What is your worst verbal faux-pas??

[Alida]

ok.. feeling silly here... what's a "jooview"??

I can't even find it on google!

[hellgirl]

ok.. feeling silly here... what's a "jooview"??

I want to know too! Somebody somewhere must have the answer! If google doesn't know then it must be truly unusual and therefore is a bit of knowledge that I simply must acquire!!! 

But now I have just found that the person may have been going to see the website jewview . com? (Which seems all very legit and informative). But I'm guessing from her upset response that this wasn't the case...

[guihong]

I can't help with the question, but as for bloopers, I just now made a beaut 

I've made friends with another mother in my complex, because we put our kids on the school bus every morning.  She is of Asian descent, and I assumed (I know) that she was Korean.  Today we got to talking about immigration, and it came to light that not only was she not Korean, she is Japanese (ouch).  It was cool though, because she didn't immigrate from Japan but from Brazil, so we were off and talking about Brazil.  I decided to let it go by and hope she wasn't offended.  We made a tentative playdate for the kids, so I don't think so.

But...ouchie.  I broke my own rule about not trying to guess someone's nationality, especially if they are Asian.  So much history between the countries, and none pleasant.

At least I didn't say "Your daughter must take after her dad, not you"  .  The little girl is her stepdaughter.

gui

[thebadchemist]

I broke my own rule about not trying to guess someone's nationality, especially if they are Asian. 

And does this rule exist because we all look alike? I'm seriously just teasing... I couldn't resist.

I think it's a great rule to have, because people have guessed everything from Thai to Korean with me. I'm not offended, but I do question the need to acertain exactly "where I came from". For some reason, only other Chinese people figure that I'm Chinese-American. The absolute most hilarious example was a tour guide we had in Hong Kong. It was one of those half day tours and while she made a verbal faux-pas, I laughed at the irony. She warned our group (largely Caucasian) to stay together... "because you know how you all think we Asians look alike? Well, all White people look the same to me, so I won't be able to tell you apart from the members of the other tour groups!"

Having been on the receiving end of "How are we supposed to know what you are? You all look alike!" I had to laugh.

Oh, for posterity's sake, I'm from Los Angeles.