I once worked in retail with an young (British) English man who said he could spot British people at 50 paces and he was actually pretty good at it. He said they just had a “look” to them.
Assume you’re in some giant international airport. If you see a group of people with the approximate skin hues of your nationality, could you spot your own nationality at a distance based on the way they look and behave before you would ever hear their voices?
As an example are there any American, Canadian, New Zealand, UK or Australian dopers who think they can distinguish their countrymen at a distance?
I live in NYC, a very international place. I’m pretty good at spotting ‘other’ people. I can spot British people, and I can spot Eastern European girls pretty good although splitting between Polish and Romanian and Latvian is more difficult.
Like Zebra, I can pick out an Eastern European easily enough although I wouldn’t place a bet on whether they’re a Pole or a Czech. I’m not Serbian but I’ve worked with a bunch and can “always” spot one in a crowd based on looks.
My wife is from Peru and can rattle off the origin of most people from Latin America on sight.
Of course, it’s not as though we ask all of these people afterwards and compare notes so take it with a grain of salt. And my examples are more ethnic. I’m not sure if I could tell an American from a Canadian if both were hanging around Heathrow Airport with their mouths shut. Well, except that the American would be wearing a big cowboy hat and the Canadian would be carring a line of trapped beavers.
I’m certain that I can’t do it for Australians, unless something like an item of clothing gives it away. Even then you can’t be sure: the person wearing a T-shirt with an Australian flag may just have visited Australia.
I can often spot Québécois, or more precisely, Québécoises (for some reason women are easier to tell than men), by appearance. There’s a particular facial structure that’s difficult to describe but is fairly distinctive.
I can generally pick out Americans overseas. It really isn’t the facial features but rather the clothing and the way they may carry themselves.
A friend of mine whose parents are Indian but was born and raised in the States said that people in India could pick him out as an American even when wearing clothing purchased in Indian. He said it had something to do with body language.
Finns are pretty easy to pick out abroad because a lot of us are blondes. Also, there is a certain reservedness when communicating with other people: we tend to keep a wider personal space between us and the other person than a lot of other nationalities.
Also, the horribly embarrassing bad-touristy type ones will be drunk and have Suomi Finland Perkele -t-shirts on.
Yup. When living in Seoul I could easily pick out the Koreans that’d been brought up the US. For the most part, anyway. There’s a certain way they dress and act that singles them out.
I can’t really tell Korean Americans from Chinese Americans or Japanese Americans, but I can definitely distinguish between them if they haven’t been brought up here.
Hmm. I can generally spot Indonesians relatively well but sometimes they get lost in “hey, Pacific Islander!”, and thinking about it, there is definitely a body language difference between Americans and non-Americans. I’m pretty sure I fall into the first bucket.
I can’t pick Australians usually, but I can often pick Americans/Canadians in Australia. I’m not sure why - maybe it’s the clothing, which alays seems somehow preppy to me or something. It’s also the fact that they tend to have baby faces (comes from years of not squinting into a baking sun)*.
*This doesn’t explain why I can’t usually pick the British though (maybe their clothing and the way they carry themselves is too similar to our own).
To my mind, it’s harder than it used to be. Most young Irish people wear American clothing to a tee with people going to America specifically to shop for preppy stuff, Abercrombie et al. Apart from say Irish people sporting Gaelic Athletic Association jerseys or more Celtic FC jerseys than you’d see in Britain there is very little to separate them. Unless they were taking the piss an Irish kid wouldn’t wear a baseball cap backwards.
Irish people will be more likely to be in a bar or drinking maybe than other nationalities.
Irish people tend to be less tanned than most other white people but lots of people go on sun holidays and use tanning booths etc so that’s levelled out somewhat.
If there’s an Irish “look” then I’d imagine it’s diluted by the amount of migration we’ve had with so many British and American people essentially Irish transplants.
I’d say for the most part I can identify people of my nationality but my miss rate would be high enough.
Yes, for nationalities that I have close links to. Skin tone and teeth play a huge part in addition to the aforementioned body language/ clothing.
Non-Russians new to Moscow would often ask me ‘Can they tell I’m foreign’. Answer: the huge flashing neon sign over your head gives it away. When everything about you screams ‘foreign’, you haven’t got much hope of hiding.
I’m of mixed heritage and everyone always assumes I’m either Persian or from the middle east, or Greek or Italian or of other Mediterranean descent.
Everyone except fellow latinos. I can’t tell you how many, without ever being introduced before, have automatically begun speaking to me in Spanish. Nobody else ever gets it right, but they always do.
If I see a family group on an international airport, and
-Mom, dad and kids are all tall, and neither obese nor skinny;
-They are all rather practically dressed and no-one has an elaborate hairdo;
-They all have a certain pert bearing
-Mom seems to be in charge;
Then I’m willing to bet the family is Dutch.
If I see a short, stocky guy on my Dutch streets who is young, and yet wears a beard or a goatee, wears long shorts, sneakers and a T-shirt with some tekst or design on it, and a backpack, I don’t even need to bet; I *know *that guy is an American. Dutch young guys don’t wear beards.
I can often (but not always) recognize fellow Israelis. Not on looks – I doubt there are many more heterogeneous-looking nations on the face of the Earth – but by body language (and general loudness… :rolleyes: )
I’ll often try and get closer to them and see if they’re speaking Hebrew. And there’s a 100% chance of finding if I was right – because, if they aren’t talking at the top of their voices, then they aren’t Israelis after all! :smack:
I can usually tell whether a given snowbird is Canadian or American, and I can also usually tell whether someone is from one of the former Yugoslavian republics – we have a lot of Serbs, Bosnians, and Croatians locally, and I can ordinarily tell if a given group of people is from that area.
Also, I’m good at spotting where the foreign tourists are from if they’re from Western Europe. Germans on vacation do not look like Brits on vacation and neither one looks like the French.
Being a US American, you would think that my answer to your question would be no (melting pot and all that), but I do think that those who are second-generation or more definitely have an American “look” to them. It can’t be the actual physical appearance, since this seems to me to cut across all races and ethnicities. Must be the clothing, the attidude, or something. I don’t know. I guess more to the point is if I see someone who is NOT an American, it usually seems really obvious just from looking.
I remember being in Paris in, oh, 1986-ish, not speaking a word of French, and needing to know the time. I spotted an American guy from a good two blocks away.
How did I know he was American? No idea. I could just tell.
