What do they mistake you for?

[Sarah_Woodruff]

@monstro

It’s funny what happens when people don’t really know “what” you are…
It’s almost like a lot of us don’t know how to interact with someone unless we know if he or she is “one of us”.

On the upside, you’re less likely to stick out like a sore thumb among diverse populations. And if you have a flair for learning different cultures, you can “pass” whenever you feel like it (something I just don’t have the knack or desire for).

This accords with my experience. I have been mistaken for as many ethnicities as someone with black hair, dark brown eyes and olive skin can be! In Italy people would commonly address me in Italian (I can speak about 2 words of Italian), an old Greek couple said something to me in Greek when we were standing in line at the bus-stop, etc. etc. I’ve also been mistaken for Welsh, Jewish and French.

I have Indian (asian India), Southern English and Portuguese ancestry, and usually only Indians can pick that I’m part-Indian. Having to explain it all to curious people doesn’t bother me though. I’ve never experienced any kind of overt racism.

I presume that in the US I’d be seen as hispanic or Italian?

[Detritus]

I’ve got untannable white skin, dishwater blonde hair, very dark brown eyebrows, and almost black eyes. I’m basically another Euro-mutt, with a dash of two or three Native American tribes added late in the mix. Whenever anyone asks “Are you ____?” as a reference to my physical appearance, my usual response is “Probably.”
Accents, now…Even though I can’t seem to speak with an accent intentionally without embarassing myself, I’m terrible about inadvertantly picking up accents, phrasing, and cadences from others.
I get asked if I am Canadian at least once a month, more frequently during hockey season. (Born & raised in Idaho, currently residing in Texas.)

[Southpaw]

I have dark brown hair, grayish-greenish eyes and medium/olive complexion. Few people believe I am of Swedish/Norwegian ancestry (at least until they see my very Scandinavian name). Its amazing how many people think all Scandinavians are blue-eyed blondes. :rolleyes:

The funny thing is my mom’s Swedish relatives think I look very Norwegian; while my Dad’s Norwegian relatives think I look Swedish.

[marque_elf]

I’m 100% German Ashkenazi and think that I look Jewish. I’ve got, or had, very dark brown wavy hair, light blue eyes and my nose is by no means petite. My skin color tends to be fairly pink. I’ve had housemates assume I was Italian-American, mostly because when it was turn to cook I usually made something involving tomato sauce. I did have one housemate, from Fergus falls,MN, when I told him I was Jewish, ask me if I was full-blooded. WTF? I then asked him if he was a full-bloded Minnesotan. He looked at me as if I’d begun to babble in Akkadian or something.

I think I look pretty American but all over Europe, Germans would stop to talk to me and speak German. What German I know before that trip came from watching war movies. Since my ancestry is German-Jewish, I guess that it wasn’t unreasonable for them to make ths maistake. Once I was sitting on a park bench in Vienna reading The International Herald Tribune, an English language paper, and holding it at eye level to keep the sun out of my eyes when a man came up to me and asked me a long question in German. I politely told him in German that I didn’t speak German, about the only words of German I knew at that time. He apologized and switched to English and asked me for directions. I told him that this was my first day in Vienna and if what he wanted wasn’t on my tourist map, I wouldn’t be able to help. he couldn’t find what he wanted on the map and he found somebody else to help him.

People often mistake me for a road atlas, however. Wherever I go, I always get asked by strangers for local directions. I don’t think this has anything to do with my preceived ethnicity though.

[Queen_Bruin]

I’m 3/8s German, 1/8 Welsh, and the other half is a British Isles conglomerate with a teensy bit of Native American thrown in. Medium olive skin, brown eyes, and dark reddish brown hair. I have been mistaken for:

Any various and sundry Hispanic
Any various and sundry Middle Eastern
Greek
Italian
Part Korean
Filipino (well I guess that counts as Hispanic, but I’ve been mistaken to be my nephew’s mother; he is half Filipino).
American Indian
Indian

But I’m just another Euro-mutt. Admittedly I get this a bit less now that I’ve stopped dying my hair black (I went through a gothy phase).

[Shana]

I’m part Italian and the rest is English/Scottish…I get French a lot. Maybe because I have dark hair and pale skin. Sometimes people have asked if I’m from England, which completely baffles me…Once in college someone asked if I was half Japanese - but then, he was quite stoned…

[Jman]

I’m quite happy when locals mistake me for German. It doesn’t happen very often, because I’ll use very standard German, while they expect the slang, which I don’t know very well. It doesn’t help that I live in an area of Germany that speaks horrible German. (They call it Kartoffelndeutsch (potato German), because the pronunciation is so bad). I get mistaken as a native speaker much more often outside my town. Once I hit Austria or Switzerland, they think I’m speaking standard Hochdeutsch, so they assume I’m a visitor from northern Germany, as opposed to an American. My cover gets blown once they say something I can’t completely understand, though.

[Miss_Purl_McKnittington]

@The Weird One

Someone told me that I have a “precise” way of pronoucing words that makes me sound foreign. <snip> So apparently I have some sort of family accent, plus I was in speech therapy when I was younger because I couldn’t pronouce “m,” “n,” “s” or “ing” sounds. Like I said, though, it’s only the folks in Wisconsin who hear the “foreign” accent; everyone picks up on the Northern Midwest accent and guesses Canadian. <snip> When I hear my voice in recordings, it sounds very thick and congested to me.

I’m from Wisconsin and was in speech therapy when I was younger, too, and I’ve gotten the accent thing over the phone. When I’m under stress or emotional, my impediment comes creeping back (f, th, and other mushy sounds) and I start to overcompensate by pro-noun-cing ev-er-y-thing. Nobody’s ever guessed a specific accent, just that I have an accent that isn’t American. It usually comes from young male telemarketers, though, so maybe they’re just trying to sell me something . . .

[Mississippienne]

I apparently have a German-esque accent when speaking French. In Montreal, where I was hostelling with a lot of Europeans, I was mistaken for German by not just the French, but also a Swiss girl who was fluent in la langue allemande.

Amusingly, one ethnicity I am NEVER mistaken for is Jewish. I say amusingly because recently I was applying for a job at a synagogue. The interviewer sat me down, stared at me for several long moments, then said, “You’re not… Jewish… are you?” It was much the same reaction when I met Agent Foxtrot’s rabbi. She gave me this sort of quizzacle look, as though she just knew I wasn’t Jewish and was wondering if I’d wandered in by mistake.

Alias, one thing I noticed about your picture is that you have wide facial bones, which is a trait you often see in Asian/Native American persons. This may be behind your misindentifications.