelic language, just the accents) are much more complicated to understand then any of the american. If you learn Italian, the language in the south of the country is a complete different language then in the north. they partly don´t understand each other and it´s the SAME country. and spanish... yeah. European spanish has many different accents and the Latin - american spanish is much worse. xD
Same in The Netherlands and this is a very small country. But let's say most people in the west don't understand those in the north, east or south, the south doesn't understand the north and vice versa and so on. Most people from north, east and south understand people in the west though. There is an accent but an understandable one. In short, I'm Dutch but I better understand English, German and even a little French than many of the accents in the north, east and south in my own country, lol.
And in Swizerland four languages and many accents are spoken :)
German Chocolate Cake is called German Chocolate Cake because of its inventor, *Samuel German.* If Samuel's name had been _Italian_ instead of German, this (probably very delicious) cake would be called _Italian chocolate cake._
And the whole of Italy would probably explode in cartoonish rage at people asking them such dumb questions.
Samuel German invented the chocolate used in the recipe for the cake not the cake itself.
"Dumb" questions aren't unique to America, they are all a product of a country's education system. America is just unusual among developed nations for having an education system which doesn't include much education about the rest of the world.
One time when I was in Malawi two teenagers there asked me which was bigger, London or Africa. I laughed in their faces before telling them, and then felt super-shitty about it because of course it wasn't their fault, and it had actually taken a lot of courage for them to approach me and ask that question.
It's always good when people strive to learn more about topics they don't know about, including about foreign cultures, and we should never mock people who are trying to learn.
Yeah well, difference is those kids in Malawi not only were kids (as opposed to grown ass men) but also (I'm guessing) didn't have the access to education you can find in your average western country, or have the option to do a 5 second Google search before asking a really dumb thing.
People from the us don’t know shit about their own country as well, even that they call themselves Americans is kind of funny to me, it’s the same like me saying I’m eurasian when asked what country I’m from. Because America is not even one but two (or even three) continents with 35 countries. And it’s not like me saying I’m European, because if you ask them if they think people from Mexico or Brazil are Americans they would most likely say no.
About the warm beer confusion thing. I think this comes from the fact that we don't put ice cubes in our beer and just pour it from the tap in the glass but this taps have a cooling system inside so the beer have the perfect temperature of
7-8 ⁰C. 😁👍🍺
I had exactly the same thoughts, we don't put ice cubes in, so it must be warm :-D
I think it mostly comes from the idear, that in some german families, warm beer is said to be good against colds and sickness.
If I remember correctly it was even a legit Life-Hack untill 1925 or so. The last time I heared that was 4 Years ago, or so, that here in Germany it was common for many german men, to drink warm beer to support the immune system.
Nah, they're confusing us with the British again.
Some kinds of British beers were traditionally served less or non-refrigerated during WW2, so the Americans brought that idea home.
The real question is... why the heck putting ice cubes in a beer. If you would do that here in Germany, most people will never drink with you again. (Sarcasm) We will teach them better of course 😉
Ich will doch kein Radler saufen, deswegen auch keine Eiswürfel 🤷♂️
A friend of mine (mom from Japan, dad from Germany) visited the US (both ex enemies in one 🤣)
The host family was very kind showing him around: " ... And this is an escalator " 🤦🏼♀️
Why is Deutschland not just called Germany? Well, because Germany is the English name for it. Any other country has his own name for Germany. To assume the whole world has to speak English is ignorant.
Yeah, this question is really weird for me. And its not the whole world which calls us germany, only english speaking countries. tf
It's Germania in Italian too
@@grethi8110 Yeah, but I thought he meant exactly the word Germany. But yeah right Germania is nearly the same.
In Sweden it’s Tyskland, which is pronounced moderately similar to Deutschland.
@@grethi8110 yeah i had italien in school and you call it "germania" for the country but "tedesco" for the people which is completely different and confused me at first lol
I was a taxi driver in England and picked up a group of Americans. Driving along the M4 ( A freeway in American speak) and passing Windsor Castle in the distance which is hundreds of years old a voice in the back asked me why they built it so close to such busy freeway? I took pity and said it was so the Queen could get to London more quickly.
Heyooo, love the reaction, man. I got a dumb question in form of a joke about American stereotypes:
Hey, Mr. German Man, why are there so many diffrent languages in Europe?
Look, Tiffany (or Amber, Jennifer, who knows/cares), you wanna know why there are so many different languages in Europe? Because The Germans lost the war! ;-D
Her answer: " I'm so sorry for you guys....."
(Michael Mittermeier, German Comedian in New York, performing in English)
Found that piece some weeks ago.^^ After that i re-watched the part of his first or second programm, when he was in NY for the first time. I love that part when he try to ask the police officer for help. "WHAAAAT!!!?"""x ##" --- "Uhm...nassing?" :D
I'm sooo german and we actually don't use coconut in anything, it's like "an exotic thing" and we use caramel in stuff like caramel fried almonds or caramelised apples :D
I am German too and i am using coconut in everything!
Dumb questions I have heard from fellow Americans-
"Do they have canned food in France?"
"Who wrote Grimm's Fairytales?"
"Do they have roads in Germany?"
A few times while I was learning German I was asked if I was a nazi........
And recently after mentioning my ex-husband is from Greece, a woman said, "I'm scared of Greeks." Um..... why?
The decadent french would never go down so low as to consume canned "food", everything they eat is of the freshest and highest quality, prepared by master chefs, like on the court of the sun king Louis XIV at his palace in versailles.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Abraham Hitler both wrote Grimms Fairytales in the trenches of WW1.
We do not have mere "roads" in Germany, what an insult! Everything is Autobahn!
@@NormanTheDormantDoormat ironically I believe canned food was first invented in France, during the Napoleanic Wars so the troops could easily carry meat. At least according to my French teacher.
@@NormanTheDormantDoormat and not a single McDonald's anywhere; everybody just eats haute cuisine all the time.
Of course there are roads in Germany. There is the Autobahn, which is a single stretch of road and definitely not an entire motorway network, where there are no speed limits anywhere.
No roads other than that, though - obviously.
... me yelling 'Canned food was a frickin' french invention, for eff's sake'....
good thing I live alone.
LOL. You're forgiven 😂. I love these kinds of vids. You're funny man, and I can totally relate to these questions asked being from a tiny country in Europe as well. 🙏🇫🇮
Really, bro? Finland? Small? I feel like average American does not even know Czechia exists, or confuses it with Chechnya.
About this thing "there are no stupid questions", for me there definitly are. Every Question that you could answer by yourself by just thinking for a moment about it, are stupid questions (being too lazy to think yourself is stupid). There are many people out there, that prefer to ask stuff instead of thinking about it by themselves.
On the other hand, there are questions that might not sound stupid if you would ask it with less ignorance. So for example, instead of asking "why do you call your country Deutschland and not Germany" you should ask "where does the name Deutschland come from". It's the same question, but it sounds way better. There are many questions that are just asked the wrong way and sound dumb because of that.
Overall, asking questions is allways good and at least for me, even if i'm annoyed of a question, i will allways answer it nicely, being curious about stuff is important. Just sometimes think about a question twice. It can make you look smarter by just asking questions the "right" way.
Right. By the way, answering the question yourself beforehand trains the brain in the most important points that are necessary for personality maturation. And you can tell very, very clearly when someone neglects that. There is a lack of logical understanding, problem-solving options and personal responsibility.
But to be honest...most germans also don't know why it's called Deutschland.^^
This, or things you can answer with a 5 second Google search. I hate to be nitpicking and I'm always up for conversation specially with people from other places but come on, this could be far more interesting if we go past the 6th grade questions.
I was asked by American:"do you have roads in Russia? " 🤦🏻♀️ or "How come you speak English if you are from Russia".
At least for me the dumbest question YOU ever asked was really "Why do you call it Deutschland". It's a different language, of cause, we call countries different and it's not like everybody else calles it Germany or something similar. Just look at our nabouring countries: The french call it "Allemagne", the dutch call it "Duitsland", the danish call it "Tyskland", the polish call it "Niemcy" and the czechs call it "Německo", they all have different names for it. "Germany" is just one of MANY names for our country xD
That is kind of unusual. Take Mongolia für example. In all languages I know, the vountry has some kind of "Mongol" in it's name, inkludiert the native language. Germany has a pretty diverse range of names
@@katrinam6795 we had a very moved history in central Europe the Name Germany goes about 2000 years back to times of the Roman empire and they called the lands north of the Reihn GERMANIA MAGNA and that should be enough
The French Alemannia well a west germanic Population group called them self Alemannen and they were lokated in Schwaben and had more influence from France after the roman empire
Eh also Mongolia is a very harsh land with almost no pollution (grupps) and no real industry, and isn't a unit out of many smaller countries with different population groups like Germany so not much movement like in central Europe
@@katrinam6795 The different names come from different group's names who lived in the area of modern Germany (or where called like that from others). "Germany" comes from the roman name "Germania" and "Germanen". It's what they called the people there. "Deutschland", the Dutch "duitsland", the nerwegian "Tyskland" and the Japanese ドイツ (doitsu) (which itself comes from the Dutch word) come from the name "Teutonen", another germanic group. And so on ...
@@TheLtVoss Interestingly, the German name for the country, Deutschland, and most of the closely related languages, such as Dutch and the Nordic languages, all come from the Old High German word diutisc, which means 'of the people'. So their names for the country literally mean 'land of the/(our) people'.
@@brinkiTOgo Actually, about Deutschland and related names for the country, check my previous comment to Fabian.
When I first came to Australia I was stopped in the street by a very friendly woman who asked me where I came from , I told her Scotland and then she asked me if I learned to speak English while in Scotland or did I learn it when I got into Australia
It's a fair question. She had obviously been to Glasgow and realised they don't speak English as a first language there LOL
My cousin was asked: Do you know what a computer is? And she answered: yes, we invented it! 🤦🤣
😂😂😂 nice
My parents both came from Holland and so my oldest brother did not know/learned English till he went to kindergarten. My parents realizing this was an issue stopped talking Dutch at home and only English, so when I came around, being the youngest of 5 I can only understand very basic Dutch if spoken slowly, which is a bummer.
Same story here with Russian, my family moved to Germany and taught me Russian until I went to kindergarten, and then I suddenly stopped talking Russian with my family and answered their russian formulated questions in german. Now I have a lot of russian friends and a russian crush, but can't really communicate with them. I thought it's okay, i will never need Russian anymore, but destiny showed otherwise
But, to be fair, not only Americans ask dumb questions. In 2011 I spent my semester abroad in France and my landlord ask me: "Have you ever been to East Berlin?" He was shocked when I told him that I have been to East Berlin and he couldn't believe that the wall wasn't a thing anymore...
Was he at least aware that the Soviet Union and/or the Warsaw Pact was no longer a thing?
@@NicolaiCzempin we will never know!
haha :D
@@NicolaiCzempin As a Czech person, thank god!
Yeah, a few years ago I was working in a pub in London and a middle aged woman got very upset about the menu having hamburgers on it. She felt it was very misleading as the burgers were made from beef not from ham. I had to explain to her that the name was derived from their city of origin not from what they were made of. Sigh.
Fun fact: Orlando is the italian version of Roland which is a frankish name, but if u break down the name it turns out that originally it was constructed with the germanic words "glory" and "land". There is also an assumption that originally the name comes from scandinavia (scandinavian langauges are proto-germanic languages) and the true simplified meaning is "the men from the north".
Anyway. Something that Americans dont take into account is that the only true american names are the names of the native americans. Everything else (at least the majority, gonna ignore made up names for people like Bronx :P ) are basicly different versions of names that already existed before Europeans colonized North America.
What about X AE A-XII Musk? I don´t think any native american is crazy enough to call his son X AE A-XII.
Having an accent inGermany means, that if you don't speak that accent yourself, even as a native german speaker, you won't know what they're talking about. When I hear americans talk about american accents, I didn't even realize they had one until they mentioned it. So, for american accents, you have to be american to even realize.
Also, hoe germans actually talk, that's different in almost every town. I moved around a bit just within my own state and already came across some slang, that was confusing to me and I didn't know from back home. So, it's pointless to even try to learn all the different dialects, just learn standard german and then some local accents and dialects from the region you want to focus on. Seriously, as a heavy dialect speaker myself, speaking a dialect and then also high german feels like you already got to be bilingual. You have to code switch, just so that other germans can even understand you.
its more like the difference between an american accent and a scottish accent
We have a saying here in the Bergstraße/Odenwald region: Die erscht Fremdsprooch wo du lärne duuscht is Houchdeitsch ( the first foreign language you will learn is standard german)
@@Son_Daughter_of_Slaanesh It's not a wrong saying as the south German dialects are so much farther "away" from Hochdeutsch that other actual different languages. Norwegian and swedish or polish and czech are linguistically much closer in how they are structured than for example Bavarian and Hochdeutsch 😊
@@CocoLicious right. And thats not just the case with the south german dialects (i'm looking at you Plattdeutsch)
I live in the middle of a "dialect triangle", which means every single village in the vicinity has a different dialect. In school you always knew which exact village your classmates were from because of how they spoke... 😅
I think the most annoying thing about those questions is the confidence that the US and Americans are superior while being so horrifyingly ignorant of the rest of the world. Soda or pop might be confusing the first time you hear it, but keep in mind that person has mastered an entirely new language (English) and can surely remember another name for the same item. Honestly, it's really no different than asking an American the same thing or a German if they get confused by Berliner or Krapfen - the first time might be unfamiliar, but people have the capacity to learn new words.
Especially because we mainly learn British English in school and already are used to different way more complex English accents. But probably the most of the Americans who ask these questions don’t know that they speak actually English in England as well so..
If you really want to try a tradional german cake - check out "Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte" ( This is the "Torte" my son wants to have on his birthday )
"what's it like driving on the wrong side of the road?"
quite exiciting, gets your blood pumping, a real banger you might say, you even get shout outs on the radio!
Americans - We speak a lot of slang.
Americans visiting Australia - What language are these people speaking? I thought they spoke English here. LOL
After travelling to USA from AUS in February (to snow ski), as a single skier I got onto a triple chair with two American ladies. As part of the repartee I mentioned that it was over 100F when I left AUS the day before. One of them asked me "Oh, is it still February in AUS?". I had no answer to that, but if I had been quick enough I should have answered "No it's August". :face-plant:
It is not German chocolate cake but German's chocolate cake, named after a guy with the last name German. I don't know why she says Beercheese is not a German thing i have sold it for about 14 years at the cheese counter, it can be both either Austrian or German (although the most common ones are from Austria, with the rest mostly coming from Bavaria). Of course we use English words and not the original German ones because we are mostly accomodating and know that Americans have trouble saying/pronuncing them. Funny thing is that most misconceptions seem to either derive from things in Bavaria or Great Britain. Btw, another example besides Soda and Pop would be Dressing and Stuffing for your Thanksgiving turkey.
apparently you are confused. American "beer cheese" is not actually cheese. It is more like a cheese colored dipping sauce with a somewhat cheese like flavor. As a german i do not touch this stuff. as we say: net in de schuh!
@@uliwehner Der Bierkäse den ich verkaufte war ein halbfester Schnittstelle der meistens im Stück verkauft wurde.
@@danilopapais1464 eben! in amerika beer cheese ist fluessig! oder genauer ueberfluessig.
I had a US couch surfer come to my place in Berlin and he was very excited to finally try some real German chocolate cake in Germany.
Pretty rough awakening for him when I had no clue what he was talking about. He then learned there was no German chocolate cake in Germany. Coconut, caramel and pecan are also the most Ungerman ingredients, that could never be traditional here.
Americans are also very sad that basically nobody in Germany has seen Sound of Music 😂 I only know it from my american friends.
@@CocoLicious Like dinner for one - in gb unknown.
I used to live some time in Salzburg and guess what - there was a shop themed in the Sound of music style. I also asked some locals if they have seen the movie - no they didn't.
@@CocoLicious Im German and I had to google what Sound of Music is.
@@trevorackroyd9931 Yes I do 😆
"Wer, wie, was, wieso, weshalb warum, wer nicht fragt bleibt dumm!"
The German Sesame Street Song kept running through my head with many of those "oh my god are you serious?" Questions.
Surely helped remaining calm when explaining to a man 15 yrs my senior why lifting his right arm and greeting me with HH! was about the last thing he should do. Right after I got over the shock of it.
I've always thought that anyone being greeted like that, particularly if you're German, should provide an appropriate response by sharply raising your knee to their groin with a suitable spoken rejoinder - "Verdammtes Arschlosch" perhaps?
@@michaelmclachlan1650 I turned it into a history lesson he couldnt escape from as long as I worked there I'd tell him some historic fact at least once a day.
The Germany/Deutschland question is odd to me, as an American…why wouldn’t a country have a different name in a foreign language?
You don’t ask Italians why they say Italia and not Italy. You don’t ask Japanese people why they say Nippon and not Japan…
I think it's a natural thing to ask once you start learning about other countries and their languages. I actually remember asking my parents a similar question when I started learning English. Only I probably was like 6 or 7 at the time so nobody thought it weird. I guess many Americans don't see much incentive to learn a foreign language at a young age, so I think it kind of makes sense that they will never think about this until they are adults (or maybe never).
@@nekekaminger It's so useful to have ever rudimentary knowledge of different languages. I understand more than I speak, but I studied French, Greek and Russian in school, and I love Italian opera, so I picked up some Italian too. I am currently learning Welsh, because not many people speak it now, and I don't want it to disappear.
Best ever ask question by an american:" Do you have cars in Germany?" Sidenote this Person own a Mercedes. Come on guys really???
Fun Fact: The reason why the question for the refridgerator is especially "dumb" is, because it was Carl von Linde, a german who invented them^^
well, that´s not exactly true... he developed the heat exchange technology refrigerator as we know it today and therefor revolutionized refrigeration but William Cullen in 1756 was the one who invented the first artificial cooling Refrigerator, 2 Years prior to Benjamin Franklins Team...
I feel like the "why didnt your family warn us about 911 if theyre 7 hours ahead" one is probably a common attempt at a bad joke
As a dutch person I moved 4 miles and find myself talking with different accents and calling a lot of things, like a lot of baked goods, different things :p. So yes, depending on the baker I go to on my way home I have to call certain things differently. Things get funny if you go to one far away and you have no clue what to call half of the stuff.
I know America has accents but it's so minor as to be silly.
In European regions the traces of the local lords basically are still felt with how language evolved a bit differently in each region.
And while we can all speak the national language at least for me as a dutch person it's not really a language you use outside of, I don't know, court cases. The English honestly speak very basic English most of the time with very little slang or anything imo. Basically almost all words used by somebody who's English could be found in a book. At least in my experience.
Speaking the standard dutch language for me at least feels incredibly awkward.
True, I'm Dutch also and when I moved from the west to the east and had to answer the phone at work, I didn't have a clue what they were talking about. Also some words we use in the west have a completely different meaning in the east (for the Americans, that's about an hour drive..). Like when I asked for a piece of 'stuf' (vlakgom) in many parts of the country stuf is drugs, but where I came from (Rotterdam) stuf is an eraser, lol.
If I speak "normal", the same way my parents and so on talked with me, every german outside of bavaria looks at me like I'm from another planet. They understand more when I talk english with them, compared to bavarian xD
@@salatwurzel-4388 I've seen Flemish people talk with dutch people in English instead of trying to decipher their dutch.
Not talking about Zeeland and East-Flanders but like, West-Flanders with somebody from Amsterdam can get tricky.
3:45 Actually, Germany/it's people has/have so many different names throughout the world as probably no other nation, at least no big one. Most of them come from the culture/tribe next to those nations (for our neighbours), that settled within todays German borders, but way before our nation was born (in some cases >1000 years before that). Germans, Allemagne, Tyskie, Niemcy, Szwabski, Saksa and all those just within Europe! Imagine having just in America (incl. South America) 10 different names for the USA and it's citizens, lol. There are btw several nice TH-cam videos about that, some rather short and just summarizing the names, some nicely detailed with a lot of history.
I have never seen such a chocolate cake here in Germany. But we also have German sweets named like that, for example, "Russisch Brot" (Russian bread) or "Russischer Zupfkuchen" (Russian tear/pinch cake), which are not Russian at all.
Naja, ich weiss ja nicht, ob du schwarzwälder Kirschhtorte kennst aber die kommt dem Kuchen schon ziemlich nahe.
@@ev.09 Bis auf den Schokoboden hat der german chocolate cake nichts gemein mit ner Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte.
The 'Why is it called Deutschland, not Germany' could be rephrased into "Why isn't it called Estados Unidos (Portuguese), or Etats Unis (French), or Yhdysvallat (Finnish), or Bandaríkin (Icelandic), or Chủng Quốc Hoa Kỳ (Vietnamese) in the USA?" to really hit home that other languages simply have different words. Duuuh, next question.
/edit: German Chocolate Cake: I've heard of it, but only from the USA. I have never ever seen any cake in Germany being called "Deutscher Schokoladenkuchen".
First off, no German here would ever be dumb enough to claim to have made such a cake for the first time in Germany, AND have the termerity to call it all "German chocolate cake", because no-one would dare to claim that they were talking for the whole of Germany when it comes to cake.
Second, that would never be called a 'Kuchen', a cake in German, as there is the descriptive distinction of Kuchen vs Torte. Anything large or high enough to have multiple layers, especially when at least one the major layers is cream-filled, is usually considered a Torte, a tart, for lack of a better English word.
Third, chocolate cakes do exist in Germany, but there are dozens of local variations around the country, which again plays into the reason why no-one would claim to have made the one, true, singular 'German chocolate cake'. Just too many recipes over the last two hundred years or so for anyone to have laid claim to the 'original' recipe.
Fourth: Germans tend to categorize their names by the major flavors in their foods, so what you have shown is both chocolate and coconut, so it would probably be called a "Kokos-Schoko-Torte" or something like that in German.
Fifth: Pecans are still fairly rare in most German supermarkets. Yes, you can get them in most larger stores, but the pecan / Pekannuss is still somewhat of a rarer nut than others like hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts. So I have my very serious doubts that this type of nut would have been used decades ago, much less a century or two ago, anywhere in Germany on a regular basis. But regular use would be necessary to make a cake so traditional and widespread to take the (in my opinion) misnomer of being a 'GERMAN' chocolate cake.
All of that being said about the German chocolate cake: I have no doubts that it is absolutely delicious and yummy, but, nope, that is not a traditional cake at all in Germany.
Now that I've read some of the comments below I feel a bit stupid cause I stumbled across the origin for the name, as in the family name of the guy who invented it being German.
Hah, talk about a know-it-all-German, right? 😁😌
Actually, I think the Germany Deutschland question is quite interesting. Because "Germany" in german would be "Germanien" or something like this. The latin speaking people called the people living north of the alpes "Germanen". So the latin name is Germania which was adapted into english. French people say "Allemagne" which comes from the people called "Allemannen" (meaning "every men"). Because the people living in Germany were a bunch of different smaller folks and not one huge folk in the past. The word "Deutschland" has its origin in the germanic language and is an adjective describing the folk one belongs to. But it's not like the different names for the US. That's just a word to word translation in every language. Though Germans like to say "USA" instead of "US"
Isnt germany in french allemand?
@@prpr8904 allemand means german in French. Germany (name of country) is Allemagne.
Ah yes! German Chocolate Cake. Exactly what you'd expect from Germany, a country famous for its... coconuts? 🤔
Can we expect them to know the origins of a coconut?
the chocolate cake certainly can't be a traditional German recipe, as we have neither coconuts nor pecan nuts.
Also, it is very , very difficult to become so fluent in a language to use it idiomatically.
i read, the name "german chocolate cake" comes from the person who invented this cake, a person called Samuel German.
@@HIMzone666returns No it’s the person who invented the chocolate used in the cake recipe, not the person who invented the cake.
We germans have no choice as to drink warm beer. Without refrigerators. 😂I think that it's perfectly okay to make mistakes as long as you are willing to learn. In France the people are very strict when one couldn't speak french. But if you try to speak a little bit they are very friendly.
Why does the rest of the world call Deutschland something wrong?
When my american cousin came over to visit us, she was scared we would all be Nazis, and crawl through the bushes with a knife in our mouth. I found that heart-wrenchingly annoying... she also thought we would not have streets other than maybe gravel roads.
Curious to hear more about her experience. How did she react when in fact there were regular streets and that you even had tv ?
You're lucky Americans even heard of your country. When Americans hear that I'm from Czechia, they go "Chechnya?!".
@@becheroteka9.a525 I once had a similar experience, maybe about 10 or 15 years ago ... I'm German, and was speaking with an American. When I mentioned that I had once been in Czechia for about a week a few years before (in the year 2000), he asked me: "But, wasn't that very dangerous?"
My first reaction was probably "Why?" - because I first didn't understand what he meant, ... but quickly it became clear that obviously he had misunderstood the country name: While I remembered Prague, he apparently understood Grozny.
... "No no no, I don't mean that area in the Caucasus,. but that eastern neighbor country of Germany... between Poland and Austria..."
And in reply you say "I'm so surprised you didn't want to shoot up a Kindergarten when you got here"
@@becheroteka9.a525 oh that's bad! 🙈
I see regional differences in the U.S. in regard to the specific words being used mainly as expanding one’s vocabulary. At some point learning a language turns into mainly being about expanding one’s vocabulary including terms of phrases.
My grandmother was from Berlin and I still have multiple family members living there, I wish I’d taken the time to visit more and learn the language, the country is so diverse and beautiful though I need to get out there soon!
this reminds me of a study that has shown, that about 55% of the americans think that the sun is a ctually a planet. ive met quite a few americans in my life due to university and watching a lot of videos like this one and it seems like all americans learn in school is about how great and superior their country is over others and nothing that is across their own borders.... this also reminds me of 1933 in germany.
alos: tbh your question about the AC wasnt that stupid compared to many others that americans regularly ask. i mean, if u have never been to a country, espeically in europe with like every single weather condition zone there is, how are you supposed to know. theres certainly a reason why most households dont have them around here. if u have like 3 weeks of the year that would be great to have an AC, it doesnt really make sence from an economically point of view. as a german for example i really dont think that there are ACs in some countries in the world at all since some are simply that cold that it doesnt make sense.
„The rest of the world calls it Germany“
French: Allemagne
Turkish: Almanya
Dutch: Duitsland
Swedish: Tyskland
Polish: Niemcy
Spanish: Alemania
Denmark: Tyskland
Norway: Tyskland
Im from northern Germany more precisely from Ostfriesland and i was aware of the dialect thing because many people speak Plattdeutsch, but it really hit me how different German is spoken in a small area in Germany. My Coworker is from the Harz and she told us, that she noticed that we speak very different from her. I am not be able to notice that from her side and how she speak. For me its just normal High German but apparently its completely different.
Its goes even further with Plattdeutsch.
The Dialekt is spoken completely different in the neighbouring town than our Platt. I am be able to understand Platt but sometimes its so different, that i can't understand what they are saying.
I don't know if its only for me.
EDIT: The Platt thing really throws me off with another coworker of mine. He comes from one of the bigger Cities around here and their Plattdeutsch is so different, every time I have to remind myself that their Platt is different and that i don't have to correct him :D
An example would be the word "diese". Sometime its "Disse" or "dese"
"Anner Stadt anners Land"
As a somewhat sarcastic person from the UK when asked exactly "what is it like driving on the wrong side of the road" the response is normally "I don't know, what is it like driving on the wrong side of the car".
Just an fyi on that the smaller % of the world that drives on the Left side of the Road but Right side of the Car is a bigger list than you may think:
Anguilla
Antigua and Barbuda
Australia
Bahamas
Bangladesh
Barbados
Bermuda
Bhutan
Botswana
British Virgin Islands
Brunei
Cayman Islands
Channel Islands (Guernsey & Jersey)
Christmas Island
Cocos (Keeling) Islands
Cook Islands
Cyprus
Cyprus, North (unrecognised, self-declared state)
Dominica
East Timor (Timor-Leste)
England
Falkland Islands
Fiji
Great Britain (GB)
Grenada
Guernsey
Guyana
Hong Kong
India
Indonesia
Ireland (Eire)
Ireland, Northern
Isle of Man
Jamaica
Japan
Jersey
Kenya
Kiribati
Lesotho
Macau
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Malta
Mauritius
Montserrat
Mozambique
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
New Zealand
Niue
Norfolk Island
Northern Ireland
Pakistan
Papua New Guinea
Pitcairn Islands
Saint Helena
Saint Kitts and Nevis (officially the Federation of Saint Christopher and Nevis)
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Samoa
Scotland
Seychelles
Singapore
Solomon Islands
South Africa
Sri Lanka
Suriname (Surinam)
Swaziland
Tanzania
Thailand
Tokelau
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago
Turks and Caicos Islands
Tuvalu
Uganda
United Kingdom (UK)
United States Virgin Islands
Virgin Islands (British)
Virgin Islands (USA)
Wales
Zambia
Zimbabwe
I refuse to call american football football when it's basically a variant of rugby and most of the game is carrying the ball around, and then have to call the game where youre literally not allowed to touch the ball with your arms or hands even on accident and 99% of the game is kicking the ball... something else, so that Americans don't get the two confused. It would make about the same amount of sense if handball fans insisted we call that football. I won't stop or criticize anyone else for calling it Soccer, call it what you want, but I'm going to call it what it is, and that means football is football, and american football isn't, as far as I will ever be concerned.
In the spirit of football, basketball and handball we should call it handegg.
Up north in Finnmark where my sami grandparents lives, they heard a story about a foreign tourist that got angry. When he learned that the midnight sun on the north cape, was the same as rest of the world.
As a Swede I was once asked by an American lady from Florida:
"How do you celebrate Thanksgiving in Sweden? Do you eat Turkey like us? Or do you make Turkey meatballs or something?"
Me: 🤨😑🤦♂
LOL
I'm English and had an American ask if I celebrate July 4th. I said if Britain celebrated every countries independence day we'd have a public holiday every other week.
@@tonycrayford3893 I'd like to have been a fly on the wall there... you could have asked of whom he thought they celebrate independence of. :D
I love Feli! And usually watch her videos, but somehow I missed this last one. It's so funny to watch it now with you 🤣😂👆. Greetings from Germany
Funfact: Do you know where the rule of right side driving coming from?
To Answer that we need to go back to the medivial of the holy roman empire of german nations. Thats the time the german kaiser gets more and more powerfull, at the same time knighthood gets poor and some of them become to be something we called "Raubritter" translated thiefknights or robber barons- the roads in the german empire are not save any more- a lot of fight, violence etc. At this time u ride on the left side of the road cause in the right hand u have ur sword for quick attacks. The german kaiser changed that for prevention. When u ride on the right side u will encounter people with ur shield on the left side and its harder to hit an oponent through the horses head ;)
I heard, it was invented by the napoleonic wars. The french emperor demanded, that the middle of the street stayed free for soldiers rushing through and normal people had to walk on the right side.
When he was gone - and traffic became so dense, that you needed a clear rule, the good experience with ships on channels: passing to the right, was copied for streets and made a law.
Only countries, that were not conquered by the french revolutionary armies (UK, Sweden, ...) sticked to left-side-traffic.
9:37 the modern Refrigerator is based on an Invention by the GERMAN Carl Linde in 1876.
Honestly, I don't think there are that many questions that are actually dumb. This video covers a few, but generally I feel it's better to ask than just to presume stuff based on ignorance. Ignorance =! Dumb.
There are a few questions where I'd hope that common sense would be enough to answer them for yourself, but these are rather rare. Like "Do you guys have cars in Germany?", which I would consider a dumb question, considering Germany's very well known background of engineering and car manufacturing. Even if all you knew about Germany was Nazis, you could probably figure out that a nation that built military vehicles in the 1930s will probably have figured out cars by 2021.
To me, a dumb question is a question that you could probably answer yourself with absolute barebones knowledge of the world.
"Do you wear Lederhosen every day?" on the other hand is simply an ignorant question, but if the person in question knows next to nothing about the country it's not necessarily dumb.
"but generally I feel it's better to ask than just to presume stuff based on ignorance. Ignorance =! Dumb." it is not ignorance thinking that there are no cities outside of the US etc. I can almost guarantee that no European thinks that americans dont have cars or cities or refridgerators. That is just like 3 year old level of questions.
Agree and disagree. "Why don't you call your country Germany" is not a dumb question because it leads to the next question which is "well why don't we call it what you call it if you named it first" which leads to an interesting delve in world history.
However "Is Hitler still alive?" is a DUMB question.
I love this little mistakes - Deuceland, great^^
Can not complain about that, really fits.
I can remember when you call Deutschland Duschland ( Showerland ) . I was laughing so hard . But you learned a lot since this time . When you ask me about the german food , we do have special food in every Bundesland . What you think it's real german food is most times bavarian . And we don't eat Sauerkraut every day . I remember we visited a german restaurant in London . When we came in there where a few people askeing us 'is this real authentic german food ?' No it wasn't . We don't put Sauerkraut on sausages and on every other dish. I'm from Baden Würtemberg and our traditional food is Käsespätzle Wurstsalat Maultaschen Zwiebelrostbraten and other delicious things. Other regions have different specials ( maybe this is the reason why there is no real german chocolate cake ) . We have a lot chocolate cakes .
Käsespätzle is great! I'm not actually German (only half) but my dad is, and he is a great cook (he likes to replicate the recipes his mom used to do)! He's Bavarian though, so I really don't know much about Baden Wütemberg traditional cooking, but I can bet it's awesome.
The english word 'douche' has a different meaning, though ... it's not 'shower'.
Personal Tipp: don't eat Sauerkraut for lunch on a yogalesson in the evening
Questions like do Germans (or whomever) have airconditioning, washing machines, cars (yes really) etc. don't just show shocking ignorance, but also how deep this false idea of American exceptionalism runs, and disdain for other nations. It is no secret that US lower and middle education is generally not so good, but it's also indoctrination. At the very least to make Americans feel good about their nation, but I think also to keep them wilfully ignorant about how a lot of things could be (much) better. There would be a nationwide revolt if everyone really knew about e.g. universal healthcare in the rest of the civilised nations, their worker protections, how infrastructure is not collapsing, etc.
I think the warm beer question is about Americans often put ice cubes in any kind of drinks at restaurants and stuff, which would not happen in Germany. Beer needs to be cool and refreshing, but you wanna have the taste of the bee, not of cold sparkled liquid xD
That would actually make a lot of sense
Americans don't put ice in beer. That's as silly as the American who assumed Germans drink warm beer. We both drink beer the same way-- cold/cool from the fridge/tap/cellar.
Most beers in Northern Europe are served at room temp' of just below. there is no need for ice cold beer in moderate weathered countries, wanna quench a thirst and get drunk not freeze my nads off.
@@fasteddie406 And that's the difference. The US, in most states, is not a moderate weather country. 😊
@@fasteddie406Idk where in Europe you're from? I'm from Norway and we serve our beer cold, also at home. I have one friend that like his in room temp, but that's really not how we serve it and it's not a common thing.
When it comes to stupid questions, the attitude is Everything so it sounds like you're cool even if you've asked the same things. I mean when people express dislike for Americans it's not even the ignorance (it's not really your fault you have what I like to call institutionalized ignorance) it almost always comes from the Attitude
Many other countries also don't really learn about the rest of the world and so will be ignorant about a lot of things but their attitude about it is completely different (e.g. Japan comes to mind) which makes all the difference.
Hey There.
First question i have is: Are there even AMERICAN names? Sure, some natives still have some, but i think the most common names in the US are of european origin.
Of course i have air conditioning at my home, in fact i have it in every single room, it's a handle on every window you're able to turn 90 or 180 degrees to open it fully or partly. 🙂
I never heared about "German chocolate cake" but there are so many different recepies for chocolate cake in Germany, maybe it is of german origin, i don't know.
Airwrecka and Jazzmyne are typical American names. And yes, I refuse to believe that those are variants of Erika and Jasmin :D
@@Nutzername92a Hmmm. Maybe they are american names, or just a form of dyslexia.
Is Pocahontas a name of american orign?
8:23 one of the funniest examples for this is "Gretchen" which clearly is derived from German, only absolutely no one in Germany is called "Gretchen". It's a diminutive of Grete which itself is an abbreviation of Margarete (the German equivalent of Margaret, which originates from Greek).
In the US, like other former British colonies, cars drive on the left. A truck in the middle lane is a free for all, find your way around. Driver conduct is absolutely shocking.
Ok, so this is admittedly not the...most complex of video topics, but the energy of such a mellow, likeable dude reacting to another mellow likeable person just honestly feels like a powerful, gentle balm for my poor, harried soul right now. Thank you, kindly, good Sir!
An Australian travel website had some funny people answering questions from world travellers about Australia, mostly Americans. My favourite question and answer went like this:- "Do they speak English there?" Answer:- "Yes, but you have to learn it first!"
There seems to be much confusion by Americans about Austria and Australia...must be the first five letters causing such confusion....
Ive been to Germany, specifically Munich. Dude the roads out there so damn smooth, the strudels hit different too. The beer houses out there too smackin!!
Actually I doubt Germans do mind the "German chocolate cake" even though most might not ever heard of that recipe.
Easiest traditional German dish is: Toast Hawaii.
Legend says that after the war, a restaurant ran out of most ingredients. When new customers came, the chef said: I will make you something special. Arriving in his kitchen, only bacon, cheese , a can of pineapple and toast was left.
So he created a new dish and served it as Hawaii-Toast. Next time the customers came, they asked for Hawaii-Toast again.
The dish got really popular in all Germany in no time.
So no - as Germans we really shouldn't mind the "German chocolate cake".
so where did he get the pineapple from?
@@silkwesir1444 forgot ;D he had a can of pineapple too.
The thing was more... typical German dishes became known as hawaiian ;D
And most likely they've never heard of this in Hawaii.
Like most of us have never heard of German's chocolate cake.
Yeah, not true, it was actually invented in a German cooking show, the inspiration was most likely the american grilled cheese sandwhich. Incidentally, the show was known for really questionable recipees, but this one stuck around (minus there really nasty cherry on top).
@@swanpride Like I said: Legend says.
But I agree, the cooking show brought it to the masses.
(12:00) "soccer" isn't really the "English" term, but the American/Canadian/Irish/African/Australian English term. "Football" is still used in many other parts of the world. But "soccer" can only refer to specifically ⚽, so it's good like that, but you can't then use "football" to refer to 🏈 if you want to keep it unambiguous. I think the term is "gridiron" if I'm not mistaken.
Now, I've heard the argument that "American gridiron and Canadian gridiron aren't going by the same rules", yes, but it's basically the same sport. It's the same how English soccer, Swedish soccer, German soccer don't have the exact same rules either, but that's fine apparently.
i can absolutely understand the cake confusion:
German chocolate cake is named after the inventor, someone named "german", but in Austria there is a very famous chocolate cake, the "Sacher Torte", Since German is the official language of Austria (even though austrian-german is different from the german used in germany), this might lead to confusion.
Ooh, I love Sacher Torte!
@The Faint Owl I know, but you know the famous "German Chocolate Cake" in America? Thats what this is about, and the only thing that is at least a bit similar to that is austrian, not german.
I worked in a club for years and we had American bands over every weekend and I loved answering questions 😁
You need to learn Hochdeutsch first and foremost. The "lingo" is just very different based on where you are in Germany, how old the people are you are talking to and the social environment. Like, student lingo is very different from worker lingo.
Nothing wrong with picking up some words, but be aware that there is no common "lingo" or "slang", and it can be confusing if you use certain words wrong. A well known example: What the whole of Germany calls "Berliner", are called "Pfannkuchen" in Berlin, while elsewhere "Pfannkuchen" is an entirely different dish, not to confuse with the American Pancakes.
Where i come from we do not say Berliner we say Kreppel.
@@Son_Daughter_of_Slaanesh You're probably from Hessen like me. In Baveria they call it Krapfen.
@@biogal90 close. Im from the Kurpfalz. Mannheim/Heidelberg/Odenwald area
I aprechciate your honesty so much, thanks for that!! (I'm german)
Speaking Slang in Germany is easily described like this: When i`m casually talking to my friends vs talking to my parents i need to switch dialect to make them even understand what i´m saying every time i´m talking to them. My Parents also have their own kinda dialect, but less than our younger generation, we maybe mix things more up due to the internet. We also, at least in northern Germany, use a lot of english words or variations of them. I personally think the use of some english words makes the german language even more speakable and sometimes more accurate than using the correct german translations for it (at least for me and my friends hahaha)
Same here in Berlin, I practically speak a different Language when I speak with my Parents compared to when I speak with my friends.
the nother german (plattdeutsch) has alot of english words or sound similiarities, because they are low-saxon and english are anglosaxon. these languages are familiar.
And when you as a parent practice dictation with your elementary school children, you suddenly pronounce all the letters that you would otherwise "swallow" (G E H E N ~ "gehn" a.o.)
Feel it. I am also from northern Germany
@@sarahmichael270244 yeah Plattdeutsch is very special, we had classes in School for it and some people still speak it, especially the older generations, but it is mostly high german with some leftovers from Platt in Hamburg now.
Just for the record (best regards from Czechia): we used to drive on left befor the WW II. The driving on the right side is based on the Paris International Traffic Agreement from 1926 and we were lazy to change it so we changed our laws at 1938 and we started to drive on right side by the start of our occupation.
BTW: We have just 10,5 mil people but so many dialects and our speaking language is almost a different language at all sometimes - even in the written form.
I kinda want to find out if we can even get anything remotely close to a German('s) chocolate cake over here.
I guess we can go the James route and just bake one ourselves...
Hey James, did you Just say (15. Min) and so weiter?😂 Bro thats lit
21:50 I'm pretty sure that somewhere in Germany someone makes a cake like that.
But it works just like "in India they don't have Indian food, they just call it food".
Just like we just call "German potato salad", you guessed it...
Okay, so apparently the story about German Chocolate Cake being called that because its inventor's name ("yeah right" I thought at first) is not a joke/hoax.
It used to be called "German's chocolate cake" and over time the "'s" was dropped.
Or it's just a suuuper elaborate hoax...
@@NicolaiCzempin Nope, not a hoax. Consider the ingrediences...they aren't typical German at all.
Funfact about fridges: the first basic refrigeration system was invented by a guy named Carl von Linde who was tired of drinking warm beer.