Thoughts on "-ese"

[Quest]

I have no comment on the word oriental, but there's some logical error in your statement "I don't find oriental derogatory at all, even Chinese use it (東方人)." You can't put an equal sign between Oriental and 东方人.

[wushijiao]

You can't put an equal sign between Oriental and 东方人.

Why not? Isn't the dividing line between the Occident and the Orient somewhere around the Ural mountians?

I know "oriental" is un-PC, but I've never really understood why.

[roddy]

A lot of words are avoided because of the context they were once used in. Chinaman was used mainly for cheap badly-treated coolie laborers in the US, Oriental sounds like a bit of a throwback to an imperial age, and terms such as Hun or Gerry for Germans are products of wartime. Chinaman might mean 'a man from China', but it connotates 'cheap, disposable labor'. Etc.

[wushijiao]

That makes sense. I suppose I was unaware that the word “Orient” was frequently used in a derogatory manner.

[Ncao]

I know and I also find Chinamen derogatory, but can't really understand why some people consider oriental as derogatory.

Edit

I heard somewhere before because they don't call westerners Occidental but call Asians Orientals.But it may not sound derogratory to a Spanish speaking person because westerner in Spanish is occidental.

[roddy]

Some stuff here

So, to sum up, the term Oriental, when referring to a person, region,

or custom, is perceived as a derogatory relic of Imperialism by North

Americans (and some other countries), but is seen as an acceptable

descriptive term by Europeans and in many Asian countries.

I doubt you'd find Oriental used very often in the UK though. Having said that, in the UK you have the added problem that anyone described as 'Asian' would probably be assumed to be ethnically Indian or Pakistani.

[Quest]

Why not? Isn't the dividing line between the Occident and the Orient somewhere around the Ural mountians?

I think the original quote was

"I don't find oriental derogatory at all, even Chinese use it (東方人)."

The Chinese use the word 东方人, not Oriental. They are two words with two different pronunciations in two different languages. How is it that "even Chinese use it"? Do they say 奥利恩头尔? Even if they did, Oriental and 奥利恩头尔 could still have different connotations. An example of that would be 支那 and China; they have the same meaning and similar pronunciation, but they are not equal.

I don't mean “Oriental” is like 支那, all I was saying was there's a logical error in the argument that "even Chinese use it".

[ala]

"I don't find oriental derogatory at all' date=' even Chinese use it (東方人)." [/quote']

You can't put an equal sign between Oriental and 东方人.

Exactly. 东方人 is actually Easterner, a very neutral term, like 西方人 is Westerner. Any decent English translator today will translate 西方人 as westeners, not occidentals.

Oriental and Occidental are both just outdated terms and not very accurate anyway. For example, the Oriental Institute in Chicago is a museum on Iraq, Iran and Egypt.

[carlo]

Was this really published on the China Daily? No way.

The English suffix '-ese' comes from Old French -eis (Modern French -ais or -ois), so it follows that the French are being racist with themselves.

Taking a quirk of the English language to 'prove' ignorant generalizations about the 'West' is unfortunately common in some circles. The article is also full of historical inaccuracies, but the author is obviously preaching to the converted so who cares.

[roddy]

It's on the website if you search for it. I did find it but neglected to add it to my favorites. Not sure if it made it to the print edition. Anyone going to submit a rebuttal for publication?

[Jose]

The English suffix '-ese' comes from Old French -eis (Modern French -ais or -ois)

That makes sense. It helps to explain why the suffix was originally used for places in Central and Southern Europe that may have entered the English language through French sources. Besides the already mentioned Portuguese, Maltese and Viennese there are also, at least, Genoese, Milanese and Aragonese.

Similarly, in recent times Congolese was probably modelled on the pattern of the French "Congolais".

In the case of "Chinese", "Japanese" and others, my feeling is that the prefix -ese, already established in English at the time when these terms were coined, was probably preferred because there is already a nasal consonant at the end of the original name, so adding another n makes it sound repetitive and unpleasant to the ear (try saying Chinan, Japanan, Vietnaman, Surinaman).

[wiz_oz]

I put the author's name into google and came up with the threads below

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/1/20/asia/13162686&sec=asia

which was where I read it in the first place.

From the google results, seems it is on a couple forums as well as in the Korea Herald.

Did not really read them though.

[roddy]

There's some discussion on the China Daily forums here, with a comment from the author himself.

Any comment is welcome. Let us agree to disagree.

Nay, let us agree you are wrong.

What is worrying is that a) apparently this did make it into the China Daily's print edition, and B) someone on there actually took the time to dignify the article with a full rebuttal (which may or may not be worth reading, I didn't bother).

Roddy

[geraldc]

This is highly reminiscent of the Korean vs Corean argument from a while ago. The internet is great for making dubious claims and seeing how far they get.

Why not just ask for the country to be renamed zhongguo in English and the people to be called zhonguoren

[ala]

Nay to the above suggestion. That would be Mandarin-centric and PRC-centric. Lots of Chinese in Malaysia and elsewhere do not think of themselves as 中国人 (which to them is a political term), but do think of themselves as ethnic Chinese (华人, 汉人).

Even the characters 中国人 has tons of different pronunciations.

[ZhuJiesheng]

Well I'm half taiwanese and I've never really been bothered about people calling me oriental (I actually like the word_ and my mother has never seemed phased by it either. To be honest, I think most old 'derogatory' words are only derogatory if you want them to be, by using them in a normal context without the negative connotations you can quite easily change them into normal, or even positive words. All the black kids in my school were quite fond of calling each other nigger, and some of my uni friends still use it to refer to themselves, they just sue it in a non-derogatory way. Languages change and meanings of words change so you may as well just move on wiht the language. I mean gay used to mean happy but are you gonna hold on to the old use of the word and proclaim to everyone how gay you feel on a particular day? I don't think so

[Lugubert]

Why not just ask for the country to be renamed zhongguo in English and the people to be called zhonguoren

I realize that you're not too serious about this suggestion, but I'm never the less reminded of the Cambodian problem in Sweden some years ago. Suddenly, some circles argued that the PC correct country name should be Kampuchea instead of Kambodja. After another few years, we were back to everybody writing Kambodja.

I've never reacted to the endings of nationality/language names, but find it more interesting to look at the names as such. An example approaching Cambodia is Burma. In German, it used to be Birma. Then some orientals decided that the whole world should use Myanmar. So what? None of us outside that country can pronounce either name in Burmese. And if we tried, in all probability the two efforts would sound the same anyway. (Burma - Bima - Buhma - Myumma - Myamma - Myanmar to approximate.)

A worse problem, closer to this forum, is 北京. For ages, it was Peking in Swedish. Why should we change our age-old way of writing the Swedish name of the city because of some new spelling invented far away from us? Personally, I tend to use the old name when speaking to average people, and Beijing (trying to get the tones right) only when together with people who appreciate the difference.

I'm not very consistent, though. For cities in India, I prefer the more recent versions, like Mumbai for Bombay, Chennai for Madras etc. And I'm always tempted to refer to Dilli to include New Delhi and Old Delhi. Probably just showing off.