60 Americans Recall The Funniest Things Foreigners Have Ever Said To Them About The United States
As an American who’s lived abroad for over 4 years, I can confidently say that everyone has an opinion on my home country. No matter where I go, I’ll be met with assumptions, stereotypes, political commentary and sometimes, just genuine curiosity. Yes, we love peanut butter. No, not everyone is rich. And yes, you probably do know more about the U.S. than most Americans know about your country. That’s just what happens when your nation is unavoidable in the media!
But this can also lead to some hilarious encounters. Americans on Reddit have recently been recalling the funniest comments people from other countries have ever made about the U.S., so we’ve gathered the best ones down below. From questions about the American diet to assumptions that we all know one another, enjoy scrolling through these silly stories. And be sure to upvote the comments that make you smile!
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).
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.
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.
“You are the richest country in the world, surely you have universal healthcare?”
That put me in such a laughing fit that I bruised a rib. Doctor’s bill after insurance was only $27,680.
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.
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.”.
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.
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 s**t 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.
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.
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.
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!!”.
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?”.
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!
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’!?”.
A British friend of mine called southern sweet tea “the most vile, disturbing, horrific swill ever created. Please bring another pitcher.”.
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.
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.
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.”.
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.
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 F**K BAD HEHEHEHEEEE” and shimmied off.
I was in spain, and a very loud irish man told me that i was “very quiet for an american”.
Not said but done: when an international student took her top off at a public pool and unintentionally created quite a scene.
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 😅.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
While in Japan a young lady that had visited the states stated she was dumbfounded by the amount of land used for parking lots.
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.
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.”.
The “Americans eat {X}” can be quite entertaining. Apparently we all eat chipped beef for breakfast.
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. .
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.
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.
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.
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.
A French guy once told me, “You know, I think Americans hate taxes because they get nothing from them. In France they give us things.”
It’s not funny but I’ll never forget it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!”.
