Made Up Words
During a foreign language class, we were learning the names of different countries. Suddenly, someone stopped the lecture and asked the dumbest question known to man: They asked why the language we were learning made up names for different countries.
They said, “Why can’t we just use the real names like Germany, Japan, etc”? There was total silence in the classroom. Then, we spent 10 minutes of the entire class time trying to get this person to understand that “Germany” is not the name of Germany in German.
We had to explain to them that all the country names we know are all English “made up” names for those countries. They did not comprehend this concept.
It confounds me to this day, especially since that person was not from an English-speaking country to begin with.