I’ve got South African ancestry. I was born/raised in UT,US- but my parents and ancestors going alllllll the way back are from SA.

People often tell me that I seem more South African than American, mostly because of the respect I have for people, how rarely I get sick, and how I’m almost always barefoot if I can get away with it. I’ve never been- so I don’t know. 😄

All my ancesters are from yorkshire, going back hundreds of years. im still in yorkshire so i guess i havent lost touch with that. i still eat yorkshire puddings but i dont drink tea, thats kinda a big deal around here.

I’m still very much in touch with my heritage. I love the food and can cook it. I speak the language fluently. I love Bollywood movies, the clothes, and can dance Bhangra (sort of 😉). I’m knowledgeable of all of the traditions and customs.

I’m a little bit afraid that my kids won’t have those things but I will try my best. I’m first generation and it is hard to pass that kind of thing on. It’s easier to assimilate.

I am of quite a mixed heritage. Being descendant from (and bear with me)

Indonesian-Java / Germanic descend. And from French nobility (fled from the guillotine) / Norse Germanic descend.

So deciding which heritage is a tricky one. As for ethnicity, I was born and currently still live in the Netherlands. Which culturally has had some pretty dark pages.

Also in the current social climate saying you're from Norse descend is enough to label you a Nazi. I suppose I just try to live an honourable life wherever possible...

-Legion.

Indian / polish. Most people mistake my conduct for either american or british upon first encounter, no idea how that's even remotely possible. Not as concerned with ancestry as other family members - I'm me.

My mother was Japanese.... My father was English .... I was brought up in Eroupe... but I love the Japanese culture.

Not really Japanese or European.

I'm a culture all of my own lol

Have you ever been to Japan? I love japanese culture. The food is so good...and the festivities are so enchanting. It's such a beautiful culture.

I'm not sure what I would call my heritage. My parents claim to have roots in Ireland, Germany, France. But that was so many generations ago, we are just Texans now. I guess my heritage is modern american culture now, at least that's all I've ever known. I guess I relate to my ethnicity, but I wish I knew more about my family and where we came from.

Yes from time to time .... to learn about Japanese culture Kyoto is the best city to visit.... It's the old imperial capital .... love that city ..

Didn't know you're South African! 🙃

If I ever get to go, I hope that will be the first city I get to visit!

I'm South African, living in the US, I hated US culture when I moved here, specifically how 'fast' everything is. No one really takes there time with things, but it's the system that's to blame I realise, not the people immersed in it exactly. I've been learning about my 'origins' lately, my family is a right big mix of Dutch, French, Scottish and God knows what else. I'm going to take a DNA test at some point soon to know for sure. I love my South African traditions, and I know that some can be traced back to traditions that are still practiced in Europe, which I really like. So my SO and I are in the process of learning the traditions our ancestors would have practiced, incorporating them into our holidays and lifestyle. So that when we eventually have kids, we can teach them about their origins. I want to learn the languages too, hell, I'd love to end up in Scotland.

My SO is Texan but his ancestors are Czech? And Welsh, possibly Irish? But he's more into the ancestry stuff than I am, he's the reason we're really getting 'back' to our culture. I think the culture you come from is important, we need diversity, your culture and its traditions (as long as there is no cruelty involved - torture of animals including humans, e.g. Sacrifices) is what makes the world richer.

TBH i feel like English culture is not allowed to be celebrated, its always seen as bad.

My mom's side of the fam is French and English. My dad's mother came to the USA directly from Yugoslavia when she was a girl. She married a man whose family had come to the USA from Czechoslovakia. I dearly loved my Granny from Yugoslavia. She used to cuss a blue streak in her native tongue :) She held a grudge like no other and voiced her opinion with no reservations. It was tragic to get on her "bad side." I was her fave grandkid, I think, and she loved me to pieces. And I loved her to pieces. She taught me to speak Yugoslavian (?) When I was a kid and we used to speak to each other. I've lost the little bit of vocabulary I learned from her though :'( She talked about her homeland all the time, and when I was in the hospital constantly as a little girl, she would sit and sleep at my bedside, never leaving, and tell me stories about how I was a princess from the homeland...it completely enchanted me

I didn't identify so much with my mom's side of the fam...they were a stodgy, stuck up, self righteous lot. Pretentious about their roots when they were in fact, peasantry and nobody "special..." Though they liked to pretend.

As a married woman...I married a man who is half Japanese. His mother was a WWII bride. He grew up speaking, reading, and writing Japanese. He has a black belt in Kenpo. He was a Buddhist. He dreamed of being and studied samurai and loves to make bonsai trees. I so wish he would teach our kids Japanese...the language and more of the customs....but he claims to have forgotten it. Also, being the product of a mother who was our "enemy" in WWII...made him deny a lot of his Japanese heritage when he was outside the home....

Interestingly...all 4 of my kids are 1/4 Japanese. My oldest LOOKS 100% Japanese (more so than his dad, in fact). My daughter looks just like her grandmother did at the same age from pictures. My two youngest boys have blond hair and fair (almost translucent) skin, like me. They have blue or blue/green eyes. But all 4 kids have the epicanthal fold. You just don't notice it as much on the blondes....my daughter was also born with "mongolian birth spots," which is something that babies who have "medium skin (not African/not white)" have from time to time.

To answer your ?, though...I relate more to my Yugoslavian ancestry than any other. I have tried to emulate my Granny as I get older in many ways. I've tried to cook some of her old recipes. I would love to visit the area where she grew up. I realize Yugoslavia is no more, but she was from Zagreb, and that city still exists...

That's because colonialism has pushed it onto other civilisations and it's awful that happened since so many people lost their native religion and traditions, but that shouldn't mean that the English or Europeans shouldn't celebrated their own culture (but it should never be at the expense of others). It sort of defeats the purpose of promoting diversity. I can never be a part of any other culture because it wasn't anything I learnt or embraced, so to deny my celebration of my own culture, what a glum life that is, ey?

My father was a Gibson. My mother was a Fender.....
That's why they call me, Mindbender!

[https://youtu.be/I4Sdv3os1b8]

Got the blood! Never been though. Lots of family out there that comes and visits now and then. 😊

I have a few tendencies that people point out are a little aboriginal around here now and then. Want to get more into the culture and pay a visit to some family out there. One day when I have the time/money. 😉

I'm just a mutt. Mom's family were Swedish and English and my dad's family were Irish and English. I'm really not enough of anything to claim an ethnicity. All my great grandparents were born in the USA....

Hungarian/Polish, which makes me super sneaky and too damn stupid to know any better. I look at myself as Canadian.. full stop.

Yep, we certainly are punished for colonialism.

I live in england, the uk and don't show a huge interest in the Queen.
and im not that fond of tea either...

When we have our meet up, your cooking Japanese food!!

And really I'm immersed in the southern culture. I moved south across the Mason-Dixon line when I was about 19 or 20 and people here have a lot of pride in their southern heritage. I mean I asked girls out that said their daddy wouldn't let them date a Yankee when I was young. So I started talking slower and learned to use words like y'all and fixin' and yonder and suddenly I was everyone's best friend.

I like to hunt and drive big jacked up pick up trucks and even have a few Confederate battle flags around the house. It's a lot like an ethnicity. The food is different from mainstream and the attitude is different too. My wife fries everything, even bologna and we eat dressing not stuffing and have biscuits smothered in gravy and drink moonshine. I relate to being a rebel a lot, even though I'm a born again rebel...

My sister made our family tree years ago, and as far back as records go the entire family are from the same part of Lancashire, England.

As soon as I was old enough I left and have been all over, but will never go back there.

I am back in England now, but not near where I'm from.

I definitely see myself as English and HATE getting called British.

I don't feel any ties or connections to any region of England, and if I can't eventually settle somewhere hot then I'd like to live back in Scotland.

And here I thought all along that you were Scottish. You're a born again rebel too.

Yonder is a very Lancashire word, but mainly just the older generation.

I thought you were born and bred there, so where were you brought up?

Any time I think of a southern American you are the exact image I see!

Haha

That's cos I moved there around 21 yrs old, and spent a long time moving all over there.

I was living in Scotland when I joined original help, and honestly never thought I would return to England.

If I hadn't settled into such a remote pretty part of England I would have run back to Scotland a long time ago.

I grew up in a corn field in Indiana, it was kind of redneck just a bunch of farmers in jacked up pick up trucks with guns.. ha ha. And my dad was the veterinarian who worked on everybody's horses, cows, and pigs so I knew everyone. Or at least they knew me, I was the little kid that always rode around with him and held the pigs while he castrated them.

But when people think of the north they think of New York or Chicago or Detroit. These big giant concrete jungles that are nothing like the midwest cornfields and farms. Yeah I am the poster child for middle America. If you look "deplorables" up in the dictionary my picture is there.

You couldn't pay me enough to spend any amount of time in the south of England, it's way too busy and too many buildings.

But I'd spend an endless amount of time in the southern states of USA.

I have visited a few places in North America, hated new York for how big and busy it is, but apart from Florida I haven't been to the south.

Yeah there goes the neighborhood.. no it's okay as long as they assimilate into the culture, learn the language, and don't try to change things. Kind of like the illegal aliens who are not assimilating, it bothers people.

And yeah Florida is kind of not really the south. It's a big giant beach where everyone goes to escape the cold and party. Lots of Canadians there.

It seems like everyone is moving to Colorado. This used to be a relatively quiet, sporty state where a majority loved the outdoors. Now we have so many who don't assimilate. Getting crowded here, for real.

And all those outdoor spots.... they are getting trashed. For the first time in forever, lots of people are vandalizing hiking trails, etc.
And one trail we used to hike now has a 3 hour wait to begin the ascent... AFTER you've made a reservation!

And its costing $45 vs $5 to get into national park land... guess they need more employees to manage the influx of people (and their garbage)

I live in the lakes, so our year round population is pretty low compared to the rest of the country, but we get a LOT of visitors, mainly city dwellers, and a lot of them bring their city ways here, they park like bell ends, they leave litter everywhere, they lack respect and you can normally spot one a mile off.
And all through summer it's swarming with people.
It's difficult to find solitude in the mountains with so many others around.

I had set out to go up England's highest mountain this August.
I got to the bottom of it, looked up and saw a snake of people going up and down.
I turned round, jumped in the car and went somewhere else.

Couldnt agree more, southerners are awful. London is just hell. I much prefer the quiet contryside. Your little corner looks amazing and my cousin is looking to move that way soon. Cant blame her, i just wish it was a bit warmer and less wet. Same for my side tbh

Hm. Well, when I travel internationally, I will def visit the lakes! And certainly stay north. You'd certainly spot the loud, rowdy Americans from a mile off! But I love the earth and respect mother nature. So I won't trash it 😎

But to have less cold and rain, we have to go south.
As much as I hate bad weather, I'd still rather be up here.

If I'd didn't rain all the time it would be the big hole district, not the lake district....

The Americans are even worse at parking, and they are always loud, but I've not noticed them being as bad as southerners for leaving a trail of mess everywhere they go.

Alfred wainwright would turn in his seeing how things are getting in the lakes

That seems to be the trend these days, the world is more accessible and Instagram shares beautiful pictures. Drawing more tourists. Its a shame people cant respect the areas.

I went to 7 waterfalls a while back and the queue there was phenomenal. The people spoil the serenity of the place.

My family are mutts. Lol.

My father is Dutch-Hebrew. With my mom's side, it gets even more ridiculous. My maternal grandfather is German, my maternal grandmother is a mix of Scottish, Welsh, English, and French. My aunt, who helped raise me through most of my childhood when my parents weren't fit, married an Italian.

Then there's my half brother from my/our father's first marriage. His mother was half Australian Aboriginal - she was a victim of what's known as the Stolen Generations. My brother never met his mother's side of the family, and our dad walked out on him when he was 2, so he was raised by his mother, who was raised by a white foster family.

And to top it all off, in 2015, I got pregnant to a Chinese man.

As for me? I tend to identify with some of the Hebrew side, just mainly because I wasn't very close with my father's Dutch side of the family, and I left my father when I was 11 and have only seen him once, since. We don't speak.

I know more German than I do Dutch, and I know more Hebrew than I do Dutch as well. But I'm also extremely proud of my Scottish ancestry...but that's because of the clans my grandmother came from; Highlanders who were part of the Jacobite Rising.

So I guess I kind of see myself as a weird Australian/Dutch/German/Scottish Jew...