Americans of Reddit, what’s the funniest thing a foreigner has said to you about America?

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Americans of Reddit, what’s the funniest thing a foreigner has said to you about America?

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  1. Festive-Burner123 Avatar

    I always see these questions for other countries, and it’s normally Americans saying the goofy thing, but it goes the other way sometimes. I had an Irish woman tell me Louisiana smells because a bad wind is funnelled down from Canada between the Rocky and Appalachian mountains.

  2. Ok_Cranberry_4956 Avatar

    A French guy asked me if we really put ranch on everything. I said, “Yes, even salad,” and he stared at me like I’d just admitted to living in a dumpster.

  3. GrimeyScorpioDuffman Avatar

    Not said but done: when an international student took her top off at a public pool and unintentionally created quite a scene

  4. kween_of_bees Avatar

    we say “awesome” too much, not everything can be “awesome”

  5. EdithWhartonsFarts Avatar

    I briefly lived in Russia in 2003 and went to the mall with a friend. When there, we saw someone my friend knew and we started talking (in Russian) about whatever. Guy asks where I’m from, says I sound British, and I said I’m from LA. In English, he suddenly says “Ah! Los Angeles! For shizzle my ni***r!” The hardest ‘r’ in the history of ‘r’s. I was like, whoa, whoa, let’s never say that again, shall we?

  6. TravisJ98 Avatar

    I used to work in a kitchen at a Mexican restaurant and two of the cooks (they were brothers) were learning English. They were in HS at the time so they were learning a lot of slang too and they thought it was very weird how we say “I feel you” when you agree with somebody. Every time I say it now I can’t help but think how weird it actually is lmao

  7. movingbackin Avatar

    My friend and I asked an Austrailian guy at our local bar why he was dressed so fancy and he said “I’m not American, when I go out I don’t dress like…” and gestured to us wearing hoodies and jeans

  8. Hot-Complaint9349 Avatar

    My coworkers all wished me a “happy holiday with my family” before st Patrick’s day….. I am not Irish just the only white person on the team 😅

  9. BingBong492 Avatar

    Was at a pub in Italy with a friend and some of the guys found out we were American. Proceeded to take shots with them toasting ‘to the Ohios!’… we’re not from Ohio lol

  10. VeryMerry_Canary Avatar

    Had a classmate who’d I’d converse with casually, they were from Korea. We were talking and they go, “Is America a country or a bunch of countries on one continent, are those countries technically continents if there’s even more countries in them? Do you guys really vacation to these other countries from your own?”

    They were asking are the states separate countries, and are the parishes/counties in each state also a country.

  11. Real-Psychology-4261 Avatar

    My wife’s Swedish cousins thought they could go explore both New York City and Los Angeles in a single weekend.

  12. unclemikey0 Avatar

    When I was thirteen I was in Paris with my (French ) friend and we went to the Paris McDonald’s. Just before we take our food to the table to sit and eat, I do the “mom-grab” and take as many napkins as I can fit into a handful. My friend says, very alarmed and aggressive

    “MICHAEL!! THIS IS A RESTAURANT! NOT YOUR HOUSE!!”

  13. FatherOfCats6 Avatar

    “What kind of gun do you carry?” (Said by an Australian, without a hint of snark).

  14. ceramiccoconut Avatar

    I lived in SE Asia for a year. Anytime I mentioned I was from Texas, I’d first get asked if I was from Dallas (apparently the only city people know). I’d get the occasional “cow boi?” finger guns Once had a cabbie ask if we had casinos.

  15. TwinFrogs Avatar

    “I’m landing in Seattle on Friday, and my flight leaves Monday. I’d like to see Yellowstone and Mount Rainier.”

  16. ISDM27 Avatar

    it wasn’t said to me directly but i read somewhere that eariler this year when tiktok was down in the US a bunch of users migrated over to RedNote and for a couple days there was a basically unmoderated cultural exchange between US and Chinese users asking each other questions, and my absolute favorite question I saw a Chinese citizen ask of an American was “why do you eat like your healthcare is free?”

  17. babygoat44 Avatar

    Are cheerleaders real? – teenager in London in 2006. Cheerleaders were in movies but they had no idea if that was a real thing. It was a charming conversation as a teenager

  18. EggburtAlmighty Avatar

    Me to new Mexican friend (in Mexico): que es el tipo de musica Americano mas dificil para entender? (What is the hardest genre of American music to understand?)

    Her, with a COMPLETELY STRAIGHT FACE: “How do you call it? N****r rap?”

    Ngl I wasn’t mad. She’s in a different culture. But I almost keeled over laughing.

  19. PeggyOlsonsHaircut Avatar

    I was telling a group of Czech people about a time I drove to Manhattan, and one of them asked me if that was possible because it’s an island. I let her know that it has bridges.

  20. NHBikerHiker Avatar

    Do you have any permanent houses?

    This man I knew in college – was from rural Kenya. Apparently your temporary house was constructed of wood. Folks that had gained enough wealth no longer had a wooden house.

  21. BigAlieni Avatar

    Why so many ads about drugs 🤣

  22. DopeYeti Avatar

    My 6-year-old cousin from the mountains of Zakopane, Poland visited Philadelphia awhile back.

    We were driving them around and he says to his mom, in Polish, “Woooow I had no idea how rich everyone was in America. Look at how big their houses are!”

    She translated to us, and we were like… what lol. And then he said, “I just don’t know why they need so many doors and windows for their houses”.

    He was looking at our row homes. He thought a block was one big house. When she explained to him that they were all separate houses he was like “….oh.”

  23. The_Royale_We Avatar

    Worked with a German guy once. Somehow the History channel came up in convo

    “Ah ze Hitler channel”

    I chuckled

  24. MWSin Avatar

    The “Americans eat {X}” can be quite entertaining. Apparently we all eat chipped beef for breakfast.

  25. seanayates2 Avatar

    I’ve had Irish guys in a cafe tease my sister and me for being California girls who want almond milk for their lattes. The whole restaurant laughed because honestly it was pretty funny and true.

    When I went to St. Lucia, the cab drivers would ask where I was from and when I said California, they would say “Kobe Bryant! The Governator!” 😂

    Edit: For more context, the Irish guys worked at the cafe in Dublin and we were on their turf.

  26. JonF0404 Avatar

    In Egypt 1989, I was asked if I knew Michael Jackson or Madonna, I was also asked where do you live, New York or LA… 😂

  27. WizardlyLizardy Avatar

    I had a guy with a call of duty shirt on and a yankees hat tell me the US has no culture.

    He might as well have been eating a hotdog while saying it.

  28. themarajade1 Avatar

    When my British friend came to visit me, in the US, we passed a school bus while riding around town and he was shocked and enthused they existed. I thought it was cute that he was so excited over a school bus lol

  29. AppropriateLeg6419 Avatar

    I have caused several incidents as a foreigner living in the US, if that counts? Including not understanding the protocol for when your car is stopped by the police for speeding. Apparently you are meant to stay seated, put on the interior light and put your hands on the dashboard. Not what I did: I leapt out the car and asked what the matter was. I couldn’t tell who jumped more, me or them. When very angrily asked if I’d never been stopped for speeding before, I replied “no, we just have speed cameras do that back home.” They didn’t take that well, either.

    As for general hiccups, more than I can count. When I first arrived, I tried to plan a road trip to Texas. I was quite shocked to learn just how much of a distance that was… also quickly stopped calling my underwear “knickers” when I saw the horrified looks and way it made everyone quickly turn with whiplash speed to our black colleagues.

  30. NittanyOrange Avatar

    A Japanese man told me that American men can crush apples with their bare hands.

    He asked me if I could. He seemed like he really wanted me to say yes. I probably can’t, so I honestly said I never tried in order to avoid disappointing him, I guess?

    Luckily neither of us had an apple on hand.

  31. Apprehensive-Care20z Avatar

    had some visitors from Japan, and they asked if they could swing over by the west coast for an afternoon. I explained to them that it was about 3000 miles away and would take several days to drive there.

  32. sniksniksnek Avatar

    I used to live in Chicago. When I traveled outside the country, I’d tell people where I lived and more than one person pantomimed firing a machine gun along with sound effects, like it was still prohibition and Al Capone was running things.

  33. sweetrose77 Avatar

    This wasn’t to me directly but I’ll never forget seeing a viral tumblr post where someone said “I was today years old when I learned that Country Roads Take Me Home is in fact not your national anthem.” (Not the exact wording because I can’t remember but I thought it was hilarious)

  34. ConsolationUsername Avatar

    I am the foreigner in this case.

    My uncle gaslit me for years regarding the meaning of Red and Blue states. I was about 4 years old during the 2000 election and we had family dinner once a week, before dinner we’d usually watch tv. And at the time the big thing in the news was about George Bush’s victory in the election. And they’d show all the infographics.

    So I asked my uncle why some places were blue and others were red. And he told me that in the blue states you were allowed to wear blue, but not red, and vice versa. And he kept that shit going into my teens. As a non-American i never really cared to look into it, and obviously as a 4 year old i didnt understand the concept of a political party, so i just took him at face value.

    Fast forward to 2010, i’m now 14 and my family goes on vacation to Florida. And i’m walking around seeing people wearing both red and blue. We go to a restaurant and I ask the waiter why people are wearing both, when its only legal to wear one or the other. My mother was mortified.

  35. Confused_Tinkytink Avatar

    I asked them to do thier best impression of a American accent and they said in a COUNTRY accent “HOWDY YALL”
    They also said apples and peanut butter was one of the weirdest combo they tried

  36. Present-Cranberry-49 Avatar

    While in Japan a young lady that had visited the states stated she was dumbfounded by the amount of land used for parking lots

  37. sundance235 Avatar

    A waiter in Prague asked where I was from. I told him Boston. He said, “Oh, I have a friend named Tomas Dvorak in Wyoming. Do you know him?”

  38. awksomepenguin Avatar

    The way they talk about American cheese, as if that’s the only type of cheese we have in the US. The actual process used to make “American” cheese was actually invented in Switzerland.

  39. pompeia-misandr Avatar

    A Japanese person once told me that the US is “enviably wide.”

  40. NoeTellusom Avatar

    “Why do you chat with every cashier?” Asked incredulously by one of my German exchange sons.

    Look, kid, the job sucks, it’s underpaid and idiot corporate wanks insist on forcing them to stand.

    The least I can do is be pleasant.

  41. JimmyIsbeast Avatar

    I once had a tourist ask me to take their picture with the empire state building in the background. I explained to them that the building behind them was the chrysler building and not the empire state building.

    They didnt get it and still wanted a picture. Flew all the way around the world to take the wrong picture

  42. f_14 Avatar

    French guy at a bar in Paris would not believe that we had more varieties of beer than just Budweiser or Bud Light. I tried explaining that there was a bar where I lived with probably 50 beers on tap made just in my small midwestern state alone. Could not convince him that there are thousands of craft beers in the States. 

  43. kuroi-hasu Avatar

    The endless number of people on the internet who think we don’t have electric kettles available for purchase at any department store or even regular grocery store.

  44. bloodfist45 Avatar

    “I didn’t think squirrels were actually real, huh.”

  45. french_revolutionist Avatar

    I had a friend come over from Belgium and she was shocked, saying “there is so much wildlife up close!” The wildlife in question? Squirrels and deer we passed by when driving…She couldn’t believe that our area had so much more wildlife that she wasn’t seeing (bears, coyotes, beavers, etcetc).

    She also didn’t understand how dangerous tornadoes were.

  46. Lord_Kaplooie Avatar

    An International Student (from Malta) and I were hanging out at the “Smoker’s Lounge” aka the place in front of the dorms where people smoked. A raccoon popped out of one of the trash cans, and he freaked out and said that the animals in North America were the size of monsters.

  47. cherrybomb_777 Avatar

    I did an exchange trip to southern Germany when I was in high school and one of the day trips was to go visit the local elementary school.

    Soooooo many kids asked us why we weren’t fat and asked if all Americans really had guns. One kid asked if we all lived in NYC. They were really cute but yeah there was some hard stereotyping there lol

    Likewise my brother’s exchange partner (also from Germany) saw all the squirrels around our house and went “Ah! RATS!”

  48. tokoyo-nyc-corvallis Avatar

    Saying I had an angry sink because it had a garbage disposal in it.

  49. TheFemale72 Avatar

    Freezing cold day in Maryland. Friend from Ukraine – “You think this is cold?”

  50. FormerStuff Avatar

    A Chinese exchange student in college could not grasp the concept of “yo mama” jokes. He ran into the room in nothing but a towel and yelled “YO MAMA FUCK BAD HEHEHEHEEEE” and shimmied off.

  51. OgreDee Avatar

    Why does no one drink tea?

    Asked at a restaurant when offered coffee, which was funny because tea was an option. I’m not saying it was particularly good tea, but it was tea.

  52. NeutralTarget Avatar

    A coworker who was a elderly and recent immigrant from India asked me if hotdogs were made from dogs.

  53. The14thWarrior Avatar

    Vastly underestimating distances within the United States.

    I think the 50 states throws people off. They simply don’t understand that the distance from say San Francisco to NYC (~2950 miles) is like from Paris to the North Pole (~2850 miles).

  54. OhManOk Avatar

    A Persian man that I worked with did a redneck impression. He said “I’m an American and I like guns and Jesus” in a perfect southern accent.

  55. ImAMeanBear Avatar

    We had an exchange student from Spain stay with us when I was 12 or 13. We went bowling with a big group and I ordered a root beer. She exclaimed “but you can’t drink that, you have to be 21 here!” So I had to explain that it was a soft drink and I was not in fact drinking beer on a weekday afternoon as a preteen

  56. Gentleman-Jones Avatar

    Australian guy when I was said it’s weird they use the term petrol instead of gas for filling up their car… “Why do you call it gas? It’s a fucking liquid mate”

  57. bonthra Avatar

    I told someone who wanted to visit both coasts in a couple days, “It takes like 8 hours to fly from one side of our country to the other.”
    He answered, “Do American planes not fly as fast as other countries’!?”

  58. TheMeanestGenius Avatar

    My Chinese roommate told me, “In America, if some is enough, more is always better.”

  59. Inner-Dimension-3595 Avatar

    This doesn’t quite fit the question, but my husband is from England. Straight up Cockney. Back in the day, whenever someone (myself included) would ask him why he came to the US, his answer was always: “To drink your beer and fuck your women”. Somehow it always resulted in him making a new friend instead of a bar fight. And he got a wife out of it. Lol

  60. djcashbandit Avatar

    I’m in Paris with my wife and we booked a professional photographer for an hour. He kept telling us his favorite thing about America was that there was a CVS on every corner.

    I said to him the best part about Paris is that there is not a CVS on every corner. It was a funny moment.

  61. One_Perspective3106 Avatar

    Not me specifically, but when I was in Afghan an obnoxious Marine was going on and on about how much better America is compared to the rest of the world (his first time leaving the continental US so how would he know).

    A British soldier looked at him dead in eyes and said “I’m not going to argue with someone whose country is younger than my doorknobs”. I FELL OUT.

  62. Pitiful-Lobster-72 Avatar

    i was in spain, and a very loud irish man told me that i was “very quiet for an american”

  63. coobmaroog Avatar

    Was at the Grand Tetons and a bunch of Korean older men asked if I was Mormon. I replied no sorry we’re not from here. They all started giggling and go we’re not from here either.

    It was so adorable and we all got a good laugh.

  64. cuatrodemayo Avatar

    I was at an airport and was in line at a Wolfgang Puck Express. A Japanese man was ahead of me and saw the margarita pizza and asked for one slice. The worker said sorry but it’s sold as a whole pizza. The man was incredulous and turned to me and jokingly said “This is why Americans are so fat” and left. I then ordered that same margarita pizza.

  65. StereoSabertooth Avatar

    My mother told my sisters to “Get their FANNYS over here!” When they were running off. We had Australian friends visiting us and were horrified.

    Fanny for us means butt. Turns out, Fanny does NOT mean butt in Australia.

  66. Natasha_T Avatar

    my Chinese dorm-mate sometimes struggles with English so when she walked in on me cooking completely hand-made enchiladas, she was surprised and asked what it was. when I told her and demonstrated how to do it, she beamed, started bouncing in excitement and said, “I didn’t know you liked the brown people food!”

    it was genuinely adorable and we both laughed XD.

    I guess she had never heard the word ‘Mexican’ in English so she just improvised XD

  67. kennelboy Avatar

    A Belgian once told me she had no interest in visiting the U.S. because she liked nature and open spaces. A Belgian!

  68. FARTfayc3 Avatar

    “Why do you ask me how I’m doing?” I never thought of it before but I understand why a 19 year old from Czech Republic would find it mildly rude and annoying. Particularly when no one here waits to hear your answer.

  69. Setsailshipwreck Avatar

    My fiancé from the Netherlands asked what the “zing” road sign meant that he kept seeing everywhere. I couldn’t figure out what the heck he was talking about at first.

    It was the X-ing (crossing) sign 🙂

  70. HolyRavioli187 Avatar

    Theres an air bnb on my street. I was walking to my car one day and these 3 youngsters (freshly 21 )were staring at me as my wife and I were walking out to my car. 2 of them looked away and one kept staring at me so I gave him the “wassup” head nod. Like “keep it moving.” The kid yells out “aye bruv! You wanna give us a ride to the pub?” And it made me laugh pretty hard. I was driving passed the bar anyways. So I said yeah hop in. We only spent about 5 minutes in the car. They were telling me “this place isn’t like everybody says huh? I haven’t seen a single gun the whole time I’ve been here!” That’s when I had to let them know people with guns don’t want you knowing they have guns. We don’t walk around with them in our hand all day. He asked if I owned guns and I laughed and said “there’s a gun in this car right now. You think I’d let 3 punk kids in my car without one? I’m from the ghetto.”

  71. letsdotacos Avatar

    My brother had a college roommate from Yemen he brought home for Christmas one year. It was really snowy and he wanted to go out and do some “cookies” took us awhile to figure it put, but he meant donuts in the van. Like 20 years ago and I still laugh

  72. zucchiniqueen1 Avatar

    When I studied abroad in Germany, my host family told me “We bought lots of peanut butter for you. We know Americans need peanut butter.”

    I do love peanut butter, but I had definitely never heard that stereotype before!

  73. vissionsofthefutura Avatar

    It wasn’t about America but I had a German friend who had never heard the word cajun out loud so he confidently ordered the “cahuun”chicken.

  74. xeroxbulletgirl Avatar

    My German TA in college said she was going to drive to NYC that weekend to see Times Square. We were in West Texas and had to explain why that was basically impossible.

  75. cowsncorn Avatar

    My German family members seem to think we only eat processed American cheese, all our wurst are hot dogs, all out bread is Wonderbread, and all the beer is light and served on ice.

    I live in Wisconsin, we do beer, cheese, and bratwurst pretty well.

  76. dopshoppe Avatar

    A guy from the UK I know loves to refer to Americans as melon farmers. Melon farming imbeciles. Doesn’t know what some object I refer to is? Must be some kind of weird melon farming contraption. Where have I been the last few days? Must have been tending to my melon farm. I wish I had a backyard instead of a dumb asphalt apartment parking lot? Ah, I must be missing life back on my melon farm

    It’s really really weird

  77. AleksandrNevsky Avatar

    I was talking with some exchange students from Europe about guns. They asked me about them. Well, more specifically they asked to see how many I had. They were shocked to learn the closest thing to a firearm I own was some old paintball stuff and a longbow.

    They asked if we could go to Walmart (and they said Walmart specifically) to buy some. They were again shocked when I told them there is not a single supermarket near me that sells firearms or ammo, you need to go to a place like a gun store or a outdoorsman store. They also wouldn’t be able to buy them anyway, they’d probably not be able to pass a background check and they wouldn’t be here long enough to get passed the waiting period anyway.

    “…Waiting period?” They didn’t seem to process that individual states set their own gun laws and I lived in one of the strictest states in the country at the time. They thought laws like out in Montana applied to here. They also seemed to think I could get my hands on a fucking automatic with little issue. They clearly knew gun models from video games or movies because they mentioned “M249, M416, and SCAR-H.” They were confused when I mentioned “tax stamps” and how automatics were well outside what most people could obtain without a LOT of money and bureaucratic rubber stamping.

    So I decided to throw them a bone and introduce them to my uncle who hunts and has a decent collection. We were going to do some target shooting with a .22 rifle but they gave up when we were running through the safety rules. We handed them props to help them get used to holding them and so they learned muzzle awareness and trigger discipline but they, among other things, pointed the props at each other and looked down the barrels not 5 minutes after we told them not to.

    Overheard one of the two say to the other “I was expecting cowboys, we found the Statsi instead.”

  78. Lentra888 Avatar

    A British friend of mine called southern sweet tea “the most vile, disturbing, horrific swill ever created. Please bring another pitcher.”

  79. HotCaramel1097 Avatar

    My Canadian friend kept ragging on us for treating “every food as a vehicle for ranch dressing.” Thing is bro loved him some mayo. Now I ask you, my fellow Americans, what is ranch but more flavorful mayo?

  80. Rtman26 Avatar

    While being transported from the airport to the hotel in Morocco, the cab driver said “American?” To which I responded “yes.”

    His response:

    “Ahhh yes. Bill Clinton.”

  81. GoldenKitty720 Avatar

    Someone from the UK asked me, “Did you vote for Trump, or are you normal?”