[JildaWishian]

I always find learning people's heritage and culture interesting. It sort of just goes to show there's so much more to a person rather than the surface and assumptions you make and can always be interesting.

So this thread, basically what are you? Do you speak any other languages? Celebrate anything that's from your culture? Or do you have any stereotypes you maybe hate about your culture? Anything goes.

I, personally, am Cuban and Chinese – to be more exact 75% Cuban and 25% Chinese. I speak and read Spanish pretty fluently, though writing it take a bit more time.

I really hope this thread is okay I haven't made any threads yet but thought this would be interesting?

[rowanWishian]

I'm pasty mcwhite, but I do have some Irish heritage on my dad's side (with the red hair to match)! I had an ancestor, supposedly, who immigrated here during the potato famine. A good amount of my ancestors lived in California like me, and in my dad's local-county history book the family name's mentioned a few times (not the current one, but one of the older ones – macdonald!). On my mom's side I have the most miniscule amount of Cherokee it's barely worth mentioning.

I like to think I live up to some Irish stereotypes – I absolutely love to eat anything with potatoes, haha.

[lavenderWishian]

for a brief and succinct explanation I will provide this family portrait

but no omg all I can say is that my family is so white… but half my family is Texan country-folk (rednecks) and the other half is Kentucky city slickers. I don't like being around my family much lol

[fireheartWishian]

I'm jewish, but I pass as white pretty much 24/7 so that's what i usually call myself. my grandparents speak a variety of languages but i was raised only with english and a touch of german and yiddish, which i've long forgotten. i do speak french pretty well though – i studied it through all of high school and for a couple years in university. my family's non-practicing so the only thing we celebrate is chanukah, though i'm hoping to start observing more holidays sometime soon.

fun fact: before i was born, my parents had a cat named latke. no joke.

[DustfeatherWishian]

This seems like a really interesting thread

I'm from the UK — Wales, to be specific — and admittedly embody quite a few of the stereotypes (overly polite, very fond of tea, have a habit of understating things). Welsh culture isn't very widely known about, particularly outside of Britain, but we do have quite a few interesting traditions and things here

British traditions:
• Pancake Day/Shrove Tuesday: originally an Anglican festivity in which people would use up their remaining ingredients before Lent, this is now traditionally a day on which everyone, religious or otherwise, makes pancakes (usually topped with sugar and lemon juice).
• Bonfire Night: every year on November 5th, people gather around bonfires and put on elaborate firework displays. This began after Guy Fawkes's failed attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605, after which King James I made the day an annual celebration of the fact he was still alive. Even after he died, it just kind of kept happening, and is still celebrated today.
• Cheese Rolling: an annual event held in Gloucester in which hundreds of people travel from all over the country to chase a wheel of Double Gloucester cheese down a very steep hill. There are several events, and all the winners get a huge cheese wheel as a prize. Various health and safety organisations have attempted to ruin everyone's fun by banning the event, but fortunately this hasn't happened as of yet.

Welsh traditions:
• St. David's Day (Dydd Gwyl Dewi): St. David was the patron saint of Wales, and on March 1st, people celebrate in various ways, including visiting the cathedral in St. Davids (the smallest city in the UK, and the place where I went to school), making welshcakes, and in the case of children, dressing up like little farmers and Welsh ladies. Adults will often pin a small daffodil or a leek made of felt onto their clothes.
• St. Dwynwen's Day (Dydd Santes Dwynwen): the Welsh equivalent of Valentine's Day, which takes place on the 25th of January.
• Eisteddfod: a particular type of competition usually held around the time of St. David's Day. It involves singing, poetry, instrumental performances, and various others, and is all about celebrating the Welsh language and culture. These are sometimes done on a small scale (e.g. in schools) but there is also a national one.
• Lovespoons: carved wooden spoons designed to be given as gifts to loved ones. Certain designs can mean particular things (e.g. a lovespoon with a horseshoe carved into it signifies good luck).

In terms of ancestry, I'm a lot more English than Welsh My parents are both English, as were all of their parents, but my dad's side before that was all over the place: Polish, Dutch, Indonesian, German, and I may even have some distant relatives in Israel I've got a very rare surname (Sztencel, for those who don't know me on Facebook), and am probably the only person in the world with my full name. I only recently found out that I've been pronouncing my own surname incorrectly all my life, as have my parents, because apparently the proper Polish pronunciation of it sounds German, and having a German-sounding name in Britain during the 1940s-50s could result in you getting beaten up or even murdered in some cases, so for decades my family have just been pronouncing it “Stencil”, and never really bothered to go back.

My mum's family comes from a long line of coal-miners from north east England, which explains why we all hate the Tories so much.

[sageheartWishian]

I'm 75% American mutt, but a full 25% of me is Macedonian. I've been to Macedonian-American festivals with my father and grandmother, rest her soul, and it is a very fun, active Slavic-Greek fusion culture I'm proud to be a part of. But they have a big history of nationalism and violence to achieve independence from the 1700s through the early 1900s. A man at one of those Macedonian-American festivals once said, during a presentation, “Every person with Macedonian blood in them is the descendant of a revolutionary or a murderer.” That's always stuck with me.

[JildaWishian]

[member=55]fireheart[/member]

I too can pass as white – people often mistake me for it – but I personally don't like it. idk it ties in to that sterotype that all hispanics have tan skin and black hair which isn't true at all, in cuba you can find people of all different colors and appearances and whatnot. And then due to that I'm given a bit of a harder time at school ( my school is full of hispanics, a large majority being mexican ) and I'm constantly having to “prove” myself and it's really just all ridiculous. One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone goes “you can speak spanish? prove it” or try to correct you when cuban spanish is quite a bit different from other spanish like mexican, puerto rican, etc etc

/end rant ^^'

[member=6]Dustfeather[/member]
I've always found Welsh culture so interesting, somewhat due to a main character being Welsh in a book I once read but regardless haha. You guys have a load of unique holidays/traditions wow, lovespoons sound so adorable.

[member=58]sageheart[/member]
I've never heard of macedonians (or maybe I have but I'm terrible with history) but your culture sounds so interesting. I might do some google searches on it later or something. ^^

[DustfeatherWishian]

[member=6]Dustfeather[/member]
I've always found Welsh culture so interesting, somewhat due to a main character being Welsh in a book I once read but regardless haha. You guys have a load of unique holidays/traditions wow, lovespoons sound so adorable.

Thank you ^.^ We've got some interesting historical figures as well; my favourite definitely being Jemima Nicholas. She was a cobbler from Fishguard, and during the French Invasion of 1797, she and her fellow Welsh ladies managed to scare off several of the invaders who mistook their red dresses for military uniform. She also singlehandedly rounded up twelve invaders, armed with a pitchfork, and brought them to the Royal Oak pub where they surrendered.

Badass women are the best historical figures

[DarkstarModmin]

I'm half Norwegian, half Irish-Roma. My ancestors as far back as I can trace on my dad's side were viking kings. On my mom's side, my ancestors were known as the Irish Travellers. So it's really pretty interesting, I could go into more detail but I'm a little brain foggy right now.

[LightningWishian]

I love reading this thread and about the different cultures and stuff that this website's members have. This kind of thing is so interesting and wow so many different things.

Me? The only thing interesting about me is that I have Native American blood in me- it's dominant on my father's side of the family! Fun fact, the Tribe is called Blackfoot, but we haven't nailed down which one it is from there- no one knows…mainly because the people who knew the answer are long gone. I think it was a great-great-great grandfather..

Although I'm white, some of my facial features remind my mother of my dad's side and you can really tell with my dad and his father and that line- I think it's directly in my father's line, instead of coming from like… his aunt or uncle or something like that.

[tinyfeatherWishian]

for a brief and succinct explanation I will provide this family portrait

but no omg all I can say is that my family is so white… but half my family is Texan country-folk (rednecks) and the other half is Kentucky city slickers. I don't like being around my family much lol

i'm crying that's so me

but apparently i'm related to william the conqueror so that's cool
and i have been told that i am somehow related to quanah parker but i don't know if i believe it?? either way it's not nearly enough native american blood to say i am native american haha. i'm just white.

[DustfeatherWishian]

I'm half Norwegian, half Irish-Roma. My ancestors as far back as I can trace on my dad's side were viking kings. On my mom's side, my ancestors were known as the Irish Travellers. So it's really pretty interesting, I could go into more detail but I'm a little brain foggy right now.

I've met quite a few Irish Travellers here in Pembrokeshire. Due to ferry links we've traditionally always had a lot of Irish people living here, and it can even be heard slightly in the local accent

[SplashyWishian]

I'm half third-generation Chinese and half fourth-generation Japanese. It's basically been a long time since any of my family were actually in Asia. Culturally I'm basically just American, and more Hawaiian local than Chinese and Japanese. I sort of speak the pidgin spoken among Hawaiian locals (note: locals, not native Hawaiian) though not as well as my parents, who grew up there and can fall into it while they're there or around people from the Hawaii. On the mainland not so much.

Again, we don't really celebrate any Chinese/Japanese events or such. My grandmother on my dad's (japanese) side used to send me little gifts for Girls' Day and for my sisters as well, but the meaning was never quite there for me. I'm more New Yorker than anything else. In the words of some people from high school I'm a twinkie/banana/etc. which basically means I'm Asian on the outside and white inside. I don't think they ever realized how hurtful that could be sometimes. It's a weird situation. I'm not actually white so there was always a degree of separation among white friends but I wasn't Asian in the same way many of my Asian friends were in high school and that alienated me from them as well. It's something I'm still wrangling with especially due to the stereotypes.

the stereotypes. oh so many, many stereotypes. I'd go on a rant about it but I might save that for another time. Let's just say I've always had this weird thing of being proud of my not-asianness and defying the stereotypes but also realizing that that's not something to feel superior about and just asjdklasdhkajsd. basically this whole situation has been a confusing thing for a long time for me!

[JildaWishian]

[member=6]Dustfeather[/member]
I've always found Welsh culture so interesting, somewhat due to a main character being Welsh in a book I once read but regardless haha. You guys have a load of unique holidays/traditions wow, lovespoons sound so adorable.

Thank you ^.^ We've got some interesting historical figures as well; my favourite definitely being Jemima Nicholas. She was a cobbler from Fishguard, and during the French Invasion of 1797, she and her fellow Welsh ladies managed to scare off several of the invaders who mistook their red dresses for military uniform. She also singlehandedly rounded up twelve invaders, armed with a pitchfork, and brought them to the Royal Oak pub where they surrendered.

Badass women are the best historical figures

You're welcome!

They definitely are. Women have gone through so much and its definitely interesting to see the struggles they gone through, the triumphs they've received, etc etc

[JildaWishian]

[member=4]Lightning[/member]
Culture is something that's so interesting to me, and the way it can also impact someone and shape part of who they are. On the note of you having some of your dad's features, idk how on subject this is – probably isn't at all –  but my dad is half Chinese and my mom always told me she was hoping me and my brother would get asian features from him even though he himself doesn't even look that asian. It's pretty funny actually.

[member=50]Splashy[/member]
It's been a while since any of my family was in asia either. My grandfather on my dad's side had parents who migrated from China to Cuba and had him there (so he was chinese-cuban technically I guess? I don't even know) and then he got with a Cuban woman and they had my dad. Then my mom and dad came to america and had me and my brother, and how they came here is a story for another day that involves blackmail lol. okay wow totally rambled there xD

We don't really celebrate much either, and as for sterotypes I really dislike them as well. Though opposite of you somewhat I do like embracing my culture haha.

[mossWishian]

I'm just white tbh. mostly italian and greek but like…. white.

the only thing is that my dad said once that it's possible one of my great etc. uncles or s/t might have been in the mafia??? idk

[SplashyWishian]

I think the thing is for me is that I'm so far removed from my cultural heritage. My parents didn't grow up with it and didn't raise us with it, my grandparents minimally, my great-grandparents moreso but still were more assimilated into the local Hawaiian culture than their parents'. I grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in a small, but mostly white (and mostly Jewish due to being on the UWS) gifted program and danced on the Upper East Side, again a mostly white environment. It feels wrong to celebrate a culture now that, for my whole life, was not my own simply because of my race and heritage. While I would love to learn about it, I know I won't participate. There's a level of alienation I've always had from that. Again, it's the whole I'm not culturally Asian but I'm not white either. I may look 100% East Asian but culturally I am not and never have been.

It's not that I hate the fact that I am Asian or look down upon the culture. I think there's a rich culture there and it's fascinating, it's just not mine. The numerous stereotypes are what I feel only made me want to distance myself further as they infuriated me and were just everywhere. The number of times people have assumed I don't speak English in the city or are amazed at how well I speak English… ugh. I had huge headphones on walking home one day and this guy was harassing me. He thought I was ignoring him because I didn't speak English even though the headphones were very obvious. People don't believe I live in Manhattan, people think I won't retaliate when they catcall and when I do they're shocked, people think I'll be submissive and quiet and let them have their way because I'm an Asian girl, people think my parents are definitely going to be crazy when all they want is for me to be happy and could care less about me living my life the way I want to. The assumptions and expectations people have of me simply due to my race did and continue to piss me off and I loved defying them.

And that led to this weird confusion for me. White friends don't really understand my situation due to them being well, white. Most of my Asian friends particularly from high school came from a different world than me and didn't face those issues in the same way, just seeing me again as a girl who looked Asian but was secretly white. I don't really know how to voice this. I've had a weird experience with the whole race and culture situation to say the least.

[DawnwingWishian]

My ancestry is 75% Polish, 1/8 German, and I believe the other 1/8 to be English.  Most of my ancestors came to the US in the late 1800s to 1910ish, except for the I-think-English branch that seems to have come in the late 1600s.

I'm from a very heavily Polish-influenced area, so that's the only part of my ancestry that has any actual effect on me.  We still follow a lot of traditions:

• It's a very heavily Catholic area, as you'll see by some of my examples
• The radio has polkas every Sunday morning, and lots of local events have a polka band playing.  The Holiday in Poland polka is my favorite:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUFgesfXIaQ
• Weddings also often have polka bands and it's tradition to have chicken noodle soup
• A town near here has the Polish harvest festival, Dozynki, every fall.  Some people wear traditional clothing, and a girl presents a wreath to the mayor, and all.  And, of course, food and polkas.
• Churches sell oplatki, the Christmas wafer.  It's similar to the Communion host during Mass at church, though not consecrated, and at Christmas dinner everyone breaks off a piece and wishes each other Merry Christmas.  Also my grandpa used to put hay under the tablecloth at Christmas dinner to represent the stable in which Jesus was born; that's a Polish thing too.  My church always sings this beautiful Polish Christmas lullaby at Christmas Mass:
  
• We also celebrate St. Nick's Day on December 6th – children check their shoes for small gifts left by St. Nicholas
• For Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday, we make ponczkas (which, from my Googling online, are sometimes called paczki elsewhere).  Other food is made at other times of the year, such as kolachi cookies for Christmas.
• There's a few buildings in town with Polish paintings on them that are maintained that have been around for a long time – there's photos of them in like 1930
• Lots of Polish names.  One that amuses me because of how differently it sounds compared to how it's spelled is Przybylski, which is pronounced “Shabilski”
• A few Polish words crop up here and there.  Probably the most common is “kluski zupa“, which refers to (chicken) noodle soup.  A few people might also call someone who's being stupid a “dupa“.

[/list]

[TeezyWishian]

I have kind of three sets of parents.
There's my birth parents, who I've never met. They're just kind of generic white and genetically speaking I'm a mix of Irish, Scottish, and German.
I have my legal set of adopted parents. I'm Ashkenazi through them. Also my mother's side of the family has been living in and around Boston for about 100 years now, so there's that.
My real set of adoptive parents are the parents of one of my best friends. (My relationship with my legal family outside of my grandfather and late grandmother is extremely strained.) They're also Ashkenzi and have been kickin around Boston for  several generations.

So basically I'm Ashkenazi but the Massachusetts thing is also a huge part of my cultural upbringing. (People tend not to move far from home here which has lead to a pretty distinct regional culture.)

[SorrelWishian]

i'm white, man. i'm sooooo white.

[HollyWishian]

i'm 100% chinese. parents' parents are 100% chinese. kinda boring. my family speaks cantonese, which i can understand to a basic degree, but not speak (i used to be able to lol). for chinese new year we just do like a dinner out or something and get the red envelopes which i cannot remember the chinese name for at the moment. 

i was born in hong kong but i moved when i was 2 so i don't remember any of it and all of my grandparents were born in not-hong kong china, i'm pretty sure, but they came to canada in the 50s. so i'm pretty much 100% canadian as well. fun fact people think i'm esl because i don't talk and i'm chinese. 

[SplashyWishian]

fun fact people think i'm esl because i don't talk and i'm chinese.

oh man do I know that feeling. (Japanese/Chinese here but people just see East Asian and assume)

[HollyWishian]

fun fact people think i'm esl because i don't talk and i'm chinese.

oh man do I know that feeling. (Japanese/Chinese here but people just see East Asian and assume)

it's so annoying and kind of hilarious at the same time. even my sister (who does talk more than i do) was told “she needs to read the English language more.” i don't know why people see asian and assume that a person doesn't know english? sigh.

[SplashyWishian]

fun fact people think i'm esl because i don't talk and i'm chinese.

oh man do I know that feeling. (Japanese/Chinese here but people just see East Asian and assume)

it's so annoying and kind of hilarious at the same time. even my sister (who does talk more than i do) was told “she needs to read the English language more.” i don't know why people see asian and assume that a person doesn't know english? sigh.

I'm a born and bred New Yorker and people also see me and assume tourist-who-can't-hear-you-insulting-her because she doesn't speak English. People's faces when I tell them off are fantastic.

Not to mention when my mom went to the post office to send postcards for a friend  the woman at the desk refused to accept that my mom was in fact, not sending them internationally but domestically. i have too many stories about that assumption.

[DustfeatherWishian]

I've had some awkward moments with language. North Wales, where I go to uni, has a lot more Welsh speakers than the south, but the dialect is also vastly different. I've tried speaking Welsh to people up there before and had no idea what they were saying back to me, whereas I can quite happily have a conversation with someone in Welsh here in the south xD

Wenglish is also very common where I live, due to there historically being a lot of English-speakers here. I remember quite often hearing my piano teacher say things over the phone like, “Maen nhw'n dod yma next week, ond yn fy marn i mae'n waste of time”. A friend of mine was talking to her dad once and said, “Dwi'n teimlo absolute knackered!” xD

[Arcade HeatWishian]

Let me tell you what I am

I mean, I'm a bit more interesting than that, but that gets into family, and not necessarily culture so yeah

[WryfinchWishian]

Hey. Is this thread dead? Because I like it!

I am 100% full-blood Asian. Specifically, my parents are Burmese (Myanmar-ans?) but immigrated to America with cousins and friends. Apparently my family lineage goes back to somewhere in Northeastern China, although my grandparents appear to be completely Burmese. I dunno, I'm bad at looking into ancestry. (And just spewing random facts: my mother's family is fervently Buddhist, my dad is somewhat more lax on religious stuff, while my brother and I are atheist.)

Wait culture? Da heck is that?

Before entering 6th grade I was homeschooled and did not leave the house very often. When I did leave the house, I didn't get much interaction with people or animals other than anytime I went to meet 'old family friends,' some of whom I never even heard of before. And they were all Burmese, so I guess my whole childhood was like so: lots of Asian cuisine, lots of computer games, lots of reading, lots of academic tests, lots of visiting random-strangers-who-are-not-actually-strangers, and few interactions with other races. And I actually seem to be the least racist person in my whole family… so I guess that's an accomplishment?

I still understand some Burmese and used to speak it up till 6… then I forgot it. Oops.

[glimmerWishian]

i'm very white, and so are my mum's side of the family – all from scotland and ireland if i remember correctly. we have a couple of well-known artists mixed in on that side as well as a few soap-opera type love affairs, and my mum has a couple of files my grandmother put together of documents gathered over the years relating to our now-dead relatives, including a letter written in the 1850s and a lock of hair from the early 1900s (this sounds so pretentious i'm laughing). we only just found those recently, so that was pretty cool.

we don't have nearly that much for my dad's side though; his grandparents were jewish and came over from poland & ukraine during WWI, so we don't have any records of our family beyond then. there's a chance that they exist and i'm p sure my dad & his brothers have gone to their grandparents' hometowns to look for them, though they haven't had any luck. due to some stuff about who-was-controlling-who at the time it's possible that the records could be in russia somewhere, which seems about 10x more unreachable somehow :S

i grew up with judaism for a lot of my life, though now all we really do is go to relatives' houses to celebrate passover and hanukkah and things like that. i think my dad's parents spoke mostly yiddish, and would speak to each other in it when they didn't want their kids to know what they were talking about lol. my dad is pretty fluent in hebrew from what i remember – me, my brother and sister also learnt hebrew at some stage and had our bat/bar mitzvahs, but i haven't really retained any of the stuff i picked up, which is kind of a shame imo. i might try and refresh my memory sometime; i miss that part of my life orz

[TomWishian]

I am actually Australian contrary to what they say. But on one side I'm first generation Australian and of Irish descent, while on the other I'm 25% Irish and like 4 generations (my ancestor on this side was an actual stowaway haha) Australian, and 25% Portuguese and not sure how many generations Australian.

So culturally I'm like heaps Australia. Genetically I am just like.. generic Irish. Blonde hair, blue eyes, funny green hat, loves alcohol

[thunderpetalWishian]

Hmm.. never really got into culture stuff, and my parents never told me what my heritage was. Though, I've been told from quizzes that my heritage is Scandinavian and German. 8D
(Though I gave myself a Portuguese/Spanish name, I somehow got surprising results from quizzes lmao)

[ScarWishian]

My heritage is like so fucked up because a bunch of people in my family are adopted BUT

My great grandparents on my dad's side were Irish immigrants (last name O'Donnell… we have a castle back in Ireland lol). They continuously married into 100% Irish families until my dad married my mom (who is adopted… my dad's family does not like her or me because of this).

My mom's adopted parents are both Native American descendants. We were part of the Mi'kmaq tribe, which lived in southern Canada. There's still a few distant relatives of mine who live on the reserve there. One of my ancestors was actually the chief of the tribe.

As for my mom's birth heritage, it's mostly just English/Scottish/Irish stuff, with a little bit of Armenian. HOWEVER, since I was raised with only the Irish and Native American heritage, I consider THAT to be my true heritage/culture. A lot of people tell me regarding the Native American “that doesn't count because it's not blood” and to them I say fuck you it absolutely counts, I'm adopted into that culture, I was raised in that culture, it's just as much mine as any other descendant's.

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