Have you ever noticed someone who just doesn’t seem to be from here (where ever “here” may be)?
I’m not talking about someone from India wearing a sari in a shopping mall in Baycity, TX. Or a Wyoming cowboy on vacation in NYC, standing around in boots and a Stetson gawking at the skyscrapers. Nor am I speaking of an ethnicity that may be a minority in the area.
What I’m thinking of is when you see someone who almost, but not quite, blends into the crowd. But something about them makes you notice. Perhaps it a subtle difference in their clothing. Or maybe it’s the way they seem to carry themselves. Posture, body language, hairstyle, make up? There they are, wearing their jeans, shirt, shoes … But something makes you think to yourself, “I’ll bet they’re not from here.”
It may be completely coincidental, but I used to regularly pick up on which groups of people or singles were from different countries. And that was without hearing them talk. I’ve heard others say they do this, too. Public places/events, parties, restaurants, about the town, etc …
So, what is it? Is it selective memory? Are we simply remembering when we guessed right? Or are there really subtle clues that some people are able to pick up on? Imagination? Real phenomenon? Thoughts, agreement, disagreement, observations, theories?
It can be easy to tell depending on how familiar you are. For example, I’m pretty good at spotting the American Chinese in China before they even open their mouths. Has to do with a milk fed diet, nutrician, personal space, way of wearing clothes (clothes can be identical), mannerisms, etc.
My unprofessional guess would be that body language plays a big part. In extreme situations, we can tell who is uncomfortable, and perhaps to a lesser degree, we pick up similar clues from those in unfamiliar circumstances.
Same here. I can’t recognize ethnic Koreans who grew up in Japan, but people who grew up in Korea, China or the West just stick out in Japan. The hairstyles, fashions and ways people carry themselves are noticably different for each culture.
I worked at a very busy youth hostel for two summers, and the vast majority of our guests were foreigners (non-Americans). Others seem skeptical when I tell the story now, but towards the end of each summer, after months of long shifts dealing with someone of a different nationality every couple minutes, I developed a fairly accurate ability to guess where someone was from the minute they walked into the hostel, before they pulled out their passport and before I heard them speak. It wasn’t foolproof of course, but I was getting pretty darned good at it. (Admittedly, this may just be the selective memory thing mentioned in the OP, but I don’t think so.)
By way of a slightly roundabout recommendation, if you’re interested in the OP I highly recommend that you check out the book The Charm School by Nelson DeMille.
Well there was this guy I worked with that had a very strange something about him; the general concensus was that he wasn´t from this planet, or at least his mind operated at a different spatial plane.
Californians. Can spot them every time. Having a conversation, when something just seems off. Somehow it’ll come up that they are from California, and I’ll think to myself, “Yep, that’s it. That’s it exactly. That explains everything.”
A friend and I were just talking this afternoon about how you can spot mainland Chinese people in Hong Kong, even if they’re don’t have ruddy cheeks and look like their hair has been cut with a knife and a rock.
My home town has a navy base and a large university population,added to that we get a fair few "Irish"Irish (as opposed to english Irish) straight off the bus from the emerald isle .you can spot the sailors in civvies (overly smart "casual"clothing),the students (all seem to dress down ) the Irish(just different somehow ) Oh and i nearly forgot we get a fair few young males from lowland Scotland(Welfare tourists we call them over here ) and theyre quite noticeable ,a bit of a giveaway is their shouting loudly in broad glasweigan accents after having managed to get drunk out of their minds by 11 in the morning and vomiting onto the sidewalk !Theyre always pretty noticeable as well begging outside of the railway station having spent all of their unemployment welfare cans of super strength lager.
Recently I went on a guided tour of the town where my family lives and where I grew up.
After a while, I asked the guide where was she from. Very smug, she said “oh, you ask because I don’t have the accent, don’t you?” “No, I ask because some of the things you say wouldn’t be said by a local.” I’m a local and I don’t have the accent either.
She told me she was born in (Thistown) and is now living (Twovillagesaway). A while later I heard somebody else ask; later, a third. Being born in Thistown has no merit in and of itself, since it’s where the local maternity has been for the last 300+ years. Before the current hospital was made, there was already a “House of Mercy” which served as maternity and old people’s home; it still exists but the maternity ward was divested to the hospital.
After a while, some of us locals would just look at each other every time she Did It Again.
She made a lot of “professional” mistakes, like claim that St John the Baptist wore sheepskins (no, dear, camel) or mistake two Capra Hispanica for unicorns (if those two are unicorns, I’m the Pope, which would take some serious surgery since you’ve got to be male). But mostly, she said a lot of things that no local would ever say, I’m not going to bore you with details that wouldn’t mean much to you. Some of them would have been the local equivalent of a NYC guide calling the Chrysler Building “that ugly heap”; a few decades ago, she would have been likely to get dipped in an irrigation ditch (traditional method to see if the rinsing wakes the moron in question up).
