nationalities

When i was little i used to believe that only Americans could change their accents to match other peoples', like Australians or English for instance. I thought they were "stuck" with their accents for life or something, but Americans had this ability to talk differently. My good friend, who's from England, began talking with an American accent after being teased about hers, and i was shocked!

anonymous

My ethnic heritage became important to me when I was in second grade. My parents told me that I was "...mostly Scottish and French." I asked my mother what I was LEAST and she replied, "Chinese."

Quite truly, the next day at show and tell I announced to the class that I was a very small bit Chinese.

Wily

when i was in kindergarten, we used to have this racial appreciation thing where every week we would celebrate and learn about a new race/culture through each other. so it was going to be my turn soon to share my race and culture, and i asked my dad what i was. he said i was scottish cuz he's weird. but really, i'm 100% chinese. yeah so i told my class that i was chinese...but scottish at the same time. so for the longest time (i think up until 4th grade), i believed i was scottish somehow.

i just talked to my brother, and my brother said that he believed he was part hawaiian for a while too. man. my dad sucks.

Jen

When I was in first or second grade, I asked a dusky-skinned girl what nationality she was. She told me she was Indian, and I told her something along the lines of that she couldn't be because Indians wore their hair in braids and she didn't. It wasn't until years later that I realized she meant Indians from India rather than Native Americans (who in old pictures most always have their hair braided). However, for years after that, she often, if not always, wore her hair braided, and I wonder now if she took my words to heart.

AJT

I was 7 or 8 years old when my parents told me we were moving to England and I was convinced that London would be a small village with fluffy, warm dry snow all over it. I was very disappointed when I saw my first London snow storm (a whole 3 mm of cold wet grubby ice. Yuck!)

I also learnt about other kids' beliefs. I went to a school in Slough, where a pretty decent number of nationalities were represented and yet when I told them I was from South Africa, the response was: "but you can't be African! You're not black!"

Other favourites were:

"Did you have TVs?"
"Did you live in a mud hut?"
"Do lions wander all round the streets?"

Kids, eh?

Ex-South African

I believed that Spanish people were cats.
Oh yes, it made perfect sense at the time.
One day, my dad invited one of his work friends (who was spanish) round to our house. The man had brought his cat. When the man came into the room where I was, his cat was standing next to him, so when my father said, "Look, this is my friend Manuel, he's spanish!" and pointed towards the man and his cat, I thought dad was gesturing towards the cat.
A year later, I started to learn spanish. Each day I would find a cat and try to speak to them in their own language: Spanish
I still have had no success communicating with the spaniards.

Spaniard Communicator

When I was a kid, I'd never heard of Wales, so I thought that Princess Diana was Princess of Whales. I always pictured her riding on an orca.

Anon

When I was too young to understand the concept of a nationality, people still asked me, "Where are you from?" I didn't understand what they meant, so I just answered the most logical way I could--the most recent place I had left. "I'm from my house/the school/the market/etc..." Sometimes the timing was bad and I would have to answer, "The loo."

erica

This happened to my little sister, but it's still hilarious.

When she was in third grade everyone in the class was sharing their genealogy. Kids around the room were saying, "I'm English", "I'm Irish", "I'm Danish". My sister raised her hand and shouted out to the class, "I'm Germish!".

I was told it took a long time for the laughing to die down.

Awesome Sister

When I was younger, I must have heard the expression "the British have stiff upper lips" somewhere, perhaps in an Altoids ad. However, not knowing that it was just a saying, I thought that British people, for some odd reason, actually HAD stiffer upper lips than most people, and if you touched them under the nose, their lips would feel hard, like muscle! I thought they must have very strong facial muscles to smile and frown with such hard lips!

Freezair

I used to believe that the stereotypical politeness of Far Eastern Asia was because everyone there knew martial arts. Logically, you would never be rude to anyone in case they'd kick your ass.

Anon

I found my mother's "Alien" card when I was 5 years old. I actually believed my mom was an alien, until I finally asked her and she explained that she was an immigrant.

Anon

When I was very young, about 4 years old, I believed that I lived in the "United Skates of America". I really loved roller skating at the time..

Anon

I used to think the person who delivered Chinese food came all the way from China to do it.

Savana

When I was little my Dad told me Japanese people work hard and eat raw fish called sushi. I imagined a man pulling a wriggling fish out of the ocean and biting right into it. I thought the Japanese must work so hard they have no time to cook the fish!

Leah

I used to believe that other culture wore their indigenous outfits ALL THE TIME, like the British all wore Robin Hood outfits and suits of armor, and the Chinese always wore silk robes, and that Indians always wore feather hats. If they didn't wear these things they would become Americans and lose their accents.

I also believed that other countries made up languages to confuse us and all really spoke English, but didn't like us so they made it up. I still think this one a lot!

Max

I was always stumped with this when I was younger: I knew that Chinese people ate with chopsticks and that American people ate with forks, and I remember thinking that if Americans used those miniature forks to feed their babies what did Chinese mothers use? Toothpicks? Twigs?
Some of you might have heard this elsewhere as a joke, but I assure you that I really thought it. ;)

dumb

In 6th grade I moved from Ontario, Canada to New York, and told several of my new classmates that beaver tails are a Candian delicacy, that my old school had been held in an igloo, and that I rode a dogsled or possibly a mammoth instead of a schoolbus each morning. (Some of them caught on when I got to the mammoth, some didn't.)

Beaver

When I was eight or so, I believed Scotch tape came from Scotland and the kilts that Scottish people wore all had the same design like the one on the Scotch tape package.

Janelle

When I was young and looked at a map, I thought that the colors of the countries on the map were the colors of the people who lived there.

Em