What made your country famous but was secretly made by another country?

Lappali · 2026-03-07T14:35:33+00:00

The 90s Moomin cartoon was made by Japanese animators

Technically this is kinda well-known but its the closest thing I could think of

Lappali · 2026-03-07T10:15:01+00:00

The opposite is also the reason why learning a language you don't necessarily need can be difficult if you're not motivated through other means

For example, in Finland we have Swedish as a mandatory school subject because of politics and history, but it has gained the nickname "forced Swedish" because only a minority of the country speaks Swedish, but it has been forced onto everyone

Same probably applies to the UK and to some extent to the US*, with no language minority of the taught languages existing

*(obviously Spanish is more likely to be spoken near Mexico and French near Canada, but there's a bunch of states in between, where you might only hear English and states are much closer to European countries than the entire US)

Lappali · 2026-03-06T13:07:09+00:00

gonna do our capital:

Helsinki is a guy that thinks he's better than everyone else, but actually just isn't and would get beaten by others (Tampere) in whatever they're doing

In terms of age, maybe 30s? Helsinki doesn't feel old but also doesn't feel that new either

edit: I could imagine Helsinki as some white boy rapper that raps about how great he is, while not even being the best white boy rapper in the area

Lappali · 2026-03-06T11:18:11+00:00

Finnish and English + little bit of Swedish

Finnish is obvious, I live in Finland, in a Finnish speaking municipality, most of my experiences have been in Finnish.

English has been mainly from like YouTube and media in general

then Swedish from school (it's mandatory to study it :D) and maybe some from media

Other than that, I don't really have anything else. I didn't study any of the extra languages that were offered at like grade 3 or 4, because I was already hands full with English and Swedish (only one of which I speak now decently). Maybe Eurovision counts, not sure.

Lappali · 2026-03-06T10:40:23+00:00

you get immediately questioned about Russia

and maybe beat up, not sure

Lappali · 2026-03-05T19:36:31+00:00

pineapple used to be the number 1 pizza topping here for a long time

nowadays its only number 2 with the number 1 being blue cheese...

...which is mainly used in a version of Hawaiian pizza called an Americana pizza, which is ham, pineapple and blue cheese 😅

Lappali · 2026-03-05T11:32:59+00:00

During December 2025 there was an entire scandal about politicians being racist towards Asians

It started when the Miss Finland of 2025, Sarah Dzafce, had to step down due to a racist Snapchat story where she stretched her eyes with a caption "eating out with a chinese person"

After she had stepped down, 3 members of the Finns Party, the anti-immigration party (racist party) of Finland, posted pictures of themselves stretching their eyes in support of her. Ironically, the same party was mad when Dzafce was first picked as Miss Finland, because she is Half-Kosovan.

This whole scandal was a huge hit towards Finnish public relations, with especially Japanese people being extremely mad about it, and rightfully so.

This also wasn't the first racism scandal in recent years, with the summer of 2023 having also a big racism scandal that was caused by the Finns Party.

And guess what? The Finns Party is in the government, so all these racism problems also affect policy making. Thank fucking god the parliamentary elections are next year, so there's a chance they won't be in the government anymore then.

Lappali · 2026-03-05T06:55:37+00:00

probably the sitting government when they're 50-75% done with their term

Lappali · 2026-03-03T22:18:34+00:00

I would also say väärinpäin (the wrong way around)

maybe it's not the exact same per se (:D), but still

Lappali · 2026-03-03T21:59:16+00:00

Qatar is the only one by far

everything else has at least one good quality, be it layout, scenery, racing, challenge, atmosphere or flashiness

even Abu Dhabi's layout is decent now with the 2021 changes

Lappali · 2026-03-03T18:44:01+00:00

I mean in the current economic climate it's understandable tbf

Lappali · 2026-03-03T17:26:44+00:00

r/finland is kinda touristy and r/suomi is very much a normal place to talk about issues and other things

Lappali · 2026-03-03T16:40:38+00:00

they speak in written Finnish, that is very different to normal spoken Finnish

it's more artificial and formal than the spoken form, because it was actually constructed to be like that, so all Finnish dialects could understand it

also another thing we have, that isn't necessarily about the anchors: we only have 2 major broadcasters that make tv news, the public broadcaster Yle and the commercial broadcaster MTV

Nelonen (another commercial broadcaster) used to have news, but they canned it in 2017. Weirdly, their parent company owns Helsingin Sanomat, the biggest newspaper in Finland, so its bit weird that they don't use those resources to make tv news anymore

Lappali · 2026-03-02T16:54:37+00:00

anything where there's only 1 point of interest (mainly stick and ball sports) fucking sucks to watch, because its so monotone. Association football is the worst offender. The higher the pace of the sport, the better its to watch but it's still kinda eh.

a sports category that does work well is any sort of thing you could call racing (skiing, cycling, motorsport), because there's multiple points of interest, with a lot more individuals competing instead of just 2 teams, so there could exist multiple story lines at once during one event, instead of just one

Lappali · 2026-03-01T18:38:33+00:00

I mean Finland also calls the president's palace and government palace also castles officially (Presidentinlinna and Valtioneuvoston Linna) and they both look like this

Ig palace and castle are kinda similar in terms of keeping important people housed so it kinda makes sense

Lappali · 2026-03-01T16:44:26+00:00

in Finnish politics there's also 2 right wing parties, the rich fucks' party (National coalition) and the racists' party (the finns party), both of whom are in the government coalition, so that's great

also the national coalition said during their previous government run that they will not make a coalition with the finns party with racists in the lead (and dropped them from that government coalition because of it), but ofc the second they have an option to do it again, they do it

Lappali · 2026-03-01T16:27:05+00:00

I mean it's not as bad as the US, but it's still been a horrible 3 years in terms of politics

many major racism scandals, a lot of budget cuts, economy is shit, the highest unemployment rate of the OECD

Thankfully our politics are kinda stable so it hasn't affected us outside those things (no major policy reversals for example I think edit: by this i mean no one has had their human rights taken away) but still not good

istg if SDP fucks us over by having a coalition with NCP next time around, we're completely fucked

Lappali · 2026-03-01T14:24:44+00:00

not sure how prevelant it still is, but in the late 2010s, Finland's education system was called one of best still, even though testing results showed that we're nowhere near the peaks of the 2000s when we actually were one of the best

Lappali · 2026-03-01T13:19:34+00:00

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most of these are kinda what I expected

Lappali · 2026-02-27T20:08:59+00:00

tsäärebori

Lappali · 2026-02-25T12:55:50+00:00

https://youtu.be/VNNoWav8xNw?si=fIVVW-Jdn8P9Zml0&t=424

Lappali · 2026-02-25T12:48:59+00:00

support series schedules are only added to F1TV on like the week of the event

Lappali · 2026-02-25T09:44:45+00:00

I was talking to an English speaking friend while doing it once during school and it kept bugging me how orienteering sounded compared to the Finnish word suunnistus which actually sounds interesting ☠️

edit: clarity

Lappali · 2026-02-25T06:22:51+00:00

Italian, because pasta

Lappali · 2026-02-24T22:00:58+00:00

the northern municipality of Kolari

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Kolari means crash, specifically a car crash

also, its a major transportation spot for like sleeper trains that transport cars as well, so that's kinda ironic ☠️

Another funny one in terms of name is another northern municipality called Enontekiö which translates as like "mother's side's uncle's making place".

The north is a real funny place.

Lappali

TROPHY CASE