20 Most Common Questions I Get from Americans

hello i'm lawrence and i'm on a quest to uncover all of the memos that britain and america lost in the pond and one of those memos pertains to questions specifically the questions that americans have asked me as a brit since i've moved to the united states on my live stream last night as well as celebrating the name tim somebody asked me what a jumper was and in britain a jumper is what americans would call a sweater and it occurred to me that i get asked this question all the time right and it's not the only question that has that distinction and i thought you know today would be a good place and a good time to address those questions and then i thought more deeply about this and i thought well this video could serve another purpose and that purpose is this british people seem to be under the assumption that americans only ask strange or or weird or even stupid questions like do you know the queen but i've lived in the united states for roughly 12 years and i've been asked that question precisely once it's not as common as most people might imagine probably because most americans understand that there are millions of people in the uk and the chances of knowing the queen are slim to zero unlike my current figure but we're in quarantine so i have an excuse now don't get me wrong i mean last year i did do a video addressing some of the stranger questions that i've been asked since living in the united states but they're outliers right those questions about outlies for the most part the majority of the questions you get are very practical in nature or just inquisitive about really ordinary things and so that's what i want to address today we're going to take a look at some of the most common questions i get asked by americans ah yes where's the accent from i get asked that all the time and you never want to assume the intent behind the question because they might know you from england from the english accent and might want to know whereabouts in england you're from or they might just not know because sometimes you get confused with being from australia or ireland or scotland or south africa or canada or dare i say kentucky so that did happen to me once but most of the time i tell them i'm from the east coast of england and if they if they probe further i say grimsby because that's my hometown what brought me to the united states well a plane to be literal and the reason that i moved to the united states was because i have a wife now who's american and we wanted to be in the same place and that place was originally going to be london but i was laid off during the 2008 recession so we sort of gave up that dream and moved to recession hit anderson indiana where people were leaving because factories were closing monty pyth i'm surprised by how many people ask me about monty python here i know it's big and i know it took off in the 70s in the united states but it is the go-to for a lot of people when it comes to comedy and you know my thoughts on monty python my answer is always the same for this one is that i loved monty python when i was a kid and i watched it to death almost i nearly died laughing you know it's like that scene in monty python where the funniest joke of all time is told and you die because it's so funny monty python was that for me in the 80s and i can't watch it anymore because i'm dead no not i'm not dead the monty it's stale it's not stale that's the wrong it's just i maybe i'll give another chance i will i'll live stream it i can't do it because there are rights issues with that i'll just i'll live tweet it do i get home often well before last year when this question was asked to me you know i i tell people much to their surprise i've actually not been home since i moved to america and at that point we're talking 11 years right and people were shocked you don't go home every year well no because the weird thing is you know it costs a lot of money just to book a flight and then to stay places and things like that plus life happens right gets in the way um that's specifically true this year because we booked to go to england um in july and um of course the quarantine happened and all of the flights got shut down and now i'm just stuck here in this this room with two flags and a camera but the truth is until recently i didn't get home as often as i would like i'm not sure if that's true of all sort of brits who moved to america i'm just speaking from my own experience and it's quite weird seeing my homeland from afar and and through the eyes often of an american lens right it makes me reassess britain in an american light and appreciate it more than i did i think when i lived there yeah of course i miss my family i mean they might they might not miss me because they get to see me on youtube every so often so that's good for them when we went home i mean it was great to see my family and can't wait to do it again but we've got skype we don't need and it's not like we hug because we're british so we don't need that physical interaction we just need to say hi once in a while i'm speaking for myself not for the re my mom probably does miss me and my dad and my brothers now that i'm going through the i feel bad now we always talk about moving back when i say we i mean me and the voices in my head and my wife mostly her and we think it might happen within our lifetimes you know although i don't know why i would attempt it after then because we'd be dead but as i've established that already happened due to monty python so this is very morobund episode this is not what i intended yes i i do see us moving back one day and getting a little cottage in the lake district and a pair of flat caps and i'll have a stick the lake district for anybody who doesn't know is my favorite national park not just in the uk perhaps in the world you know i don't have enough experience of other national parks around the world to be fully confident of that but i definitely want to live there and i want to call attention to it mostly because it sets up my next video which is about national parks what's up what's oh what's up uh yes americans of course will ask me that every now and again it's pretty common question for just anyone doesn't matter if you're british or not when you're in the us you'll you'll hear that phrase and when i first heard it i was you know deeply paranoid that i had resting face which i'd probably do i don't smile much but that doesn't mean that i'm not inwardly happy i am i'm happy on the inside i it's impossible for me to be happy on the outside because i have british teeth and nobody wants to see that but when when americans do ask what's up i've come to understand it just means hello it feels like more effort slightly what's up hell oh no it's the same effort so props to you why is british beer warm it's it's not really i think that that's something of a myth my experience of having beer in england specifically in pods is that when it's pulled it comes in a nice cold pint and i don't think that's anything you should be too concerned about when visiting britain the real question should be why is this house so warm and the answer is there's no air conditioning your beer could get warm if it's left to sit out in a house in britain for more than two minutes oh yeah so i heard such and such a word on you know doctor who what does this word mean this is a common question and there are so many different examples of a particular word that needs clarification and i get them all the time now i should point out it's probably because i do this channel that i get more than most but i think you know when i first moved here people were asking me face to face what does what does the word wanker mean for example this would even be asked of me within a work setting where it's usually taboo to swear it was sort of my outlet i could use all of the british swear words within the workplace and not get fired i found other reasons to get fired but it wasn't swearing what is the difference between the united kingdom and great britain and i think it's a sensible question because i don't think even all british people know the answer to this in its simplest terms britain is a combination of england wales and scotland whereas the united kingdom is those three countries plus northern ireland i could get deeper into the specifics of this or down in the weeds as they say in corporate america but i think it deserves its own video how long have you lived in the u.s i always want to sort of adopt a russell crowe voice from gladiator and just say 4192 days and this morning you know but i just say 12 years it's easier then we get the people who are visiting england and you know they want some sort of advice tips things like that um this is pretty common and there are many forms that this can take um often it is you know how do i get from a to b how do i get to london from say liverpool or should i rent a car while i'm there or use the train my answer to that one by the way is is always take the train but then i'm biased towards trains renting a car you just you'd have to learn to drive on the other side of the road but on the other side of the coin or on the other side of the tracks catching the train in the uk is quite a nice experience too because you can get around the country quite quickly on trains although it's not cheap don't go expecting that but if you want that sort of experience i would i would say the train every time and on that note another question that americans like to ask me is what's it like learning to drive on the other side of the road and my answer might be quite different to a lot of british people who move to america because i never learned to drive while i was in england right because we had the trains but we also had buses and i had my own personal horse and carriage but once i moved to america specifically indiana it quickly became apparent that those things weren't as readily available except for my horse and carriage i did have that shipped over but for a little bit you know they were trying to get me to learn to drive when i say they i mean my wife and everyone and those that tried to teach me my wife included regretted it instantly and i've since moved to chicago where there are trains and that's better for everybody's safety i think weather is just a go-to isn't it conversationally for most humans and that's certainly true here this is a question i think i get asked in person rather than over the internet a lot of the time is what do you think of these midwestern winters and my answer that question isn't usually loaded with words but more a face and it's this how does the u.s compare to england you'll be amazed how often this gets asked and it's such a broad question isn't it because it's not like asking how does how does it compare in education standards or anything like that no i'll often get asked just generally speaking how does it compare and there's there's no real way to answer it with any degree of specificity because i've sort of lived two lives if you don't include pre-monty python in other words my life in england and my life in america i tend to look at this question in terms of which life brought me the most happiness and they're just sort of neck and neck at the moment right i i'm generally a happy person i know you can't tell but i am as i said you know inwardly happy and optimistic and i think that i see the positives in both scenarios i i look back on my life in britain with just a sense of glee and wonderment that's really overdoing it i had a great time there growing up and the same is true here and for different reasons i've become an adult in the us not necessarily because of the us but just because of the aging process and if anyone were to ask would you recommend america to others you know as if it's a hairdresser i would say yes depending on your needs i mean it's it's different from person to person but for me it sort of fits my needs it sort of allowed me to pursue the endeavors that i've pursued here not to suggest i couldn't have pursued those though in england it's it's a tough tough call oh yes this one's similar to that words one right somebody an american might stumble upon a food item that they saw on the great british bake off and ask me specifically what is that food spotted dick is a famous one and i always recommend don't look that up if you're at work but it just happens doesn't it i mean i've covered it on this channel that there's such a cultural divide when it comes to the types of dishes that we have in each country that it just there's an inexhaustible supply of those types of questions i'm always happy to answer them specifically though if i can get a free sample of said food do you have a brother who's single on this is a weird question to me right on the one hand it's quite flattering because you obviously saw something in me that you really liked and then realized i was attached but on the other hand i'm just scared for my brother right if i give out his details to i don't know you he doesn't know you and in any case you already know that prince harry is taken that was a joke about how harry was my brother my lips are sealed on that one if if you want a british fella that badly then move to britain right there are a good 30 million of them how do you like it here that's perhaps the most common refrain and my answer is always quite general but it's always positive because my experience here is positive but i can't imagine how awkward that conversation would be if i said i hate it and i want to go home what would your response be would you console me or would you just look down at the ground and twiddle your thumbs i might try it but the truth is i do like living in america i ought to by now having lived here for a dozen years and i think it's because you know i i always always adopted this approach of ingrain yourself into the culture be okay with the differences and you'll be just fine it doesn't mean to say that you know i didn't at some point in time miss home or get somewhat homesick but for the most part i've i've only been optimistic about my time in america america has always sort of from afar when i lived in england represented something that's quite different and dare i say magical if you are to believe disney and in fact that brings us on to the final question here which is is america what you thought it would be and the answer to that has to be no it isn't or wasn't but that's not a bad thing i like that it's it's not hollywood i like that it's not all palm trees and beaches all the time that there's a diversity of culture and a diversity of things to do and and things to see it's not that i thought america was small but it's only once you've lived here for a bit you realize that the distance merely from indianapolis where i used to live to chicago where i currently live is not much different to that of london to paris and when i lived in england i thought that that was another world away america is it's full of surprises still still to this day i think and i i hope to see more of those after we get out of quarantine and i start seeing more of the country and on that very subject and on the subject of america's sheer size stay tuned for my next video i think you'll all be interested that's it for this particular video thank you for tuning in today and thank you for all of your questions over the years that made this video possible something else that made this video possible were my patrons who are growing in number if you would like to support this channel and everything we do here you can do so at patreon.com lost in the pond and if you do so you'll get access to our secret live streams and we're live i mean this is this is clorox this isn't kills 99.9 of viruses and bacteria what about the other 0.01 i think they've made it up [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Lost in the Pond

Views: 210,488

Keywords: Finding America, Laurence Brown, America, questions, Americans, Brit, British

Id: XrAjvusIEmk

Length: 15min 46sec (946 seconds)

Published: Sun May 03 2020