Do Asians in America think you are a fob ?

[Craig]

In my case, more often than not, other Asians in the USA will think that I was born and grew up overseas ? Both American born Asians and foreign born Asians typically think I grew up in Asia. They can never place me correctly, but don't think that I am an ABC. I was wondering how common/rare this situation is. Personally, I find it a little odd that I don't stick out more considering I grew up primarily in an all-white area and am reasonably fluent in only English.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

some ABCs who hear me speaking Cantonese figure I had to have grown up overseas, since hapas raised in the US usually speak Asian language just as poorly as their AA counterparts. it's about the only thing that'll convince them I have any connection to Asia and am not just some white guy poser surrounding myself with Chinese movies and food in order to try to pick up girls.

[Faithless]

What would make one think that you are FOB? Noticable accent? Just the mere fact that you look Asian?

[AngryABCGirl]

I think a lot of Asians assume that if you can speak an Asian langauge fluently, you have to be a fob. It happens to me sometimes, some guy with his son who both recently immigrated asked me where I came from when I asked them in Chinese what Chem books to but. It doesn't happen much since I really look unfobbish.

[Faithless]

Oooo. What does FOBish look like? Do they wear the jackets like in the book, "The Five Chinese Brothers?"

[karizma]

only when i do the peace sign...and cuss in cantonese...and dress like one..heh heh...but..im abc to the max!! *peace sign* gah yao gah yao!

[Adaon]

actually, just the opposite with me.....usually they smile at me and think I'm totally whitewashed ABC with no connection to where my parents grew up and such....until they start really pissing me off in which case they find out that I can understand most of what they're saying about me....unless it's in Mandarin (in which case I only know about a quarter if I listen) or Taiwanese (in which case I've lost all hope/don't care cuz I dun understand) :huh:

[artsfartsyjanet]

people here do not think I am a fob. I'm more Americanized I think mostly due to my lack of writing and reading of chinese.

[Fireblade]

Most of them hand me the fork instead of chopsticks. <_<

I can speak a little cantonese, but I'm losing more day by day. Oh well. Whenever I do speak it to someone who is a fob, they're surprised, because I don't have an extremely heavy american accent on the language. Although Pat would say otherwise... that fool :rolleyes:

But I cringe when I see people do the peace sign stuff... there's a friend of mine who lives on clement st, and that totally bugs me. Because I think it's really cheesy.

[Adaon]

Originally posted by Fireblade@May 5 2003, 10:52 AM
Most of them hand me the fork instead of chopsticks. <_<

I can speak a little cantonese, but I'm losing more day by day. Oh well. Whenever I do speak it to someone who is a fob, they're surprised, because I don't have an extremely heavy american accent on the language. Although Pat would say otherwise... that fool :rolleyes:

But I cringe when I see people do the peace sign stuff... there's a friend of mine who lives on clement st, and that totally bugs me. Because I think it's really cheesy.
yo man, considering when your parents yell at you, I can't understand them, when I can perfectly understand the news on television....heh....no wonder your accent IS jacked. :rolleyes:

[Napoleon Chynamite]

Chinese people look at me and start speaking English whenever I go to stores or restaurants or whatever. Dunno why

[Hanuman]

Most asians here think I'm whitewashed. In fact some are shocked that I speak Thai. i went to a thai market in the city yesterday and listened to the lady tell another employee in thai to see if I needed any help. She said I looked confused. She obviously didn't think I could understand her. So I just asked them for what I needed in english and never let on that I was thai.

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by karizma@May 5 2003, 06:43 AM
only when i do the peace sign...and cuss in cantonese...and dress like one..heh heh...but..im abc to the max!! *peace sign* gah yao gah yao!
hahhah!

what a johk sing jailbait.

[sOKaLiBoY]

some peeps think im a fob until they hear me speak perfect english

[tvbdude]

Originally posted by FrozenPizza@May 5 2003, 03:43 PM
Chinese people look at me and start speaking English whenever I go to stores or restaurants or whatever. Dunno why
sometimes they can't tell if you are of another asian nationality. as for me, most of the time they think I don't know my native language.

[MellowDrama]

I fob out sometimes and dress fob-like... it's when I really don't feel like being bothered or talked to.

[airborneranger]

You are still yellow anyway
a language and accent can be learnt
but appearance has to be michael jacksoned

[BeTheReds]

People in Japan assume I was raised in Korea after they learn my father is Korean. I mean, come on... whoever heard of a man moving to be with his wife? :lol: :lol:

THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN!(sarcasm)

[kimpossible]

If you've ever seen a picture of me it's fairly obvious that no one's ever thought I was fob, but man my husband gets bombarded by fobs who pick him out as fob. Not just Chinese but Korean and SE Asian fobs. What's weird is that he has completely accentless (if not grammatically perfect) English and usually wears American brand clothing. He must put out some fob vibe I'm too white to pick up on.

[Chester]

No, definitely not. Most probably mistake me for sansei Japanese.

[SunWuKong]

If you've ever seen a picture of me it's fairly obvious that no one's ever thought I was fob, but man my husband gets bombarded by fobs who pick him out as fob. Not just Chinese but Korean and SE Asian fobs. What's weird is that he has completely accentless (if not grammatically perfect) English and usually wears American brand clothing. He must put out some fob vibe I'm too white to pick up on.


a lot of times it's the hair and the way you dress that can give you away. i mean a lot of fobs wear American brands, but they wear it differently from the average American.

[YuheiCarreau]

If you've ever seen a picture of me it's fairly obvious that no one's ever thought I was fob, but man my husband gets bombarded by fobs who pick him out as fob. Not just Chinese but Korean and SE Asian fobs. What's weird is that he has completely accentless (if not grammatically perfect) English and usually wears American brand clothing. He must put out some fob vibe I'm too white to pick up on.

Same thing with my dad. He dresses like a Connecticut WASP and other FOBs can still tell. I think it's a matter of body language and facial expressions; other than style of dress those are the two biggest indicators of FOB-ness for me. I find that when I'm around Japanese people I change my body language and such to be like them, but it's been a while since I was surrounded by FOB Japanese so I may have lost that ability...

[BigLew]

Asian Americans think I'm a sellout. Others think I am militant about anything remotely anti-asian.

[kasia]

only the old people in chinatown. many of them will assume that i was born in hong kong because i can speak without an accent.

everyone else pretty much can see that i'm abc.

[TTChino]

When people look at my hair and my clothes, they offer me a towel cuz they think I just swam off the boat.

[deez nuts]

When people look at my hair and my clothes, they offer me a towel cuz they think I just swam off the boat.

hahahah that's a good one.

[kasia]

I fob out sometimes and dress fob-like... it's when I really don't feel like being bothered or talked to.

you mean like tight clothes?

[purezero]

My friends say out of us, I am the most fob-ish. They said this when we went to eat Japanese food for lunch and I opted for the chopsticks over the forks, which they took. Besides that, I speak more than they do. Other than that, nothing characterizes me as so.

Adults on the other hand though mostly assume that I'm more Americanized. In restaurants they'll ask if we need forks or if we want ice water. Even some of my relatives are super surprised when I speak Cantonese. They just think I lost it all (my brother is on the verge of it, I don't see why they don't neg him about it).

[John0101]

To a lot of white people even if your a fob or not, they still have the same old stereotypes.

- How do you say ____ in ____
- Do you know kung Fu?
- Wow, your english is so good!
- Ching, Chong, Wooa,Chi, what did I just say?

[Craig]

you mean like tight clothes?Do fobs wear tight clothes ? Maybe too many Americans are wearing excessively large clothing ?

[Seamus]

I get the English treatment, too, but I think that you'd get that even if you seemed like a FOB.* If I were a FOB myself and saw another fobbish person, but couldn't tell what nationality they are, I'd probably speak to them in English to avoid getting bitchslapped for using the wrong language.

Real FOBs are always surprised when I know anything about their language, but I'm actually better at my Asian language and know more about my Asian culture and history than a lot of AAs. Sometimes I'm kind of sneaky and try to have some fun by surprising them with my knowledge after the conversation's been going for a while. Yay me, I'm special.

they'll ask if we need forks.

That's retarded! Where are you? Here in Norcal not even the hakujin get forks.

Do fobs wear tight clothes ? Maybe too many Americans are wearing excessively large clothing ?

The FOBs I know wear a lot of bling-bling and floss zoot suits and gold chains with dollar signs. Oh, and rings. Lots of rings.

------------------

Random note: I used to think of FOBs as being older people, or younger lower-income people in immigrant enclaves, because most of the middle-class Asian people in my generation and below that I know are younger, but these days in California, I come across a fair number of middle-class FOBs in their teens and twenties, in towns like Cupertino, or working at pearl milk tea places. I can see how older Asian people might (mistakenly) think AAs are just white people with Asian faces, but the weirdest thing is when you get the hakujin treatment from your immigrant peers. I'm not trying to prove myself to anybody, or to be like "look at me! I'm Asian! I'm the same as you!" but it's still an odd feeling. It's a total cliche, but whenever I interact with Asian immigrants who are my age, I find it fascinating how similar yet different we are.

On the other hand, because Asia is less different from the U.S. than it used to be, I think Asian immigrants and Americans are also less different in their outlooks and in how they carry themselves than in the past. My general feeling is that if you look Asian and are mostly fluent in an Asian language, you have a bit of flexibility to determine how much of an insider you are among immigrants. I kind of enjoy the fluidity, actually. It also depends on context and who you're with. Especially if you look kind of Mexican/Latino like me, if I'm with a bunch of non-Asians, I think it would be safe to say that almost no FOBs would think I was a fellow Asian immigrant. But if I'm with other Asian people, it's obvious that I'm Chinese and I could even be a FOB if I tried hard enough.

*FOB sounds a bit derogatory and I actually don't like this term. But in the context of this thread, I'll just assume it has neutral connotation and use it as such. I actually have a few FOB friends, and no offense to you guys, but sometimes I actually enjoy hanging out with them more than with other AAs. I have a few close AA friends, but when I'm with a bunch of random AAs who aren't my best friends, sometimes I feel a little weird because a lot of them really don't seem that "Asian" except in their appearance, and I feel like it's a bit disingenuous for everybody to be playing up their Asianness just because their parents happen to be Asian, and I'd rather either go chill with my FOB friends or my white-ass Caucasian friends.

Of course, I realize that what I just wrote is a crock of shit, because I realize that there IS such a thing as an AA experience and AA culture that is distinct from Asian culture or "mainstream" white culture. And it is a bit pretentious of me to think that I'm that much more in touch with my "roots" than so many other AAs.

[Napoleon Chynamite]

Do fobs wear tight clothes ? Maybe too many Americans are wearing excessively large clothing ?

Maybe it's just cause we're fat so we have to. But yeah, in terms of pants, Americans definitely wear looser pants, at least guys do. I find that the Japanese especially wear tight pants. Usually I can tell Japanese FOB's from other FOB's by how their jeans fit on their bodies.

[seanp]

to me, FOB is fucked-up oriental boys o.o

[Napoleon Chynamite]

Whenever people ask me if I'm FOB, BOB, or ABC, I always say I'm STTLHTOB (Still trying to learn how to operate the boat).

[Tao]

^ how do you pronounce that, "still-tob"?

[Leviticus]

I don’t understand something. During my trips to the US in the early 90s I was informed about the word FOB. Strangely enough I was under the impression that FOB meant fucking oriental bastard. Am I wrong?

[Ron]

I don’t understand something. During my trips to the US in the early 90s I was informed about the word FOB. Strangely enough I was under the impression that FOB meant fucking oriental bastard. Am I wrong?

Were you informed by an Asian or White person of this? Usually, FOB is something mainly known among AAs.

Regarding myself, no one really has thought I was a FOB, might be something about my characteristics/bone structure and baggy clothes, they'll see me as Asian, but different than most Asians, since I'm mixed. Then they'll figure out I'm mixed and they'll be like "ohh that's why!" to themselves.

I think my European last name made many people assume that I may be adopted.

Considering that I went to a school where most of the AMs wore glasses and many of them carried the negative stereotypes that were insinuated onto them, maybe it was because I dressed like the stereotype black hip hop/basketball fan, without the bling.

[Kuchana]

No. The opposite. They think I sound white. Can't please everyone.

[Leviticus]

Were you informed by an Asian or White person of this? Usually, FOB is something mainly known among AAs.



Asian. Asian people I met warned me about racist insults i might hear while visiting

[PropellerheadCP]

to me, FOB is fucked-up oriental boys o.o

What do you mean by that, exactly?

[robotic]

what is a 'fob'? ^_^

What do you mean by that, exactly?

i think what seanp means it as, is that he sees FOB as an abbreviation "for f-cked (up) oriental boys"

[SunWuKong]

No. The opposite. They think I sound white. Can't please everyone.

that's ok. our own dear webmaster sounds like a white dude in his 30s. (well, he's almost in his 30s anyway.)

[Seamus]

Other than the ones who grew up in Asian 'hoods or places like Cupertino, CA, how do Asian Americans sound any different from white people? Certainly there may be some differences, but I don't think that Asian American identity is shaped by how we speak to nearly the same extent as for a lot of other non-Anglo-Saxon ethnic communities.

[Chester]

Other than the ones who grew up in Asian 'hoods or places like Cupertino, CA, how do Asian Americans sound any different from white people?Yeah...I don't know of an "Asian American" accent. I mean, there's stuff like pronouncing "stupid" as if were spelled "stoooopiiiiiiid," but that's really more of an age thing than a race thing.

I, by the way, sound like "a white guy" in his 50s.

[SunWuKong]

Other than the ones who grew up in Asian 'hoods or places like Cupertino, CA, how do Asian Americans sound any different from white people? Certainly there may be some differences, but I don't think that Asian American identity is shaped by how we speak to nearly the same extent as for a lot of other non-Anglo-Saxon ethnic communities.


umm... accent?

[kimpossible]

that's ok. our own dear webmaster sounds like a white dude in his 30s. (well, he's almost in his 30s anyway.)

So does my husband and English is his second language. Same for my mom. I haven't talked to too many Asian Americans that sound well... Asian. Couple of 1.5er exceptions and true fobs of course. Hell, one of my cousins is a fob and she hardly has an accent after 3-4 years in the states.

Although, now that I've been on the West Coast longer and met a few people that grew up in Chinatowns and also went back and forth to Taiwan while growing up, yeah - they tend to have a slight accent in natively spoken English.

[>:^|]

Other than the ones who grew up in Asian 'hoods or places like Cupertino, CA, how do Asian Americans sound any different from white people?

Which White people? Or do you mean people without any discernible accent from a second language? People without regional U.S. accents? People who speak standard English?

I think that you can often hear traces of people's other language in their English, even when they speak fluent, non-accented English. Sometimes it's a cadence more than an accent. Plus any speech influence would probably be more influenced by the specific language than by the Asian thing.

Certainly there may be some differences, but I don't think that Asian American identity is shaped by how we speak to nearly the same extent as for a lot of other non-Anglo-Saxon ethnic communities.

Not sure what you're saying here ... please elaborate.

[Seamus]

Which White people? Or do you mean people without any discernible accent from a second language? People without regional U.S. accents? People who speak standard English?

I think that you can often hear traces of people's other language in their English, even when they speak fluent, non-accented English. Sometimes it's a cadence more than an accent. Plus any speech influence would probably be more influenced by the specific language than by the Asian thing.


"Which white people?": to be more precise, I mean whatever Anglo people live in their region and are in their social class (e.g., Long Island, upper class Boston, working class Boston, upper class New York, working class New York, Midlands, Southern, Chicago, Los Angeles). Obviously, everybody speaks slightly differently, but you wouldn't be able to pick out most Asian Americans from the way they speak and identify their accent as an "AA accent."

But there ARE exceptions to the rule. For example, I do think that a lot of Asian kids who grow up in communities where it's like 70% Asian (e.g., Cupertino, Monterey Park, Lowell high school in S.F.) do have a slightly different intonation and way of speaking that seems to transcend specific ethnic groups. Also, a lot of the pinoys I knew in high school hung out with the Latino kids, and had yet another specific way of speaking. And I've also heard AAs, including one of my friends in h.s., speaking slightly "ghettoized" English, though this was usually a conscious effort.

Not sure what you're saying here ... please elaborate.


An example of what I mean is that if you're black and go to school with a lot of white people and "speak like a white person", some black people might accuse you of "acting white" or whatever. If you're Asian and speak like a "white person" no one would blink an eye. You might be accused of "acting white" because of other things, but not because of your accent. That's what I mean.

[deez nuts]

So does my husband and English is his second language. Same for my mom. I haven't talked to too many Asian Americans that sound well... Asian. Couple of 1.5er exceptions and true fobs of course. Hell, one of my cousins is a fob and she hardly has an accent after 3-4 years in the states.

Although, now that I've been on the West Coast longer and met a few people that grew up in Chinatowns and also went back and forth to Taiwan while growing up, yeah - they tend to have a slight accent in natively spoken English.


i think i lost my accent along with my deteriorating mandarin.

[kimpossible]

i think i lost my accent along with my deteriorating mandarin.

You have a slight accent. It sounds kinda Hawaiian to me. I kept expecting you to break out in pidgin like "On top da ocean, had sail boats dat can take two-three hundred peopo inside."

heheheheheh :biggrin:

today is pick on Dr. Buns day

edited cuz i got a question: does Mr. Stud have an American accent in Mandarin? Some people have told me he does and then some people say he's spot on in pronounciation. I know he sounds a little Tainan-ish with his r/zh sounds like 'ren' he says 'zen' and 'rou' is 'zou' like his daddy does.

[deez nuts]

edited cuz i got a question: does Mr. Stud have an American accent in Mandarin? Some people have told me he does and then some people say he's spot on in pronounciation. I know he sounds a little Tainan-ish with his r/zh sounds like 'ren' he says 'zen' and 'rou' is 'zou' like his daddy does.

his mandarin is really good. it's clearer and more concise than mine. no american accent on mr stud. but, when he speaks mandarin you can tell he's from taiwan. it's hard to explain.

meeting mr stud put me in mass confusion, i didn't know whether to speak mandarin or english since i still think in mandarin and translate it to english in my head before i speak english. imagine the confusion in my head when i meet someone that's fluent in mandarin. i don't intend to speak in mandarin, but it just pops out and when i realize what i'm doing, i switch back to english. i would imagine it's very confusing and/or frustrating for the listener.

[Seamus]

My Mandarin accent is somewhere in between a Taiwan one and mainland Chinese one.
Because of my family background and because I learned my Chinese in part in China, I definitely distinguish between zh/r, ch/c, sh/s, and I say "er" a lot more compared to most Taiwanese people in words like "shi'r," "roushe'r," "yihui'er," and "yidian'r." Also, I distinguish between "eng/ong" and "yin/ying." However, I still definitely don't talk like I have an orange in my mouth like a northern mainland Chinese person from Beijing. Also, my Chinese is relatively flat and atonal.

To the fellow Kitaiets out there, how do you speak your Mandarin?

[SunWuKong]

his mandarin is really good. it's clearer and more concise than mine. no american accent on mr stud. but, when he speaks mandarin you can tell he's from taiwan. it's hard to explain.

yeah sometimes i can sort of tell, too, and my mandarin is barely usable. i think the R's in Taiwanese Mandarin is lazier than mainland Mandarin. and sometimes the ZH consonant sounds different.


meeting mr stud put me in mass confusion, i didn't know whether to speak mandarin or english since i still think in mandarin and translate it to english in my head before i speak english. imagine the confusion in my head when i meet someone that's fluent in mandarin. i don't intend to speak in mandarin, but it just pops out and when i realize what i'm doing, i switch back to english. i would imagine it's very confusing and/or frustrating for the listener.

imagine being in a crowd with people that speak different combinations of English, Mandarin, and Cantonese. talk about tripping over yourself linguistically.

[kimpossible]

imagine being in a crowd with people that speak different combinations of English, Mandarin, and Cantonese. talk about tripping over yourself linguistically.

hey, that's my typical HK shopping experience. me speaking short sentences half in Mandarin, half in English. my husband using Mandarin and the shopkeeper speaking back in Cantonese, Mandarin and some English.

With beautiful gold and plastic cards as the ultimate international translators.

[deez nuts]

imagine being in a crowd with people that speak different combinations of English, Mandarin, and Cantonese. talk about tripping over yourself linguistically.

toss in taiwanese and that's our big family gatherings i.e. chinese new years. though mandarin is spoken most of the time during these gatherings.

this leads to another type of frustration for me: understanding some of the cantonese and taiwanese being spoken but not being able to speak it.

[Chester]

imagine being in a crowd with people that speak different combinations of English, Mandarin, and Cantonese. talk about tripping over yourself linguistically.I'm a mess. I understand a lot more Cantonese but speak more Mandarin. There have been times when I've tried telling folks to speak to me in Cantonese but to expect me speaking in Mandarin. Good in theory, but it never works out as it just confuses people and they end up speaking Mandarin.

[SunWuKong]

toss in taiwanese and that's our big family gatherings i.e. chinese new years. though mandarin is spoken most of the time during these gatherings.

this leads to another type of frustration for me: understanding some of the cantonese and taiwanese being spoken but not being able to speak it.

you just need to watch more HK movies and sing Cantonese songs at Karaoke.

[kuilong]

My Mandarin accent is somewhere in between a Taiwan one and mainland Chinese one.
Because of my family background and because I learned my Chinese in part in China, I definitely distinguish between zh/r, ch/c, sh/s, and I say "er" a lot more compared to most Taiwanese people in words like "shi'r," "roushe'r," "yihui'er," and "yidian'r." Also, I distinguish between "eng/ong" and "yin/ying." However, I still definitely don't talk like I have an orange in my mouth like a northern mainland Chinese person from Beijing. Also, my Chinese is relatively flat and atonal.

To the fellow Kitaiets out there, how do you speak your Mandarin?

They tried to standardize our accent in Chinese school, so now I don't speak like most southerners (i.e. not pronouncing retroflexes, etc.) -- but I make a conscious effort to stay away from 'er hua' and other Beijingisms (e.g. ri4tou2 instead of tai4yang2). I'm told people from Heilongjiang speak this way, and their Mandarin is supposed to be much admired, but the only person I've ever met from Harbin does the 'er hua' thing.

According to Wikipedia, some Mandarin speakers pronounce pinyin "j" as "k" (this was the standard pronunciation a few centuries ago, hence "Peking" and "Heilungkiang"), but I've yet to actually hear this... I really want to find someone who speaks this way though.

Oh, and I have a strong American accent, which I didn't used to have a few years ago. Bah. -_-

[SunWuKong]

According to Wikipedia, some Mandarin speakers pronounce pinyin "j" as "k" (this was the standard pronunciation a few centuries ago, hence "Peking" and "Heilungkiang"), but I've yet to actually hear this... I really want to find someone who speaks this way though.

i'm not sure about Heilingkiang, but the "k" in the "Peking" romanisation comes from Cantonese. the Western world had more contact with Cantonese speakers than Mandarin speakers in the past and a lot of the old romanised names and words resemble Cantonese more so than Mandarin. another example - Hong Kong instead of Xiang Gang.

[Seamus]

"Ritou," haha. I wouldn't be caught dead using that term.

I've never heard the "k" thing, either. Have you noticed that some Chinese people's "w" is somewhere in between an English w and a v? It's got a more v-like quality than the English w.

[kimpossible]

i'm not sure about Heilingkiang, but the "k" in the "Peking" romanisation comes from Cantonese. the Western world had more contact with Cantonese speakers than Mandarin speakers in the past and a lot of the old romanised names and words resemble Cantonese more so than Mandarin.

I always wondered about this with Japanese too. With some of the Chinese pronounciation of some words (fuck if I can remember what it's called) some of it seems more Cantonese sounding than Mandarin. Like mok/moku for wood.

Let's not even pretend I know what I'm talking about though. Just wondered for a long time and hoping kuilong and AliBaba read this.

[Seamus]

I remember someone saying that the grammar and pronunciation Cantonese is closer than Mandarin to the pronunciation of archaic Chinese. The grammar and pronunciation of Mandarin was affected by contact with the Manchus, Huns and other Altaic peoples. If the vocabulary reached Japan really early, it would make sense for it to sound more like Cantonese. I, too, only pretend to know what I'm talking about. I think kuilong is more expert on this than anybody else here.

[SunWuKong]

I always wondered about this with Japanese too. With some of the Chinese pronounciation of some words (fuck if I can remember what it's called) some of it seems more Cantonese sounding than Mandarin. Like mok/moku for wood.

Let's not even pretend I know what I'm talking about though. Just wondered for a long time and hoping kuilong and AliBaba read this.

for the few Korean words i know, some of them sound more like their Cantonese counterparts than their Mandarin counterparts.

[Napoleon Chynamite]

for the few Korean words i know, some of them sound more like their Cantonese counterparts than their Mandarin counterparts.

This is the case with Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, and probably Thai. During the period in which other languages borrowed many words from the Chinese language, the Chinese pronunciations used were closer to modern day Cantonese than modern day Mandarin.

[kuilong]

for the few Korean words i know, some of them sound more like their Cantonese counterparts than their Mandarin counterparts.

That's because Japanese and Korean borrowed a lot of words back in the day, and as Seamus says Cantonese is phonologically a lot closer to Middle Chinese than Mandarin (it preserves all the Middle Chinese finals and tones, for instance).

I don't really know about borrowings in Korean, but in Japanese the borrowed pronunciation for a character is called the on reading. Oftentimes, words were borrowed more than once, resulting in two types of on readings: go readings, which were borrowed before the Tang dynasty and kan readings, which were borrowed during the Tang dynasty (some on readings, to add to the confusion, are neither). For instance, 美 (Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin: mei3, Cantonese Yale: méih) has the go reading of "bi" and the kan reading of "mi". Meanwhile, there's also the kun reading, which is the native Japanese word which means "beautiful", which was applied to this character -- "utsuku(shii)". The borrowings were adapted to Japanese phonology and both languages have diverged plenty since the Tang dynasty, but Cantonese has generally diverged less, which is why Japanese (and Korean) borrowings tend to be more similar to Cantonese.

[Made in China]

Gosh, Asians think I am a ABC!! Even though I am ultra-nationalist Hong Kong born foreigner.

It must be my American accent. :( I am NOT a jook-sing. More like a Jook-Huk. :D

[Filiprish]

A lot of APIAs, fob or not, think I'm hapa.

[Leinad]

i haven't even heard of that term 'fob' until i saw it on eurasiannation...
i no wat it is now

no 1 calls me fob though

o asians in nz don't even talk to me... the koreans are too stuck up in their group and they're mostly 'fob' s anyway

[s1eve]

AAs I've met especially in Hawaii quizzed me about my accent with one saying, "Dude, there are Asians living in New Zealand?"

[Shinkai]

i didn't know what fob meant until i looked it up on wikipedia. no one has ever identified me as fob, but i do notice how americans and asians identify me differently. most asians think i'm mixed whereas americans think i'm abc or not quite the stereotypical asian. this is rather ironic considering i grew up in china and i'm not mixed.

[uhhden]

My dad's friend from Taiwan once told me my English was "very REALLY good." My friend's mom once asked me how long ago did I come to America...what the crap. -__-

[omgitsyoung]

Well, it depends who we're talking about.
My Asian friends, who were born in America, are just so stupid, it saddens me. My Asian friends from scattered parts of Asia usually fit the Asian stereotype, but there's always one messing it up for the rest of us. >:[
When I go to an Asian District or an Asian restaurant, i'm not usually mistaken for another type of asian, or 'fob'. I think it's because they're supposed to be well-mannered and trained not to offend anyone. I guess I like going to some pretty snuffy places.