My dad tries to understand what the U.K is

Never change Chary's dad

I'm not even British and I'm still offended by this.

The Real Jdbye said:

I'm not even British and I'm still offended by this.

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The tut tut -- toot toot is a simple enough mistake in I guess it would be onomatopoeia to make, and may indeed actually be more accurate -- you are far more likely to be tutted at (especially doing the boorish American routine) than you are to ever encounter someone saying pip pip toot toot good-bye-ee, especially not seriously.

Are you just trolling or is your dad that dumb? Not knowing what the UK is. that's like not knowing what America is....

When I was kid I always thought England was only for white people fresh prince blew my mind

Fresh Prince is in America tho

@FAST6191 Not that, just the whole thing.

I am British and I can confirm tea people live here and we say tut tut Cheerio every day.

Unfortunately I have not tried tea yet.
How are these paws supposed to grab a fucking teacup?
Then again I could use telekinesis.

I strive for that level of "I don't give fuck/I don't know"

Yeah, that inner peace is certainly desirable!

100% british and you may get an toodley pipski out of me on occasions depends how mind numbing bored i am a the time and how much i want to see the sheer look of confusion and bewilderment on someone's face

Growing up, we always called it Britain. Then, later on, when I learned that the history of what Britain is, it's relationship with Ireland, Wales, etc., it became simpler to just refer to it as the U.K..

as a british person, this makes me laugh.

“To be fair I do think many people here only know where certain towns/cities are because of football” [citation needed]

also how does an american person not know what the uk is?

arcanine said:

“To be fair I do think many people here only know where certain towns/cities are because of football” [citation needed]

also how does an american person not know what the uk is?

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Are you really suggesting that football does not inform a huge amount of geographical knowledge or name recognition of places? https://www.theguardian.com/football/2003/may/29/theknowledge.sport
Or you can run it yourself
https://www.thegeographist.com/uk-cities-population-1000/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_football_clubs_in_England
Some of it might go by age as it looks like several of those have radically changing fortunes over the decades -- football bores me to death so several of those I only recognise because of osmosis from late 80s/early 90s football card crazes (which was then the premier league and not much else, at the time it was also the top league but I am told there might be another in there somewhere) and apparently today are rather lower ranked.

Either that or we went to very different schools, hang around in very different pubs and speak to very different people. Many people that would not be able to do the villages surrounding their town, or all the estates/eras within it, I do usually find do well at towns with football clubs and unless they are notable for something else are more hazy on things without.

As for not knowing what the UK is then in my experience "are you from England" (though possibly as loud as possible and more pronounced Engerland or Ingerland) tends to be the question asked even if they are speaking with the a "their mother could barely understand them" Scottish or Welsh accent, that or Australian for some reason.
Or perhaps similar to why you would probably fail to many American schoolchildren in a game of state capitols

you didn't say recognition of the names, you said where those towns and cities are. I am not saying whether or not knowledge of the names of football clubs makes it more likely that people will know the geographical location, but if you are making an assertion that it does, then I'm interested to know how you have come to that conclusion. I don't know what the lists of cities and clubs you posted have to do with it. None of the information contained within the names of football clubs or the towns they are in reflect their geographical location at all. I know that there is an american football team called the miami dolphins, but I don't know where miami is. In order to know that I would have to look on a map and then remember it. Knowing there is a sports team there makes no difference to that at all

Lol... Football manages create another argument out of nothing!

Truly the beautiful game

arcanine said:

you didn't say recognition of the names, you said where those towns and cities are.

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Working on job sites, being in schools, and talking to people in pubs and what not if we are having a discussion of geography or naming a place where someone is going to do something/get something/ship something/visit something to then so much does it come back to football. This goes even more if the local* team is a respectable side and they have away matches people (be it themselves or their mates) attend, or don't attend because "wow that is a serious journey".

*or local enough if it is one of the surrounding villages/towns that their more talented kids get tapped to play professionally end up in such places and thus it bleeds in.

They might not necessarily know the roads and junctions to get there (trains and coaches and all that), almost certainly not as well as truck drivers and people that put in distance for a living but it is there. Maybe some won't be able to pin it on a blank map (granted that can be hard and more navigate by other cities rather than geography, though blank the city name and leave surrounding ones and it will happen).
There will probably be a further disparity between name recognition and being able to locate it but with name recognition no doubt being higher but to dismiss football as a cause of geographical knowledge would be nuts from where I sit. It is also just football as so many when questioned further only do football and maybe a pub on the way out. I would struggle to quantify things if you are going that way but I can stand 100% behind football is a great source of national geographical knowledge for a lot of people.

that all sounds anecdotal and i don’t know how you get from there to a generalisation about the population other than through assumption

You seem borderline offended at such a notion which is bizarre to me.

I have however been all over the country, spoke to dozens of people from all walks of life (I find myself knee deep in mud/concrete as often as with a soldering iron or in a business meeting). When doing the where are you from, where did you study, where do we have to go for this, where is this going, what is it near... discussion as part of that I and many of my associates have it come back to football as a frame of reference. It is sometimes troubling to me as I really don't care for football (see IT crowd sketch) and have not got a clue beyond whatever I remember from a playground decades ago where such a conversation usually started "have you got any shiny cards/shinies?".
Moreover it tends also to apply to those that might never leave the county, or indeed not know the villages surrounding them, other than to go to an airport, ferry terminal, maybe a trip to London for a concert once every decade (though I don't hold that one against them as London is an awful place), or said coach/train trips to an away game.

Usually something along the lines of "[place]", "oh yeah [football club associated with it] we played them away a few years back and I went" and if [place] does not have a football club of note then somewhere nearby tends to get that line. For the latter that may be a case of know the big places but it still tends to involve football. Depending upon how in depth they get they might also chuck in the road name for the grounds, or indeed use that in place of the name (which is doubly hilarious as most times such roads are where you go to find prostitutes).