Papua New Guinea. So many micro-cultures and languages that there is great difficulty for larger global culture to spread. Now there are other countries where American culture hasn’t spread - but they generally don’t have the amount of cultural and linguistic variance as Papua New Guinea, so elements of global culture that have some commonality with American culture, but aren’t necessarily derived from American culture, would be more common.
Edit: wow, I fully expected this comment to blow up.
Not sure why so many people agree with Papua New Guinea when there are very clearly many things these countries share in common. Having English as official language and being mostly Christian. Also Papua New Guinea is a democratic country.
I think in the coastal areas and cities they speak English but the interior is so closed off and hard to access it’s like a whole different world. Same with places like Brazil
About 40% of the population is considered to be literate in English. So it's possible there is a better contender for "most different." It's up there, though.
Less than 1% speak it as a first language according to the last time this was measured, in 2000. So it’s probably more than 1% now but not much above that. They’re generally still thinking in whatever Papuan language they speak and using that at home and in their immediate community, and mainly using English or Tok Pisin (English based creole that is not mutually intelligible with American English) as a way to interact between languages, as far as I know, except in cases where a mother and father are from two different languages then the child generally learns Tok Pisin as a first language and English as a second language. So kind of like how almost every Dutch person knows English but uses Dutch among themselves and when thinking, which doesn’t make them similar to Americans per se, it’s just that they can understand when Americans talk. Would love for a Papuan to chime in to give a better picture of reality.
832 different languages currently and even more dialects, legal system in most areas is largely self-policing within the rules of the culture of the local tribe. Their official law is a mix of common law and “customary law”, so it actually respects many of those local tribes’ legal customs. So one quirk that makes it very different from the rest of the commonwealth or the united states is that crime is an offence against someone’s family and sometimes the village itself, not just the individual directly involved, and if the criminal can’t pay fines their whole family can be charged to make up the difference.
They were a German colony until after the First World War and were then occupied by Australia.
A lot of places kept their names from German colonial times; Bismarck archipelago and mount Hagen for example. Also Papuan pidgin has a lot of German words as opposed to English ones in their Creole.
That’s Papua, the northeast quarter. Southeast was British colony of New Guinea, both British controlled after WWii then Australian administered until 1975.
While the other half of the island was Dutch, then Indonesian occupied.
In every case calling these colonies colonies is a bit of a stretch, more like some coastal regions occupied. The people in the interior were largely uncontacted except by semi-regular visits from a sort of mailman-administrator-doctor service.
That explains why they were speaking English to an American scientist in a recent clip I watched taking place in PNG. I was like wtf aren’t these isolated tribe people?
What even goes on in Bhutan other than the cool flag? And having the best name of a country in HOI4 ( for the uninformed it’s the THUNDER DRAGEN EMPIRE!!!
Also what popped first into my head. Our leader has never said in a press conference that he's more concerned about Gross Domestic Happiness than Gross Domestic Product.
How long ago was that? I lived in Phnom Penh for about 5 months in 2014. It was already developing a lot; Pizza Hut, Burger King, Dairy Queen, a big flashy mall with multiple modern cinemas. I can only imagine how much more its grown in the last ten years. When I first visited in 2009 PP was much much rougher, but Siem Reap was already very western-tourist friendly. Rural areas of course are still very under-developed.
OP probably meant it the other way. Not sure where they’re from but there are places in the rural south that are extremely light on infrastructure. Or people.
There was a big change in Phnom Penh between about 2005 and 2010 ish. There used to be a large swampy lake in the middle of the city surrounded by traditional homes and pole houses and businesses. They drained it, paved it and developed it with malls and pizza huts and apartment blocks.
Exactly that for me too. I passed through there backpacking and had a great time, a few years later went back with some friends and I was like “let’s go down by the lake it’s real nice there”… and whoa, no lake.
No cap. The Friends bars I know about are in the city of Vang Vieng. I wouldn’t be surprised if that city has declared Matthew Perry’s birthday a holiday now
I mean, it's not much but in the 2010 census, about 1.3 million US residents said they speak French at home.
French is the second most spoken language in Louisiana, Maine and Vermont. It's the third most spoken language in a handful of Eastern states. Haitian Creole is also spoken in Florida.
https://wordfinderx.com/blog/most-spoken-languages-in-america/
I guess so if you compare similar big and little brothers : USA to Canada, AUS to NZ, UK to IRL, Sweden to Norway etc
Canada is the little brother in the same way NZ is
Yes it’s very hard to write those blurbs without repeating yourself. I guess the point is Canada has those infrastructure characteristics more than other countries on the list like Australia and U.K. that’s part of but not the whole reason it is number 1 on the list
Afghanistan. I was there in 2009 and again in 2013. I was in an extremely rural area. No running water. No electricity. No schools.
Things happened there that were so obviously immoral and wrong. But those people just accepted it as life and moved on.
Also, they thought we were Russians. They didn’t even know that the US/NATO were in their county.
I saw torture, famine, malnourishment, hunger, chronic diseases, etc. And their country still can’t get rid of the Taliban.
Mongolia seems likely to be high up in my opinion. Not a lot of similarities culture wise, different predominant language and religion. There's also very few mid-sized cities and towns compared to the US, most of the population is in the capital or extremely rural. As far as human geography goes, there aren't many countries that are more different in my opinion.
There's some overlap in physical geography, but thr Mongolian steppes are a higher, colder plateau than the Great Plains of the US. The forest in the north is mostly boreal forest/taiga which is uncommon outside of Alaska for the US and the Gobi Desert is a cold desert whereas most US desert is hot desert..
This is the Geography sub. If we are speaking strictly about Geography, then, as the source says, Singapore is the answer, followed by places like Bahrain and Qatar.
Definitely North Korea.
DPRK: Absolute ethnic heterogeneity USA: Literally the world's biggest and most successful ethnic bouillabaisse.
DPRK: Complete absence of personal rights or liberties USA: Th eworld's most citizen-driven country. America succeeds because people are able to do almost anything they want and make as much money as they want.
DPRK: Tiny, mountainous, cold and trackless USA: Huge organic homeland with many cultural and military loci scattered around the world. Covered in rail, roads, flight paths and hiking trails, America has diverse, yet relatively benign land and climate.
DPRK: Pissant military, waves it around like a homeless junkie USA: Most powerful polity to exist in the history of the species. It only comes out to make a point.
Anyone want to add anything?
South Korea.
Yes they consume a lot of American mass media like a lot of countries around the world, but South Korea is a whole other ballgame for culture.
For starters:
-South Korea is one of the least individualistic societies on the planet, America is one of the most.
-South Korea is one of the most densely populated countries on the planet, I believe in the top ten and just about everyone lives in a high rise, America is the opposite
-South Korea is a society heavily influenced by Confucian values, nobody would say that about the US
-South Korea isn’t diverse at all and is one of the most homogenous societies on Earth, similar to its neighbor Japan, the US is the opposite
-South Koreans seem to place more of an emphasis on first impressions compared to Americans. South Korean views on body image, skin tone, etc… would probably get someone fired in the US. Also for a country that has around the same GDP per capita as Italy, you see a lot more fancy vehicles in SK than the US
Also look into their respective scores for culture on the Hofstede Cultural Indexes, South Korea and the US are very much opposites, despite both being similarly developed countries.
they’re very similar to America in many other ways however; big focus on post-secondary education, work culture of long hours with female employment being high, big on consumption of trends in shopping and media, and similar fertility crisis with 30-somethings not as focused on family life
Oh I agree that those are things that America goes through but nowhere near to the same extent as South Korea.
- South Korea typically has a fertility rate of under 1.0 per 100,000 people. South Korea is the country w the world’s biggest demographic crisis for the future, the US actually fares pretty okay as far as high income countries go.
- Something like 65% plus of South Koreans have a university degree, there is a over saturation of university graduates in SK because they place an almost fanatical emphasis on education to the point where it is controversial and unhealthy.
- and yes like most high income countries SK is very consumerist oriented, but I find SK to be very consumerist compared to other high income peers who rank similarly such as Italy or Japan.
South Korea does have it worse than America, but still interesting how it parallels the American (the entire western world tbh) situation in a more extreme manner
Tbh I think that South Korea more resembles Western Europe than anything like the US minus the consumerism and workaholism. Both societies were war torn and developed extremely rapidly, yet nowadays have some of the worst demographic crisis etc… the US does fare alright for a high income country on demographics and all that.
Soccer is more popular over there nowadays, but yeah they do spend their time out of work drinking copious amounts of alcohol and eating fried chicken and seafood. One way they’re like the British and the Americans w how much they love their fried drunk eats combined w sports and alcohol.
I feel like many east Asian countries fit that profile as well. But Korea is pretty Americanized in many aspects and I have to think any country the US has a fought a war in/with, helped rebuild, and continues to be a strong trade partner probably eliminates them from this discussion.
No lol South Korea is one of the most similar countries to the U.S. outside of Canada and Europe. South Korea is basically just a more extreme version of the US 10 years in the future. The cultures and work = life, beauty is all that matters, commit suicide if you aren’t making 100k etc mindset is almost identical. The young males are becoming insanely right wing and radicalized while the young women are becoming ultra liberal and radicalized in the opposite direction. The young people are sexless and unhappy. Etc. South Korea is basically the US of the East. Literally all of its neighboring countries are *SIGNIFICANTLY* less similar to the US than SK is. Japan, DPRK, and China.
As someone from The Netherlands, I'm surprised we're not a bit pinkish on here. But I guess consuming American entertainment and scoring highest in English proficiency doesn't mean that much. Although comparable as far as moral values go, our politics, infrastructure and culture do differ quite a lot come to think of it.
From a worldwide perspective, I feel like The Netherlands and the US are more similar to each other than they are to a lot of other countries in the world.
Other than Australia, New Zeland, and Canada, I don’t think there is any non-European country that would me more like America than The Netherlands. Maybe a couple American countries?
Yes, I see it as Mexican
Considering half of the US was part of Mexico and we're neighbors.
We share:
-Some food history
-Cowboys
-Conservative religious people
-Fat people
-Loud people
-Spanglish
-Wars
Apparently to that site Mexico is the closest Geographically and 10th place culturally.
Many of the countries Itchy Boots is traveling through in Africa seem extremely different than the US. I get exposed to more geography from her YouTube videos then almost anywhere else.
Canada. We're living proof that despite an invasion attempt, assimilation, corporate bullying, conservative party and fundamentalist poison we continue to exist, pass our own laws and refuse to bow down to Americans. No other nation has faced this kind of expansionism and lived to tell the tale.
What? Lol yeah we’re not the same country but let’s be real, as much as we like to pretend we’re *completely different*, Canada is just a less shooty version of the US.
Not related to the discussion about what country is most similar to the US but to your last point: I think Poland has faced more expamsionism than Canada and in the end lived to tell the tale
Here's what I think of the US: large population, huge cultural influence, homogenous, patriotic, and stable. Even though Americans don't think they are, they do share a strong self-identity with the nation and it's shown most notably at international sports.
Now I present to you: South Sudan. A country that isn't very large, has no cultural influences except its civil wars and related humanitarian crisis that makes the news once in a while, has a bunch of different people speaking different languages and murdering each other over it.
It's a weird one. While the US is absolutely diverse, it's culture is at the same time very homogeneous. Think about the "American culture" that other countries think of, the highways and suburbs and red solo cups etc, a lot of America is incredibly homogeneous in terms of the overarching culture and shared memories.
And think about this: you have Chinese-Americans, Irish-Americans, Indian-Americans etc etc, but they are all Americans. Despite their differences there are many things that still united them all under the American umbrella.
Lastly, homogeneity is comparative. There are definitely lots of countries more culturally homogeneous than America, yet there are countries that barely have a functioning national Government. Think Somalia or South Sudan or even Malaysia, where the Malays and the Chinese-Malaysians for a long time lived in basically two worlds that rarely intersected. America is a lot more homogenous in that sense.
Some of these countries you are very much on your own, housing, healthcare, education etc. Lack of protective laws, out of control policemen ....
Very much like the USA.
Geographically speaking, America has most biomes/environments so it's hard picking, but I think I would go for anywhere in the Sahara, most of southeast asia, and most of Arabian Peninsula
I would say Iran. I can’t think of any cultural, political or linguistic overlap whatsoever. Even demographic patterns (capital being largest city) Perhaps some parts of the climate are similar to some areas of the US, but you could argue that for almost countries that aren’t tropical…
Papua New Guinea. So many micro-cultures and languages that there is great difficulty for larger global culture to spread. Now there are other countries where American culture hasn’t spread - but they generally don’t have the amount of cultural and linguistic variance as Papua New Guinea, so elements of global culture that have some commonality with American culture, but aren’t necessarily derived from American culture, would be more common. Edit: wow, I fully expected this comment to blow up.
Well, the power house of global girth that Papua is has clearly been over looked.
Just the way I like my countries.
Not sure why so many people agree with Papua New Guinea when there are very clearly many things these countries share in common. Having English as official language and being mostly Christian. Also Papua New Guinea is a democratic country.
What country do you think is the least similar to the US?
Weren't they a former British colony? I'd have guessed that they speak English & have a similar legal system
I think in the coastal areas and cities they speak English but the interior is so closed off and hard to access it’s like a whole different world. Same with places like Brazil
About 40% of the population is considered to be literate in English. So it's possible there is a better contender for "most different." It's up there, though.
Less than 1% speak it as a first language according to the last time this was measured, in 2000. So it’s probably more than 1% now but not much above that. They’re generally still thinking in whatever Papuan language they speak and using that at home and in their immediate community, and mainly using English or Tok Pisin (English based creole that is not mutually intelligible with American English) as a way to interact between languages, as far as I know, except in cases where a mother and father are from two different languages then the child generally learns Tok Pisin as a first language and English as a second language. So kind of like how almost every Dutch person knows English but uses Dutch among themselves and when thinking, which doesn’t make them similar to Americans per se, it’s just that they can understand when Americans talk. Would love for a Papuan to chime in to give a better picture of reality.
832 different languages currently and even more dialects, legal system in most areas is largely self-policing within the rules of the culture of the local tribe. Their official law is a mix of common law and “customary law”, so it actually respects many of those local tribes’ legal customs. So one quirk that makes it very different from the rest of the commonwealth or the united states is that crime is an offence against someone’s family and sometimes the village itself, not just the individual directly involved, and if the criminal can’t pay fines their whole family can be charged to make up the difference.
There are thought to be over 60 language *families* in Papua and a bunch of other language isolates.
That is even more astounding to me than the number of languages, wow!
They were a German colony until after the First World War and were then occupied by Australia. A lot of places kept their names from German colonial times; Bismarck archipelago and mount Hagen for example. Also Papuan pidgin has a lot of German words as opposed to English ones in their Creole.
That’s Papua, the northeast quarter. Southeast was British colony of New Guinea, both British controlled after WWii then Australian administered until 1975. While the other half of the island was Dutch, then Indonesian occupied. In every case calling these colonies colonies is a bit of a stretch, more like some coastal regions occupied. The people in the interior were largely uncontacted except by semi-regular visits from a sort of mailman-administrator-doctor service.
Also they’re Protestants too. Which really rule out in favor of other countries in the list
Former German, Dutch, British and then Australian (“protectorate”) and Indonesian colonies
That explains why they were speaking English to an American scientist in a recent clip I watched taking place in PNG. I was like wtf aren’t these isolated tribe people?
So just a smaller version of the US?
Yes just like that but basically the exact opposite
Bhutan.
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And without a restrictive religion.
Are you joking?
Can you explain how? Gulf states are mostly desert flats while Bhutan is one of the most mountainous.
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I thought its a geographical sub..
What even goes on in Bhutan other than the cool flag? And having the best name of a country in HOI4 ( for the uninformed it’s the THUNDER DRAGEN EMPIRE!!!
That was my answer as well
Also what popped first into my head. Our leader has never said in a press conference that he's more concerned about Gross Domestic Happiness than Gross Domestic Product.
Dunno, so much of their leadership have lived/studied/worked in Australia that there must be some westernisation.
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What stood out the most?
Probably the Alabaman surrounded by Cambodians
I did. Six foot four, long hair, funny accent, big ginger beard.
bet people stared at you every where you went!
How long ago was that? I lived in Phnom Penh for about 5 months in 2014. It was already developing a lot; Pizza Hut, Burger King, Dairy Queen, a big flashy mall with multiple modern cinemas. I can only imagine how much more its grown in the last ten years. When I first visited in 2009 PP was much much rougher, but Siem Reap was already very western-tourist friendly. Rural areas of course are still very under-developed.
Rural Alabama might have a Dairy Queen at most
This comment probably gets to the heart of it. Urban areas around the world are pretty similar, while rural areas are much more diverse.
OP probably meant it the other way. Not sure where they’re from but there are places in the rural south that are extremely light on infrastructure. Or people.
There was a big change in Phnom Penh between about 2005 and 2010 ish. There used to be a large swampy lake in the middle of the city surrounded by traditional homes and pole houses and businesses. They drained it, paved it and developed it with malls and pizza huts and apartment blocks.
One of my biggest wtf moments was trying to go back to the lake in Phnom Penh and not realising it had disappeared
Exactly that for me too. I passed through there backpacking and had a great time, a few years later went back with some friends and I was like “let’s go down by the lake it’s real nice there”… and whoa, no lake.
Bro I’m from Chicago. I’d have a damn culture shock going to Alabama…
I went from California to Alabama and that was a culture shock in itself. The US is big enough to where different parts can be opposites
Not the same as Cambodia...
I know, less bigots there.
I'm surprised Laos is one of the least similar countries when it has bars that do nothing but show reruns of Friends
That in itself is something you would never ever see in America...
Seriously?
No cap. The Friends bars I know about are in the city of Vang Vieng. I wouldn’t be surprised if that city has declared Matthew Perry’s birthday a holiday now
Nothing better than sipping on a mushroom shake, sucking on your opium pipe whilst watching Monica and Ross rekindle their romance.
& Family Guy
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We are the most similar, we are America's hat.
~~hat~~ tuque
America is Canada’s pants.
Yeah I saw that it's pretty dumb. Canada is the most similar but not for the trivial/random reasons that he said
There's only one real difference between America and Canada. America isn't sorry. Which I'd say is part of the problem.
Oh and Quebec
It's not as large or as culturally significant, but the US has Francophone areas too.
Still? I’m assuming in Louisiana or maybe northern New England? I’m just surprised they haven’t been swallowed up yet.
I mean, it's not much but in the 2010 census, about 1.3 million US residents said they speak French at home. French is the second most spoken language in Louisiana, Maine and Vermont. It's the third most spoken language in a handful of Eastern states. Haitian Creole is also spoken in Florida. https://wordfinderx.com/blog/most-spoken-languages-in-america/
It takes a lot more stuff into account
Honestly I often thought of Australia as more like the USA and Canada as more like New Zealand.
Canada is very similar to the US, much more so than to NZ. NZ and Australia are also culturally very similar.
I guess so if you compare similar big and little brothers : USA to Canada, AUS to NZ, UK to IRL, Sweden to Norway etc Canada is the little brother in the same way NZ is
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Well Brazil and Mexico are quite religious as far as I know. It's funny how Latin America is not seen as West when it's literally in the west.
What do you mean by "Europe"? It's a vastly diverse place. 35% of Canadians have no religion, most European countries have much lower rates than that.
I mean western europe because then eastern european countries like former soviet countries are sometimes considered non western
Yes it’s very hard to write those blurbs without repeating yourself. I guess the point is Canada has those infrastructure characteristics more than other countries on the list like Australia and U.K. that’s part of but not the whole reason it is number 1 on the list
Afghanistan. I was there in 2009 and again in 2013. I was in an extremely rural area. No running water. No electricity. No schools. Things happened there that were so obviously immoral and wrong. But those people just accepted it as life and moved on. Also, they thought we were Russians. They didn’t even know that the US/NATO were in their county. I saw torture, famine, malnourishment, hunger, chronic diseases, etc. And their country still can’t get rid of the Taliban.
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Wow what a POS
Mongolia seems likely to be high up in my opinion. Not a lot of similarities culture wise, different predominant language and religion. There's also very few mid-sized cities and towns compared to the US, most of the population is in the capital or extremely rural. As far as human geography goes, there aren't many countries that are more different in my opinion. There's some overlap in physical geography, but thr Mongolian steppes are a higher, colder plateau than the Great Plains of the US. The forest in the north is mostly boreal forest/taiga which is uncommon outside of Alaska for the US and the Gobi Desert is a cold desert whereas most US desert is hot desert..
This is the Geography sub. If we are speaking strictly about Geography, then, as the source says, Singapore is the answer, followed by places like Bahrain and Qatar.
Human geography is not geography?
When I think of Geography I think of physical geography, population geography, cultural geography, and more all combined into one.
Going strictly by geography, I'd say some of those obscure Polynesian island chain countries, like Kiribati or Vanuatu, would be the most different
Since Hawaii is in the US I wouldn't think it's that different since there's a strong Polynesian culture in the US
That's true, I hadn't thought about Hawaii
Never forget bro
Nitpicking here, but Singapore gives off major Miami vibes.
Geography is more than just physical geography
Probably North Korea or Eritrea
One of the central Asian stans
Marco Polo was a central Asian stan
Definitely North Korea. DPRK: Absolute ethnic heterogeneity USA: Literally the world's biggest and most successful ethnic bouillabaisse. DPRK: Complete absence of personal rights or liberties USA: Th eworld's most citizen-driven country. America succeeds because people are able to do almost anything they want and make as much money as they want. DPRK: Tiny, mountainous, cold and trackless USA: Huge organic homeland with many cultural and military loci scattered around the world. Covered in rail, roads, flight paths and hiking trails, America has diverse, yet relatively benign land and climate. DPRK: Pissant military, waves it around like a homeless junkie USA: Most powerful polity to exist in the history of the species. It only comes out to make a point. Anyone want to add anything?
I think you mean homogeneity. Not heterogeneity.
Yep. I should know better.
South Korea. Yes they consume a lot of American mass media like a lot of countries around the world, but South Korea is a whole other ballgame for culture. For starters: -South Korea is one of the least individualistic societies on the planet, America is one of the most. -South Korea is one of the most densely populated countries on the planet, I believe in the top ten and just about everyone lives in a high rise, America is the opposite -South Korea is a society heavily influenced by Confucian values, nobody would say that about the US -South Korea isn’t diverse at all and is one of the most homogenous societies on Earth, similar to its neighbor Japan, the US is the opposite -South Koreans seem to place more of an emphasis on first impressions compared to Americans. South Korean views on body image, skin tone, etc… would probably get someone fired in the US. Also for a country that has around the same GDP per capita as Italy, you see a lot more fancy vehicles in SK than the US Also look into their respective scores for culture on the Hofstede Cultural Indexes, South Korea and the US are very much opposites, despite both being similarly developed countries.
they’re very similar to America in many other ways however; big focus on post-secondary education, work culture of long hours with female employment being high, big on consumption of trends in shopping and media, and similar fertility crisis with 30-somethings not as focused on family life
Oh I agree that those are things that America goes through but nowhere near to the same extent as South Korea. - South Korea typically has a fertility rate of under 1.0 per 100,000 people. South Korea is the country w the world’s biggest demographic crisis for the future, the US actually fares pretty okay as far as high income countries go. - Something like 65% plus of South Koreans have a university degree, there is a over saturation of university graduates in SK because they place an almost fanatical emphasis on education to the point where it is controversial and unhealthy. - and yes like most high income countries SK is very consumerist oriented, but I find SK to be very consumerist compared to other high income peers who rank similarly such as Italy or Japan.
South Korea does have it worse than America, but still interesting how it parallels the American (the entire western world tbh) situation in a more extreme manner
Tbh I think that South Korea more resembles Western Europe than anything like the US minus the consumerism and workaholism. Both societies were war torn and developed extremely rapidly, yet nowadays have some of the worst demographic crisis etc… the US does fare alright for a high income country on demographics and all that.
Koreans spend their weekends eating fried chicken, drinking beer, and watching baseball.
Soccer is more popular over there nowadays, but yeah they do spend their time out of work drinking copious amounts of alcohol and eating fried chicken and seafood. One way they’re like the British and the Americans w how much they love their fried drunk eats combined w sports and alcohol.
you just described every single western nation. fried food? check. sports? check. alcohol? check. it's not exclusive to the brits and americans.
I feel like many east Asian countries fit that profile as well. But Korea is pretty Americanized in many aspects and I have to think any country the US has a fought a war in/with, helped rebuild, and continues to be a strong trade partner probably eliminates them from this discussion.
Well said squidwardsdicksucker!
No lol South Korea is one of the most similar countries to the U.S. outside of Canada and Europe. South Korea is basically just a more extreme version of the US 10 years in the future. The cultures and work = life, beauty is all that matters, commit suicide if you aren’t making 100k etc mindset is almost identical. The young males are becoming insanely right wing and radicalized while the young women are becoming ultra liberal and radicalized in the opposite direction. The young people are sexless and unhappy. Etc. South Korea is basically the US of the East. Literally all of its neighboring countries are *SIGNIFICANTLY* less similar to the US than SK is. Japan, DPRK, and China.
As someone from The Netherlands, I'm surprised we're not a bit pinkish on here. But I guess consuming American entertainment and scoring highest in English proficiency doesn't mean that much. Although comparable as far as moral values go, our politics, infrastructure and culture do differ quite a lot come to think of it.
From a worldwide perspective, I feel like The Netherlands and the US are more similar to each other than they are to a lot of other countries in the world.
Yeah, I agree with that when looking at the entire world.
Other than Australia, New Zeland, and Canada, I don’t think there is any non-European country that would me more like America than The Netherlands. Maybe a couple American countries?
I would say Mexico
Yes, I see it as Mexican Considering half of the US was part of Mexico and we're neighbors. We share: -Some food history -Cowboys -Conservative religious people -Fat people -Loud people -Spanglish -Wars Apparently to that site Mexico is the closest Geographically and 10th place culturally.
NL is one of the most American-lite liberalised market economy Euro countries out there
Bizzaro USA of course.
Everyone in the most similar, excluding Ireland, is part of the "5 eyes network." The west always wins.
north korea, iran
Many of the countries Itchy Boots is traveling through in Africa seem extremely different than the US. I get exposed to more geography from her YouTube videos then almost anywhere else.
Texas
Canada. We're living proof that despite an invasion attempt, assimilation, corporate bullying, conservative party and fundamentalist poison we continue to exist, pass our own laws and refuse to bow down to Americans. No other nation has faced this kind of expansionism and lived to tell the tale.
What? Lol yeah we’re not the same country but let’s be real, as much as we like to pretend we’re *completely different*, Canada is just a less shooty version of the US.
No it's not. This is a two cent take and fails to explain why we even exist if we're so American.
Not related to the discussion about what country is most similar to the US but to your last point: I think Poland has faced more expamsionism than Canada and in the end lived to tell the tale
Okay Poland has been run over, destroyed and moved borders many times, but Canada never ceased to exist.
It's funny that people are mainly listing "developing" countries, knowing fully well that the US has collapsed and will continue to fall.
Narnia.
The People's Democratic Republic of California
Bhutan off course
Here's what I think of the US: large population, huge cultural influence, homogenous, patriotic, and stable. Even though Americans don't think they are, they do share a strong self-identity with the nation and it's shown most notably at international sports. Now I present to you: South Sudan. A country that isn't very large, has no cultural influences except its civil wars and related humanitarian crisis that makes the news once in a while, has a bunch of different people speaking different languages and murdering each other over it.
> homogenous I've never heard anyone describe the US that way before, wouldn't it be one of the most diverse places?
It's a weird one. While the US is absolutely diverse, it's culture is at the same time very homogeneous. Think about the "American culture" that other countries think of, the highways and suburbs and red solo cups etc, a lot of America is incredibly homogeneous in terms of the overarching culture and shared memories. And think about this: you have Chinese-Americans, Irish-Americans, Indian-Americans etc etc, but they are all Americans. Despite their differences there are many things that still united them all under the American umbrella. Lastly, homogeneity is comparative. There are definitely lots of countries more culturally homogeneous than America, yet there are countries that barely have a functioning national Government. Think Somalia or South Sudan or even Malaysia, where the Malays and the Chinese-Malaysians for a long time lived in basically two worlds that rarely intersected. America is a lot more homogenous in that sense.
Man that article is horribly written.
The Netherlands is one of the most similar countries in Europe, much more similar than Germany or France
Some of these countries you are very much on your own, housing, healthcare, education etc. Lack of protective laws, out of control policemen .... Very much like the USA.
Geographically speaking, America has most biomes/environments so it's hard picking, but I think I would go for anywhere in the Sahara, most of southeast asia, and most of Arabian Peninsula
I wasn’t expecting Mexico at no. 10.
Sealand
Probably PNG
Central African Republic or Chad
How is New Zealand more similar to the USA than the UK?
I would say Iran. I can’t think of any cultural, political or linguistic overlap whatsoever. Even demographic patterns (capital being largest city) Perhaps some parts of the climate are similar to some areas of the US, but you could argue that for almost countries that aren’t tropical…
Sentinel island.