Okay, I and my husband are Filipinos. We're also Canadians who are living on a sort of diplomatic exchange in the United Kingdom. We love traveling. We love learning about other cultures. We've also had the privilege of meeting lots of people - very traveled, very culturally aware as well as very ignorant. Now, we've learned to accept that there
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Moreover, since I'm from a country where people do not usually look, well, Asian, it drove me nuts when AFTER telling them where I'm from and grew up, people would attempt to "teach" me supposed facts about the place where I had spent years living in (even the language (!!!) which led to a pretty embarrassing incident, for the idiotic pseudo-teacher of course, during my freshman year in college.
People enjoy making cultural assumptions (of the politically incorrect kind) that sometimes can be simply offensive. But as you said, curiosity is understandable, but flat out ignorance and even arrogance is intolerable.
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When I went to the US for college, people would literally stare at me whenever I spoke Spanish or said I was Hispanic. In London, or big cities like NY, people were less confused by my cultural ambiguity.
Next time people ask you where you're really from, tell them Angola or something like that. I know someone who has Colombian origins but was born in Alexandria, Egypt. You should see people's reactions at that.
Even with globalization and the so called more connectivity, people are still living in social bubbles.
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In any case, looks aside, language is also a way of identification. So if you look like X, people tend to automatically assume you speak language X people should speak.
At this point of my life, I'm used to people not believing or believing me, correcting me when they are the ones not knowing, challenging, etc. Nevertheless, there are perks. I have fun unintentionally eavesdropping some conversations. And just for kicks, I try to avoid speaking a language as much as possible and see what people say. It's really priceless to see shocked or even embarrassed faces when I'm introduced as "oh yeah, this is so and so and she also speaks..."
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