Oh, I thought u were from the U.S.!

This is just a short post about the fact that many British people tend to mark everyone with good English skills as "American". I have met six people since September who admitted that they thought I was from the U.S. (or they still do as I wasn´t always keen on telling them otherwise).

Jill, the Sales Account Manager from Glasgow Science Centre, thought I was American, as well. At least for a few first minutes of our conversation. I told her that I came back to scotland by plane the day before. She asked me politely how long the flight was and was quite surprised when I told  her about my boring two-hours flight. :-) So she asked me where I was from and everything was clear. :-)

Me: "I´m from Germany/ Czech Republic."

Jill: "Oh, I thought you were from the U.S.!"

So, people tend to make judgements about your origin based on your accent around here. And they love telling you why you have an American accent even though you´re not from the USA. The most common explanation you´ll probably hear is THE AMERICAN SERIES and MOVIES. And it´s true.... we foreigners watch lots of them.... I´ll rather not count all the hours I spent watching Californication, True Blood, Friends, How I Met Your Mother, Vampire Diaries, The Big Bang Theory, Alias, Nip/Tuck, Dexter, Sex and the City and so on....... I remember watching one British series only, the Black Books (which reminds me that the Irish shop owner was often regarded  being Scottish by some book buyers although his English wasn´t Scottish at all.). So..... in a nutshell, if  the British don´t start producing some famous mainstream series we will be condemned to speaking with American accents only. Yeeeeaaaaaah!

An interesting explanation was once stated by my English teacher from London who said that it is the Czech coming through my English and people don´t recognize it so they automatically think it´s American.

Cheers to all "fake Americans!" :-)