What widely held misconceptions to foreigners have about your country?

Also, RCMP officers do not patrol the border or work at the border crossings.

Aside:
“What’re you doing in Canada, eh?”
“What are YOU doing in Canada?”

If we’re going to regionalize a bit, let me throw in a few Montana misconceptions:

  1. No, the whole state is not over-the-top conservative. Despite being a “red state” (a useless term I’d like to see dropped), our governor and both senators are Democrats, and the Democrats control the state senate. The old-time ranchers and farmers tend to be very conservative, but there are a few places in Montana that rival the Republic of Berkeley for liberalness.

  2. No, I can’t just “drive over and pick that up.” It would take 12 hours to cross this state corner-to-corner driving the speed limit. And yes, we have speed limits.

  3. We also have indoor plumbing, electricity, broadband Internet, stores that sell high-tech equipment, good restaurants, and real, live universities.

  4. Not everybody here owns a gun, and very very few are members of a “militia.” (they all moved to Idaho ;))

  5. Yes, eastern Montana is as flat as Kansas, but the mountains in western Montana are rugged, beautiful, and largely unspoiled.

  6. Yes, the coldest point in the lower 48 states at any given time is likely to be in Montana (the lowest temperature ever recorded here was -70F at Roger’s Pass in 1954), but summer temperatures can be quite toasty. Over 100F is common.

Ah, but that was when Ed Norton of The Honeymooners, posing as a doctor and trying to explain how it was that he had attended Oxford but didn’t know it was in England, uttered the immortal line, “It was so foggy over there, half the time I didn’t know where I was!”

That soldered London fogginess into American consciousness for the next 500 years.

As does the brand London Fog, of course.

Eastern Montana radio stations say otherwise (I travel on 200 from Glendive to Great Falls each summer).

I love Montana.

Another Canuck here.

  • We do not say “eh?” after everything. Nor do we say “aboot” or other such nonsense. Just about the entirety of that stereotype comes from the “Newfie” accent. If you can use that stereotype on me, then I can say that every American has a thick Boston accent like Cliffy from Cheers.

  • I’ve experienced the igloos/polar bears for pets/perpetual winter thing first hand. From someone in Las Vegas. I’m in southern Ontario. Whatever weather I get is whatever, say, New York gets. Sometimes they even get it worse.

  • Hockey is not our national sport. It should be, but it isn’t. Lacrosse is. Don’t ask me to explain that. Don’t ask me to explain Lacrosse, either.

  • If you think we’re all polite and courteous and nice to everyone, you aren’t in Toronto. Or Vancouver. Or most other major urban centers, actually. On the whole I suppose we’re a bit more “up there” in terms of overall niceties than some other places, but let’s be clear: We are just as skilled in the use of the word “asshole” as anyone.

I remember when I first moved to Korea from the US, and all my classmates asked me if it was true that American high school students all carry guns and spend most of their days having sex in broom closets.

Sorry, but I don’t have any statistics. It’s just an estimate based on three factors:

  1. The amount of people I know who own handguns. It’s not uncommon, but it’s hardly the rule, and most people who own then need them (for instance, their work takes them in or near the Territories).

  2. The fact that Israeli gun control laws are fairly strict, and include a three-month waiting period, a complete background check, compulsary training and qualification and a firearms sales tax of 100% of the value of the weapon. And that’s just for handguns - it’s easier to get a licence to practice medicine here than it is to get a hunting licence.

  3. The fact that Israelis think Americans are completely insane when in comes to firearms. It’s not that we think guns are evil - far from it - we just don’t get your enthusiasm for the subject.

That’s actually not true at all. The about/aboot thing typically mystifies Canadians, who have no freaking clue what Americans are on about when they call attention to it or crudely try to imitate it. (They usually can’t and instead say “aboot.”) It’s not just that word, you’ll hear it in many words, like “wife.”

It’s a common feature of many flavours of Canadian English - predominantly noticible (to me, at least,) in folks from Ontario, but present just about everywhere in Canada.

What’s going on is that certain diphthongs are pronounced with the tongue in a slightly higher position than standard, when they are followed by a voiceless consonant. It’s a subtle (but very noticible) difference, and when Americans try to imitate it they swap out the vowel sound altogether. For Canadians, both pronunciations are so familiar that most people actually register them as equivalent, unless you’re a dialect freak or something.

“What the hell are you talking about?” :confused:

Irish people don’t live in thatched cottages for the most part, don’t ride donkeys, we’re not all farmers, we do have pizza, we don’t all drink guinness, we do have all mod cons, we do wash, no you can’t get a train from London/Edinburgh/Glasgow to Dublin (yet).

It’s probably because anthropologists of yore, when trying to break down the various ethnicities, came up with an ‘Alpine’ or ‘Dinaric’ segment of the white race, taking in the people of southern Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. Dark hair was one of the expected physical features.

I understand the mechanism behind the pronunciation – I can imitate it better than the average Murikan if called upon to do so (it almost has a Scottish flavour to it) but I have only ever heard it naturally spoken thus in folks from certain regions of the maritimes, and in particular from Newfoundland. I’m an Ontarian born and bred, but I don’t speak like that, nor does anyone I’ve ever known that was born here.

Now that I think about it though, native Indians who were born into Canadian society (i.e. were not brought up speaking their native tongue) tend to have a bit of an accent that features similar traits, though not as pronounced.

If you’re thinking of a specifically Atlantic-canadian thing, you might not be thinking of the same thing. Sorry to be a pedant, but here’s an example. Are we talking about the same thing?

Most people with Canadian raising (and probably more than half of Canadians without Canadian raising) will hear this example and say, “Umm… what? I don’t hear anything different.”

Not all Canadians. That’s for sure. But I have a few friends from Calgary that say “eh?” more often than a Georgian says “y’all” or a New Yorker says “fuck” :wink:

What are “mod cons”?

Modern conveniences, eh?

I think it’s more like aboat than aboot, FWIW.

Me too. Always puzzles me why people jokingly say “aboot”. Definitely sounds like “aboat” to me.

Well, I’m from Italy. I’m not really sure about what stereotypes are attributed to my country, so just ask ahead and I’ll let you know.

Apart from the one about pasta: in Italy people do eat a lot of pasta.

More information on Canadian raising for those who care. Incidentally, Canadian raising applies, as Larry Mudd pointed out, not only to “ow sound” + unvoiced consonant (as in “house” or “about”), but also to “long i” + unvoiced consonant (as in “rice” or “kite”). But, Americans don’t seem to notice the latter feature of Canadian raising, probably because many Americans have that particular feature themselves.

Whilst I agree with you on most of your foreigner misconceptions, I have to say that Japanese people in the northern area I lived do eat dog, but it would be unusual for the rest of Japan. Also, Japan is very homogenous in many areas - in the towns I lived there was only one family that was half Philipino half Japanese and they only came back to the town because the parents split. People who were different, ie me and the aforementioned family were very rare.

Another Canadian one.

No, there are not grizzly bears roaming the streets.

No, you REALLY don’t want to bump into a grizzly bear during our hike.

No, grizzly bears are not cute and fluffy.

I hosted a gal from Japan a few years ago and she was convinced that I was being a jerk and if we only went to the right part of the mountains, grizzly bears would be abundant, and she could pet one. I took her to the zoo instead and amazingly, the grizzly there stood up on it’s hind legs and roared in true grizzly fashion just as we were arriving. She got very pale and didn’t bring up “Petting a grizzly in the forest.” again.