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The Internet is in a tizzy over an interview in which teen dream Justin Bieber appears to not be familiar with the word “German.”

In the interview, a talk show host from New Zealand asks the 16-year-old a few true-or-false questions, including the query “True or false: ‘Bieber’ is German for basketball.”

Bieber gets confused over the word “German,” and the interviewer repeats it.

After this back-and-forth, Bieber says he doesn’t know what the TV host means, and finally gives up on the question, proclaiming: “We don’t say that in America.”

It seems obvious that Bieber was simply perplexed by the interviewer’s thick Kiwi accent (which the host himself points out). Or perhaps he was just annoyed at being asked an inane question.

Bieber offers his own explanation, via Twitter. “I thought this interviewer in NZ said ‘Jewman’ instead of ‘German’ people think I don’t know what German is?”

Either way, the video has gone viral as blogs have ridiculed Bieber for exactly that as he did actually read the cue card that seems to say the word ‘German.’ One such blog, The Huffington Post, had toamend its post making fun of Bieber when it found an interview the singer did in Germany way back in August, in which he talks about his German great-grandfather and even counts to ten in the language.

Bieber mentions that interview on Twitter, saying “I count in GERMAN and translate my own name. Guess I know what German is. Guess home schooling is working out. Do your research next time b4 making a lame attempt at hating on a 16 year old.”

In other Bieber news, Kim Kardashian says she’s getting tweet threats from Bieber’s rabid fans after the reality-TV star jokingly tweeted that she had “Bieber fever.”

She contracted said “fever” when she met the 16-year-old at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last weekend. Bieber answered Kardashian’s tweet by calling her his “girlfriend,” which was, apparently, enough to ignite the ire of his most ardent fans. Bieber responded telling his fans to “calm down”: He added an invitation for everyone to be friends and “hang out often.” No doubt his fans would not mind that opportunity.

To see more Bieber (when he’s not caught off guard by an interview), check out his Eenie Meenie video.