Bizarre misconceptions about your home country

[NotQuiteCockney]

As a Canadian, living in the UK, people are always sharing some very strange ideas about Canada:

• It's really cold. No it bloody well isn't, not in the summer. It's hotter than the UK. Really.

• We have loads of beautiful countryside. Well, kinda. It's a long way away from everything, the countryside. We have no right to roam, and no footpaths, so it may well be beautiful, but that doesn't mean you can go see it. And as we have loads of it, we can put up ugly warehouses made out of corregated metal anywhere we like.

• It's very ecological. No, it's not. It's more car-dependant than the UK. Organic food is harder to get. And electricity is cheaper, so we use loads. And it's more of a consumer culture than here - more adverts on the telly, for one thing.

• It's cheaper. Not really. The taxes are quite a bit higher than in the UK. (Yes, really!) And work/life balance isn't great.

Which misconceptions are you tired of dealing with all the time?

Nomen est omen, huh?
bingo lady Sherlock

Well, actually I'm not there now but that's the place

They don't call me Sherlock for nowt you know.

cat tails?

errrm.

we were thinking of doing a driving holiday to IoM next year.

but we'll leave our cats here in Edinburgh.

:o

When I was in Germany in 1996ish I used to get 'Do you like Blur or Oasis? Blur? Ah, then you are upper class!'
I had to explain very very patiently that, no, actually I'm more sort of upper lower-middle.... The English class system is far too complicated for foreigners to understand

I remember having a parent interview and being asked how was it that I was qualified to teach English in school when I came from Australia and spoke Australian?!?!?! and I am now speaking - klingon to you?!?!?

I agree with anniemac, you folk drink a lot of tea. I don't drink tea, and people are always pretty thoroughly horrified by this fact, even though I'm clearly foreign.

Canada to me means one thing and one thing only

Moose

I've always wanted to see a moose

and to know what the correct plural is

meese

mooses

Saw plenty of moose in Grand Teton National Park, and in Montana.

Apparently they have no respect for borders! :o

mounties
also good

An American asked me if Ireland was like England, lots of lilacs?

what does that mean exactly?

annie, yes I do, but I don't know anyone else who drinks tea as much as me. Just off to put kettle on.....

annie, just seen other thread. pmsl!!

think stleger's acquaintance must have visited England at this time of year - down my road every single garden has a lilac tree/bush cascading over the fence!

And I can quite see the reverse - someone who visited Boston in November asking if Louisiana has lovely autumn leaves...

Oh, I've seen moose in person, in the wild. (Plural of moose is moose, btw.) But only after I moved to the UK, and went back for a holiday.

The mounties normally look like regular police officers, they only wear the goofy uniforms for special occassions I think.

I'm not sure the US class system is more complicated, exactly, but it is different:
a) there are more ethnicities I think
b) things vary even more, from region to region
c) they like to pretend they have no classes, which makes it all a lot trickier.

Sorry, but Oprah likes to simply things into black and white. Don't believe everything you see on TV about the States!

I mean, they show EastEnders in the US - do you find that representative of Britain as a whole?

It's OPRAH, though. Sorry, I like her magazine, and at times her show can be good. But she can go into what some people call 'Church of Oprah' preachy-sort of mode and tbh she does like to put things in black and white for greater dramatic effect.

The US is too vast to generalise, however. There are ethnic, religious and regional differences to consider as well. Some areas of the US are incredibly diverse, much more so than others.

300m+ people too many to generalise.

from canada
the cold thing is so true - we have hot hot summers in the east coast (30+ honestly!) it's not winter 6 months of the year

not everyone knows how to ski or skate or play hockey ( not ice hockey btw - it's just plain old hockey)

(nqc - Wales is v well known in the maritimes!)

am sure there are lots more