Oriental not

You cannot be serious! This involves occasional mixing up and that I will recommend not! Sometimes I think the word "oriental" main usefulness is to avoid the exact determination if the person is Chinese or Japanese or Korean. And although most of them claim that they can easily distinguish between oriental race groups, I have seen many a mistakes made by them among themselves, let alone us, poor occidentals!! :)))))))))))))))

Sasha.

Being "aware" of every PC game our esteemed "peer-review-me -and-I -will-peer-review-U" wizards wish to call "nuance" and actually taking this childish game seriously are two different things. The word "oriental" could be accused of eurocentrism (you live east of ME, so you are an "easterner"), if the word "west, western" would not be used as often. The concept of East-West without some "Center" seem quite just for both sides and I have never heard much of complains about it. Even the Chinese Emperors would not object judging from their place in the center of the "Central Empire".

Certainly that shell not prevent someone in the field of the political science to invent this dissatisfaction and make it his/her dissertation thesis, since this is so much easier than say, learn Arabic or Pushtu and actually stand up to neocons and neofascists that found such an easy way in the absence of the honest academic discussion into the decision making corridors of Washington.. THAT, accidentally, would be a very occidental thing to do!

Sasha.

There's a story about a Japanese scientist at an American chemistry conference walking around looking confused. Someone helpfully asked if he'd like to be taken to the orientation desk. His reply: "I didn't come here to get oriented; I came to be occidized."

LMAO!!! That's so chem nerdy...that's great!!! :D :D

Melinda

Well, if I am meeting with someone face-to-face, I will usually ask them where they are from. Then, if I have to refer to them by nationality, which is something that seldom happens unless I am telling others, I will call them by their nationality. I assume nothing.

Oriental always sounded like something used to describe a thing and not a person, so I usually stick with just "Asian".

Melinda:

Talking about dishes. It can get really specific in China. For instance, they eat pickled turnips in Sichuan that taste different from say Hunan or other places where they may not eat that at all. How do you make such distinction? Ask.

OK Sasha, in truth it was a joke! Since nobody around here uses the phrase "occidental" other than to juxtapose it to "oriental" it was meant to say I don't give a rat's ass, (a tinker's dam, a wit, a bit, at all) about whether you call me occidental. The main point I wanted to raise was in the phrase, "Just don't call me late for dinner," which means that I don't care what you call me. Your discussion of derrogatory terms in terms of the intent of the sender and the reception of the receiver put it well.

In the context of the paragrah above, when you questioned my use of the term occidental and asked what problem I had with it, I didn't know whether you were continuing the joke. Thus the confused set of responses. Language is nothing if not entertaining.

Half Moslem, eh? Tell us more.

Michael, The Oriental, albeit slightly disoriented (Don't say disorientated, it hurts my ears.)

[Thitherflit wrote:]

We have a whole "Oriental Studies" department here, as I'm sure is common in many universities. Predictably enough, it's jam-packed with academics, most of whom have the word "oriental" on their business cards. No avoidance. :)

Toodlepip,

Hobbes

messagenews:C1C26F18.458D6% snipped-for-privacy@pipeline.com...

Sasha, this is totally off-topic, but I'd love to know what kind of pipe tobacco you smoke and what nationality it's associated with in Russia. I've observed a similar effect (minus the acrimony) in China when I smoked Zhongnanhai brand cigarettes in the southwest. Everyone instantly knew that I was a cosmopolitan Beijinger, rather than a Baisha-smoking local dirt dumpling.

Alex drinking XZH LBZ that I cold-water steeped overnight

Michael,

I got the witticism. Those predisposed to Dialectics probably wouldn't. Just don't call me late for tea.

JIm

Michael Plant wrote:

Wow, you can use an on-line dictionary, include copywrited material in your article and then post the same message twice. Accidents happen. Orient still means east and occident means west. For example Venezuela has both an oriental and occidental coast. If you are going to be a philologist you need to be oriented.

Bubba

East of me, West of you...this is irrefutable evidence that we live on a flat earth with the sun circling around us.

Phyll

toci wrote:

My ancestors from my Dad side were big Moslem landlords living in South Caucasus with land ownership in Shusha, lake Sevan (Nur-Bayazet, now the town of Kamo), Shemakha and other regions, including some oil properties in and around Baku. Some of their lands are now in Azerbaijan, some in Armenia, that was all just provinces of Russian Empire before 1917. Caucasian Turkic Moslems never really called themselves Azeris. Before Stalin, Azerbaijan was mostly just a geographical name, but I guess now most of my relatives that still live there call themselves Azeris. My last name is of Turkic origin - Chaihor - is a someone who is crazy about tea (so we are not entirely off-topic :))))))) The ending -sky was added after my ggg-dad was exiled by tsar Alexander the II to Poland for liberalism. There was a whole bunch of Caucasian noblemen who were exiled and they all came back with Polish ending to their last names as a sign of libertarian dissent, I guess. Thus how Khans of Baku, Shemakha, etc. became "Bakinsky, Shemakhinsky..."

Believe it or not - I smoke Black Russian from Tinderbox.

I am really not a type of guy who wraps himself in an old country flag at all, but the owner of the shop not even knowing who I was told me that this was his favorite and I liked it very much. It has a very strong aroma (some people use the word stench) but I hardly smoke a pipe a week now, so its OK.

Sasha.

Orient and Oriental are 2 different words and have more than 2 different meanings. Black and black mean 2 different things when used in different context. Your assumptions are not so oriented.