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Appearantly my looks are an enigma for people who want to stick ethnic labels to other people.
In highschool someone bluntly asked what country I was from.
" Holland."
" Yeah, right."
Later an Indonesian man thought I was his long lost son, and the Caribean cleaning lady in our student house thought I was from Aruba. I have appearantly been mistaken for anything, from Latin American to Japanese and from Mediterranean to Indian.
The strangest event though was when I was taking a drawing course. The teacher was an American, so we talked English to him, but I noticed that all the other students were speaking Spanish together. I thought it was rather rude, as they were in Holland and I didn't understand a word of what they were saying. Another guy was also just staring at them as if he felt left out. Later on he turned out to be Albanian. It seemed that all the others were Latin Americans, Costa Ricans and Columbians. And, because of what we looked like, they thought we were Hispanic too!
A similar thing happened when I visited Italy. I had practiced hard at my pronounciation. "Scuzi, dove est il cabinetto?". So when I realy needed to go, I ran into a hotel and blurted out the only sentence I knew, whereupon the gentleman at the counter replied with an endless stream of words. All I could do was mutter: " excuse me..." The man frowned and told me shortly that the toilet was for customers only. I suspect that he actually meant 'customers and Italians'...
It's a nice thought though, that appearantly I can blend in everywhere and that people often think I am of their ethnic group. All I have to do now is to learn 6000 languages. |
Written by Clifftown (642 comments posted) 10th January 2007 | | Interesting piece, and isn't it fascinating how we are labelled (lazily) by our looks? I am an Essex girl, born and bred, and have never lived anywhere else, but I've lost count of the amount of times people have asked "so what country are you from then?" when I meet them for the first time. One lady came over during a writing course and started speaking to me in Swedish, thinking I was the same nationality as her. So I can sympathise a little! |
Written by Fledermaus (3489 comments posted) 10th January 2007 | Thanks Cliff,
Funny, isn't it? And I've heard the same from other people. My best friend is often asked for directions in Mandarin or Japanese, both of which she doesn't speak.  | Hi Fledermaus
Written by jean.day (2366 comments posted) 10th January 2007 | I enjoyed reading this, and it makes me curious as to what you really look like. My Dutch relatives, and their neighbours, as a whole part of North Dakota was settled by people from the same region, are pretty ordinary looking - as far as I could see. Some blond with blue eyes, some dark with brown, some big and stocky, some slim and dainty. Most of them very shy, almost painfully so.
People don't question where I am from due to my looks, but from my accent. I have been thought to have come from Ireland, and Canada (understandable enough) but also Devon and the occasional other country. The US is seldom the first guess. |
Written by Fledermaus (3489 comments posted) 10th January 2007 | Hi Jean,
If I have to stick a label to myself it'd probably be Eurasian, so I don't look like the average white Dutchman  Funnily enough though only few people guessed close and even they thought I was Indo.
Accents can be misleading too indeed. I just met some people from Friesland and I actually thought they were foreigners! |
Written by Witzl (1585 comments posted) 10th January 2007 | | Interesting piece, Fledermaus. My children would sympathize with you. They both went to Japanese schools from infancy and the first words they spoke were Japanese. Their friends never questioned what they were, but when they went on school excursions, my kids always came back looking angry and unhappy. In our own little community and at their own school, everyone knew my kids and they were just part of the group. Away from their own area, however, my children stood out and no one knew them personally or saw them as individuals. They were simply foreigners -- or 'gaijin.' Their friends, to my everlasting gratitude, were indignant when this happened. On one occasion, I heard one angrily exclaim 'She isn't a foreigner, she's Hannah!' I will never forget that. |
Written by Fledermaus (3489 comments posted) 10th January 2007 | Hi Witzl.
That must have been incredibly strange. My brother told me about a black collegue of him who went to China. He turned into some sort of tourist attraction! |
Written by Bottleblondesurfer (3567 comments posted) 10th January 2007 | Quite a thought provoking piece,written with a humourous light touch which i think says more about cultural differences than many a worthy and lengthy polemic that I see in magasines. I have to mark papers by foreign students studying English and you often get their impressions and ideas about the English in the stories, which is a real eye opener. I get the impression that they may all want to learn the language but they don't like us much on the whole.
Hey,with that ability to blend in and once you've learned the languages you would make the perfect spy- how are you with an ouzi?
cheers
J |
Written by Witzl (1585 comments posted) 10th January 2007 | When I first went to the Netherlands, I had already spent two years in Japan. In Japan, of course, I stood out, particularly in the small town I had been living in. People would sometimes make comments about me quite openly, and often I would understand their comments -- a very uncomfortable experience for me, though also very amusing at times. When I got to Amsterdam, ridiculous though it sounds, I suddenly felt as though I must stand out terribly. Everyone around me was speaking a foreign language, and I had a few moments when I wondered what they were saying about me, this foreigner in their midst. I felt this way on countless occasions, even though I knew intellectually that it was nonsense. Of course, it was no more than my own paranoia and insecurity. No one was paying me any attention at all or noticing me in the slightest, and in fact I had many people address me in Dutch.
I once had the interesting experience of taking a Japanese-American friend's brother around Sendai. He did not speak Japanese at all, and wherever we went, people talked to him and I answered for him. It really cracked us up, because the people we met thought we were very weird indeed. |
Written by Fledermaus (3489 comments posted) 11th January 2007 | Hi Witzl.
Thank must have been strange indeed. In Japan you looked differently, but you understood everything, while in Holland you looked the same, but couldn't understand the people.
Funny annecdote about your friend. It's realy a pity if people don't learn the language of their ancestors. That's also the main reason why I'm trying to learn some Chinese now. By now I can almost predict what Chinese people I'm introduced to say... 
" But you don't look Chinese! Can you speak Chinese?" |
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