Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Is the Capital in the Country?

During a recent conversation, a French person expressed confusion about Washington D.C. and Washington state. Another French person piped in and asked if Washington D.C. was really in the US because it wasn’t a state and wasn’t in a state. I hope she was joking, but after the experience I had with someone thinking that Alaska was an island, I may need to carry a map of the US ready to show to the US-geography-challenged.


5 comments:

David in Setouchi said...

French people's confusion about Washington DC comes mostly from the fact that the concept of federal country is more than vague for most of them (that and the fact that Washington state is so far away from DC)

Anastacia said...

I have to say i love your blog, only discovered today i've read a hell of alot of pages. My personal favourite post is about the grass being en repos.

I spend a fair bit of time in Paris and love it. I live in London, and find it rather refreshing that you hate it too. Most visitors to the capital rave about it.

Anne said...

This time I think you can give the French a break. I lived in Washington, DC for nearly 25 years and I can assure you that there are plenty of Americans who are confused about the city's status too! They think it's part of Maryland or they think that no one lives there (for the record, the city has about 700,000 residents) and they have no idea that it has no representation in Congress in spite of that oh so American expression "no taxation without representation."

islandgirl4ever2 said...

Oki...

I'm from Cali so I DO know the diff. between Washington State (just abouve Oregon and below Canada... and Washington D.C. .... I know where Washington D.C. and that D.C. stands for the District of Columbia.. but somehow.. I always get confused by what Washington D.C. really is.. besides being the CAPITOL of ALL capitols!!!!

David in Setouchi said...

Leesa, don't make me embarrass you and explain you (me a Frenchman) what DC is... ;-)