10 Things People Should Know About Your Country

You can use this thread to dispel/confirm stereotypes or just to inform.

1. England/English does not = Britain/British ever time you use it as such you are insulting thousands of people.

2. Britain is in Europe yet we all like to pretend it's not.

3. Unlike the rest of Britain Scotland does not hate France.

4. If you are speaking to a Scotsman and you think he's very rude he's more than likely trying to be polite.

5. Even tho we are very bad at it everything revolves around football, when Scotland inevitably fails to qualify we will support any team that's not England and that includes Germany.

6. If you are an American in Scotland don't use the word fanny in public, it means something very different.

7. Contrary to popular belief the Scottish are not penny pinchers as we give more to charity than the rest of the UK.

8. It rains here at least once a week every week.

9. Listening in on our conversations may give the impression we hate each other but this is actually us being nice.

10. There isn't that many gingers here honestly.

@jonny_anonymous: wait? its a stereotype that scots hate french?? never heard this one....im an American descendant of the Brune Clan. which is originally Le Brun of Normandy before William the conqueror, and claims hereditory to Charlemagne. so maybe this is just because of my upbringing. but again I never heard that stereotype.

@bierschneeman: No but it's a stereotype that the British and the French don't get on, I was just saying that doesn't apply to the Scottish

haha

I'll do my current state (Minnesota) rather than Country.

1. We are known for "Minnesota nice" however I find "Souther hospitality" more welcoming.
2. In face hostility is replaced with passive aggressiveness.
3. Only people "up north" speak like in the movie Fargo.
4. At times of the year we are colder than Alaska and other times warmer than Hawaii.
5. Minneapolis is consistently ranked in the top 3 biking cities in the US despite our long hard winters.
6. Natives complain about the weather more than folks that have moved here.
7. Wolves, Elk, Moose and bear are all native here.
8. We've voted a professional wrestler/ex-Navy SEAL (Jesse Ventura) and a comedian (Al Frankan) into state-wide offices.
9. Despite being prominently white, Minnesota has the largest Somali population in the US.
10. As long as it's not snowing and above 35F, people will ride their motorcycles.

United States

1. the "of America" was added later, after some other countries had added United somethings (and most Americans don't know this)

2. I heard abroad that they expected me to be a cowboy hat/boots wearing man who is trying to buy up all their land... the hat and boots...mostly just texas....with props to Tennessee and Virginia. the land bit...thats a very small margin, small enough in fact, that we also look to foreigners when we see massive amounts of adjacent land being bought up.

3. we aren't all pigheaded.......just sayin.

4.you look at the numbers the US donates more foreign aid than any other country , and its the conservatives that donate more amongst americans by a ridiculesly wide margin, for some reason this is thought to be otherwise a lot.

5. whatever accent you think we all have.....we have hundreds more depending on what state/region of state a person is from.

6. are tops sports are American....Football (our version which is based on the same ancestor as rugby) Baseball, Basketball, Car racing, Hockey. but coming up in popularity are not.....Soccer, and La Crosse are the two fastest growing sports in America. (la crosse is an Iroqouis sport)

7. we are large and diverse enough, whatever opinion you have of us, stereotype or not, I can easily find a region of people that are completely opposite

8. one of our most famous landmarks (the Statue of Liberty) is a gift from france....they put it together near paris, disassembled it, and shipped it over. theres a smaller version apparently staring at ours still in France. another less famous gift, is the Cherry blossom trees that line key points in our capital... this is a gift from Japan. and there are many more all over the US.

9. The current Government, is technically our second....for around 7 years we were a country under a different form, and we than changed to our present form.

10. for population we have one of the youngest (less than 300 years) but as far as the age of our country, we are one of the oldest....out of 212 countries....around 30, are older than us (I have them all written down, when I find it, ill share. as well as an exact number)

No gingers you say? hmmmm

Sweden

1. There aren't any @£!# polar bears here!

2. We are not all blonds and tall and have blue eyes. Though I'm a bad example for that statement.

3. We hate to stick out, even though we don't want to admit it we don't like to show that we are different. It's considered rude (mostly) to tell people you're smart or rich etc because it implies that others are not.

4. Most of the country is very open-minded when it comes to refugees. There's lots of people moving here because they can't stay in their country.

5. It doesn't snow here all year long, worst case scenario: there's wet snow in april.

Something more...something more... AH!

6. We're responsible for the "put together your own furniture thing" (IKEA). I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.

7. The most popular sports are football, basketball and ice hockey, as well as floorball.

8. We're not large, savages with horns on our helmets. Quite the opposite actually.

9. We have a tv-show that follows several Swedish housewives in Hollywood, one of them is originally from my hometown and she is a horrible human being.

10. We used to own Finland, Norway, Estonia, parts of Russia and Germany at one point,more than half of northern Europe.

Denmark

1. Is not a place in Sweden!

2. Danes like to think that our country is way bigger/more important than it actually is.

3. If you ever visit, you *will* be forced to stumble your way through the phrase "rødgrød med fløde" (~red berry pudding). Fear it.

4. Danes are literally melting at 35 degrees C.

5. Danes are very much about the concept 'hygge' (which is something akin to coziness). We'll use living lights all the time, everywhere. Even on the Christmas tree.

6. Greenland and the Faeroe isles are part of the Kingdom of Denmark. We have also held Norway, a huge part of England, bits of France and Ireland, southern Sweden and Estonia. This was mostly during the Viking and early middle ages.

7. We were once good at handball, and we won European Football Championship in 1992 (mostly by luck) ... 'nuff said.

8. We're a difficult people to get to know. Some think us cold, but it's more a matter of us not being physically affectionate with anybody but our families (mostly).

9. In 1999 Denmark were hit by a hurricane which actually turned into a category 1 hurricane!!

10. Most dangerous wild animal is the wasp, though we also have a tiny variant of adder.

well there is some

@kangaxx_54: my limited experience with Danish army seems to imply that it's entirely composed of vikings and super models, can you confirm this? Seriously all the guys were huge with beards and all the woman were gorgeous

as promised I finished my list above

@themanintheshoe Whats floorball?

@kangaxx_54: Muahaha! We took Skåne from you! Feel the burn (jk)

@bierschneeman: This. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floorball bacially hockey without the ice. Or it's called floor hockey (or maybe it's the same thing, never mind)

Northern Ireland

Paramilitaries is all you need to know

@themanintheshoe: ohh yeah.... we played that all the time in high school...that and Field Hockey, and arena soccer(football) none of which are popular leagued sports here

Don't have much, if any, experience with the army, but I'm pretty sure you've just been lucky :).

Oh, and an extra little point:

11. Denmark and Sweden have the biggest love-hate relationship in the world.

Everything bad about America is true...

Levererar.. ;)

Brazil

1. We are the largest, most populous South American country.
2. We don't speak Spanish, unlike other South American countries.
3. We used to be the only sovereign monarchy and empire on South America.
4. We are all people of mixed descent of Portuguese colonists, African slaves and Native Americans as well Middle East and Japanese immigrants, so "Hispanic" doesn't apply to us.
5. Our capital is not Buenos Aires.
6. We have a rivalry with Argentina, akin to the one between US and Canada.
7. Soccer is a real fever here. We won the FIFA World Cup five times, more than any other country.
8. Carnival is like Mardi Gras, only people don't dress in very much (specially the women).
9. Some subjects aren't treated as sensitive here as it is in the US like racism.
10. The Sega Genesis is still produced and sold here.

@theacidskull: Well, ticks are up there too among the most dangerous animals, but yes. There's 1 or 2 people who die from wasps every year... Denmark is an incredibly safe country, compared to just about every other country in the world.

@hel: Yeah well say what you will, but Denmark clearly wins: We don't have Systembolaget!

Jamaica

1. Not EVERYBODY smokes ganja. I'd be lying if I said there isn't a strong presence of the herb here, but foreigners do tend to over exaggerate quite a bit.

2. Bob Marley did more than simply smoke weed and play Reggae.

3. Bob Marley isn't the only good reggae artist to come out of the island.

4. Kingston is undoubtedly the most dangerous city to live in. Political gangs plague the streets and have been that way for decades.

5. Jamaica didn't actually become it's own country until very recently(51 years ago to be exact).

6. The waters are absolutely breathtaking. Pollution is one of the smallest problems we have to deal with, so as a result our wildlife(other than large fish) is virtually untouched.

7. We have some of the spiciest food in the Caribbean.

8. Homosexuality is GREATLY looked down upon in all parts of the country. To the point where you can very easily get beat half to death for making your affiliation publicly known.

9. The stereotype that Jamaicans are hard workers is..for the most part true.

10. Since historically there has been a great influx of immigrants and merchants from across the world, many Jamaicans are actually an amalgam of different ethnicities. I for one am Puerto Rican, Chinese, Irish, and African.

True, instead you`ve got an invading army of swedish kids trying to get plastered on Danish booze. Changed the window signs in Helsingør into swedish yet? ;)

besides the fact that it isn't 10 things, thereby not being to OP's instructions, this is definitley exaggerated to a point of being Blatantly wrong, or more wrong than right if you'd prefer.

Example: In North Korea the press release on Kim Il Jong's death claims that America made a giant Godzilla monster to destroy North Korea, Kil Il Jong proceeded to Box with the Godzilla Monster... defeating it, but then succombing to his wounds and dieing...thereby... America Killed Km Il Jong. "obviously this bad thing about America...is not true."

your argument would be more meaningful, if you tried to be more specific. or followed instructions and made a list of 10