Since the age of 15 I've been a complete Hispanophile. I began to obsessively learn Spanish in my late teenage years and soon became fluent in the language and then spent significant time in Spain and Latin America where I felt much happier and fit in with the culture. I consider myself a Latin soul.
However, I soon discovered that even though I don't identify with Anglo culture others will still associate me with it by virtue of my (unwanted) nationality as soon as they find out where I'm from. Let me be clear. I absolutely don't like British people, am repulsed by all manifestations of British culture, hate the sound of British English, and make an active effort to avoid British people whenever I'm abroad. So naturally, whenever I'm in Spain or elsewhere, I dread being asked where I'm from. I speak Spanish well enough not to be perceived as a gringo/guiri (I don't have an Anglophone accent) and so most people simply assume that I belong to some other nationality. But when somebody asks me "¿De dónde eres?" and I have to reply "Inglaterra", I am overcome with shame and embarrassment and begin to feel extremely uncomfortable. I'm forced to assume a national identity which really doesn't suit me and which I loathe.
Spain and Latin America aren't the only places I've lived in. I also spent some time in Japan in the late 2000s and early 2010s and learned Japanese to a high level.
During my stay in Japan, I would simply tell people that I'm Spanish. After all, I already spoke fluent Spanish and most Japanese people are clueless about the different European nationalities. It was unlikely that anybody would figure out my white lie ("white" here meaning gaijin Caucasian foreigner
).As a Caucasian foreigner in Japan, you typically attract a lot of attention and sometimes get Japanese randos in the street or some other public place coming up to you and asking for English practice. Some of them can be quite a nuisance. Or alternatively you speak to a cashier or whoever in reasonably good Japanese and they see your Caucasian gaijin face and respond to you in broken English. Whenever these things used to happen, I would usually tell my interlocutor that Spanish is my native language and that I'm bad at English and ask them to speak Japanese. The "Eigo beggar" randos would then apologize with a "Ah, sumimasen!" and leave me alone while the cashiers and such would immediately switch to Japanese and the transaction would go smoothly.
I never felt bad about lying about my nationality in Japan, by the way. The Eigo beggar randos merely wanted to use me as a commodity for language practice without giving a fcuk about who I was or how I felt about the situation, the cashiers and such were being prejudiced against the white-faced gaijin (白人だからといって日本語がわからないわけではない!), I never had the patience to listen to Japanese people's annoying and poorly pronounced "katakana ingirish", and, as I've already explained, I don't really identify with Anglo culture anyway and so I had no reason to speak English with anybody in Japan. I'm a vibrant and free-spirit Latin soul and a virulent and pathological Anglophobe, after all.
In Spain the situation isn't anywhere near as bad. As a European I don't stand out very much at all and even look somewhat Mediterranean due to my obsession with tanning and my consistent use of Melanotan. I feel perfectly at home as a European in a European country.
Nevertheless, I still dislike having to reveal my nationality to people when asked about it. I'm so detached from my roots that I don't even know how to "act British". Also, due to the position of English as a lingua franca of sorts, once in a while even in Spain some asshole with L2 English abilities will attempt to speak the language with me once my nationality and native status have been revealed (although this happens far less frequently than in Japan where I'm an obvious whiteboi foreigner and therefore assumed to be an Anglophone, lol!). This naturally pisses me off since I don't like the sound of English, hate the way I speak English due to a bumpkin accent and dysprosody, only desire to speak Spanish which I regard as a far more beautiful and superior language, and once again feel no connection to British culture despite officially being "British" myself. I see my nationality as a source of self-hatred and a major inconvenience.
Why can't I just lie about my nationality in Spain too? The problem is that I'm not fluent in any European language other than English and Spanish and therefore wouldn't be able to convincingly pull it off.
In Japan I could get away with telling people that I'm Spanish because I have a high level of Spanish and could most likely fool just about any Japanese person even if that person knew some Spanish, but if in Spain I were to claim to be, say, Serbian or Lithuanian or some other obscure European nationality, without legitimate skills in the language I would run the risk of getting caught should I encounter a native speaker of that language or even just a hobbyist polyglot who happens to have learned some of it. I've actually dabbled in Serbo-Croatian and Russian. But my knowledge of those languages is still quite basic. And, for obvious reasons, nobody would ever believe that Japanese were my native language. Lol!
And for the moralists on the forum who might start tubthumping about the virtue of honesty and whatnot, I have no moral problem with lying and Machiavellianism. This world is a rat race of conflict and competition and ruthless dickheads trying to get one over on their fellow man. People lie all the time to protect themselves from discrimination and affronts to their personal integrity, to avoid potential threats and inconveniences, to get away from others who are being a nuisance, or to gain the upper hand in a situation which involves a conflict of interests. Besides, as I've already said in another thread, most people who we meet are assholes anyway.
This is my reflection on the topic of lying about my own nationality. While I'm not particularly asking for advice or anything like that, I hope that some of you can read my reflection and even find humor in the funny parts!
