Asia Asia!
11.02.06 (10:43 pm) [edit]
I am usually extracautious not to disregarde the difference/distinction among the real melting pot of Asia, but reading the above, I wonder how segregated each goup of people are in a place like Singapore. This post actually reminded me of the regional difference of dictions even to refer people, which might reflect something about the huge range of the area and how diverse it could really be. In England, they mean Sounth Asians when they say 'Asian', whereas Eastern Asians are refered as Orientals. From US PC terminology, however, the word 'Oriental' is considered to be so derogatory that people would be really dismissed as being uneducated and crass once they uttered the word Orientals whereas way worse words and situations are out here treating people like garbage. In the US, I bet all 'deshi's are clumped just as one and to be refered and assumed as 'Indian' as if to compensate their lack of vocabularies to distinguish each people from the South Asian area. The same thing is applied to 'Orientals'; all Asians (I mean 'Oriental's)are called 'Chinese' in the US, because not a lot of people know the word 'Asian' to refer people from the region, to the extent the word began sounding derogatory. The process of one word begins to sound from
a) 'inadequate to describe'
to
b) 'offensive.'
The transition might be very worthwhile examining. People's ignorance and prejudice against, and/or contempt towards, the subject matter might play some role in producing the transitional meaning of words, often towards to descrimination. Why the idiom as Chinaman's chance still passes to mean "No chance" ?