Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/09/22
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I've heard this before. Years ago, maybe 20 years ago, William Safire, in his weekly language article in the NYT Magazine, wrote on exactly this topic. His opinion was that Asian is more correct than Oriental. Part of it is for the exact reason that you mention - "The Orient" being basically anything from the Near East to the Far East. Despite that fact, when most say "Oriental" as regards to people, they invariably mean Southeast Asian or East Asian. Rarely would a person referred to as "Oriental" mean someone from India or Afghanistan. Asian might then be a bit more accurate. Or maybe less laden with colonialist overtones? For me, the best reason mentioned by Safire is that no one from the west is referred to as "Occidental". Ever since then, I've dispensed with the term Oriental to refer to people (but still, rugs <g>). No one has ever taken me to task about it, and I don't think it's a big deal one way or t'other. BTW, I don't know Latin, but does Orient simply mean "east", and not "rising sun" as you say? I do remember that the maxim "ex Orient Lux" means "from the East comes light"... cheers, frank Marc James Small wrote: > I have never heard this before and it rather puzzles me. > > The term is an old one, dating back to the Mediterranian bias of the Roman > Empire. From the Roman perspective, the World was roughly divided into the > Occident (the lands of the setting sun) and the Orient (the lands of the > rising sun). Whyever would this be racist? > > The Orient, as time went on, became subdivided into the Near East, > South-West Asia, India, South-East Asia, and the Far East. > > I'll have to ask my Oriental friends about this. Perhaps they would rather > be called Far Eastians? > > Marc > > msmall@infionline.net FAX: +540/343-7315 > Cha robh bąs fir gun ghrąs fir! > > -- > To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html - -- "Hell is others" - -Jean Paul Sartre - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html