91–100 of 125 posts
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My favorite example is Darlie toothpaste. It used to be called Darkie toothpaste, based on the idea that black peoples have exceptionally white teeth. The Chinese name is still “black person toothpaste.”
Kind of reminds me of Aunt Jemima Syrup.
With China being very homogeneous in terms of race, they never worked through those issues. I don't blame them. My grand parents, who lived in the countryside all their life would react in a similar way. Small anecdote: I attended an English class at a Chinese business university. The teacher (young girl, never left China in her life) told us that everything "French" means "sex/porn/etc", i.e. "french book", "french…
> With China being very homogeneous in terms of race Uh, no.
It feels like ‘Starship Troopers’ level propaganda and is completely straight faced.
The villagers constantly thank the Chinese hero for his over-the-tip acts of bravery, they celebrate when he wins local drinking contests, etc.
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Much more divergent, less like Danish and Bokmal (Dano-Norwegian) or Swedish than French and Romanian. But Romanians write in French which they can translate on the fly into Romanian as they read though a very different form of Romanian than what people speak. And written Romanian is used for scripts, songs, transcripts and under a 100 novels. French is Mandarin, Romanian is Cantonese. None of the other topolects hav…
"And written Romanian is used for scripts, songs, transcripts and under a 100 novels" You meant that there are only less than 100 novels written in Romanian? If yes, that's one of the most absurd claims I've read in my life.
[1]https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=2&...
With China being very homogeneous in terms of race, they never worked through those issues. I don't blame them. My grand parents, who lived in the countryside all their life would react in a similar way. Small anecdote: I attended an English class at a Chinese business university. The teacher (young girl, never left China in her life) told us that everything "French" means "sex/porn/etc", i.e. "french book", "french…
It's just that until recently the Han have been too busy attempting to subjugate them.
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Africa is a continent while India is a country. India is indeed much diverse than almost other countries.
The World Atlas link shows 16 African countries more ethnically diverse than India.
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Mandarin is 普通话, the common speech, standard Chinese. It is based to a very large extent on what the people of the Northern Plain speak, more specifically those of Beijing. The written form of it, which absolutely is also Mandarin is the form of Chinese which took over from Classical Chinese during the Republic of China. Traditional and Simplified Charcters are only barely relevant to this. The only spoken varieties…
It may be true that Mandarin is based to a very large extent on what the people of the Northern Plain speak, more specifically those of Beijing. I have no idea, but I've heard it said so many times that I'm willing to consider the possibility while waiting for an explanation to my question. My question is: if this is true, why the heck is the pronunciation for standard Mandarin so different from the standard Beijing…
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For what it’s worth even non-homogenous countries like the US haven’t solved their racial-related issues either. For a while I had thought that Brazil was as close to color-blind as a economically-developed country can be but after reading and learning more about their internal politics and especially after their latest presidential elections it seems that I was wrong.
it's always strange to see communities which have the least amount of foreigners being the most xenophobic (East Germany, US Midwest/flyover, Australian Western Territory, large parts of Eastern Europe etc ...). Not saying xenophobia doesn't exist in the other territories, but it seems exposure and mixing can help a lot. EDIT: it seems the places where xenophobia doesn't exist are mere pockets in a vast ocean of bigo…
And to be clear I'm in no way alluding to any specific group. For instance Irish were heavily discriminated against in the US. They were considered alcoholics prone to violence and criminality. "No Irish Need Apply" was a typical phrase seen throughout the US. However, this stereotype yielding to discrimination was not driven by fantasy. This aggregate behavior did exist. And as the aggregate behavior rates changed, so did views against the group. Now they're just another group lumped in by the amount of melanin in their skin as if that identifies their cultural or genetic roots.
So back to your example calling East Germans xenophobic is laughably untrue in some cases. Merkel is very East German and probably not the first person you'd list when speaking of xenophobes. Yet of course if you were somehow able to poll individuals in xenophobic tendencies, you'd probably find a substantially higher aggregate rate in East Germany than in e.g. Belgium. Yet by now just claiming 'East Germans' are the most xenophobic, you engage in the exact same behavior you'd hope to combat.
This is not picking on you, and I'm certainly not offended. I'm just pointing out a rather ironic point. Ultimately, I think we should focus on behavior. Asking East Germans to, collectively, stop engaging in as much racist behavior is probably a smarter choice than my asking you to stop referring to East Germans as xenophobes.
[1] - https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
With China being very homogeneous in terms of race, they never worked through those issues. I don't blame them. My grand parents, who lived in the countryside all their life would react in a similar way. Small anecdote: I attended an English class at a Chinese business university. The teacher (young girl, never left China in her life) told us that everything "French" means "sex/porn/etc", i.e. "french book", "french…
About "French book" etc, I don't think this is particularly different in other languages - we have phrases like "french kiss" or "dutch oven" or "it's all greek to me" in English that have nothing to do with the country involved and everything to do with some historical stereotype or linguistic accident.
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The World Atlas link shows 16 African countries more ethnically diverse than India.
It's not surprising that a continent is more diverse than a country.
1 Guinea 2 Tanzania 3 Democratic Republic of Congo 4 Uganda 5 Liberia 6 Cameroon 7 Togo 8 South Africa 9 Congo 10 Madagascar 11 Gabon 12 Kenya 13 Ghana 14 Malawi 15 Guinea-Bissau 16 Somalia