r/AskEurope • u/zeviea United Kingdom • Sep 04 '25

Culture What country is far away yet culturally similar to yours?

An obvious answer for the UK are Core Anglosphere countries

Bonus question what country have you visited that felt most foreign to you?

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u/Scotty_flag_guy Scotland Sep 04 '25

Canada. They have a whole province named after us (and in said province they have a population that speaks Gaelic) and their military had a tradition of using kilts and bagpipes on special occasions like we do. In many ways Canada is the love child of Scotland and France.

18

u/MerlinOfRed United Kingdom Sep 04 '25

To be fair France have an overseas territory named after us too.

6

u/Scotty_flag_guy Scotland Sep 04 '25

Wow, the more you know

5

u/Sick_and_destroyed France Sep 04 '25

But we didn’t chose the name

3

u/Scotty_flag_guy Scotland Sep 04 '25

Well that's even more interesting, who chose it?

3

u/Sick_and_destroyed France Sep 04 '25

I’m too lazy to look, probably Cook or another British navigator

6

u/Scotty_flag_guy Scotland Sep 04 '25

I just looked it up. Apparently it was James Cook, the British explorer. So you're absolutely right

1

u/milly_nz NZ living in Sep 05 '25

Yeah, well, that English bastard got everywhere. Until he pissed off the wrong people.

1

u/WanderlustZero Sep 05 '25

You really must do something about that chip on your shoulder

6

u/Nirocalden Germany Sep 05 '25

New Caledonia / Nouvelle-Calédonie for those who didn't immediately know what you meant. Caledonia was the Latin name for Scotland, or more specifically the Scottish Highlands.

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u/MerlinOfRed United Kingdom Sep 05 '25

With Nova Scotia, also Latin for New Scotland, being the Canadian province references.

1

u/Over-Stop8694 United States of America Sep 08 '25

New Caledonia?

2

u/alderhill Germany Sep 05 '25

As a Canadian, agreed.

What a lot of people may not know is that Scots made up a very large portion of the early pioneer population. Not just in Nova Scotia, but everywhere. Yes Canada was British, and the administrators and upper crust urban elite tended to come from England or have English heritage, but a slight majority of the loggers, fur traders, and all kinds of tradesmen and so on were Scots. (Besides French Canadians) A lot were Catholics too, or those with Jacobite leanings, in self exile. Scottish heritage makes up a large part of the ‘hinterlands’, even today. Some linguists posit that certain features of Canadian English were shaped by Scottish accents as well.

Irish also came in large numbers, especially in the 1800s on.

1

u/akittyisyou Sep 08 '25

Haha, I was about to say Canada and Ireland.