Tropers/{{eleutherios}}: I'm Vietnamese, most of my high school was Vietnamese, Chinese or Filipino (seriously, I think Australia's in danger of being swamped by Asians...) and I had enormous trouble telling them apart. Didn't help that there were about eighty billion dozen Nguyens in the school, either...

Would that mean that your school is Full of Nguyen?

You are made of awesome, not only for making a pun that's ActuallyPrettyFunny, but for knowing how to pronounce my surname.

Tropers/LadyNomad: As someone who is part Filipino, whenever people meet me for the first time, they think that I'm Korean or Japanese or even Chinese especially when I was a child. Now, many people think that I'm hispanic.

This troper has the same exact problem (or situation, depending on your view). When I was little, I looked very "asian", but as I grew older my skin also grew darker, making one person memorably ask me, "Are you a Black Chinese person?". Now, most people think I'm hispanic.

Tropers/PutYaGunsOn: Haha, reminds me of this Filipino guy in my old school, and this other guy always called him "Blackanese".

Tropers/SatanicHamster: I'm Filipino too and I've gotten people thinking I'm Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican. Dang dudes, at least do a little research on asians. I don't mind being called hispanic because I have a great grandmother who was Spanish but being called Mexican is annoying. I did know a half Filipino and half Japanese dude who was very annoyed of being called Mexican.

Tropers/JackMackerel is Filipino, but he's ''really'' Asian looking, but the rest of his family definitely look mestizo. I don't, people think I'm a Korean with a tan.

Tropers/WaxingName is Filipino but Chinese looking too. According to my mom, we do have some Chinese blood in our family, so I guess there is some justification for this..

Tropers/{{Solandra}}: Sadly, I have trouble distinguishing between Asians...even though I'm Asian myself. I blame it on being the only Asian student around in elementary, middle, and high school. I also have no idea how to tell the nationality of another Asian, even though my parents have no trouble with that.

Tropers/SatanicHamster: Which Asian are you? I can tell the difference between a Filipino and other Asians. I do have trouble telling the difference between a Japanese person and a Korean person.

i'm an asian, living and born in asian country and there were few cases where i was mistaken for a Central_Asia local Korean or when i did the the same mistake. This happens rarely though, because you usually can tell the ethnicity of the person in question by his/her name (if you care about it at all in the first place). Asking one directly of his lineage is a major faux pas here.

Ah, a country that the west doesn't hear much about. I do find it's easier to tell the difference by spoken language and appearance. The Japanese and Koreans, I find tend to have lighter skin than the South East Asians. South East Asians tend to have bigger, rounder eyes than the Japanese and Koreans.

Why am I not surprised that this trope's so common? I'll bet everyone above me gets the Bruce Lee jokes and Ching Chong chants as well.

Tropers/{{KZN02}}: if the former you mean knowing martial arts, then yeah, in the past.

This (English) troper has serious issues telling apart different asian nationalities - despite being at a more-than-95%-asian high school and having only asian friends...

Tropers/SailorEnlil: I'm also Filipino, but mixed with Chinese and Spanish blood, thanks to my father and mother respectively, but often mistaken for a pure Chinese because of the eyes. Case in point, one Filipino-Chinese in my college class, when he talked to me for the first time, spoke in Mandarin, and when I gave him confused looks, he realized I didn't understand a word he said and so he reverted to Tagalog.

Tropers/{{Verily}}: In this troper's hometown, there are scores of Chinese and Japanese restaurants, and nearly all of them are owned and operated by Koreans. The town has a much larger Korean community than Chinese or Japanese, but no Korean restaurants.

24.126.168.157: This troper is Chinese, and telling the difference between Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans is pretty difficult even for me (until they start talking, that is).

Averted here. I honestly can't understand the idea that all Asians look alike to people, or that it's hard to tell the difference between different Southeast Asian nationalities, which I can almost always do. Then again, I did go to a majority Asian school, so that probably helps matters.

All white people look alike, I have a hard time telling the difference between a German and an Englishman by looks alone.

This troper is half Chinese, but the rather dramatic mix of the other half has led to me being called any number of other things, from Hawaiian to Native American. Amusingly no one guesses the other two Asian groups I could be called correctly(Australian and Russian).

Australia is an Asian group ... ?

This white troper doesn't see why this is racist. I can't tell the difference between a French person and a Russian. Why should I be able to tell the physical difference between ethnicities, which are mostly a cultural distinction.

That's just it: knowing that cultural distinctions exist.

Averted. This white troper has never gotten this at all. People from ''small and neighboring'' countries may look alike, but ... Japanese and Chinese people, for instance, look ''nothing'' alike to her.

cocoy0: @Troper above me: You have never gazed upon all the varieties of Filipino. Filipinos can look like all races, including Chinese, Indian (Aryan and Dravidian), and Pygmies. Maybe except Jews.

Jewish is not a race, it is a religion. There is no such thing as "anti-islamic racism" either. You are born into a race, raised into a culture, and choose a religion.

Er, Jew is used to refer to both the race and the religion. Either is correct. Islam is not a race however.

This Troper lives in Korea among many Chinese Americans, Japanese Canadians, etc. and the locals always mistake them for fellow Koreans.

Averted incredibly weirdly for this Filipino troper in that I was never confused for an Oriental or a Malay Asian. In college, I got confused for a variety of peoples: I got confused by someone for an Indian, Arab and at least three different kinds of European. I can somewhat understand that I was mistaken for Indian (an Indian guy showed my parents a picture of his son and we did look alike) and Arab (I was told I looked such through early adolescence), but the mistaken European identities baffle me. What's worse is that I was never mistaken for Spanish, despite the fact that Spanish blood is what gives me my distinctly non-Asian features.

A {{Jerkass}} friend of mine (I honestly don't know why I refer to him as a friend) occasionally makes bad jokes about me being from North Korea. This is a semi-aversion, since I am half-Korean, but he's still a jackass for making such jokes.

Among my friends at uni, there are two Asian guys (let's call them G and J) who really don't look alike -- their heights are different, their facial features are different, their voices are different, even their accents are different (J speaks English in a clipped sort of way while G speaks in a more regular smooth sort of tone), and they are from different countries -- and yet they have inexplicably been mistaken for each other ''several'' times on ''completely separate occasions''. None of my other Asian friends have been confused with each other, ''just'' those two. It makes no sense to me.

This Troper once asked a guy if he was Japanese. He answered that, no, he was from Pakistan. Oops.

This troper is Filipino. But you'd have to ask because it doesn't show at all. Well, he's also European, African American, Caucasian, Hispanic..

Apparently, Central Asia does not exist. There are no Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tatars, etc., etc. We're all just myths. *spooky-fingers*

This half-Cantonese, half-Japanese troper is frequently mistaken for Filipina or Thai, usually by older white guys trying to hit on her ...

It seems like you have bigger rounder eyes, which might explain why people think you're Thai or Filipina.

This Asian troper is a Chinese adoptee. Whenever this comes up in conversation, 99% of the time, somebody will think I'm Japanese. There was also that one time when someone thought I was Korean. So far, the only person to guess my ethnicity correctly was my band teacher.

Hilariously inverted with this white troper, who grew up in a ''very'' Asian part of Los Angeles. She was one of about 5 kids in her elementary school classes that wasn't Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, and it took her until around third grade to realize ''she'' wasn't Asian. When she moved to black-and-white South Carolina in sixth grade, she constantly mixed up blonds and brunettes well into high school.

This Half Asian troper's Taiwanese mother doesn't really look like what most of the people I know consider as "Asian". As such, no one really knows that I'm Half Asian until I tell them. Oddly enough, before I enlighten them, people think I'm Native American. Weird.

This troper's grandfather is blind, so he can't tell faces apart without touching. He can, however, place a person within 100 miles by listening to them speak.

This troper is East Indian/Taiwanese and can't tell the difference between Asian nationalities by look.

This troper can certainly see great variation, but lack of experience means she's mostly uncertain on what is what- so, for example, if showed her pictures of someone from, say, South Korea and someone from China, she'd be able to tell that they were from different countries, but possibly not which was which. But she's trying to learn. That said, she can still tell the different between East Asians, Central Asians, and ecetera.

This troper grew up in a very multicultural area of London, and has therefore learnt to tell religious groups as well as racial groups apart.

This troper can't tell the difference between spoken Asian languages, and can only differentiate between written Korean and everything else. (Korean is the only one with little circle thingies!)

I can distinguish Asian from Caucasian - sometimes (I'm white in Central-to-North-Europe type BTW). To my defence - I grow up in country which due to historical reasons had minimal immigration and minorities IIWW there was large amount of minorities [>50% IIRC] but due to first invasion of III Reich and Holocaust then moving ethnicies to fit into borders during aftermatch as well as moving borders and I know that for e.x. there are lot of differences between Chinise and Japanise culture; or that the Chinise culture is not monolithical,

This troper is Filipina and mistaken for Chinese or Thai...by Chinese people...

This troper's little cousins have the tendency to call ''every single Asian person they see'' Chinese. They also call anyone who looks vaguely Latino Mexican. I've tried to correct them, but they never seem to learn. I wouldn't mind so much if they were really young and didn't know better, but the older one is ''11.''

This troper is very Mexican and has been confused for chinese BY the chinese in china. He also has a very uncanny ability to tell Chinese from Japanese and (with less chance of success) Chinese from Koreans. Its even easier if he is trying to tell Asian women apart...for some reason.

For what it's worth, this troper can't tell individual white ethnicities apart either.

This troper can distinguish between most ethnicities in Asia. He still has trouble with the Vietnamese, Thai though. On the other hand, make them speak English and he can tell you in an instant which country they're from. For this troper, it's tough, because he's an AmbiguouslyBrown Asian who can mimic Asian accents quite well.

As a Chinese person, I don't understand how people are constantly mistaking me for Japanese or Vietnamese. WE LOOK NOTHING ALIKE! Granted, there are more Vietnamese people here, but that means that people ought to be able to realize that I look VERY different from them.

JackMackerel - you'd be surprised how easily some Japanese pass off as Chinese and vice versa. My brother's Mandarin teacher states she's done it repeatedly (being a Japanese fluent in Mandarin helps, for obvious reasons.)

Hell, this troper is Chinese (well, Chinese-American anyways) and he couldn't tell you if someone was Chinese, Japanese, or Korean to save his life. Especially since there are so many minorities in China and nobody, and I do mean ''nobody'', is actually of pure Han ethnicity anymore. There are a number of stereotypical differences, of course, but they are so far from universal as to be largely pointless. This troper has himself been mistaken for Korean ''in China'' due to his mode of dress (Koreans tend to wear clothes in a more Western style).

This troper thinks he's actually pretty good at telling other Asians apart. Unfortunately, this is not reciprocated. This troper spent the first 15 years of his life in the Philippines. He's always been fairly light skinned for a mostly pure Filipino. Upon moving to Chicago, and returning for a visit four years later, his own countrymen, and even people who knew him from before, mistook him for being Korean.

Strangely, I am Asian and I constantly evoke this trope.

I cant tell the different nationalities apart, and have trouble with telling different people apart sometimes, but that is not just asians, I have trouble remembering faces and usually only recognise people by their hair, eyes, skin and clothes anyway-makes it hard with working in a school, 30 pupils all in identical uniform, and I have trouble telling them apart, especially little boys as most of them have the same haircut. Maybe for me it is that all people look alike.

I can easily tell the difference between Japanese, Chinese, Mongolian, Filipino, Indian, and the like, but I haven't interacted with enough Korean people to know for sure (physical appearance-wise; culturally, I can tell just fine). On the other hand, after living among Japanese people for a year, I got hit with a very, ''very'' weird inversion of this trope. While in the beginning, I was having trouble telling a lot of Japanese people apart, at the end, for some reason, every white person I saw looked ''familiar''.

Reversed when this Caucasian troper befriended a Chinese exchange student, who asked about the origin of my accent. I responded, "I don't know, we all sound alike to me."

Bonus points, as she later revealed she frequently asked me about assignments because she could understand my accent, but said that the teacher's accent was very thick. The teacher and I were both from the same part of Michigan.

This troper is an American that has met Asians who have told him that his accent doesn't cound American. Oddly enough, many are sure it's a British accent. This troper is from the St. Louis area.

I'd say you must speak phonetic English, which sounds a lot like British English.

Tropers/PutYaGunsOn: Oh God, this is basically my BerserkButton right here, especially being Filipino myself. Throughout grade and middle school, I grew up with classmates who ''literally'' thought that all East Asian cultures and ethnic groups were one and the same (Basically, they thought the whole continent was Theme Park FarEast {{Wutai}} land. No joke.), and that the terms "Chinese" and "Japanese" could be used ''interchangeably'' to refer to ANYTHING of East Asian origin. What.

And then they'd mistake ''me'' for Chinese/Japanese, but then I'd correct them, thinking it was an honest mistake. (Well, to be fair, some time after that I found out that I actually DO have Chinese blood in me, but this was back when I didn't know that, so yeah.) Then they'd just tell me that we all look the same/ARE the same. Cue me getting close to lashing out at them and desperately wanting to beat the crap out of them, but restraining myself only so I don't get in trouble with the teacher standing right there. Then some of them would call me Chinese/Japanese on purpose just to piss me off.

The teacher would have punished you for hitting them, but didn't punish them for their blatant racism? FlatWhat indeed.

This troper (Weird mix-up of Chinese and Vietnamese and a few others) finds the idea hilarious. That doesn't stop him from answering those lovely questions of "What race/ethnicity are you?" with "I'm Somali" for the hell of it.

This troper here is full Taiwanese....but everyone from the States seems to either think I'm Chinese or just Asian. Granted yes, I do come from a part of Asia, but there is a VERY big difference between the Chinese and Taiwanese. Strangely enough, I'm unable to tell the actual difference between the two, until they start speaking.

...perhaps it's because Chinese and Taiwanese people are ethnically the same? Why would anyone be able to tell the difference? (This Troper, incidentally, is also Taiwanese, but has no problem admitting that Taiwanese = Chinese in terms of ethnicity)

I just can't tell people apart asian or not. Not only can I not tell the difference between people of different asian countries apart at a glance the same is true of european and african people. The most shocking thing though is sometimes I can't tell the difference between individuals of completely seperate races I once confused a hispanic woman for my white mother because they were wearing similar jackets.

I find it almost impossible to guess what nationality someone is by looking at them. That is, if I see a Chinese guy and a Japanese guy I can tell they look way different, but I'll be darned if I know which is which, or even which groups I should be picking from. If they start speaking in their native language or eating their native food I'll probably figure it out though.

Not my anecdote, but: a (white) friend of my mother's and her family were transferred to Hong Kong for business. Their older son learned Cantonese, and one day the mother asked him to order for them at a restaurant. He listened very carefully to the wait staff and told her he couldn't. "Why not?" "Mom, they're Korean."

Protip: it's not just looks, but also body language. There's a way Japanese people (for example) behave, and there's a way Chinese people behave. Learning to read the signs is an important part of the skill.

A weird way of playing this trope straight: my family is white, and we grew up in an area that had a large population of Laotian immigrants, where it was assumed that any Asian person in the area was Hmong. So, to this day my sister has a tendency to refer to anyone of southeast Asian decent as Hmong first and foremost. I'm trying to break her of this habit...

Tropers/Omurice: I've been mistaken for Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indonesian, and Indian (at least once) but never Filipino (my real nationality).

This troper's 14-year-old sister honestly believes this is true. Anytime you try and say how the Chinese and the Japanese are different, she goes on by saying "yes they are" and she tries to get you to shut up or she'll shut you up herself.

This troper is Chinese. He knows the cultural and linguistic difference among different Asian nations, but guessing nationality from merely looking is very hard for him. Only exceptions are Indians and Vietnameses.

This Tropette is half-Taiwanese, Half-American. She has been mistaken for full Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Korean, French, English, Australian, Italian, Spanish, and even INDIAN and NATIVE AMERICAN!!!

Tropers/{{Pikachukid}} just realised how stupid his sixth-grade teacher was. I was in my third year of a Japanese class with Kumon (and had studied it in school in Grade 2), and had started doing Chinese in school. The teacher did in fact wonder why I was doing so poorly at Chinese when my Japanese was fine. Most of the time, the languages don't even ''look'' alike.

My brother's mother in law is a fun case. Ethnically, she is fully Chinese. However, she was born and spend her childhood in pre-Castro Cuba. People expecting her to ''sound'' remotely Chinese get a surprise when they hear a Cuban-accented English (or Spanish) coming from her.

Sharysa likes to lampshade this, given that she is literally one of two Asians (She's Filipino, the other is Vietnamese) in her mostly black and Caucasian theater group.

This Chinese troper has been mistaken for a Japanese and a Korean before. Though, to be fair, this troper learned Karate (not just martial arts, but actual Karate), and likes to eat Korean BBQ.

That explains how a Chinese exchange student decided I was Japanese (I'm a very stereotypical-looking Ashkenazi, with features that are vaguely middle eastern)

This (Caucasian) troper has no trouble telling apart ''most'' Asians and figuring out where they're from, but she likes to joke about how all Asians look alike to her friends. One is a tan Indonesian, the other is of the pale, North-Chinese persuasion. The thing is? ''They agree with me''

@/ThatOtherYou, being a Filipino, has problems with this when it comes to appearance. It doesn't help that her close friends are a Filipino who looks Chinese, a half-Chinese who looks Filipino, a light-skinned Indonesian whose god-brother is Chinese, and a Chinese person who's really into anime. (Don't be fooled--the Filipino population around here is lot higher than what I'm suggesting.) On a more {{facepalm}}-worthy note, she once saw a Caucasian girl near Cucina Manila (a very Filipino name in itself) leave, saying that "I don't feel like Chinese food today."

This mostly-White Troper has no problem telling Asians apart. Chalk it up to lots of Asian friends and associates and being a student of Japanese language and culture, as well as other Asian cultures. On the very weird side, a former co-worker, who was a Chinese native said that he thought I was Chinese and a stranger in a convenience store once approached me, happy to meet "another person who is half-Japanese, half-Mexican." So I guess Asians can't tell me apart?

This Troper's Asian classmates lampshaded this when comparing their ID pictures.

My Chinese girlfriend has had this at times. Several of my photos are with my Asian friends (invariably female... thankfully I had managed to explain this before we became a couple), and she has a hard time telling them apart. She learned to guess Japanese, the majority of my Asian friends, but at least is mostly correct as all of them are either Japanese, Korean, or Chinese (one is full Japanese culturally but two generations removed from being full Korean...) For my part, I have trouble telling Koreans and Chinese apart, but less trouble telling Japanese apart from them.

I've been called everything from Chinese to Indian when they forget that between south and east Asia is southeast Asia (I'm Thai, so I'm lighter in skin tone than a lot of Indians but darker than most Oriental Asians.). It's now been more a personal RunningGag for me to say that I'm from North America and that I'm Navajo-Seminole with a bit of Miccosukee before I say that I'm Thai. Hey, if they can't tell the difference between Asians, who says they can tell the difference between Native Americans tribes :D?

Tropers/PutYaGunsOn: Hey, thanks! Next time someone mistakes me for anything other than Chinese/Filipino, I'll probably steal your idea or something.

This trope applies to all of my Asian friends. I can't tell them apart lots of the time. Considering that, most of the Asians at my school are Veitnamese, so as soon as I met my friend Jane, I assumed automatically she was Veitnamese. She, in fact, was Korean, (as I learned later). I have a rather hard time telling all Asians apart, actually.

When this troper's 3rd grade EXTREMELY IGNORANT teacher went to Japan, she never shut the hell up about how "cool" it was. This suddenly stopped when she asked a kid about Japanese-y things and he corrected her, telling that he was ''Korean''. Oh snap. This troper herself can identify a person of Asian nationality instantly though by either listening to their accent (if they have one) or knowing their name, so I haven't encountered this problem myself.

Also the same Troper had to convince her friends that not all Asians play ''StarcraftII'' by bringing up our friend that lives in Japan that can't even fix her internet connection because (her words) "she's too old for computers". Yeeeaah. All Asians play Starcraft...

My nephew is 1/4 Chinese, but some kid asked if he was from Japan.

I goofed the term for the ''taijitu'' symbol, calling it "yin-yang". This was a course on Japanese history, so the appropriate term would have been ''in-you'', according to my (Japanese) teacher.

Apparently I (a Hispanic) have an Asian great-grandfather. Whenever I ask what nationality, everyone (even his daughter) responds "... We're not sure. We just know he was Asian." But since he had an incredibly Spanish sounding name, I have to keep assuming 'Filipino.' Until I see a picture... even then I might not be able to tell...

Aversion: The other day I was amazed to see a white classmate of mine correctly identity a girl as coming from South Vietnam just based on visual cues. He claimed that he had taught himself to distinguish among people of all nations in that region of Asia.

This Troper's father can always identify where people are from. This Troper can't, ever, and has learned to shut up. This ability/lack of ability, however, extends to all races - he can identify people as being German/Russian/British etc and I can unfailingly guess the wrong thing for every human being I meet.

Wherever my family and I go, we're constantly asked if we're Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, or Thai - Even at Asian establishments. We're Filipino. Also, this is somewhat unrelated, but someone was trying to get my attention through my music, to no avail. The dude next to him said "Asian. Hellooo, asian kid?" in a rather soft voice, and I whirled around as if he'd been yelling. Hilarity ensued.

I really cannot tell Caucasians apart, and they (in turn) either think I'm a full-on Chinese or completely American. I am a Taiwanese/Australian mixed.

This caucasian troper has little trouble telling adult Asians apart, but when they're children she can't tell the difference. Not only Asians but certain Native Americans like the Inuit, too.

Tropers/{{Archer250}}: Inverted. I can never tell a Caucasian apart.

I was at a WWE house show a few weeks ago and I heard some idiot Dublin kid say "Gail Kim's a chink". Gail is of Korean descent actually.

This white troper goes to a mostly-Asian boarding school. At first I couldn't tell anyone apart, but since I've been going for a few years I can usually guess by their names or by hearing them speak... Still, I never mention it until I'm 100% sure.

...This troper is confused, cos she always thought this trope was not being able to tell the difference between two specific Asian ''people'', much less different nationalities. She's Chinese and has been mistaken for pretty much every one of the other ten or so Asian girls at her school.

This troper recently took a trip to Taiwan, along with other people from his school, and some from a Korean school. It wasn't until then that this troper really knew how to tell the difference between Chinese and Korean people, and that still only goes about as far as "Koreans have more yellowish skin."