Please read the following passage from an AP article on today's France v. Switzerland match:
"The idea of the little Switzerland, that's over," said [Swiss footballer Alexander] Frei, who thinks a win over France will put the tiny Scandinavian nation on the soccer map ahead before co-hosting the 2008 European Championship with Austria.
You read that right. Tiny Scandinavian nation. I had to reread the article a few times to be sure I wasn't hallucinating. Granted, this AP reporter is not in charge of any diplomacy, but I am shocked... shocked that no one picked up on it. Let us all briefly ponder a map of Europe. The countries in red are Scandinavia, obviously.
I need to lay down.
Update: Danke Schoen, Sanity Claus. I need to lie down (I always get that wrong... so embarassing.).
5 comments:
I am outraged in a way not unlike how you would be outraged over grammar mistakes. This stinks of such lazyness and stupidity it's close to being funny.
Love the map. As long as we're all one big, happy, nitpicking family, that should be, "I need to lie down." But you probably knew that and you're (your, yore, ewer) just testing us. And, Joshua, I believe it's "laziness" rather than with a "y," but it is funny, as well as depressing.
I met a guy at a party on Saturday night. He asked me when I learned German. "Well, I really learned while I went abroad to Vienna for my Junior Year."
"But you didn't speak it before you went to Germany?"
"Actually, Vienna is in Austria."
"Whatever. So you didn't speak it before you went to Austria?"
I kind of admired the way he didn't get embarassed and just soldiered on with it...
Another time I was telling some American college guy that I was studying in Austria and he asked me, "So, like, do you speak Austrian?"
This is apparently a very difficult concept to grasp. One languge, two TOTALLY DIFFERENT AND SOVEREIGN nations. I've employed the USA/Canada metaphor one than once, I tell you.
Sanity Claus, if you correct any of the grammar in this comment, I will shove a pie in your face.
Yeah, explaining Switzerland to people is doubly hard, because of the four languages and whatnot.
"So, do you speak.... wait, what do they speak there?"
I mean, I understand if people don't know the geography of Africa and Asia really well, but a serviceable knowledge of European geography is pretty basic... I mean, the US was founded by Europeans (on the backs of Africans, but that's a different story altogether).
Thanks Sanity, that's why I leave gramnmar to Sheena and now apparently you.
Post a Comment