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?

everybody is posh and lives in a thatched cottage, we all drink cider (although I do!), we go scrumping for entertainment, we can't read (aka mummerzet), jobs there are all in the crafting ilk or involve jammmaking....

Somerset

One of the funniest I had was realising that the person I was talking too thought that Latin was the official language of Latin America.

[nqc you do know I was joking about meese, right???]

lol

does that mean the plural of "noose" is "neese"?

it should be meece though.

people always ask me if it's true that everyone has tea at 4pm

HC, I was pretty sure you were kidding. But I'm Canadian, we're not allowed a sense of humour about our national identity. (I do feel tempted to yell "moosef*ckers" at those dolts plastered in Canadian flags, though ...)

Chandra, you met Dan Quayle?!?

maybe geese should really be goose ?!

Hmm, from the top of my head, I think goose is a proper English word, while moose almost certainly is not. So goose, as a proper English word has a proper flaky weird English plural, while moose doesn't. (I think the irregular plurals are being retired, anyway, generally. Slowly.)

Oh, and my favourite irregular plural fact: apparently, it shouldn't be "one octopus, two octopi". It should be "one octopus, two octopodes", if you want to be pedantic about it. Hence, "two octopus".

On a trip to America my brother was asked if England was part of Germany

NQC - I'm a bit gutted the Canadian on Big Brother isn't wearing one of those teeny maple leaf lapel pins. My Canadian mother used to LOVE those.

wilbur - do you want some? mum brought over loads last time she was here(?) and I just can't quite bring myself to throw them out!!!!

hana - actually, I do quite fancy one for old time's sake. I always used to lose the backs of them and had to pin them on the pin board instead.

Peachyclair my MIL lives in Somerset. She is frightfully posh and used to have some stereotype-fulfilling yokels living in one of her outbuildings. They looked after the horses and couldn't read! (I was shocked though!)

When I first came over from South Africa to Europe 14 yrs ago - (Mandela was still in prison etc and SA was definitely not in the news) ....some absolute gems.....

1. Have you met Tarzan ?

- yes, he lives 3 trees down from us on the left!

1. How have you adjusted to wearing clothes/ eating cooked food/using a knife and fork?

- haven't adjusted .. .

1. Did you go to school?

- yes, but it was a mud hut and so when the rains came the huts washed away and we moved into the trees until the water went down. 4 . You can't be from South Africa - you're not black - - had to flash passport at oddest moments for this one

1. South Africa - where's that again,? oh yes, next to Argentina.
2. Is it true you have pet lions?

- Absolutely, once we fed him the neighbours kids - ha, ha, ha, ha Hand on heart - all truth -

NO. This is MY thread, and there will be no passing out of strange little Canadian symbols. Well, they're ok as long as you don't wear them, but by god, every time I see someone wearing one, I want to scream.

What I do instead, though, if I can manage it, is chat with them, and assert that there are plenty of Americans wearing Canadian flags these days, you know, trying to pass.

(For the unCanadian, Canadians wear those flags everywhere so nobody will mistake them for Americans. Because, yeah, there's such a big difference between Canadians and Americans, they're pratically different species. And if a Canadian gets mistaken for an American, their head will explode. Or something.)

American tourist "You speak very good English"
Me:"Thank you"
AT " Are you French?"
Me "No, I am from Zimbabwe"
AT "So where did you learn English then?!!!"

Splutter.

When I was teaching here I was asked if it was too cold in England for people to have a bath in the winter/to take our clothes off even - this was by educated (!) teenagers. I should point out though that here in Brazil when it gets 'cold' there is no heating anywhere so if it is 8 degrees outside it is also 8 degrees inside.
I was asked once if Brazil is in Africa (by an American)

ggglimpopo, reminds me of a story told by 2 Australians who were congratulated on their command of English by a group of Americans!

I also studied in the US and had an hour long conversation with the admissions officer about all sorts of stuff regarding the school, fees etc - at the end of the conversation he told me my application would be denied unless I could prove that I was proficient in the English Language!!??!! - after an hour on the phone - we were speaking english - FFS!! - ??

No NQK, Dan Quayle is just the most famous of them all, but if you wander around some touristic areas of Mallorca, that's the sort of remarks you are likely to hear.

Actually, I met a woman from the Vasque country who always complimented me on the quality of my Spanish, it took me two months to realise that she thought we spoke "Mayan" at home.

Just yesterday I went to a museum and the snob at the door asked where I was from, when I answered he proceeded to tell me in French that he couldn't speak Mexican but spoke French and Spanish perfectly... thought of asking him if he ever heard while studying Spanish that that language is spoken in quite a few countries out of Spain!

Hmm, I bet Spanish folk have (or worse, people who've just learned Spanish with a Spanish accent) a slightly sniffy attitude towards South American Spanish. Certainly I get a lot of that about my French, which is fairly Quebecois. (But it is still the same language! Although, bizarrely, the French put subtitles on Quebecois films. I think they're just doing it to be annoying.)

NQC - have you seen the film just out, C.R.A.Z.Y? I found the accents a tad difficult to follow sometimes but thought the film itself was great.

No, haven't seen it, know nothing about it. Where's it from?