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Why do Korean people sometimes think all western People are American?

Why do Korean people sometimes think all western People are American?

OK, with all due respect, and no offense, but, I am getting irritated.

I think it is annoying that one of the first things I hear, when being introduced to a Korean: My English name is ... Please use your Korean name! I am not English myself even, or American. Also I do not call my French, German, Dutch, Spanish or whatever colleague by an English, or Americanized
name.

Also the Romanized Korean is based on English spelling. I can understand Hangul better. And that is not just because I am studying Korean. English has the most in-consequent spelling of all languages that use Latin letters. And even if it did not, we all use the Latin alphabet slightly different.

Now there is the Korean Chuseok celebration this weekend. I know about the celebration even. Nevertheless, my Korean colleague writes me it is the Korean Thanksgiving. I probably now more about the Chuseok festival, than about Thanksgiving.

Out of protest, I wrote back: What is Thanksgiving?

For learning: Korean
Base language: English
Category: Culture

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    Yeah, like what he said. We all look alike. Americans tend to come up more, for some weird reason. I do get called German, Dutch, English, and about every other country on the earth. Hell, I've been told I'm from the Philippines!

    Try to understand, that in a lot of these cultures, especially Asian ones. They were really far behind in technology and what is cool and what's hip in culture. So English is kind of a hip cool language. They usually include it in their songs as kind of a cool/joking way. Americans include some Spanish in their songs in the same way. Everywhere in China, they have English names, even the Chinese call each other by English names sometimes and the rest in Chinese. It's kind of a big joke/cool to them.

    All in all, try not to be upset about it. Just think of it as them trying to be funny or be cool. If you want you can ask them to talk about it in the way they should. Also, sometimes they don't know how to translate it/think you won't understand so they try to put it in a simpler way.
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    Not sure if you meant the question to be rhetorical, but since you wrote in the ask a question, rather than the notebook, I'd think you were after an answer.

    We've all heard this, when a stereotypical white guy says, "[Asians] all look the same to me", but the opposite does hold true too. Asians can't differentiate between white guys either. Funnily enough, when I visited Turkey from a Hong Kong based tour, the locals all decided we were Japanese and would start off "Konichiwa" , go figure... People will usually already have a bias as to where your from at first glance. If they still can't tell once they hear your accent (assuming it's definitely un-American), then oh well.
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    I agree it's a bit annoying. It's like when people say "oh, so you speak Spanish?" when I say I'm from Brazil. We speak Portuguese, for crying out loud.
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    what a first world problem
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