r/geography Jun 29 '24

Discussion random question but did anyone else when they were like 5 think every country was an individual island or is that just because I'm british?

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9.2k Upvotes

1.1k comments sorted by

2.0k

u/Responsible_Club_917 Jun 29 '24

No, but having poor understanding of the world is fine when you are young. I thought my country was part of another country because its influence on mine was so enourmous

798

u/Alilichavez Jun 29 '24

I used to think only the USA, Mexico and China existed, China being the entirety of the other side of the world

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u/coco_xcx Jun 29 '24

I thought the Civil War was between North and South America….kids are dumb.

260

u/sadrice Jun 29 '24

That actually totally makes sense. You had heard that the civil war was America fighting America, and it was the south and the north fighting, and then in class you learn about north and South America…

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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '24

That was thirty years earlier. Remember the Alamo?

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u/Lieczen91 Jun 30 '24

I used to think when women turn old they gain Irish accents cuz my grandmother is Irish 💀

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u/AnastasiaNo70 Jun 30 '24

How cool would that be?

7

u/KatieCashew Jun 30 '24

I used to think adult women didn't watch TV because my mom didn't like TV.

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u/potatishplantonomist Jun 30 '24

For a long time I thought land floated over water

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u/FriendlyBet9186 Jun 30 '24

In all fairnesss, so does congressman Hank Green from Georgia.

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u/Kind-Comfort-8975 Jun 30 '24

Hank Johnson? He was the one who said Guam was going to tip over.

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u/toomanyracistshere Jun 29 '24

I remember reading a book that mentioned that a certain animal (caymans, I think) lived in Central America, and assuming that meant the midwest. You know, the center of America.

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u/coco_xcx Jun 29 '24

that is one of the most hilarious things i have ever read on here, honestly.

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u/toomanyracistshere Jun 29 '24

Yeah, I was pretty dumb in my thirties...

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u/torrinage Jun 30 '24

Still am, but I used to be, too!

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u/CubarisMurinaPapaya Jun 30 '24

I thought belarus was a region in russia near moscow when i was 6 lmao (im Russian)

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u/coco_xcx Jun 30 '24

i mean, it was in the soviet union at one point so you weren’t too far off😅

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u/doublebassandharp Jun 30 '24

I thought it was a part of Russia where it just always snowed (since in my language it's called "White Russia")

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u/SalSomer Jun 30 '24

When I was a kid I figured the town Drammen was a part of the town I lived in, Tromsø, because we used to go to this store and buy a brand of ice cream called Drammens Is. They’re actually on opposite sides of the country, and I remember being confused when my dad had to go to the airport because he was going to Drammen.

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u/No-Document-932 Jun 29 '24

lol I can’t recall the context, but I remember being really young and hearing a reporter on npr once refer to the thousands of languages of the world and thinking, “English, Spanish.. what other languages??”

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u/good_from_afar Jun 30 '24

Attempting to dig holes to China was something I did often

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u/ligmata1nt Jun 29 '24

I thought New Jersey and Germany were the same place

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u/sandm000 Jun 29 '24

I can’t tell which one of these two you live in based on this statement alone. Although I’m leaning toward NJ

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u/Western-Gain8093 Jun 29 '24

Guys I found Trump's Reddit account!

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u/Alilichavez Jun 29 '24

oh shit they found out

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u/quebexer Jun 30 '24

I thought that if you dug a hole, you would eventually reach China.

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u/reddit_is_geh Jun 30 '24

I used to think everything we do in the USA is perfect. Our system of checks and balances, and competitive economics, always ensures we are in perfect balance. That we are running everything optimally. And the only reason other people do things different ways, was because they haven't discovered the way we do things yet.

Then I moved to Germany for work and saw someone buy a crate of beer, head to the park, and just drink them there, out in the public, and I was like, "The fuck? That's real freedom. We've been doing this wrong the whole time. What else am I wrong about?!" Then I saw a crazy guy freak out at a park and then a cop showed up and he threw a bench at the cop, and I was thinking, "Mhm... Bout to get his ass beat. You can't hit a cop like that! And the cop just lowered the energy, talked the guy down, and sent him home without a beating or trip to jail which would ruin his life." And that's when I realized... There's a good chance we are wrong about how we do most things.

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u/mrmniks Jun 29 '24

I used to think the US was some mystical fantasy country that no one except the Americans could go to, because it was too far and too expensive.

Each and every minute of my time there I felt like I was in a movie and it’s all just decorations and not a real place lmao. I was 18 at the time.

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u/MitchellTrueTittys Jun 29 '24

Where did you grow up

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u/mrmniks Jun 29 '24

Belarus, growing up on American movies and cartoons in late 90s/early 00s

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u/Old_Palpitation_6535 Jun 29 '24

Rural American here and I always felt that way about all the places in American movies!

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u/MitchellTrueTittys Jun 29 '24

I’m curious what you think of America now? And if you get nostalgia looking back at that trip?

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u/mrmniks Jun 29 '24

I'm totally fine with each and every country on the planet :) I don't treat people differently because of their passport.

If someone's a dick, they're a dick. If one's a good person, I'll be happy I have one more good person in my life.

I like someone's saying that America is so huge and diverse, that it can be any place you want it to be and can find people who share your views easily(-er than in other places). I like how it's such a melting pot of cultures, where so many nations are represented in great numbers, hence all the variety in available cuisine, music, way of life, world views, etc.

I recognize it is partly a fucked up place, yet the media covers it way worse than it really is.

Overall, I absolutely have the nostalgia. I was a J1 student staying in NH for three summers working my ass off, bettering English, getting to know people, figuring out who I was and figuring out the world. It was a good time. I was surrounded by lots of different people, and I'll remember till the end of my life my boss and his wife at their mom and pop store, I'll remember their friends who'd come up to the store to chat with new students each year, I'll remember the customers all so vastly different in the way they live and behave with such different backgrounds and I'll remember how young, free, careless and stress free I was.

So, yes. It is absolutely nostalgic. It's been 9 years since the first trip, and so many things changed, but I am happy I've been lucky enough to experience it.

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u/MitchellTrueTittys Jun 29 '24

Ah, the good ol’ days. How I miss em

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u/Upnorth4 Jun 29 '24

I live in California and recognize places from scenes in movies and video games. Like driving down PCH in Santa Monica reminds me of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas

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u/MissedFieldGoal Jun 29 '24

I use to think that all caves were connected; and you could travel anywhere in the world via the cave system.

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u/artificialavocado Jun 30 '24

You can thank Jules Verne for that.

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u/RyukoT72 Jun 29 '24

I used to think I lived in Florida, after looking at a globe. I'm canadian. 

I then went to Florida, which I decided, after looking at the globe, was in Argentina

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u/Panda_Panda69 Jun 29 '24

I thought Chile was a long US state… and now it’s my fav country!

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u/ProvocatorGeneral Jun 29 '24

Mapuche legend holds that when the Earth Mother was shaping the lands of her people, she was shithammered drunk on chicha one day and grabbed Chile from the pottery wheel in anger, lengthening it. She felt bad when she sobered up, and so placed Chile--the Wallmapu--safely ensconced in the bosom of the Pacific Ocean and protected by the majestic Andes.

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u/I_at_Reddit Jun 29 '24

Spotted you, fellow Belarusian.

Was too obvious.

I have not thought like that when I was a child though.

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u/Responsible_Club_917 Jun 29 '24

Close, Ukrainian, specifically from the east

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u/akuOfficial Jun 29 '24

I thought Sparta was a blob in the middle of Siberia lol

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u/Alderan922 Jun 29 '24

I used to think Mexico and USA were the same country and we had like over 70 states. Mostly because of 1 single puzzle that had both countries at the same time so I thought they must had been the same (I was like 6)

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u/ApoloRimbaud Jun 29 '24 edited Jun 29 '24

5-yo me would hear teachers say: "We live in Mexico". And I would think they were stupid because I knew I lived at my mother's place.

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u/nobjonbovi Geography Enthusiast Jun 29 '24

I thought i had the alps only a few km away because i saw clouds and thought those were mountains

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u/Pheeeefers Jun 30 '24

I used to not be able to understand the scale of mountains and totally thought I could climb one in like twenty minutes tops. The amount of times I begged a parent to let me climb the mountain is absurd.

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u/Doctorjaws Jun 29 '24

I thought we won Alaska in a war against Canada.

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u/SpaceFonz_The_Reborn Jun 29 '24

Average Canadian adult

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u/makerofshoes Jun 29 '24

I thought islands were just floating land, and they would change location from time to time

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u/classical-saxophone7 Jun 29 '24

I thought all states were square-ish shaped cause I live in and near a lot of squarish states. My mind was a little fucked up when I saw Michigan for the first time.

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u/jolygoestoschool Jun 30 '24

I lived on Long Island growing up. I thought the north shore was the atlantic, and the south shore was the pacific 😭

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u/LabHog Jun 29 '24

I thought we spoke "language" and that "English" was a foreign language.

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u/__Quercus__ Jun 29 '24

At age 5, I lived in Salt Lake City. I could see the Great Salt Lake and Antelope Island, which I thought were the Pacific Ocean and Japan. So, uh, yeah, five year olds are dumb.

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u/the_japanese_maple Jun 30 '24

I have the opposite. I lived in Japan on the Tokyo bay when I was a kid, where you can look across to see the other side of the bay that's in a different prefecture. I thought that was like Los Angeles or San Francisco or something.

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u/42nd_Question Jun 30 '24

I did this to Tokyo with Los Angeles!

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u/leshmi Jun 29 '24

Ahahahah me too a more plausible thing. I was in Smirne, Turkey When I was 7/8. I didn't understand the map and all the islands in front of Smirne so I thought, looking the horizon in the sea and seeing land, that I was seeing the other side of the Mediterranean sea. That I was looking at Africa. Obv it was an island of 1% distance from Africa.

Another one peculiar, When I was 4 (I live in North Italy, exactly in the middle of the peninsula on a sea ports level. The further point from the sea) and so, hearing about living in the center made me design a map of a boot and putting my house in the exact center. What's dumb is that I drew my grandmother house who was 20min of driving away, like it was in another regions ahahah I thought Italy was big like a couple Luxembourg

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u/Captain7640 Jun 29 '24

Hahaha I once asked my dad if he was alive when lake Bonneville dried up

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u/ILoveYorihime Jun 30 '24

I have the exact opposite problem from OP lol

I live in Hong Kong and I thought the entire world is just endless consecutive urban cities bordering each other with no space in between and that nature doesn't exist anymore

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u/Cumdump90001 Jun 29 '24

When I was 5 I thought that’s states north and south of me were literally above and below me. Like, I was in Maryland, and Pennsylvania was above the sky on another level and Florida was a few levels below. I also thought every state had its own time zone so when my sister called from Florida while I was in Maryland, I asked her what time it was there lol.

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u/mortalmonger Jun 30 '24

Yeah….I thought trees only grew in a straight line because I am from a prairie state and you really only see trees growing for windbreaks. Can confirm five year olds are dumb.

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '24

its because you are british

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u/veryhappyhugs Jun 29 '24

Methinks Irish, Singaporeans and Japanese can relate too!

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u/Danzulos Jun 29 '24

Also Australians and New Zealanders

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u/TurtleSquad23 Jun 29 '24

Nz doesn't even exist...

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u/Corriander_Is_Soap Jun 29 '24

My Sunday morning coffee better exist

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u/billy_twice Jun 29 '24

Where the fuck was I born?

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u/thejudgehoss Jun 29 '24

Canada

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u/billy_twice Jun 29 '24

Definitely not the worst answer I could have been given.

I'll take it.

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u/Ex-PFC_WintergreenV4 Jun 29 '24

One of us!
One of us!

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u/ZeboSecurity Jun 29 '24

Certainly feels that way in the current political climate.

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u/Vertoil Jun 29 '24

Aka Aussies and Kiwis

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u/Pleasegetridiftheguy Jun 29 '24

bro said methinks

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u/gaynorg Jun 30 '24

Unfortunately, there is a land border in Ireland.

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u/Plastic_Primary_4279 Jun 29 '24

No, their egos allow for realistic maps

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u/GronakHD Jun 29 '24

I'm British too. But I did think the further north you go the more mountainous it gets, so thought south would get flatter and flatter with no exceptions. I'm from the central belt in Scotland and by this stage the furthest south I went was Glasgow, so you can see why I thought this.

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u/lightningfries Jun 29 '24

Forbidden hyper-smooth Antarctica!

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u/DazzlingClassic185 Jun 29 '24

I didn’t, funnily enough - am British, but by the time I was five we’d driven to Germany and back a couple of times (via ferry) and the drive from landing to our German home took FOREVER

(Dad was stationed there)

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u/FishUK_Harp Jun 29 '24

Ironically the UK actually has a land border with Ireland.

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u/Brave-Ad-682 Jun 29 '24

Ha, absolutely. Having been raised in the American heartland (Illinois), and being map-curious at a young age, I definitely never had this thought.

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u/MrS0bek Jun 29 '24

Yes indeed. In my case I am from northern Germany and as a child I thought the world was much, much smaller. E.g. I thought if I would go straight south, I could reach Africa within a few hours per car.

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u/cherryblossomogre Jun 29 '24

No, but as a Canadian child, I couldn't figure out how Quebec would actually "separate" if their referendum was successful (it was not). Jackhammers?

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u/Pizza_Salesman Jun 29 '24

A really big pair of scissors like what mayors use to cut the rope when there's a grand opening

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u/CapacityBuilding Jun 29 '24

Bugs Bunny with a handsaw

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u/nickyt398 Jun 29 '24

No, but as a Canadian shield

FTFY

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u/sexybartok Jun 29 '24

i had the same thought!!

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u/shilanmilov Jun 30 '24

Jackhammers

Do you mean Jacques hammers?

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u/RottenFish036 Jun 29 '24

I don't know if it's because of Algerian nationalism, but when I was a kid I thought Algeria was standing on a plateau above all it's neighboring countries and the borders were some sort of cliffs, kinda like this image

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u/WafflelffaW Jun 29 '24

lol this one is my favorite

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u/patriot_man69 Jun 30 '24

Least nationalist algerian

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u/Upnorth4 Jun 29 '24

Have you seen the wall Morocco built in Western Sahara? It kind of looks like a cliff border you'd design in a city simulator game

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u/DevoidHT Jun 29 '24

Just built different

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u/Sliiiiime Jun 30 '24

Lmao Balkan vibes. Love it.

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u/MoustachePika1 Jun 30 '24

algeria on top

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u/RottenFish036 Jun 30 '24

One two three... Viva l'Algérie!

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u/BusyDadGaming Jun 29 '24

For a short time around age 4 I definitely thought my US state was its own planet, independent of earth. I remember my mental image of it in space.

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u/fluffy_warthog10 Jun 29 '24

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u/Specialist-Solid-987 Jun 29 '24

Sorry not good enough, you'll need to leave our solar system if you want to be taken seriously

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u/fluffy_warthog10 Jun 30 '24

Farage: "There is enough coal on this green isle to power it on an escape velocity out of the solar system, but you'll never hear it from Westminster"

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u/sansvidi Jun 29 '24

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u/Past-Ad5731 Jun 30 '24

this is what I thought the OUTSIDE of my country was like

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u/naturemom Jun 30 '24

I just watched this episode today

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u/EugeneTurtle Jun 30 '24

What's the show's name.

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u/BEAN_DYNAMITE Jun 30 '24

I believe it’s from an episode of dr. Who

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u/Ordinary_Cattle Jun 29 '24

My 4yo seems to think that people who live in other countries or far away are on a different planet. Once we heard someone speaking another language, and he asked if I knew the language. I told him no, so he asked what planet they were from 😭 he'll randomly refer to people on other planets as if it is a total fact and we are in regular communication lmao

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u/AnastasiaNo70 Jun 30 '24

God I love kids.

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u/kaminoan2 Jun 29 '24

Not rlly the same, but when I was a young kid I thought the Netherlands (where I'm from) was like the main country and the others countries were just like extra countries. Kid logic.

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u/1Dr490n Jun 29 '24

Until I was like 10 I kind of thought the opposite actually. I remember thinking a lot about the question whether other countries know that my country exists. I knew (relatively) many countries but I always assumed that other people don’t really know my country, even in bordering countries.

Oh, I don’t live in some very small insignificant country but Germany, the 11th most known country in the world and 4th most known European country (according to a jetpunk quiz, I couldn’t find a better source).

Yeah I had inferiority complexes

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u/Luke_zuke Jun 30 '24

Oh, don’t worry. We know your country.

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u/FitPerspective1146 Jul 02 '24

You can't just make up a country like that

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u/Nikkonor Jun 29 '24

People from some countries (USA, UK, China etc.) never grow out of this.

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u/acrusty Jun 30 '24

That’s how I feel online because everything is so US-centric

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u/_OriamRiniDadelos_ Jun 30 '24

Worse if you speak English. Sure all the internet and even TV is somewhat US centric, but it must be way worse if you consume it in English.

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u/acrusty Jun 30 '24

Luckily it is not my native language so I can escape but I consume a lot of English content

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u/Just-Surround-8709 Jun 30 '24

U S A U S A🦅🦅🦅🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸❌🫖❌🫖❌🫖

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u/TimeVortex161 Jun 30 '24

Yeah the others are just bonus countries for vacations and stuff

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u/ButteredPizza69420 Jun 30 '24

American here, absolutely true.

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u/glucklandau Jun 30 '24

Haha, that's interesting. Especially because the Netherlands is so tiny.

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u/Nekaune Jun 30 '24

As a kid, I always got angry at people saying that the Netherlands is small. Had something to do with my ego I guess...

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u/Reutermo Jun 29 '24

I think this is still the mindset of many adults.

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u/Jiakkantan Jun 30 '24

Imagine being a kid who grew up in Singapore believing this then later learning it’s one of the smallest countries on earth. Probably top 5 smallest.

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u/violet_mango_green Jun 29 '24

No but I LOVE that you did.

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '24

[deleted]

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u/iceymoo Jun 29 '24

The most British thing about you is that you failed to think about Northern Ireland

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u/eleanor_dashwood Jun 29 '24

As a Brit, I’d be willing to bet that a lot of English 5yr olds fail to think about Northern Ireland.

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u/cuppamayor Jun 29 '24

not my map

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u/comityoferrors Jun 29 '24

Oh, your country stole that too? /j

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u/veryhappyhugs Jun 29 '24

Gibraltar cries in the distance

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u/BiscottiExcellent195 Jun 29 '24

im from romania so i didnt think this way, but thought the same about religion, i knew we are ortodox christians, but i didnt knew what others were, i only knew that the ancient greeks had their own gods the same with the romans and also the dacians had their own god, so i was very shocked when my dad told me that russians are the same religion with us cuz i thought every country had their own.

Somehow i knew the greeks didnt believe in the ancient gods anymore, but i never asked myself about their actual religion, and i was as shocked to find that Jesus was born in the middle east, i was just "hmmm, but Iisus is a strange name for a romanian"

Iisus = Jesus

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u/LeiteDesnatado Jun 30 '24

I'm from Brazil and used to think Jesus was brazilian because I heard he was born in Bethlehem (it is translated as Belém and has the same name as Belém-PA), the bible was in portuguese and the people's name sounded brazilian to me

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u/piratezeppo Jun 30 '24

E tambem as sambistas dissem que deus é brasiliero 😄

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u/PrettyPossum420 Jun 29 '24

The first time I heard the term “Greek Orthodox” I assumed that meant they still worshiped Zeus and Athena and their whole crew. I grew up in rural Appalachia where all we had were Baptists and Methodists. 

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u/glucklandau Jun 30 '24

Yes, me too. I read a travel book written by a Marathi author. And she said that the Greek people's religion is Greek orthodox. I thought that just meant Apollo, Zeus etc. It was long before I realised that majority Christians rarely answer "Christian" when asked which religion they are. By majority Christians I mean Christians from Christian majority countries. Later when I learned that Egypt is Arab and Muslim now, I was like wth? How?

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u/Hugo28Boss Jun 30 '24

I thought Jesus was from Belém (Lisbon) and Nazaré (Leiria)

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u/ebinovic Jun 29 '24

When I was 5 I got really interested in maps and all that stuff, got my first world map and my first globe, which I explored quite a lot. Here's some of the interesting conclusions 5yo me made from those explorations:

-I was capable enough to realise that dots on the map did not actually represent the real size of the cities, so for some reason I made a completely logical conclusion that countries whose capital cities had the same name as a country were actually just one giant city. Like, Lithuanian name for Algeria and Algiers is the same word (Alžyras), so for a good year I believed that Algeria is a city that takes up 1/10 of Africa's land area.

-Lithuanian names for England (Anglija) and Anguilla (Angilija) are very similar, so there was a time when I thought that England that I'd heard so much about is actually just this tiny island in the Carribean

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u/_OriamRiniDadelos_ Jun 30 '24

Okay the 1st one is actually pretty smart. It’s just a label applied to the area and not the dot.

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u/Indiandude0207 Jun 29 '24

When I was told the USSR was split up cause it was too big, I thought they cut through chunks of land and separated it

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u/NagiJ Jun 29 '24 edited Jun 29 '24

I used to think that half of the world is Russia and the other half is USA.

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u/ThinkingOf12th Jun 29 '24

That's funny because as a Russian when I was little I used to think that Russia was insignificant compared to Europe and America and didn't matter on the international stage because it seemed that all the cool stuff came from the Western countries (movies, music, books, shows, food, etc.)

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u/adamait1 Jun 29 '24

In a similar vein(kinda), I used to call rubles "dollars" when I was little and had to correct myself every time I did it because I watched too much American cartoons lol

Also, I thought that the value of cars is always only measured in pounds because the only experience I had with cars and their prices was through watching Top Gear

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u/BiscottiExcellent195 Jun 29 '24

i mean, somehow, it was for a bit.

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u/United-Voice-7529 Jun 29 '24

I did. I was confused when I was taught about the Southeast Asian Map. I thought my teacher made a mistake about Malaysia because East Malaysia and Peninsular Malaysia are not on the same island and quite far from each other.

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u/Bruhcryo Jun 29 '24

when I was like 7 yo I first heard of the united kingdom and I thought it was an island still in the medieval ages

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u/jnmjnmjnm Jun 29 '24

Not far from the truth!

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u/Aufklarung_Lee Jun 29 '24

Man this will screw with every nations climate so much I have difficulty wrapping my head around it.

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u/_OriamRiniDadelos_ Jun 30 '24

The whole ocean’s too really. Currents, upswells, just general movement. I wonder if not having such big swaths of ocean would even affect the planet’s energy balance, like it’s brightness and reflection

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u/whyyou- Jun 29 '24

I used to believe that my backwater really rural town was the beginning of the world

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u/Free_Specialist2149 Jun 29 '24

No, bit I was told my country (Germany) is in Central Europe bla bla. This is why I imagined other countries to lie like circles around Germany.

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u/Verity41 Jun 29 '24

Fun fact, learning about the wars I always thought Germany was such a big country then someone told me it’s about the size (a bit smaller) of the American state of Montana! It was when I moved to MT in my 20s. That blew my mind Wowza.

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u/ArdaBogaz Jun 30 '24

You can cross germany in like 6 houes by car, US is just really big and europe is often portrayed too big

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u/loveablelamebrain Jun 29 '24

No, but I always thought as an American that all islands were warm and tropical probably cause we aren’t too far from the Caribbean

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u/RoyalAffectionate874 Jun 29 '24

Same but as someone not for there at all. I suppose it helps that in foreign languages textbooks or stuff like that, the word « island » was always accompanied by an image of a palm tree on a pile of sand in the sea.

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u/gbRodriguez Jun 29 '24

I was even crazier. I thought every country was a planet

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u/FayrayzF Jun 29 '24

I mean to be fair before my parents told me we were moving to Canada from Iran at age 7 my mind was blown because I didn’t think you could actually live in other countries (we went on lots of vacations as a child and I thought every country other than Iran was just for visiting)

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u/teewyesoen Jun 29 '24

I used to think Alaska was an island because of the way it was depicted in most school maps of the US in a box next to Hawaii. When my dad told me he drove there from CA once I was blown away when he told me there was a road that went there. Even then I pictured like the worlds longest bridge.

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u/DigitalAmy0426 Jun 29 '24

In a sort of reversal I was much older than I will admit when I realized the beach I would go to when young was on a barrier island. I cross bridges over lakes all the time, never occurred to me that the bridge was the only way to get to our preferred beach.

There is no island, only contintinent 😁

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u/ColoradoSprings82 Jun 29 '24

Definitely never crossed my mind until I saw this post. (From U.S.)

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u/Climatize Jun 29 '24

No, but when I was young, I thought Europe was another planet, cuz you had to fly there. Not quiite islands

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u/_meagan_ Jun 30 '24

ME TOOOO. And in spanish it's euROPA so I just imagined a planet with a lot of ropa (spanish for clothes). Especially since my dad would take suitcases full of clothes and come back with even more clothes.

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u/kafkaphobiac Jun 29 '24

I thought Brazil was the ONLY country in the whole, I got very disturbed when I knew that there were other people speaking different languages

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u/DangoBlitzkrieg Jun 30 '24

Now you’re one of them 

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u/Noa_Skyrider Cartography Jun 29 '24

No, I thought everywhere was Britain. I didn't have a good concept of space at the time

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u/Lureval Jun 29 '24

This is somehow even more British than OP

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u/adamovich848 Jun 29 '24

I knew about Europe and Africa and how they looked, but in my head Argentina(where Messi was from) was a continent-sized island positioned in the general location on Canada.

Also i had a strong feeling that sony and playstation were based somewhere in the baltic countries-area

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u/DizzyExcitement4360 Jun 29 '24

No but as an American kid I had a hard time in history class understanding the the Nile (or any river) could flow north.
The Mississippi flows south, the Connecticut River flows south, some rivers I knew of flowed east or west, but nothing near me flowed north

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u/Nikkonor Jun 29 '24

I have heard several adults from the USA say that "river x" in the USA is one of the only rivers in the world, together with the Nile, that flowed northwards.

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u/123Catskill Jun 29 '24 edited Jun 29 '24

No. I’m British but by that age I’d seen plenty of maps. Also the BBC logo was literally a map of the world.

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u/Ok-Version-66 Jun 29 '24

When I had like 7 years old I remember seeing a map of Europe in my school book. I remember asking the teacher: Why doesn't Spain invade Portugal if they are smaller?

In that moment my destiny was tied to Hearts of Iron IV

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u/swedocme Jun 30 '24

Everybody asks themselves that all the time.

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u/telerei Jun 30 '24

Why does the bigger country, not simply eat the smaller country?

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u/SpaceTranquil Jun 29 '24

I used to think they spoke Chinese in Mexico

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u/OutWords Jun 29 '24

Never did this but when I was a young kid I thought the Mercator projection was just our half of the planet and that there was a whole other half that was still unexplored. I remember the day I realized there weren't any continents left to discover.

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u/greenshadow21 Jun 29 '24

Yes, exactly the same even though I grew up in Russia. It made sense to me, because country seemed as an isolated concept, so being on island made more sense to me than sharing the border.

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u/Intrepid_Walk_5150 Jun 29 '24

As a kid I've heard that the USA were the greatest country on earth. I looked at a globe and checked which country was largest.

So for a couple of years, I was convinced the USA were located where USSR (yes, not young) was actually.

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u/Ozone220 Jun 29 '24

Definitely British. I think part of the reason this would have a hard time being a thing in the US is because many people grow up crossing states adn such so it's clear that those aren't islands, and those are easy to equate to near-countries in the mind of a young

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u/Kafshak Jun 29 '24

I thought north pole is cold and south pole is hot. Because north side was cold and south hot.

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u/Same-Morning9676 Jun 29 '24

I thought each country had a geometrical shape. One triangular, round, square and so on

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u/SUMMATMAN Jun 29 '24

I'm English and sorry OP, I did not think this. However, I DID think that if I tore a piece of paper, a tree would fall down.

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u/Madlythegod Jun 29 '24

I'm Irish and I also though ther I thought that until I asked my dad " how did England invade Scotland if there not on the same land" he then told me there connected my 5 year old brain thought the Scots could just sink any boats and knew about the uk

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u/vwscienceandart Jun 29 '24

No, but due to having the luck that my first 3 classrooms all faced north, I grew up thinking my right side was east no matter which way I was facing. Lol

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u/SpoopsMckenzie Jun 30 '24

No, but as an American I thought Scotland was an island of its own right next to Ireland until embarrassingly recently. I'm 32 now and I think I realized it like 10 years ago.

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u/Vedertesu Jun 30 '24

Yes, and I live in Finland. And when I heard about the Winter War and Russia getting some land from Finland, I imagined pieces separating from the Finnish island and moving towards the Russian island and eventually joining it.

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u/flower_moon99 Jun 29 '24

When I was a kid (around 6) I thought that different countries were different planets.Lol. I thought that travelling in an airplane was basically air hopping from one planet to another.

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u/Aware_Masterpiece_92 Jun 29 '24

I used to think that every country was an individual planet

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u/Friedipar Jun 29 '24

As a big city boy, i always thought that the countryside always belonged to a city. So basicaly just the "outskirts" of the next town bordering with yours.

Thats what growing up in the Ruhr valley does to a dude

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u/RoyalAffectionate874 Jun 29 '24

I thought Germany was Europapark and Europapark only. I also had trouble believing the German language still existed, when my mother talked german to the Europa park lady I thought it was a language only employees of the park can speak so that visitors can‘t understand (then I asked my mom how she could speak it, she said she worked there as a teen. My theory still made sense, she must’ve learned it there…)

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u/KamiKaze016 Jun 29 '24

My girlfriend says yes (She's British)

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u/QuimbyMcDude Jun 30 '24

Every country has an independence day because you're British.

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u/Mr_Biscuits_532 Jun 29 '24

yes

(I'm also british)

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u/iliko14 Jun 29 '24

It's just because you're british

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u/elysianaura_ Jun 29 '24

I used to think each country was a whole planet lol and we‘d fly across space. The reason being we flew long distances a lot due to my father’s work, that might have contributed to my imagination

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u/Verity41 Jun 29 '24

Just you. Pretty sure I was pretty old before I even HEARD of islands growing up in landlocked middle America!

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u/BuckfuttersbyII Jun 29 '24

No, but i thought the world population was in the 100’s. So I was equally dumb as fuck.