(no subject)

[bedlamsbard]

Something that happened lately that irritated me:

Seminar, last week, seminar member (white guy who's auditing) comes in, sits down, looks at me, and leans forward to say, "Excuse me, do you speak Cantonese?"

Followed by my withering look and, "I'm half-Japanese."

*sighs*

Yes. Because we all look the same. Japanese and Korean are relatively similar, but generally speaking, Japanese and Chinese? NOT SO MUCH. Also, yeah, sure, assume the Asian girl must be multi-lingual, let's go with that. No assumption, at least I don't think, that English wasn't my native language, considering that we're a month into the semester and I try and speak at least once a class. There are only a couple of words I pronounce like a non-native speaker because I grew up hearing them that way. ("Sixth" is the main one; I pronounce that one like my mother says it, "sik-th", instead of the way most native (American, at least) speakers pronounce it.) All my other pronunciation quirks are regional, I think.

Humans. Argh.

Comments

[autumnia]

I empathize with you! I get those type of questions from time to time from non-Asians, and it does bother me.

When I'm in those types of situations with Asians... well... I've had Japanese people speak to me in Japanese but I'm usually not bothered by it because that happens when I'm in a Japanese store. What really irks me is when a Chinese person comes up (and this happens on the phone a lot) and immediately starts talking in Mandarin. I don't speak a word of it (I speak Cantonese) and I can't stand how they just assume I speak it.

[bedlamsbard]

Yeah. *sighs* I've been mistaken for straight Japanese before, although in a sort of logical setting, I guess -- I was in the Sea-Tac airport, and the guy was clearly meeting someone who he'd never met before, so he probably saw "lone Asian-looking girl" and hoped for the best. I've had people automatically assume that I must know Japanese! My mother is Japanese! What's wrong wtih me that I don't speak the language?

The last time I was in Japan, though, I don't think anybody looked at me and automatically assumed I was pure Japanese, though. Possibly my body language screams, "American!"

[whatistigerbalm]

The hell, I could tell the difference between people from different countries before I'd ever set foot outside my own (zero-diversity at that) country. I can't understand how people who actually live in complex places can't do this.

[bedlamsbard]

Well, there's not a huge Asian population in New Orleans -- there's actually a fairly sizable Vietnamese population, and a lot more Japanese restaurants than I expected when I came here -- but still. I'm sort of irritated by the implicit assumption that since I'm non-white, I should speak another language fluently. I'd be less irritated if instead of jumping straight into the language question (and the assumption implicit therein), he'd asked if I was Chinese first. Probably still slightly irritated, but less so.

Agh, people.