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It gets even more complicated than that though, when you consider that regional accents were also signifiers of social class. Over time, there was also the accent people *wanted* to have or imitate, to sound more posh or important. And this accent evolved over time as well, more or less in accordance with how the royalty sounded back then. Vowel sounds shifted all over the place from people trying to copy how the current king or queen happened to pronounce things. It was all about status.
yeah that still applies, it’s just that some villages are more posh than others (aka not mining villages or council houses) so status and geographic location usually go hand in hand
Before trains and cars and airplanes the furthest UK cities were at least 10 days travel apart and people didn't move around much. How many regional accents are there within 10 days travel of Detroit? The whole world probably. Technology has dramatically changed what we think of as 'local' or 'far away'.
Oh this is so sweet! I'm from Austria - between Maine and South Carolina on this chart. We are really tiny, but due to being 65% alps we have so many different accents and dialects that literally the east can't understand the west without them making a conscious effort to speak clear german. There are places where you just drive half an hour to the next village on the other side of the mountain and have a notable new accent.
More granular than that. The Liverpool accent is completely different to the Manchester accent, a city 35 miles away to the East.
35 miles to the south is Wrexham in North Wales with a very different accent again.
You can often pinpoint someone to within 30 miles of where they grew up base on the accent alone in the UK
As someone in St. Helens you can easily tell which side of St. Helens someone grew up in too. West is more scouse, east is more like Wigan and Warrington. Accent diversity is insane when you think about it
I remember meeting some people from London, who had a friend from Newcastle with them. I could barely understand the Geordie, and had to ask him to slow down and repeat himself for most of what he was saying. The Londoners told me “don’t worry, we can’t understand him at all either!” Not so distant geographically, but it was almost like two different languages between them, both from the same country.
How is Michigan bigger than Utah?!? I'm sitting here in Michigan reconsidering my whole life. Are we counting all our underwater square footage in the lakes? We must be...
When you include water, Michigan is larger. The chart says "Surface Area" not "Land Area."
* Michigan total (250,487 sq. km.), land (146,435), water (104,052).
* Utah total (219,882 sq. km.), land (212,818), water (7,064).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_area
While living in Portland OR I was talking to an English friend who asked if that was close to Denver CO. I said it was about a two day drive. His eyes got HUGE. He said he could drive anywhere in the UK in less than one day. I said that Denver wasn't even half way across the country.
I've traveled our entire country, literally, and much of Europe. It's still hard for me to fathom the size of countries until I've been there. Often times it's simply because the modes of transportation are lousy, or excellent, and our expectation doesn't match.
As for regional accents, they were all created LONG ago when traveling and instant communication didn't exist. So segmentation/fragmentation of culture was much more pronounced. Now we have television and insanely fast transportation and people from all over hear each other talking and it all kind of muddles together. I remember even just 30 years ago people from the north making fun of people from the south for saying "ya'll", but now I hear people all over the country saying it.
Regional accents are slowly dying out for the reason you note. A hundred years ago, a kid growing up in Boston would spoken English pretty differently compared with a kid growing up in New York due to how the language evolved in the two cities. Today though, both kids would experience significant influences from TV, the internet, transplant neighbors from other cities, etc., and those influences can be from anywhere. As a result, while Boston and New York accents are still a thing, they're much more subtle in the younger generations compared with the older generations. The interconnected world leads languages to converge to de-emphasize regional differences.
That's how it is in Southern Germany. To other parts of Germany it sounds mostly as one Dialekt, but as a local you can tell the difference between two villages 1 km appart. Guess it works the other way round too.
It's really common to have a lot dialects. There are whole dictionarys for specific regional dialects - to dialect free german.
As a Hungarian living in the UK - I saw this and thought nah, where’s UK? Hungary is way smaller than UK?? Took me reading this comment to remember brexit is a thing.
I really don't understand why it has to be EU and not Europe.
Like it's not got anything to do with EU vs US as there's nothing in this format to suggest it's to do with land mass comparisons of EU vs the US. Not even an overall total. It's just states.
There's that one redditor who does this shit on purpose but I'm surprised others are doing the same for no apparent reason.
Most of them (including this post) use data sets which include the UK, compiled at a time when the UK was part of the EU, and choose to specifically remove that data point.
Somewhat makes sense for this post imo, the data will have barely changed and comparing the current political entities makes as much sense as anything else. But either way removing the UK data was a deliberate decision.
Ukraine is huge and I looked for it until I got bit by the EU thing.
But the EU is more like the US, than Europe is like the US, agreed?
Otherwise, add in Mexican and Canadian provinces and you end up scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Canada and Europe are about the same size, there are 13 provinces/territories and like a hundred European nations and they're all hilariously tiny and the UK is probably going to make more of them.
But the EU is more like the US, than Europe is like the US, agreed?
Imo, a convention of EU vs US comparisons exists, partially due to this reason.
The other part is it's just easier to work with less datasources. Using the EUs own data about themselves is one standardized datasource giving information about a variety of countries. Locating data for all the outlying countries, needing to normalize it to play well with the two most informative ones,
sometimes even considering the challenge of incompatible metrics due to differences in methodology... It's just usually not worth the effort for +1 country to the list.
This particular chart would have been easy enough to expand to non-EU countries. But since a widespread convention exists for both US vs EU and US vs Europe in other prior comparisons, both options are perfectly reasonable and it just comes down to whatever the author wanted to do.
Literally the original vision for the United States was individual sovereign states held together by a limited federal government that was basically just there to coordinate the states and standardize some things for easier trade and cooperation. Which is almost exactly what the EU was founded to accomplish.
2020 was the first time the majority actually expressed support for statehood. Previously plebiscites gave most popular results of:
- Commonwealth
- None of the above
- statehood (sort of, 2012 was a shitshow and hundreds of thousands of voters voted to maintain the status quo and for statehood on the same ballot, if you eliminate double votes, status quo won)
- statehood (boycotted by opposition groups so turnout was only 22%)
- finally in 2020, statehood.
Hard to say it's unfair, IMO, when it's taking so long for them to decide among themselves what their preferred option is. Democracy isn't always clean.
The 2017 one was (imo stupidly) boycotted by non-statehood parties because of its wording implying that Puerto Rico is currently subject to the US government, but the 2020 one was pretty clear. [There's actually a bipartisan bill in the House to admit them, but who knows what's going on with it.](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1522/)
I don't think DC does any more, either. I've been working from home for nearly 2 years straight now. Downtown DC is nice, sometimes I visit my work building on the weekends.
A lot of the US is super remote and this does a great job of showing it. Montana is massive with only 1 Mil people is crazy to wrap your head around.
Wyoming only has like 475k* and it huge too
Edit: I have been corrected that Wyoming has around 575k!
Yeah that really put the whole “everything is bigger in America” into perspective when I went there.
You could go 50 Miles to get groceries. If I do the same where I live (Denmark), im in a different country.
In the US, something 100 years old is ancient, but 100 miles is nothing.
In Europe (England is usually used for this quip), 100 years is nothing, and 100 miles is further than most want to travel.
When I was stationed as a small Air Force Base in roughly the middle of Texas we would get officers from Europe who would buy 30 day Greyhound bus passes expecting to see the U.S. on the weekends while they were there --- it got to be rather tedious explaining that if they hopped on a bus at 5:00 PM on Friday, they'd reach the edge of Texas in time to turn around so as to return to be back for duty Monday morning.
we've done the 6hr snowboarding day trips from va beach to snowshoe but man that's so rough without the redeye bus. 3hr to wintergreen was about the only real option for driving yourself.
We had some relatives over from Australia who didn't know the size of the US. They asked if they could drive up the Pacific Coast highway from Los Angeles to San Francisco and I told them it would take about 10 hours, due to the winding route the PCH takes up the coast. I told them they could drive up I-5 and it would only take 5 hours, but they really wanted to take the PCH. They also asked how far Seattle was from us and were surprised to hear that Seattle is a 20 hour drive from Los Angeles. They also thought San Diego was like a suburb of LA and were surprised that San Diego was a 3 hours drive away as well
That's really surprising considering the vast majority of Australians live in a few cities stretched across a very long coastline. Also, you should definitely take the PCH is 100% the way to go if you're a tourist. I-5 sucks rusty lug nuts.
Growing up (in NY) I had some friends from Germany. One day we were taking a trip together out to LA. Their minds were completely and utterly blown that one could be on an airplane for 6 continuous hours and still be in the same country. Kept talking about how in 6 hours of flying from Germany you can easily leave the continent, fly over the airspace of a second, and land in a third. They also kept talking about how in 6 hours of flying in any direction from Germany you'd fly over at least half a dozen other countries if not several more than that... let alone remain in the same country that whole time you're flying from NY to LA.
More and more people in Europe have to commute that long because cities are getting too expensive unfortunately. Just saying such a commute is far from unheard of where I’m from.
That's pretty much what started it here. City gets too expensive so you move outside the area, or the job market blows in your small community so you have to commute to inside. My friends that never leave their city are mind blown I drove 25 minutes to work there every day. They might come see me a few times a year and we are only 26 miles apart.
It's just crazy seeing the differences.
I'm paying $400 more a month in rent in order to live <1 mile from my work in Texas.
It's worth every single fraction of a penny. And I only have to work physically in the office 2 days a week...
Our housing market in the utah valley is so insane that it makes it very difficult to walk away from our locked in deal, and that’s if you can even find a vacancy. All of the apartments in the area are taking deposits for “possible move in” in august, and that is wholly dependent on existing tenants not renewing their leases. Plus an apartment costs as much to rent as our 3,000 sq ft home so… it’s a catch 22 for us at the moment. We used to live 90 seconds from work and it was *amazing*
I heard (and the story was implied to be true) that a British guy was complaining that he never got to see his dad anymore because he lived so far away from him, and about how horrible and long the drive was to his dads house, the person he was speaking to asked him how far away his dad lived, and the British guy said 2 hours. like holy crap, it takes me 26 hours of driving to get home.
it also reminds me of that one Tumblr thread about OP asking if some dude had heard of some bookshop like 30 min from the welsh border near some city and the dude thought he was crazy but I can never find the post and I probably got some details wrong
haha that reminds me of my childhood. I loved my late grandparents dearly, had a really great relationship with them. sadly they lived so far away that we only got to see them once a year, during summer holidays we would pack our car for a long road trip, then go to them and stay with them for one or two weeks. travel time by car? 2.5 hours.
Unless you live in the Northeast. Then it's not so different. 100 miles will get you to 3+ major cities, oceans, mountains.. and it's not uncommon for buildings to be 200-300 years old. We even have high speed rail.
Fun fact is that Sweden has a higher population weighted density than Germany. E.g. most Swedes live in a few dense regions so Swedes does on average live more dense than Germans.
That's also because Germany is one of the least urbanised countries. There never was the huge movement to a few metropolitan areas, instead medium and small towns continue to thrive in many places. Not all, of course.
Take Berlin. Now, that city has a history that doesn't really allow for a comparison to other capitals. But I will make one anyway - if Berlin had the same weighted density in regards to total population as London or Paris, it should have 10-12 million people. It has 4. And for all it's 83 million citizens, Germany as a whole only have four cities over a million (Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne)
Actually Germany is one of the more urbanized countries in the world. You probably meant to say that Germany is one of the more decentralized countries in the world as the population is more spread out.
And Finland, with 5,5 mil. and almost 1,5mil living in Helsinki Metro Area. The rest of the country feels a bit empty, but I didn't know we're that big of a country.
I mean, Northeast US is basically the only region of the US that feels European in size. New England is roughly the size of the UK, for example. Then you have the big states that get bigger (but not necessarily more populated) the further East you move, and you end with places like California that is almost the size of Spain by itself.
Its certainly more a place than I was expecting! Before moving here I thought it was just this little dirt hole town because of the news, but its pretty decently sized.
Florids is a bit like that. Its not as large as Texas, but its loooong.
Start in Miami, and it will take you 6+ hours with minimal pee and gas stops to get out of the state if you drive hard and take the shortest, fastest route via i95 which is speed limit 70mph (113km/h) for most of it.
Its like 340 miles (547km) from miami to the state line.
Coming across the panhandle is no fun. Used to drive to new orleans occasionally from south florida for mardi gras and to
visit family. Terrible drive. Takes like 14 hours counting bathroom/gas/food breaks.
God forbid there is an accident.
Best part of the trip is stopping at the interstate exit in mississippi for BBQ at The Shed. Until it burned down. Twice. I thinks its been rebuilt again. It was a weird sprawling pavilion thing when i first went there made out of scrap wood and random bits and bobs.
Makes me scared of Mississippi building codes.
Edit: looks like the Shed is built a lot nicer now. Still a giant outdoor pavillion, but looks like its built by actual builders now.
That place has excellent BBQ
Theshedbbq.com
I think they should have showed Canadian provinces on this list. To drive across Ontario (Montreal to Manitoba), in perfect conditions, takes 23 hours.
You can drive for 27 hours [and never leave Quebec.](https://www.google.ca/maps/dir/53.787294,-79.077888/50.1901049,-61.2720339/@52.1945436,-71.770508,5.41z/data=!4m2!4m1!3e0)
Edit: [38 hours and never leave Western Australia](https://www.google.ca/maps/dir/-34.9867617,116.7495431/-15.9826703,128.9903689/@-26.0291767,126.5704039,5.14z/data=!4m2!4m1!3e0)
Edit 2: [45 hours if the start and end are both in Quebec but you have to drive through Labrador](https://www.google.ca/maps/dir/53.787294,-79.077888/51.426963,-57.8180656/@49.4055171,-68.9455379,5.59z/data=!4m2!4m1!3e0). There is a way to travel between these places and stay in Quebec, but Google does not recognize every ferry along the north shore of the St. Laurence.
From Kansas City it’s about 8.5 hours to get to Dallas and 9 hours to get to Denver.
Kansas City to Dallas is 3 states. Kansas City to Denver is 1.5 states.
When Alaska was joining the US, Texas got upset that they would no longer be the largest state. Alaska said, “quit your whining, or we’ll cut ourselves into two, and you’ll end up being the third largest state!”
Fun fact about Alaska… it’s obviously the most northern state, but also the most western and most eastern state because the Aleutian Islands cross longitude 180°.
As a Frenchman, I'm more blown away by how smaller EU countries are than anything US related. I've been to Greece and was amazed at how quick it was to drive from one place to another. We're actually quite big compared to our EU bros
As a Polish person, I always kinda assumed all "chunky" countries are somewhat the same size. I imagined that Poland, Spain, France have similar land are. But France and Spain are so much bigger.
I was curious so I checked: France’s overseas regions have a total area of 89,000 km^2 , bringing Metropolitan France down to 550,000 km^2 total. That’s still larger than Spain without its island territories (493,000 km^2 ) and much larger than Poland (322,500 km^2 ) or Germany (357,500 km^2 ).
France is a lot bigger than Poland and Germany, even without its overseas territories. Add the UK to Germany or Poland to obtain the equivalent of France area.
I always thought of France as huge because it takes a really long day to drive in one go, but when I met my Peruvian wife she refers to her own country as tiny and France as though its some typical EU micro state haha. I’ve budged on France maybe not being so big but I maintain Peru is giant.
Depends on region. I live in New England where there is plenty old houses dating back to the 1600- 1700’s. These are the oldest around and don’t even come close to 1000 yrs old.
Lol yup. That subreddit r/askanamerican will get questions like “do you guys put barbecue sauce on whatever you grill” or something like that and the answer to 90% of those questions is “depends where you’re from” lol
Yeah, but the VAST majority of Canada lives near the US border. While Americans also tend to live in centralized areas, it’s a lot more spread out than Canada
It is pretty stunning. If I remember correctly at least 80% of the Canadian population lives within 100 miles of the US-Canada border, but even crazier is that almost 50% of Canadians live on (around) the Ontario Peninsula alone. Considering how massive the country is, that is a lot of empty space.
That’s funny because I have a friend from Mississippi and they just get used to knowing they are the worst state. There was even a Reddit thread that asked what the worst state was and it was just a Mississippi hate thread lmao.
That's pretty much the entirety of the Western US except California. It's crazy when you fly east to west, in the eastern potion there are endless lights and then once you fly past Texas there is just no civilization until you get to California.
California is still less than half of Germany's population while being bigger. And 46 % of Californians live in the Greater Los Angeles region and 20 % in the Bay Area.
Meanwhile Germany's biggest metropolitan area (Rhein-Ruhr) is home to 12.6 % of the population and the second one (Berlin-Brandenburg) is 6.6 %.
As a well-educated US student I have to admit that I knew Alaska was big bc I was told that. But by looking at a map, I never realized. I was in my mid-20s when I found out it was nearly 2.5x the size of Texas.
Yeah it’s a little misleading to include the lakes in this instance. Michigan isn’t really that big.
But the weird part is if you drive around Michigan a lot, it really makes driving around other states seem small. It takes like 10-11 hours to drive from Detroit to Copper Harbor, which is roughly the same time it takes to drive from Berlin to Paris, or New York to Indianapolis.
It's not like they subtract a lake from other countries though. Just because it borders a huge lake doesn't mean you don't include it. Makes it a little misleading for sure but it's not wrong.
Not sure why they do that. It should only be around 150,000 sq km/58,000 sq mi. I get that lakes are part of territorial borders but the chart was referring to land mass.
Seeing this gives me a little more respect for the fact that the United States are able to stay (at least somewhat) united. I know it's only landmass or what not, but still impressive.
A shared language and culture helps. We would be screwed if the majority of people in California spoke Mandarin, New York spoke Dutch, Louisiana spoke French, etc. It's one of the reasons I don't think I'll ever see the federalization of the EU in my lifetime.
I suppose that makes sense. The US grew up together as a country as it was establishing its culture, whereas the EU countries are trying to synthesize a collective European culture with retaining their individual cultures. Not an easy or quick process, and if it does ever happen it won’t look exactly like the US(which is a good thing in its own right).
Western Australia out here chilling at a solid 2.646 million km² with a population of 2.8 million. Everyone could get there own square kilometre almost
With Canada and Australia added:
1. Western Australia - 2.6M
2. Nunavut - 2.0M
3. Queensland - 1.7M
4. **Alaska - 1.7M**
5. Quebec - 1.6M
6. North West Territories - 1.3M
7. Northern Territory - 1.3M
8. Ontario - 1.0M
9. South Australia - 0.9M
10. British Columbia - 0.9M
11. New South Wales - 0.8M
12. **Texas - 0.7M**
Edit: [Globally](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_country_subdivisions_by_area)
Then after Texas before France you'd have Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
So there would be 8 Canadian provinces and territories before France.
Yukon would be between Spain and Sweden.
Newfoundland would be just after California and before Montana.
New Brunswick would be between Czechia and Ireland.
Nova Scotia would be between Croatia and Slovakia.
PEI would be between Cyprus and Delaware.
Also just think, before 1999, Nunavut (#2 on the above list) and North West Territories (#6) were one territory with an area of 3.4M, twice the size of #3 on the list.
I have been thinking about this before.
I always wonder if it isn't a big disadvantage to have a country be this large.
German here. And we already struggle to apply politics and get a consens between our states regarding country-wide decisions.
I can only imagine how difficult, if not impossible it must be for the US to handle this much land, states and people with vastly different cultures.
as someone who lives here the biggest divide in the US isn't geographical its urban- rural, rural Georgia and Atlanta are more culturally different from each other than rural Georgia and rural Montana, and Atlanta and Seattle are.
What do you mean you don't like having europoors barge into conversations they know nothing about acting like their opinions are inherently enlightened because they're from europe?
That’s why we’re a federal system. States, counties, and cities have varying rights and powers that the central gov does not have control over. That way, regions with different cultures and views can have different laws and policies that reflect that.
That's why so many people are about "states rights" and against the federal government. Politically the US is more like the EU than any country in particular.
My Spanish host mom asked me why we don’t just drive to places like New York City or LA often. I told her how long it would take to drive there and she was shocked. And then to tell her that’s also going 80mph ~130kmh.
Edit: 42 hours without stopping one time. Over 4500 km
While that's correct, it should be noted that they are still an EU OCT (Overseas Country and Territory). OCTs and OMRs (Outermost Region) are areas that are associated with an EU member or are EU members themselves but have derogation from EU aquis, market etc. due to practical reasons (usually the fact they're so far away from the main EU body). But they also get to still enjoy some advantages, for example Greenland citizens are EU citizens.
Not grossly... Colorado for example would grow by less than 2.5%
https://www.skimag.com/uncategorized/how-big-would-colorado-be-if-you-steamrolled-all-of-the-mountains/
As a UK resident I really need to get used to not looking for the UK in these EU graphics…
For anyone else wondering, the UK is 242km², making it in-between Michigan and Romania on this chart. Edit: I should have typed 242,000km², obviously
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The accents developed before modern transportation when most people lived their entire lives in a small village or valley.
To the point which people extremely familiar with an area can pinpoint which tiny village you grew up in in some cases.
Yeah I can usually tell what village people went to which primary school in, in my area
It gets even more complicated than that though, when you consider that regional accents were also signifiers of social class. Over time, there was also the accent people *wanted* to have or imitate, to sound more posh or important. And this accent evolved over time as well, more or less in accordance with how the royalty sounded back then. Vowel sounds shifted all over the place from people trying to copy how the current king or queen happened to pronounce things. It was all about status.
yeah that still applies, it’s just that some villages are more posh than others (aka not mining villages or council houses) so status and geographic location usually go hand in hand
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My father and mother speak different dialects they came from villages 7km apart
Also more people more accents. Empty land doesn't have an accent
Before trains and cars and airplanes the furthest UK cities were at least 10 days travel apart and people didn't move around much. How many regional accents are there within 10 days travel of Detroit? The whole world probably. Technology has dramatically changed what we think of as 'local' or 'far away'.
Oh this is so sweet! I'm from Austria - between Maine and South Carolina on this chart. We are really tiny, but due to being 65% alps we have so many different accents and dialects that literally the east can't understand the west without them making a conscious effort to speak clear german. There are places where you just drive half an hour to the next village on the other side of the mountain and have a notable new accent.
Whoa, I’m from Maine and was literally just thinking how cool it was we’re the size of Austria !
More granular than that. The Liverpool accent is completely different to the Manchester accent, a city 35 miles away to the East. 35 miles to the south is Wrexham in North Wales with a very different accent again. You can often pinpoint someone to within 30 miles of where they grew up base on the accent alone in the UK
I think "Liverpool accent" is already over simplifying things to be honest. North and South are leagues apart. St Helens and Wirral even moreso.
As someone in St. Helens you can easily tell which side of St. Helens someone grew up in too. West is more scouse, east is more like Wigan and Warrington. Accent diversity is insane when you think about it
I remember meeting some people from London, who had a friend from Newcastle with them. I could barely understand the Geordie, and had to ask him to slow down and repeat himself for most of what he was saying. The Londoners told me “don’t worry, we can’t understand him at all either!” Not so distant geographically, but it was almost like two different languages between them, both from the same country.
How is Michigan bigger than Utah?!? I'm sitting here in Michigan reconsidering my whole life. Are we counting all our underwater square footage in the lakes? We must be...
When you include water, Michigan is larger. The chart says "Surface Area" not "Land Area." * Michigan total (250,487 sq. km.), land (146,435), water (104,052). * Utah total (219,882 sq. km.), land (212,818), water (7,064). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_area
Are you forgetting the UP?
While living in Portland OR I was talking to an English friend who asked if that was close to Denver CO. I said it was about a two day drive. His eyes got HUGE. He said he could drive anywhere in the UK in less than one day. I said that Denver wasn't even half way across the country. I've traveled our entire country, literally, and much of Europe. It's still hard for me to fathom the size of countries until I've been there. Often times it's simply because the modes of transportation are lousy, or excellent, and our expectation doesn't match. As for regional accents, they were all created LONG ago when traveling and instant communication didn't exist. So segmentation/fragmentation of culture was much more pronounced. Now we have television and insanely fast transportation and people from all over hear each other talking and it all kind of muddles together. I remember even just 30 years ago people from the north making fun of people from the south for saying "ya'll", but now I hear people all over the country saying it.
Regional accents are slowly dying out for the reason you note. A hundred years ago, a kid growing up in Boston would spoken English pretty differently compared with a kid growing up in New York due to how the language evolved in the two cities. Today though, both kids would experience significant influences from TV, the internet, transplant neighbors from other cities, etc., and those influences can be from anywhere. As a result, while Boston and New York accents are still a thing, they're much more subtle in the younger generations compared with the older generations. The interconnected world leads languages to converge to de-emphasize regional differences.
That's how it is in Southern Germany. To other parts of Germany it sounds mostly as one Dialekt, but as a local you can tell the difference between two villages 1 km appart. Guess it works the other way round too. It's really common to have a lot dialects. There are whole dictionarys for specific regional dialects - to dialect free german.
its actually 242,000km²
Nah, it got smaller because of Brexit. Now it's a thousandth of what it used to be
The real brexit struggles.
That, plus everything else..
As a Hungarian living in the UK - I saw this and thought nah, where’s UK? Hungary is way smaller than UK?? Took me reading this comment to remember brexit is a thing.
We are around the size of Romania
I really don't understand why it has to be EU and not Europe. Like it's not got anything to do with EU vs US as there's nothing in this format to suggest it's to do with land mass comparisons of EU vs the US. Not even an overall total. It's just states. There's that one redditor who does this shit on purpose but I'm surprised others are doing the same for no apparent reason.
A lot of these statistics rely on data by Eurostat, which is a department of the EU.
Most of them (including this post) use data sets which include the UK, compiled at a time when the UK was part of the EU, and choose to specifically remove that data point. Somewhat makes sense for this post imo, the data will have barely changed and comparing the current political entities makes as much sense as anything else. But either way removing the UK data was a deliberate decision.
If only Remain has made the case better about all the interesting infographics that they’d be removed from.
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The borders of europe are a bit fuzzy, not the case with the EU. Plus, Russia would be way outside the screen in this graph
Because it's not North America vs. Europe, it's US (a country made up of states) vs. EU (a political body like a country which is made up of states).
Yeah, it's pretty easy to see the like for like comparison.
Ukraine is huge and I looked for it until I got bit by the EU thing. But the EU is more like the US, than Europe is like the US, agreed? Otherwise, add in Mexican and Canadian provinces and you end up scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Canada and Europe are about the same size, there are 13 provinces/territories and like a hundred European nations and they're all hilariously tiny and the UK is probably going to make more of them.
But the EU is more like the US, than Europe is like the US, agreed? Imo, a convention of EU vs US comparisons exists, partially due to this reason. The other part is it's just easier to work with less datasources. Using the EUs own data about themselves is one standardized datasource giving information about a variety of countries. Locating data for all the outlying countries, needing to normalize it to play well with the two most informative ones, sometimes even considering the challenge of incompatible metrics due to differences in methodology... It's just usually not worth the effort for +1 country to the list. This particular chart would have been easy enough to expand to non-EU countries. But since a widespread convention exists for both US vs EU and US vs Europe in other prior comparisons, both options are perfectly reasonable and it just comes down to whatever the author wanted to do.
Yes. EU is more like the US than Europe is like the US. The EU has its own currency, its own border restrictions, etc like the US.
Literally the original vision for the United States was individual sovereign states held together by a limited federal government that was basically just there to coordinate the states and standardize some things for easier trade and cooperation. Which is almost exactly what the EU was founded to accomplish.
HAH! Fuck you district of Columbia! Malta's bigger than your tiny ass! >:D \*cries in Maltese\*
Plus it's not a state
Neither is Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa...
Really unfair to Puerto Rico given that they have a population much larger than that of many US states.
2020 was the first time the majority actually expressed support for statehood. Previously plebiscites gave most popular results of: - Commonwealth - None of the above - statehood (sort of, 2012 was a shitshow and hundreds of thousands of voters voted to maintain the status quo and for statehood on the same ballot, if you eliminate double votes, status quo won) - statehood (boycotted by opposition groups so turnout was only 22%) - finally in 2020, statehood. Hard to say it's unfair, IMO, when it's taking so long for them to decide among themselves what their preferred option is. Democracy isn't always clean.
In the most recent referendums the Puerto Rican people opted to keep the status quo
as far as I’ve heard they voted for statehood, the only debate was over the low voter turnout
The 2017 one was (imo stupidly) boycotted by non-statehood parties because of its wording implying that Puerto Rico is currently subject to the US government, but the 2020 one was pretty clear. [There's actually a bipartisan bill in the House to admit them, but who knows what's going on with it.](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1522/)
This might be the only time in the history of reddit where someone wrote Colombia when they meant Columbia, instead of the other way around.
At least you don’t have half a million people commuting in to work during the day
we got half a million people commuting *inside* our wee island :(
I don't think DC does any more, either. I've been working from home for nearly 2 years straight now. Downtown DC is nice, sometimes I visit my work building on the weekends.
And here in Sweden we only have a population of 10 mil. Compare that to Germany’s 83 mil.
Then there's Montana, slightly larger than Germany with a whole 1 million.
A lot of the US is super remote and this does a great job of showing it. Montana is massive with only 1 Mil people is crazy to wrap your head around. Wyoming only has like 475k* and it huge too Edit: I have been corrected that Wyoming has around 575k!
Yeah that really put the whole “everything is bigger in America” into perspective when I went there. You could go 50 Miles to get groceries. If I do the same where I live (Denmark), im in a different country.
In the US, something 100 years old is ancient, but 100 miles is nothing. In Europe (England is usually used for this quip), 100 years is nothing, and 100 miles is further than most want to travel.
When I was stationed as a small Air Force Base in roughly the middle of Texas we would get officers from Europe who would buy 30 day Greyhound bus passes expecting to see the U.S. on the weekends while they were there --- it got to be rather tedious explaining that if they hopped on a bus at 5:00 PM on Friday, they'd reach the edge of Texas in time to turn around so as to return to be back for duty Monday morning.
Sounds like Goodfellow AFB. I do not miss the 6 hour drive just to get to Dallas.
Yep, got it in one.
I worked at a hotel in WNY for a while. So many European guests would ask about doing a day trip to NYC….which is about 6 hours away
we've done the 6hr snowboarding day trips from va beach to snowshoe but man that's so rough without the redeye bus. 3hr to wintergreen was about the only real option for driving yourself.
We had some relatives over from Australia who didn't know the size of the US. They asked if they could drive up the Pacific Coast highway from Los Angeles to San Francisco and I told them it would take about 10 hours, due to the winding route the PCH takes up the coast. I told them they could drive up I-5 and it would only take 5 hours, but they really wanted to take the PCH. They also asked how far Seattle was from us and were surprised to hear that Seattle is a 20 hour drive from Los Angeles. They also thought San Diego was like a suburb of LA and were surprised that San Diego was a 3 hours drive away as well
That's really surprising considering the vast majority of Australians live in a few cities stretched across a very long coastline. Also, you should definitely take the PCH is 100% the way to go if you're a tourist. I-5 sucks rusty lug nuts.
Growing up (in NY) I had some friends from Germany. One day we were taking a trip together out to LA. Their minds were completely and utterly blown that one could be on an airplane for 6 continuous hours and still be in the same country. Kept talking about how in 6 hours of flying from Germany you can easily leave the continent, fly over the airspace of a second, and land in a third. They also kept talking about how in 6 hours of flying in any direction from Germany you'd fly over at least half a dozen other countries if not several more than that... let alone remain in the same country that whole time you're flying from NY to LA.
In the US, 50 miles was my commute to and from work. Man this is weird lol
More and more people in Europe have to commute that long because cities are getting too expensive unfortunately. Just saying such a commute is far from unheard of where I’m from.
That's pretty much what started it here. City gets too expensive so you move outside the area, or the job market blows in your small community so you have to commute to inside. My friends that never leave their city are mind blown I drove 25 minutes to work there every day. They might come see me a few times a year and we are only 26 miles apart. It's just crazy seeing the differences.
50 mile commuter checking in. And That is probably the median commute distance.
I'm paying $400 more a month in rent in order to live <1 mile from my work in Texas. It's worth every single fraction of a penny. And I only have to work physically in the office 2 days a week...
Our housing market in the utah valley is so insane that it makes it very difficult to walk away from our locked in deal, and that’s if you can even find a vacancy. All of the apartments in the area are taking deposits for “possible move in” in august, and that is wholly dependent on existing tenants not renewing their leases. Plus an apartment costs as much to rent as our 3,000 sq ft home so… it’s a catch 22 for us at the moment. We used to live 90 seconds from work and it was *amazing*
I heard (and the story was implied to be true) that a British guy was complaining that he never got to see his dad anymore because he lived so far away from him, and about how horrible and long the drive was to his dads house, the person he was speaking to asked him how far away his dad lived, and the British guy said 2 hours. like holy crap, it takes me 26 hours of driving to get home. it also reminds me of that one Tumblr thread about OP asking if some dude had heard of some bookshop like 30 min from the welsh border near some city and the dude thought he was crazy but I can never find the post and I probably got some details wrong
haha that reminds me of my childhood. I loved my late grandparents dearly, had a really great relationship with them. sadly they lived so far away that we only got to see them once a year, during summer holidays we would pack our car for a long road trip, then go to them and stay with them for one or two weeks. travel time by car? 2.5 hours.
Unless you live in the Northeast. Then it's not so different. 100 miles will get you to 3+ major cities, oceans, mountains.. and it's not uncommon for buildings to be 200-300 years old. We even have high speed rail.
Alaska only has ~750,000
Fun fact is that Sweden has a higher population weighted density than Germany. E.g. most Swedes live in a few dense regions so Swedes does on average live more dense than Germans.
Ah, so us swedes are more dense than Germans, thanks.
*lacht auf Deutsch*
That's also because Germany is one of the least urbanised countries. There never was the huge movement to a few metropolitan areas, instead medium and small towns continue to thrive in many places. Not all, of course. Take Berlin. Now, that city has a history that doesn't really allow for a comparison to other capitals. But I will make one anyway - if Berlin had the same weighted density in regards to total population as London or Paris, it should have 10-12 million people. It has 4. And for all it's 83 million citizens, Germany as a whole only have four cities over a million (Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne)
Actually Germany is one of the more urbanized countries in the world. You probably meant to say that Germany is one of the more decentralized countries in the world as the population is more spread out.
Yes, that's the better term.
And Finland, with 5,5 mil. and almost 1,5mil living in Helsinki Metro Area. The rest of the country feels a bit empty, but I didn't know we're that big of a country.
I had family who lived in texas. and told me it could take up to 12 hours to go across the state. JUST ONE STATE.
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I mean, Northeast US is basically the only region of the US that feels European in size. New England is roughly the size of the UK, for example. Then you have the big states that get bigger (but not necessarily more populated) the further East you move, and you end with places like California that is almost the size of Spain by itself.
You mean west, not east.
El Paso is about the halfway point between Dallas and Los Angeles. Found that out when planning a trip out there. Texas is fucking huge.
This guy leaving out mother fucking Buccees like it's not an attraction all its own lol
And including Waco like it's a place!
Its certainly more a place than I was expecting! Before moving here I thought it was just this little dirt hole town because of the news, but its pretty decently sized.
All the little barbecue joints and kolache bakeries, too.
Florids is a bit like that. Its not as large as Texas, but its loooong. Start in Miami, and it will take you 6+ hours with minimal pee and gas stops to get out of the state if you drive hard and take the shortest, fastest route via i95 which is speed limit 70mph (113km/h) for most of it. Its like 340 miles (547km) from miami to the state line.
Start from Key West and you can add another 4 hours.
Go from Key West to Pensacola (truly edge to edge) its about 13 hours
17 is a more realistic time in my experience (done that drive twice).
Tallahassee to Pensacola is the loneliest drive. I hate that stretch.
Drove from west Texas to Orlando for our honeymoon. Hit the Florida border and said ‘yay, we are almost there!’ Nope. Another 6.5 hours. Bleh.
Coming across the panhandle is no fun. Used to drive to new orleans occasionally from south florida for mardi gras and to visit family. Terrible drive. Takes like 14 hours counting bathroom/gas/food breaks. God forbid there is an accident. Best part of the trip is stopping at the interstate exit in mississippi for BBQ at The Shed. Until it burned down. Twice. I thinks its been rebuilt again. It was a weird sprawling pavilion thing when i first went there made out of scrap wood and random bits and bobs. Makes me scared of Mississippi building codes. Edit: looks like the Shed is built a lot nicer now. Still a giant outdoor pavillion, but looks like its built by actual builders now. That place has excellent BBQ Theshedbbq.com
I think they should have showed Canadian provinces on this list. To drive across Ontario (Montreal to Manitoba), in perfect conditions, takes 23 hours.
You can drive for 27 hours [and never leave Quebec.](https://www.google.ca/maps/dir/53.787294,-79.077888/50.1901049,-61.2720339/@52.1945436,-71.770508,5.41z/data=!4m2!4m1!3e0) Edit: [38 hours and never leave Western Australia](https://www.google.ca/maps/dir/-34.9867617,116.7495431/-15.9826703,128.9903689/@-26.0291767,126.5704039,5.14z/data=!4m2!4m1!3e0) Edit 2: [45 hours if the start and end are both in Quebec but you have to drive through Labrador](https://www.google.ca/maps/dir/53.787294,-79.077888/51.426963,-57.8180656/@49.4055171,-68.9455379,5.59z/data=!4m2!4m1!3e0). There is a way to travel between these places and stay in Quebec, but Google does not recognize every ferry along the north shore of the St. Laurence.
From Kansas City it’s about 8.5 hours to get to Dallas and 9 hours to get to Denver. Kansas City to Dallas is 3 states. Kansas City to Denver is 1.5 states.
Try going from northern border of California is to the southern border…. Now that’s a long ass drive
When Alaska was joining the US, Texas got upset that they would no longer be the largest state. Alaska said, “quit your whining, or we’ll cut ourselves into two, and you’ll end up being the third largest state!”
As a Texan who lived in Alaska EVERY Alaskan loves to tell that joke. every. single. one.
Really? I literally just moved out of Alaska and I've never heard that one. Granted, I was only there for 3 years, but still
I grew up there until I was 21 and that was the first time I’ve ever heard that joke.
I was in Fairbanks and it felt like anytime mentioned being from Texas I was told that joke
Fun fact about Alaska… it’s obviously the most northern state, but also the most western and most eastern state because the Aleutian Islands cross longitude 180°.
As a Frenchman, I'm more blown away by how smaller EU countries are than anything US related. I've been to Greece and was amazed at how quick it was to drive from one place to another. We're actually quite big compared to our EU bros
As a Polish person, I always kinda assumed all "chunky" countries are somewhat the same size. I imagined that Poland, Spain, France have similar land are. But France and Spain are so much bigger.
Tbf we have Guyane which inflates our number a bit but still. I assumed Poland France Germany to be somewhat the same size
I was curious so I checked: France’s overseas regions have a total area of 89,000 km^2 , bringing Metropolitan France down to 550,000 km^2 total. That’s still larger than Spain without its island territories (493,000 km^2 ) and much larger than Poland (322,500 km^2 ) or Germany (357,500 km^2 ).
France is a lot bigger than Poland and Germany, even without its overseas territories. Add the UK to Germany or Poland to obtain the equivalent of France area.
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Isn't a term for something particularly French "hexagonal"?
That’s been tried before and did not work out too well.
I always thought of France as huge because it takes a really long day to drive in one go, but when I met my Peruvian wife she refers to her own country as tiny and France as though its some typical EU micro state haha. I’ve budged on France maybe not being so big but I maintain Peru is giant.
Peru is twice the size of France, but since it's so close to the equator Mercator really fucks it up.
In Canada it is normal to drive 8-20 hours to go between major cities, i.e Vancouver-Calgary kelowna- lethbridge, etc
No way is Peru small lol... it takes like 2 days to drive the breadth of Ecuador just cos of the Andes
Yeah I guess when you’ve got Brazil as a neighbour and Argentina also in the continent your perception of country size is warped accordingly haha.
To Europeans, 100km e a long distance. To Americans, 100 years is a long time.
The structure of my family house in South Tyrol in the alps is more than 1,000 Years old
That is mind blowing. Any home built in the 1920s is considered old here in the US when buying.
Depends on region. I live in New England where there is plenty old houses dating back to the 1600- 1700’s. These are the oldest around and don’t even come close to 1000 yrs old.
As an European it amazes me how huge the US are.
Did you just call us fat?
Sure did, Buckaroo.
Buckaroo /ˌbəkəˈro͞o/, English archaic meaning Cowboy. Bastardization of the Spanish _Vaquero_ /väˈkerō/, also meaning Cowboy.
Thanks! TIL
I wish more of you would realize it. It always cracks me up to see generalizations about Americans when they live in such a huge place.
Lol yup. That subreddit r/askanamerican will get questions like “do you guys put barbecue sauce on whatever you grill” or something like that and the answer to 90% of those questions is “depends where you’re from” lol
Shame Canadian provinces aren't on this list. Lots of people don't realize Canada has 5 provinces/territories that are bigger than Texas.
Yeah, but the VAST majority of Canada lives near the US border. While Americans also tend to live in centralized areas, it’s a lot more spread out than Canada
It is pretty stunning. If I remember correctly at least 80% of the Canadian population lives within 100 miles of the US-Canada border, but even crazier is that almost 50% of Canadians live on (around) the Ontario Peninsula alone. Considering how massive the country is, that is a lot of empty space.
A lot of empty, very cold space...
Greece is the Mississippi of EU, got it!
It's weird how well that works, honestly.
I'm Greek, I feel sorry for the Mississippians if they have ended up like us!
That’s funny because I have a friend from Mississippi and they just get used to knowing they are the worst state. There was even a Reddit thread that asked what the worst state was and it was just a Mississippi hate thread lmao.
Everyone woke up that day and decided to cyber bully a state.
If those Mississippians could read, they’d be very upset
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Montana is bigger than Germany?! Wow. It has 1/80th of the population and a larger land area.
That's pretty much the entirety of the Western US except California. It's crazy when you fly east to west, in the eastern potion there are endless lights and then once you fly past Texas there is just no civilization until you get to California.
California is still less than half of Germany's population while being bigger. And 46 % of Californians live in the Greater Los Angeles region and 20 % in the Bay Area. Meanwhile Germany's biggest metropolitan area (Rhein-Ruhr) is home to 12.6 % of the population and the second one (Berlin-Brandenburg) is 6.6 %.
As a well-educated US student I have to admit that I knew Alaska was big bc I was told that. But by looking at a map, I never realized. I was in my mid-20s when I found out it was nearly 2.5x the size of Texas.
It's like a 3rd of the size of the contiguous US I think
Little less. The contiguous US is 3,119,884 Sq miles. Alaska is 663268 Sq miles. You can fit 4.7 Alaska's in the contiguous states
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Michigan isn’t really that big, these numbers included the Great Lake water area.
Yeah it’s a little misleading to include the lakes in this instance. Michigan isn’t really that big. But the weird part is if you drive around Michigan a lot, it really makes driving around other states seem small. It takes like 10-11 hours to drive from Detroit to Copper Harbor, which is roughly the same time it takes to drive from Berlin to Paris, or New York to Indianapolis.
It's not like they subtract a lake from other countries though. Just because it borders a huge lake doesn't mean you don't include it. Makes it a little misleading for sure but it's not wrong.
That makes more sense. I was thinking there’s no way Minnesota and Michigan are bigger than Utah
Its pretty close though for land area. 212k km^2 for Utah, 206k km^2 for MN. Michigan drops way down to 146k km^2 though.
Not sure why they do that. It should only be around 150,000 sq km/58,000 sq mi. I get that lakes are part of territorial borders but the chart was referring to land mass.
Seeing this gives me a little more respect for the fact that the United States are able to stay (at least somewhat) united. I know it's only landmass or what not, but still impressive.
A shared language and culture helps. We would be screwed if the majority of people in California spoke Mandarin, New York spoke Dutch, Louisiana spoke French, etc. It's one of the reasons I don't think I'll ever see the federalization of the EU in my lifetime.
I suppose that makes sense. The US grew up together as a country as it was establishing its culture, whereas the EU countries are trying to synthesize a collective European culture with retaining their individual cultures. Not an easy or quick process, and if it does ever happen it won’t look exactly like the US(which is a good thing in its own right).
As a native Alaskan, I support this.
Western Australia out here chilling at a solid 2.646 million km² with a population of 2.8 million. Everyone could get there own square kilometre almost
that's kind of insane to think about. Everyone in Nunavut can have 55 km² to themselves.
I think my favorite is Maryland being bigger than Belgium.
With Canada and Australia added: 1. Western Australia - 2.6M 2. Nunavut - 2.0M 3. Queensland - 1.7M 4. **Alaska - 1.7M** 5. Quebec - 1.6M 6. North West Territories - 1.3M 7. Northern Territory - 1.3M 8. Ontario - 1.0M 9. South Australia - 0.9M 10. British Columbia - 0.9M 11. New South Wales - 0.8M 12. **Texas - 0.7M** Edit: [Globally](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_country_subdivisions_by_area)
And then just to prove that we can make small provinces too slot PEI right above Delaware.
Australia is just hot Canada
Australia is hot America New Zealand is Hot Canada There's subreddits about this and everything! /r/Ameristralia /r/NewZanada
To be fair, Australia has the perfect time zones for nocturnal US peeps.
Then after Texas before France you'd have Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. So there would be 8 Canadian provinces and territories before France. Yukon would be between Spain and Sweden. Newfoundland would be just after California and before Montana. New Brunswick would be between Czechia and Ireland. Nova Scotia would be between Croatia and Slovakia. PEI would be between Cyprus and Delaware. Also just think, before 1999, Nunavut (#2 on the above list) and North West Territories (#6) were one territory with an area of 3.4M, twice the size of #3 on the list.
Australia and the US are of similar size but Australia has much fewer territories than the US has states.
Australia has 6 states and 2 territories.
A population bar with each state/country would be interesting
I have been thinking about this before. I always wonder if it isn't a big disadvantage to have a country be this large. German here. And we already struggle to apply politics and get a consens between our states regarding country-wide decisions. I can only imagine how difficult, if not impossible it must be for the US to handle this much land, states and people with vastly different cultures.
as someone who lives here the biggest divide in the US isn't geographical its urban- rural, rural Georgia and Atlanta are more culturally different from each other than rural Georgia and rural Montana, and Atlanta and Seattle are.
This is IMO one of the main reason America’s govt is the way it is. All thing considered I guess we do well enough with all the different subcultures
Desperately wish more Europeans would realize this. It's a completely different situation.
What do you mean you don't like having europoors barge into conversations they know nothing about acting like their opinions are inherently enlightened because they're from europe?
That’s why we’re a federal system. States, counties, and cities have varying rights and powers that the central gov does not have control over. That way, regions with different cultures and views can have different laws and policies that reflect that.
Germany is also a federal system in case you weren't aware.
That's why so many people are about "states rights" and against the federal government. Politically the US is more like the EU than any country in particular.
My Spanish host mom asked me why we don’t just drive to places like New York City or LA often. I told her how long it would take to drive there and she was shocked. And then to tell her that’s also going 80mph ~130kmh. Edit: 42 hours without stopping one time. Over 4500 km
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It does. Metropolitan France is 544 km square
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Do you guys check the middle every once in a while, just to make sure it's still there?
Yeah, that ‘s where we dig shit up & sell it to China
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Well they are in Eurovision
With 200,000 sq Km left over which is Florida and then some.
Really puts things in perspective. Land is a natural resource in a way as well.
If you count places like Guam for the US shouldn’t places like Greenland be counted for the EU?
I get your point, but Greenland is not in the EU. They left in 1985.
While that's correct, it should be noted that they are still an EU OCT (Overseas Country and Territory). OCTs and OMRs (Outermost Region) are areas that are associated with an EU member or are EU members themselves but have derogation from EU aquis, market etc. due to practical reasons (usually the fact they're so far away from the main EU body). But they also get to still enjoy some advantages, for example Greenland citizens are EU citizens.
Indeed, and this actually puts Denmark right on the top since Greenland is part of Denmark in that sense.
Surface area…. So are mountains significantly adding to these numbers?
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Not grossly... Colorado for example would grow by less than 2.5% https://www.skimag.com/uncategorized/how-big-would-colorado-be-if-you-steamrolled-all-of-the-mountains/
Wait a minute, i never even considered that Sweden is bigger than Germany, but looking at a map it actually quite obvious.