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What do you call people from China/Japan/Korea etc.
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I'm talking about ethnicity.
I know people will say "Call them by their name" and things like that, but that's not what I mean.
Say you had to describe someone when reporting a crime. You could say "Well he was white, 6ft, medium build" Same with the word "black".
The word Asian, I was bought up with this meaning people from the far East, but it seems to be used for Indian/Pakistani people, so if you describe someone as Asian in this country people immediately seem to think of people who look Indian.
The word "Oriental" sounds very Victorian and old fashioned. I've heard people say "He looked Chinese" but I imagine that would offend a Japanese person.
Why do we not have a word for this race of people?
I know people will say "Call them by their name" and things like that, but that's not what I mean.
Say you had to describe someone when reporting a crime. You could say "Well he was white, 6ft, medium build" Same with the word "black".
The word Asian, I was bought up with this meaning people from the far East, but it seems to be used for Indian/Pakistani people, so if you describe someone as Asian in this country people immediately seem to think of people who look Indian.
The word "Oriental" sounds very Victorian and old fashioned. I've heard people say "He looked Chinese" but I imagine that would offend a Japanese person.
Why do we not have a word for this race of people?
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Same with us (us being Australians). It wasn't until I moved here that I heard Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi people being referred to as Asian.
But it's still too vague a description - if you took a Turkmen, an Afghani, an Indian, a Laotian, a Chinese and a Malay they are all Asian but they're won't be any major similarities. Even within China there are facial differences between areas. Just look at a Uighur and compare them to a Han for example.
I found this graphic useful:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Populations.png
Yes, but could you tell the difference between these nationalities? Research shows people can't (some claim that Japanese/Chinese people have slightly different features) - a website was set up with Japanese, Chinese and Korean faces, with the hair removed so it was all facial and not cultural, and people were asked to guess which was which. It showed that people, even from these countries, couldn't differentiate.
And if you can't tell them apart, what do you call them?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orient
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_people
I believe the Police themselves use O1 (Chinese) and O9 (other oriental).
Just say looked Oriental or looked Chinese/Japanese etc. What's the problem?
Our Benefactors?
South East Asian for Vietnam/Cambodia/Thailand/Malaysia etc.
I know it's probably frowned upon but I won't contort my sentences just so I don't offend someone who's not in ear shot anyway.
all encompasing
Which would probably be the same as someone from the Far East choosing to refer to you as German looking....
Ok well two points. The reason for the study was that a lot of people insisted they could tell the nationalities apart, mostly people from those countries, so someone set up a website to see if it was true. I'm sure if we did the same for western European countries the result would be the same.
The reason for my post is that we don't have a convenient word for the ethnicity of the far East in this country.
Imagine you had to describe someone to someone else. You might say something like "He's medium height, well built, white, dark hair". You could replace white with black or asian, asian meaning the subcontinent of south asia.
But there is no word to replace for 'oriental' people. Chinese is a nationality. You might not know the person is from China. They might be a work colleague and you've never asked them what country their parents come from. You just know what they look like, but there is no word to describe this.
I call them Asian because they are from Asia.
Typical EMEA attitude. :mad:
I've tried that before, and then been met with a barrage of "that's not asian". I think it is just accepted in our language that the word is not used for the far East.
I'm no expert, but does the BBC asian service feature much Chinese/Japanese influenced content? It doesn't look like it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/asiannetwork/
Asia is a huge continent though, with lots of very different ethnicities.
Even among the Chinese. there are general physical differences between people of north & south.