memes

This reminds me of a story about a French ship that landed someplace, and a native of the area walked down the beach and greeted them, saying "Bonjour." Shocked that the locals spoke perfect French, the sailors asked "Parlez-vous francais??" and the local, confusedly asked "what did you say?" in the local language.

As it turns out, both the local language and French had apparently arrived at more or less the exact same word for a greeting by pure coincidence.

That sometimes leads to confusing results. When Europeans arrived on the Saint Lawrence river they asked what they called the place. The indigenous people thought they were asking about what the word for village was so told them that word. Then every village they went they thought they were asking the name of the place but were actually asking "is this a village?" and the response was "yes, this is a village." So that led to the assumption the entire region was called that.

Yeah so the indigenous word for "village" was "canada". Woops! When they figured out the mistake it was already on all the maps, so whatever I guess.

"It's called Noo Amsterdam, I don't know why you think it's referencing some place we've never heard of, it just means big harbor"

A lot of states are named after the natives they genocided