Asklemmy

43856 readers

1615 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

103

Why do people keep asking where I'm from? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by Shampoo_Bottle@lemmy.ca to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

114 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Up until I started working, I didn't really encounter that question. When I did start working, people started asking me that question.

Them: Where are you from?

Me: Canada.

Them: Where are your grandparents from?

Me: Canada.

Them: Ok, where are your great grandparents from?

Me: Canada.

It's irritating sometimes. I just want to exist, do my job and go home, like anyone else. Once is ok, twice is odd, three times is weird, and the fourth time is a pattern.

The only accent that I might have would probably be from Newfoundland, Canada, as I grew up with a lot of people from there. I also talk too fast sometimes.

Have you had similar experiences, and if so, how did you handle it? Can fast speech patterns cause this? Why do random people care so much?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Thalion@lemmy.ca 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Personally when someone asks me where I'm from, I respond in order of:

A) if I'm in my home city, I tell them the province I grew up in (because I came from a small town I would never expect anyone to know, if it was a big city I'd say that.)

B) If I'm away from my home city in my home province, I tell them my home city.

C) if I'm away from my home province, I tell them my home province.

D) if I'm away from Canada I'll tell them I'm from Canada

E) if based on context it seems they're asking about my ethnic background, I tell them I'm some kind of western/northern European mutt.

Now obviously I'm white as hell and no accent, but OP is saying they're basically that as well, so I'm not sure why race would be the assumption for them either. I don't even know how I would respond if i asked someone at work where they're from and they answered Canada.