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oriental or asian?

I think East Asian sounds beter then Oriental. :D
 
Accuracy is something hard to achieve if you want to talk about races without scientific terminology. Actually, in day-to-day conversation I use the term East-Asian when I refer to Chinese, Japanese et al., for too many people don't even know the scientific terms (just like Golgo said before: mongoloid = Down-syndrome???).

Labels are almost always in-accurate because they generalize. East-Asian isn't really exact either, just thinking of the Ainu in Japan, & where to draw the line between E-, SE- & NE-Asia.
But, hell, as long as people know what I'm talking about...
 
ah... but c'mon, Asia is a continent, isn't it, so why can't just everybody in it or maybe from there be called like that??? x.x
 
Mayura, of course you can call every Asian Asian, but the question is, what the one you talk to understands when hearing it.
It's not really very specific,with so many different peoples, ethnicities & cultures in Asia.
 
I consider myself an Asian-American (born outside the U.S. and with dual citizenship but having resided in America for most of my formative years). Beyond that, I try not to read anything else into it.
 
Iron Chef said:
I consider myself an Asian-American (born outside the U.S. and with dual citizenship but having resided in America for most of my formative years). Beyond that, I try not to read anything else into it.
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those are some cool quotes....and true.

[rubs stabs wounds from ex-friends who were wrong.]
 
I have thought about this subject before. My roots ,so to speak are, Native American and Irish. I looked at it with an open mind tring to figure out which classification of Native American or Indian was more correct and polite and PC and all that and I came up with, both are fine to me but maybe to someone from a different tribe it is a really big deal. They are just words and have only as much meaning as we put in them. As long as its not used in a derogitory way I don't mind what you call me. But for now I think I will just be called human. That is about as general as I can get without steping on someones toes.
 
Maybe I'm being redundant, but...

bossel said:
In Germany the term "Orientale" implies someone from the Near/Middle East, not East Asia.
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What I'd like to know is this: Was the word uttered within a sentence in German or in English?

In West Coast US, calling a Chinese Oriental used to be widespread in the past, but some Chinese would resent that because they feel insulted. Of course it's a neutral term, but some peoplde actually put an effort into avoid using "oriental." The preferred usage would be "She's Asian," and this is probably another case of the proliferating politically correct usage. I would assume Germany would not have this strange distinction becasue the two words have distinct definitions. Right?
 
lexico said:
What I'd like to know is this: Was the word uttered within a sentence in German or in English?[...]I would assume Germany would not have this strange distinction becasue the two words have distinct definitions. Right?
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Der Orientale/die Orientalin are the German words for persons from the NE/ME, orientalisch is the corresponding adjective. Actually, esp. the adjective can also be used for people from the Far East, but usually it implies NE/ME origin. Whenever you hear someone tell Geschichten aus dem Orient (stories from the orient) you expect to hear something like "1001 Nights".
 
There is another term they have been calling us, "Far Easterners." I don't mind being called East Asian or just Asian.

The word oriental here in France, like in Germany is for the middle Easterners.

I find the French tend to interpret South East Asia as South Asia that is like getting Southern Europeans mixed up with people from South Eastern part of Europe.

There is another thing about people from here, they tend to think if you were born in one country that would mean that you are the ethnic majority of that country, or you must definitely grow up in that country.

For example, I was born in Malaysia but raised in Australia but my ethnic is Chinese. For them an Australian must be born in Australia and some even asked why I wasn't white. I graduated primary, high school and university and not able to speak Malay and I am Australian citizen who says I ain't?

Then some when I said I was born in Malaysia they assumed I only went overseas to Australia to study and lived there a few years. Then they assumed you are Malaysian, and they believe that is one ethnic. There were some people who weren't satisfied with me being Australian and not white asked me my ethnic origin/s, I replied that I was half Sino Malaysian, half Taiwanese. They said to me what a good mix!

They can't called me South East Asian because as my origin because my origin is Chinese, but yet I do not come from China. After they heard the word Chinese they started to ask all these questions about China that I couldn't answer.:indifferent:
There was once I met an Irish guy who moved here with his two young children because his wife got a job here. He was completely stunned that I could have family from different places. What I don’t get is that if he can move here with his nuclear family, then he obviously still has family back there, then why can’t other people also have that? Even though they need not pay for a business immigration fee like my father did to live in the country they move to legally.

So complicated aren't I?:laughing:

For the ones I communicate frequently after half a year, they have started to understand providing every time I speak to them I need to remind them who I am. The ones I don't talk to so frequently after 2 years of classes together still couldn't make sense of who I am. Every time I start a new class history repeats itself.



Sigh
 
I've been told that some people consider the term "Oriental" derogatory.
 
Hey Minty, you defy the human brain structure/way of organising the world around us, that loves to stick a label on you and put you in the right folder. Your life story escapes this logic and confuses people, hehe. You're the real citizen of the world, the global village.
 
People in the western world associate the words "Asian" and "Oriental" with Mongoloids. They forget that Asia is a huge continent that encorpasses many races and ethic groups.
 
I was raised with the idea that the term "oriental" is oldfashioned and rude, and should not be used.
 
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