Has it ever happened that a foreigner asked you a really stupid question about the country where you live?

Just the obvious one I always get from Americans: 'Have you met the Queen?'.

Can we get this straight people - London and the rest of the UK is not as small as you think it is. The Queen does not pop out to Tesco to get in the weekly groceries for the family.

Saying that though - Prince Charles did once ruffle my hair and pat me on the head.


Oh, and Americans? Hello. If you ever come to London. The tube (subway) station and place called Leicester Square is pronounced Lester Square and not LYE Sester. Thought I'd pass that on so people won't laugh all the time at you. Thanks. Any more questions.

A lot of time. Starting if we had running water and electricity in Canada. Then they ask if we have Thanksgiving. Those are usually Americans.

People actually asked you that?
How did you get for Prince Charles to ruffle through your hair and pat you on your head?

I'm an American, so I think that is suppposed to put me in the position of -asking- the stupid questions.

Almost definitely, but I can't remember any specific instances of this. But I know I've come across some pretty amusing misconceptions about the US.

I was 9. I was in a choir when he came to visit our home town singing 'The Cuckoo Song' in Welsh. (I couldn't do it now - or the English one?). He came over and spoke to my mate Stephanie. I just smiled like an idiot. The teacher said something about how hard we had practiced and he ruffled my hair.

My baby brother and I were out once in Chester, which has one or two American tourists because of the Roman Walls and the Tudor Buildings. My brother was four and we met this American guy. My brother asked 'Are you from America?' and the guy said 'Why yes sonny I am!' and my brother tips his head and asked, 'But where's your hat?' (he meant cowboy hat or stetson)

All the time. Mostly they just get Costa Rica mixed up with Puerto Rico, which is infinitely annoying.

The worst is that they think we're all living right smack dab in a rainforest.

No, but people from the continental US ask stupid questions about Alaska a lot.

I think Chester is cool. I have a really cool picture of the street taken from East Gate. I dont have it on a web site anymore but I have it saved on the puter. I don't know how to post it here.

Is you that sent me a picture of Chester just 5 minutes ago or so?

WHEN did I mention Chester???

No, this hasn't happened. In fact, most stupid questions I have gotten have been from my own fellow Americans. One was an acquaintance of mine who is a travel agent and a couple came in inquiring about the best places to visit in New Mexico and Texas. She told them that since New Mexico is a foreign country (which is certainly ISN'T) that they would need to take certain precautions and advised them to get an English to Spanish book to help with translations. I cleared my throat and got her attention and she excused herself. I took her aside and informed her that New Mexico was in the U.S.. She asked me, "Are you sure?" and I told her if she didn't believe me then she should look at a map of the U.S. She went back to her customers and made like she had misunderstood that they wanted to go to Mexico, not New Mexico, they laughed (they were acting a bit puzzled as to her instructions) and she gave them the info they needed.

Did you have more hair as a kid then you do now?

AAAAHHHHHH!! See what happens when I reply first thing in the morning??? I replied to Dino, got mixed up and looked for your email instead. Doi. Sorry.

No problem,I was just wondering why somebody sent me that! It looks beautiful anyway.

People, even Americans asked me if there were still a lot of gangsters in Chicago. I guess when you say Chicago people automatically relate to the roaring 20's and Al Capone. Sure, the mafia is still strong there but geez, the gangsters and tommy guns are long gone.

A receptionist in LA once asked me how it was that I spoke English fluently since I was a foreigner. When I explained that I was British, she dropped the bombshell that she thought we spoke Latin here.

Not that I can remember. But when some of my friends visited America, their hosts asked them if they had light switches in England and also whether they'd heard about the September 11th attacks......

Well a guy who lived in London tried to tell us that in UK you can't mix warm and cold water and that in London they don't have the doorbells???
From that day we were referring to London and the whole UK as "The Primitive Country"
Do you have doorbells in the North?

For mix warm/cold water I mean that sometimes here we don't just have the hot/cold water,you don't have to mix,you can move the "thing" (don't know the name in your language,sorry )and have hot,warm or cold water.No need of mixing.I thought it was common everywhere.

Oh. Are you Welsh? I know a whole song in Welsh, it's called 'Dacw 'Nghariad'. I learnt it just for sake of knowing something from every language.

No, but I have a friend at work who is from Indonesia, and I ask her tons of stupid questions about her country.

I think I know what you mean by the "thing" Most sinks I've seen have two taps - one for hot water and one for cold and the mixing happens in the sink. But our kitchen sink just has one tap with two handles to turn - one for hot water and one for cold water and that mixes it before they go into the sink. I don't remember seeing sinks like that anywhere but in kitchens though - certainly never in a bathroom (possibly once or twice in public toilets?).

We certainly have doorbells around here. And now I think of it, I only recall seeing 3 or 4 houses without doorbells in my entire life!

Yes,we have one both in the kitchen and in the bathroom. (sink and bath,both of them),but usually the bathrooms have the two taps (ah,thanks for the word )sinks.

about doorbells...maybe that's just in London
We were trying to figure out what do you do for making someone open the door...yell? throw a rock at the window? knock?

If you don't have a doorbell, you'd almost certainly have a door knocker.

Yes,but if you live in an a 8 floor building?

Hmm, good point! Maybe you'd just have to trek all the way up to the door!

We have a doorbell but it doesn't work. We don't answer the door anyway. Only people selling junk come to the door. The kids have keys and let themselves in when visiting.
Never heard of a faucet with two spouts. modern sinks have two handles or just the one lever which you move to the left or right to mix the hot/cold.

My question to those in the UK is why you drive on the wrong side of the road and why are the steering wheels on the wrong side?

Was Henry Ford British or American?

Of course! More times than I could count. The best one didn't happen to me though. In 1986 Vancouver hosted one of those Expo things. I went to a party shortly afterwards, and a group of people were exchanging stories: "Is this money good outside the Expo site?" stuff like that...One guy worked at the Northwest Territories Pavilion. His job was to answer questions from people who had just been through the pavilion, and supposedly learned much about its history, culture etc.. He stood in a huge room with an enormous map of North America on the wall, indicating the Northwest Territories in relation everything else. He said the most COMMON question was: *spoken with a pronounced southern drawl* "Now the Northwest Territories, is that a part of the United States, or is that a part of Alaska?"

Good question. I don't know.
Do you have refrigerators over there? That why you drink beer warm? Yuck. Beer has to be on the verge of freezing for me to be able to tolerate it.

Here's an explanation for the driving question:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_021b.html

Of course they have refrigerators. The "warm beer" myth derives from the fact that ale and stout used to be the preferred types of beer in Britain, and they are optimally served at a slightly higher temperature than lager. Now days lager is more popular, so the beer temperature is liable to be the same.

See, Americans aren't the only ones with misconceptions!

Thanks for the link. Very interesting bit of information. It does sound however that the Brits didn't go to driving on the other side like everyone else because of not paying attention to what the rest of the world was doing, or indifference.
No slam intended to you UK people. Was just curious about it. Zang's link was very informative.

I've traveled all over the world, and although I don't recall exactly which countries drove on which side, it seemed to me that there were about the same number of each. Here in Canada, we drove on the left in British Columbia and New Brunswick up until 1922. Nova Scotia changed from left to right in 1923, Prince Edward Island in 1924, Newfoundland in 1947. Ontario and Quebec always drove on the right.

Here's another informative link:

http://www.travel-library.com/general/driving/drive_which_side.html

(It looks like the right-side drivers outnumber the left-side drivers 2 to 1.)

Yes. An American asked me if they drive on the left in Sydney like they do here in Brisbane.

WOW! I thought the question I was asked was stupid because I thought it would be ludicrous to have different driving sides in the same country, but it looks like you Canadians actually did it! I've gotta start reading the comments before I vote and comment! How the hell did you manage at the borders?
I heard the reason people passed on the left was because their sword arm, and hence protection, would be presented to the oncomer.

When I came to America from England someone asked me if I knew The Beatles.

My cousin from Orlando, FL had only visited Ohio a few times and it was to my grandma's house in the country... She thought it was like that everywhere in the state and asked me what we do at night without clubs... (I've never frequented clubs anyway, but they are all over the place in the city) Apparently she thought it was nothing but farm land in Ohio.

Once I was walking with two (female) friends of mine, a guy stopped us and asked: "Where did you left Ringo Starr?"

Nope, but I have been asked many,many stupid questions !

No, but I've had people who live here ask me some pretty dumb questions. I work for a mattress factory and I had a woman who I was delivering a bed to ask me if her sheets would fit on the new bed! How the hell should I know?

Probably...although I doubt it was stupid. A question is a question...The thing that really annoys me is when people back home (in the U.S.) ask me if I speak Japanese when they learn that I live in Hong Kong.

Cool, that's like the one I took!

I got your e-mail thanks.

Here in the US, everywhere that I have been, we have 2 tabs for hot and cold water. I know what you're talking about thought. Everytime I have ever been to a hotel or a motel, they had those. But I have never seen them in any residential home.

Here in the US, I guess its a hotel thing.

Usually Americans who are surprised that we have electricity, that we do not wear wooden shoes, and that they cannot find all the products from back home in our supermarkets.

No way! Next thing you're gonna tell me is that Al Capone is dead.

Canada is a very large country. Back in those days, it was even more sparsely populated than it is now. Even in the United States there wouldn't have been much in the way of a highway system. Cars were still pretty new. I would imagine that at the borders they would just have a sign instructing the drivers to move to the other side of the road, much like they would now between two nations, if that were the case. Remember, we're not talking about fast cars whizzing along paved highways here. More like tin-lizzies coughing and sputtering along dirt tracks alongside horses and carriages.

Do you own a pair of wooden shoes?
I did once when I was little.

Not really dumb questions,more people confusing Northern and Southern habits...and people thinking that here we have nice sunny weather all the time.

Oh, so that's what they meant by foreigners. Yeah, yankees get confused about Southerners all the time.

I went to Canada years ago to return a couple of kids. They were staying with my boyfriend and his mom and we took them back at the end of summer.

I drove during the night with the thought of getting into Canada in the morning and having myself a nice breakfast with sausage gravy and biscuits. Slurp slurp slurp.

I get up there and didn't see it on the menu, but figured they had it anyway. So I asked for it and they acted like I had two heads. They didn't even have biscuits, much less sausage gravy. I don't remember what I ate. I just remember grumbling about "those stupid limeys". I drove hours and hours with four kids in the backseat. And for what? Hurumph!

I like living in the South and all our delicacies like hushpuppies, fried green tomatoes, iced tea, BBQ. Things that are so common to me, I don't realize the rest of the world doesn't have the same.

Not that I can recall, though foreigners are generally disinterested in the realities of American life and culture, instead opting for naive, prejudicial, opinions with little basis in reality.

I don't live in the USA.I live in Italy.North and South are everywhere
I live in the northern part of Italy anyway.

Oh yeah. I tend to forget about that whole map thing.

where are the igloos? (Manitoba, Canada)

Me too when I was little.

You are not as often on this site as you were once before. Why?

I still find it incredible. You'd think on this one issue the world, or even states within nations, could come up with some consistency. There is only two choices after all. I remember going with a friend to an all deaf basketball game here in Brisbane. All the players and most of the audience were deaf. People were signing across the court at each other! There was a particularly stunning woman standing courtside facing a group of American fans who came out with their team. She was signing to them. I asked a hearing friend who can sign what she was saying and he said he didn't really know since she was using north American signs. This is ridiculous I thought. Here is a minority who have a hard enough time communicating so a language is developed for them, then what happens, two (at least) versions are taught, limiting their communication again!

You didn't know that?

That's a new one on me. I thought it was "international" sign language. Although, I could see where people in isolation from each other would develop slang or colloquialisms.

On an Amtrak train in the USA a German friend of mine was asked by a young American (25) if they had American rock music in Germany

Because the same surveys kept coming back.

Eehmmm.. yes, I did.

Oh... I miss you

I'm back! You don't have to miss me anymore.

Okay. So how are things in Holland?

Yes. Americans do it all the time.

I guess that depends on how you define a stupid question. Sometimes people have asked me questions about the US that showed that their knowledge of the country was very biased, probably due to the Hollywood movies we export.

Even the signing of individual letters is different. North American uses one hand and the rest of the world uses two.

In the US (all parts that I have visited, at least 20 states) we generally have one faucet/tap with 2 knobs, one for hot and a knob for cold. Frequently in commercial places, and also in some homes we have one faucet/tap with one knob which you can turn one way for hot and one way for cold. Both of these allow the water to be mixed to the desired temperature straight out of the tap/faucet. In England they frequently have two taps/faucets, one for hot water and one for cold, so to have water which is warm a person must mix it in the basin. SouthernYankee, have they had mostly English style sinks in parts of the US you have lived and visited or the type I first described? Even in rural and southern parts of the US I have been to they do not usually have 2 separate taps/faucets for hot and cold water unless they are very old fixtures.

They're fine. People are worried Bush will lead this planet into disaster if he attacks Iraq. No one supports him and hell will break loose in the Middle East. But doesn't seem to understand this.

Hmm... interesting. Here in Canada they are supporting him. Just another day, our neighboor came over our house to borrow something and started telling my dad how Canada should into war with USA. My dad was just smiling at her and kicked her out as soon as her could.

most everywhere we have two tabs right by each other, and they mix right before the water comes out out of one faucet. But in many hotels and motels, they have a more modernized one where there is only one tab and you move it up and down and the water comes out mixed already.

Uh... no. I don't think so.

No, but I've had YOU ask me some rather stupid questions