How ethnic do I look to people

[Jester]

Cia, you go ahead and call it whatever you wish. Jester knows we are not supposed to correct one another's grammar or spelling here.

Sorry. Personal pet peeve. My bad. I'm an idiot. I'll shut up now.

[gerund]

we are not supposed to correct one another's grammar or spelling here.

That's correct and I agree. But here we can.

[dalesys]

... called "Iowegians"

That's just to wind up the "Sveeds"... and the pastries... (gr-gr-grandma Hansen)

[Golden Phoenix]

If said co-worker didn't go on to admit that there are some, er, 'peculiar' British Isles pronunciations, accents, dialects, and vernaculars, they weren't playing fairly. Cockney, Geordie, Brummie, etc. etc.

My husband has to act as translator for me when we meet up with his family from stoke on trent. "potteries" dialect is very thick and notoriously hard to understand.

The older members of his family, i can probably understand one word in 3, if they speak slowly. I was born and grew up less than an hour away from where they live!

[Kit-Ginevra]

Try learning English from someone from the Black Country

[Dreamstalker]

I am PURE European (central and eastern) by birth (meaning lily white no real tan or anything). I have had enough people ask me what tribe I belong to.

I had a 'friend' in college who thought I was Native American. To this day I'm not sure why; I'm Irish/Slovak/Polish/something else. There are rumors that there may be (have been?) some Native blood somewhere on my mother's parents' side, but that remains unproven.

[ralerin]

Posted before somewhere but I'll post it again: I am American but my parents are from Quebec and speak French at home; ergo I grew up with an accent. Not a French one but a Canadian English one which is odd.

I am occasionally asked what country I'm from and it always baffles people when I say I'm American. Some assume Irish, French, Canadian, etc.

Currently I'm learning Norwegian and my friend who lives near Oslo jokes that I speak Norwegian with an English accent. However he seemed pleased that I was pronouncing Oslo as "Oshlo", which is how Norwegians pronounce it.

Also had a gentleman come in last month with one heck of a strange accent. I asked him that I couldn't place his accent and could he please tell me where he came from? He was Australian and also from New Jersey. Also had a guy come in from the Netherlands the other day, I guessed it right away.

[Cia]

Sorry. Personal pet peeve. My bad. I'm an idiot. I'll shut up now.

Everything's okay Jester.

[SailorMan]

Anyway, in the Middle East when ashore, active-duty Navy sailors tend to think that I'm Middle-Eastern, which baffles me. I mean, blue eyes, light skin? Maybe it's the goatee, which they're not allowed to have.

Well, my local 11-7 convenience store has a new clerk. When I came up to the counter he was on the phone, speaking Arabic. In Arabic, I told him "I speak a little Arabic." And guess what? HE thought I was an Arab, too.

When I assured him I wasn't, he wanted to know how I learned it. I told him that I started learning it in college, because I wanted to be an archeologist. Actually, and more narrowly, I wanted to be an Assyriologist, although I couldn't finish college. Still intensely interested in the subject, though (I'm probably the only sailor on a gray-hulled vessel who has Sumerian cuneiform flashcards). All the archeology in that field is done in Arab countries, so I started learning Arabic early on.

Guess I'm even more baffled, now.

there are Middle Eastern people with light eyes. this one picture comes to mind http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/20...irl/index-text

The lady in question comes from a group of people who, although they and their ancestors have lived in the Middle East for years, if not a couple millennia, are of Indo-European descent, and are therefore more closely related to peoples who speak European languages, than they are to peoples who speak Arabic or the other Semitic languages.

[Mini Mammoth]

I have fun and games - my family is Anglo-German. I am short and stocky with curves, hint-of-olive white skin, dark hair, natural dark circles round blueish green eyes. All in all, I look fairly dark for a white Englander, possibly Europeanish. What do I get mistaken for the most? Jewish.

The story I was always told was that I take after the German side of the family, whose ancestry is mottled at best There probably WAS someone Jewish in there somewhere, but it means nothing now. In fact, during wartime my family looked so like the Jewish stereotype circulating at the time that no one would have taken them seriously even if they HAD been fans of Nazism.

My first week at Uni I met a girl in Halls. We decided to go sign up for societies together and as we were wandering round, this girl pulled me over to the Jewish society bench and seemed utterly astonished when I said I wouldn't join because I wasn't Jewish. Up to this point we hadn't even mentioned religious leanings in conversation or come close to it and not actually being Jewish or knowing anything about Judaism beyond the name of the Torah, I can't say it's likely I gave an impression of being Jewish to her either (beyond my face anyway). I came clean with her and explained that whilst I wasn't totally English my family weren't Nazis either but geez.... not exactly surprised she lost interest in me soon afterwards. That was a whole new level of awkward honesty...

[Dreamstalker]

An aunt of mine has traced some Jewish roots to around the 1400s or so. Probably not enough to show up in myself, but I have been called 'honorary Jewish' by a few family friends.

[greek_jester]

My mother had fun growing up in the 50's. My maternal side can best be described as mutts; while my maternal grandmother was Greek, between her and my maternal grandfather we have:

1) Greek
2) Indian
3) Jewish
4) English
5) Somewhere Eastern European a ways back.

My mother, bless her, looked pure Indian when she was a little girl. One day the only other non-white resident of the school (actually Indian) hurt herself quite badly and, in her distress, forgot how to speak English. The teacher kept slapping mum and yelling at her to "speak in her own language!" Mum kept saying, rather tearfully, that she was speaking in her own language, which would get her another slap.

Needless to say mum really didn't like her school...