How ethnic do I look to people

[notalwaysright]

If you want a confusing accent, try listening to Lloyd Grossman talk. It's confused Brits for years!

Wow, I just looked him up... I would replace confusing with unpleasant. I did not care for it. I hope that's not what I would sound like if I moved to England. I like accents. When I was in Japan I told my host-sisters that I liked listening to them, and they laughed and said, "no, Japanese isn't pretty, French is!" The funny thing is that my ethnicity is mostly German, and I can't for the life of my pronounce German words correctly.

[Racket_Man]

I know I have posted this before---

I live in an area that has a large Native American population. 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. And the kicker is EVEN some of the Natives have asked the same question.

[Tama]

Do you have dark, exotic eyes or something?

[fireheart]

Fireheart I think most kiwis think of the gold coast or Sydney - you mean there js more

Yes, there is more thankyou very much!

I mean I KNOW that Australia used to be called NSW back in the 1700's, but I didn't think that the Kiwis were THAT far behind the loop....
At least we beat the Kiwis in The Amazing Race

[Kit-Ginevra]

Hell is Loyd Grossman and Janet Street Porter having a conversation...

At least we beat the Kiwis in the Amazing Race

But we're still ahead in the evolutionary race

[protege]

Is that a dialect of moron?

"Moron" and its dialects of "dipshit" and "assclown" seem to be pretty common my area as well. Unfortunately, I had to learn them, simply so I can deal with the locals

However, if I leave the area, and use the word "jagoff" or "gumband" people know *exactly* which city I hail from.

[KatherineB]

Hell is Loyd Grossman and Janet Street Porter having a conversation...



But we're still ahead in the evolutionary race

I suppose all those nights curled up with your favourite sheep had to do something for you.

[Seshat]

Blond hair, blue eyes, whiter than sour cream and yet somehow I'm assumed to not speak English. Especially in a job where English proficiency is a must.

Mooncat beat me to the concept, but Aryan Caucasian is more than the British Isles & Ireland. Northern France, Poland, Germany, Austria, all the Scandinavian countries, a lot of Russia, quite a few of the Slavic countries ... all blonde, blue-eyed, whiter than sour cream, and with variations of the Aryan-Caucasian bone structure.

My guess would be that you have a Scandinavian or Slavic variant of the bone structure, and you're encountering people familiar enough with that to assume you're a Viking or something.

That's actually surprising given that when most people think of Australia, they think of either Sydney or Queensland first (somehow Sydney becomes a state ).

Most Kiwis - er, New Zealanders - that I've met are reasonably familiar with Aussieland. More so than some Aussies.

That said, most Kiwis I've met were either over here, or online.

[dalesys]

Most Kiwis - er, New Zealanders...

(and Brits, and Irish) are insular.

[EricKei]

I've had the opposite issue -- I'm from New Orleans, I basically have a neutral "generic American" non-accent (or so I've been repeatedly told), and I have been asked "Why DON'T you have an accent?" before.

That being said, I can slip into Redneck, Yat (start with Brooklynese on quaaluudes and go from there), and Georgia Peach at will -- I have relatives from each of those groups, and I'm of mostly Southern German/Northern French (read: Alsace-Lorraine) ancestry on both sides.

[BroSCFischer]

Chances are, given my disposition, if someone was rude enough to ask that, my response would be on of the following:

1) Sprechen zie Deutsch?
2) Habla espanol?
3) No.

But that's just me.

SC

[mjr]

There even are places where English completely disappears.
In America, they haven't used it for years!

Yeah...a few of us even had to get the "English" Rosetta Stone.



A British co-worker of mine likes to joke about American English that "There's English, and there's wrong."

I used to joke with people that there should be one of those language learning tools for learning "redneck" or something.

Something like this:

Speaker: "Potato"
Translator: "Tater"

Speaker: "Tomato"
Translator: "T'mater"

Speaker: "Drink"
Translater: "Drank" (as in, "I need a drank")

Or some such.

But that would probably make us look more stupid than the rest of the world already thinks we are.

[notalwaysright]

Random story: We used to have a lady at our work who spoke Russian. She learned it from her husband, she had medium brown hair, gray eyes. Some people insulted her in Russian, and she said something back also in that language. I don't know what she said, but the two woman who had said the mean things turned and left the store. They didn't expect anyone to understand, I suppose.

I have been noticing a weird trend where people say things like:

"Are we out of milk?"
"You want I should go look?"

....No.

[MoonCat]

Re: Aryans....my understanding of this term is that it's misused when used in relation to white folks. Aryans actually came from India and thereabouts. The term is actually a Sanskrit word. Also, in Iranian aryan apparently means "Iranian". Interesting factoid: The Persian (Iranian) language is related to Polish. Native Polish speakers and native Farsi speakers, when speaking English, have a very similar accent.

Hitler, ruddy little ignoramus* that he was, used the term Aryan to describe his "master race" but he used it incorrectly.



*This is what JRR Tolkien called Hitler

[Peppergirl]

I had a customer ask me the other day if I was from New York (City, presumably).

I am from Ohio, but just across the Kentucky border and, therefore, any accent I carry is slightly southern if anything.