Doesn't your mother tongue have to already be something you speak, by definition?

ANd honestly limiting your travel to places with the same "Alphabet" can be misleading.

Consider happening upon this sign in Turkey, a country that uses a Romanized script.
https://melindatripsturkey2011.files...sh-sign-11.jpg

vs. Japan, which LOVES to use pictograms and cute illustrations everywhere
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_USzog_GOz...600/sign-1.jpg

I don't know about you, but I have no idea how to read Turkish or Japanese, but I can clearly understand the latter sign better.

Hence my use of quotations. My mother tongue is technically the language my Parents spoke and taught me at an early age, but having been born/raised in Canada and not speaking it at home has rendered it practically defunct for me.

Are people in these countries aware Canadians are diverse? I've heard of many examples of new worlders, Americans, Canadians etc. mistaken for locals when travelling abroad of all kinds of races, like African Americans being mistaken for Africans in Africa etc. but sometimes also Euro-Americans/Canadians/Aussies passing for locals in Europe.

Even, so, isn't there also that popularly mentioned thing about how people can "spot an American miles away" due to mannerism, dress etc. regardless of race. Does it apply to Canadians?

That's not really an apples to apples comparison, though.

If the Turkish sign had a pictogram, you could understand it just as well. With no pictogram, the Japanese sign is even less intelligible to me than the Turkish one is. If those are very common words you often see on signs, after a week or so in Turkey I'd be able to start to pick some of them up. Not so with Japanese.

If I am looking to get off a train, and the sign says "ISTANBUL", I can read it.

If I have an address or am trying to orient myself with a map or GPS, if I see Istiklal Caddesi it means something to me that I can use as a point of reference. Even if I might not know what the street name means exactly (Avenue of the Lovely Flowers? Boulevard of the Glory of the Nation? I have no idea.)

Depends on the country. I found in more developed places like Japan, China, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia many people are aware of a large diaspora of Asians in North America and immigration patterns. They may have thought I was a local at sight but as soon as I opened my mouth all doubt was eased.

Places like Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. I don't know if it was part of their tourist shtick but I always got a "oh you look like _____(insert nationality of country)" followed by "Oh you are Canadian but where are your parents from?" Sorta like the "Oh where are you really from??" query from yokels in North America, but a lot more innocuous I think.

As for spotting Canadians and Americans, again it really depends. I always dressed as I would at home in hot weather - t-shirt and shorts. That would more or less either followed the cultural norm of the country (like Singapore) or made me stick out like a sore thumb (like Myanmar)

Also you'd be hard pressed to find any locals in SE Asia that know the difference between a Canadian and American, unless they lived there or had relatives there.

Fact is, in Japan they use pictograms in many more frequent situations and often have English translations below Japanese. Whereas I found it more difficult in some places in Latin America, where signs were frequently only in Spanish/Portuguese with no helpful pictograms.

Just my experience as a traveller to over 50 countries. YMMV.

Apparently Samuel L. Jackson and Magic Johnson, when shopping in Italy some time ago were even stereotyped in prejudiced ways based on their appearance and assumed to be "immigrants".

Since at the time (or still is) there were controversies about immigration/refugees from regions like the Mid-east/Africa in Italy.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...-a7905026.html

A lot of hucksters and also more legitimate people who deal with tourists, have multiple "schpiels" they've developed for a whole slew of nationalities (and also languages). They'll try one and if it doesn't work they'll move on to the next one, and the next one, etc.

I've walked down a street and been followed by dudes trying to sell me stuff who've replied to a whole series of prepared lines I have in my mind like "I don't speak...", "je ne parle pas", "no hablo", "ich spreche kein", "no parlo"... and they still had language options to try and get my attention.

Yeah, the more a writing system is "unique" and distant from the Latin alphabet, the more likely you'll see pictograms.

Some other things said to apply to "American tourists" stereotypically are walking style (with "swagger", or moving about like they're used to lots of sidewalk space), being loud (not a stereotype of Canadians though) and smiling a lot (could be a stereotype of Canadians, if any one knows any stereotype the "nice" or "polite" Canuck would be one of them).

But these all could apply to anyone regardless of race.

Also, the stereotypical touristy clothing of Americans -- e.g. Hawaiian shirts, or white sneakers and shorts, plus (North) American style clothing like hoodies/jerseys/baseball caps and shirts with school and college mascots are all said to be markers of not being local.

But who knows, these may be outdated now in a more self-aware and image-conscious tourist demographic today and global fashion market.

I'd say I can spot an American over a Canadian with confidence about 80% of the time . Although there have been times I've assumed someone was Canadian due to their accent and mild mannered-ness and been proven wrong after speaking to them!

But yeah I find the whole sneakers/college hoodie getup a lot less prevalent in Asia than in Europe as a whole among American travellers (for obvious climatological reasons, and for less obvious reasons being that Asia attracts more seasoned travellers?). So that marker is a bit harder to spot.

Funny enough, I was in Sub-Saharan Africa last year and a ton of donated clothing gets into the hands of locals there so you'll see a things like UC Santa Barbara t-shirts and Green Bay Packers hats worn by denizens there.

No, I was in Sudbury for a few days last summer and used it as a base to explore nearby sites like Killarney and Onaping Falls. I ate at Tucos and the stores on Kathleen street were a pleasant surprise.

I'd go back to Singapore or Malaysia just for the food alone.

I was eating from construction food trucks when I was in KL thanks to the locals giving me the heads up. And I probably gained 3-4kg in three days in Singapore thanks to their hawkers markets.

Yes, that corroborates my experiences. I have been to about 30 countries. I also found it easier to navigate in Asia vs. Latin America. Even many places in Europe are bewildering (I recall when our train broke down halfway between Firenze and Bologna...being stuck on a railway siding at 12am, with no idea what was going on as everything was being broadcast over the PA in Italian only...I could pick out "treno" and a few numbers, but that was it).

Eating in Asia, despite language barriers, is great because:

a. many cheap local restaurants have pictures on their menus;
b. food fairs (in markets, malls, etc) often have the best cheap eats and often display mysteriously-preserved examples of their wares on the counter;
c. ridiculous wealth of street food stalls where it is typically pretty easy to identify (at least roughly) what is being served;
d. dining is typically casual and fellow diners don't seem to mind if you point at something delicious-looking on their table;
e. its often better to not know what you are eating (as long as it tastes good); and
f. most dishes are going to be pretty darn tasty even if you just blindly point at some chinese characters on a menu.

You can get a long way by learning only how to say "I want this".

It also really helps that being terse/direct to service staff is culturally normal in East Asia.

This - Penang in Malaysia was one of our favourite spots over a 9-month pan-Asia/Oceania trip. Hard to find the breadth of delicious cuisines, all on a backpacker's budget, in one walkable section of a city like that.

Yes, that's true. Pointing and barking "I WANT THIS" would be frowned upon in some other places.

Maybe I'm uninformed about this, but I always thought that the stereotype (at least in the west) was that westerners (Americans especially but also Anglophones more broadly) are blunt, straight-talking in a frank confident in-your-face way, and easterners (Asians etc.) were the ones who were indirect, obsessed with not sticking out, "saving face" etc.