MadameMarque
Posts: 1128
Joined: 3/19/2005 Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: MariaB Wiki....Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area (or 30% of its land area) and with approximately 3.9 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population. During the 20th century Asia's population nearly quadrupled. When the op asked about Asian girls, the question wasn't just referring to the far east. If this was just about oriental girls then surely she would of used the word oriental. I could be wrong. I shake my head at some peoples grasp of geography. I'm rather sure that she did not intend to use the term "oriental," to describe her race, because, to the extent that she knows English at least well enough to post and read, here, she probably knows that it's now considered inappropriate to refer to people of Far East Asian descent as "oriental." As a Japanese woman I know of, who is entirely fluent in English and Japanese, and familiar with both Japanese and U.S. cultures, has been known to remark, when saving people from their continued faux paus, "Rugs are oriental." As for the term "Asian," convention varies, from place to place, as to what that's normally assumed to mean, regarding race. In the U.S., the common convention is to use "Asian" to refer to people of Far East Asian descent, "Indian," or specified "Southeast Asian," to refer to those of Indian descent, and Middle Eastern, to refer to those descendant from those Asian countries. But in the U.K., Asian most often means Indian. I've noticed that many people of Middle Eastern descent prefer Persian or Asian. I tend to think that the OP's intended meaning was Far East Asian, when referring to Asians, and given its conventional use by at least many English speakers, she would not be incorrect. [Edited to change "fluid," to "fluent," because, although I am rumored to be fluent in English, myself, apparently I'm not entirely awake :P ]
< Message edited by MadameMarque -- 5/10/2012 7:27:52 AM >
|