C-SPAN WJ: Ignorance On Display

[KharmaTrain]

There's a guest dealing with American history and they're asking questions of the caller. One question was asking what was the last battle fought in the Revolution...a Repugnican just guessed Gettysburg.

The cultural myopia and ignorance of American are on full display!

Discuss...

On Edit...Here's the link to the quiz

http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx

[Toots]

1. In America "Our children is learning"

:patriot:

[Cassandra]

2. Banal is usually pronounced with the accent on the second...

syllable. Although the way they've been saying it is an option, this is the first time I've heard banal rhyme with anal. It sounds grating.

[EST]

3. How interesting.

I grew up in an area where it's pronounced BAY-nul and when I hear it pronounced bn-ALL, it unhooks a gallus in my brain and makes my ears flap. I end up paying attention to my mind's protesting at the sound and likely miss the next sentence from the speaker.

[Cassandra]

5. I looked it up in Webster's and...

BAY-nul (or something similar) is at the end of the list of options, indicating the least common. All other options (about 5) have the emphasis on the first syllable. ba-NAL, with two short a's is more what I've heard before. It's always amazing when you hear someone else pronouncing a less common word that you didn't know others pronounced differently.

[karlrschneider]

6. The second sentence in your post has me totally baffled.

In any case, I have never heard it pronounced in any way but 'BAYnul'.
edit: interesting observation from American Heritage dictionary:

ba·nalize v.
ba·nally adv.
Usage Note: The pronunciation of banal is not settled among educated speakers of American English. Sixty years ago, H.W. Fowler recommended the pronunciation (bnl, rhyming with panel), but this pronunciation is now regarded as recondite by most Americans: no member of the Usage Panel prefers this pronunciation. In our 2001 survey, (bnl) is preferred by 58 percent of the Usage Panel, (bnl) by 28 percent, and (b-näl) by 13 percent (this pronunciation is more common in British English). Some Panelists admit to being so vexed by the problem that they tend to avoid the word in conversation. Speakers can perhaps take comfort in knowing that any one of the last three pronunciations will have the support of a substantial minority and that none of them is incorrect. When several pronunciations of a word are widely used, there is really no right or wrong one.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

[Cassandra]

11. My being on the East coast...

probably contributes to the pronunciation that I have always heard. Admittedly, it's not a word that comes up tremendously often in conversation but when I've used it, nobody blinked at my pronunciation.

I just realized why you're baffled. I meant to say the other options have the emphasis on the SECOND syllable (with variations in the vowel sounds). Sorry.

[karlrschneider]

12. ah! Yes, that makes sense now.

:D

[ThomWV]

4. 88.33% ... A couple of them I had no idea

[Gidney N Cloyd]

9. Same score here. I had the roughtest time with the economics stuff.

[BanzaiBonnie]

7. 78.3%

AS with many tests, it made me feel inadequate. But I guess it was not too bad. It was a difficult test.

[burf]

8. You and I

scored the same (78.3). I guess that is not too bad in my case having graduated HS in 1969! Some of the questions I missed we due to not reading all the answers and some I had no clue.

Interesting test though.

[malaise]

10. I got nine wrong

You answered 51 out of 60 correctly — 85.00 %

I thought I messed up until I saw this

http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/report/major_findings_finding1.html

[bumblebee1]

13. I scored 68% on the quiz.

n/y

[Bozita]

14. You answered 48 out of 60 correctly — 80.00 %

You answered 48 out of 60 correctly — 80.00 %
Average score for this quiz during October: 70.3%
Average score since September 18, 2007: 70.3%

Pretty tough test!

[TahitiNut]

15. "You answered 52 out of 60 correctly — 86.67 %"

:dunce: A couple of REALLY stupid answers. D'oh!

The others caught me clueless.

[TahitiNut]

16. The comparably 'better' performance on "The Market Economy" is discouraging to me.

So much of that, particularly at the undergraduate level, is propagandistic and politically-motivated that I'm not confident it indicates education as much as it indicates indoctrination.