how bad is sexism and prejudice in Japan?

[jasonbvr]

I don't recognize those kanji. What about guai lo? What is the kanji for that? I think that one is outright offensive, isn't it? I can't recall the meaning.

As far as kanji for modern appliances and such, maybe the Chinese started borrowing from the Japanese, but I doubt it. Japanese also stopped assigning Japanese names to things such as computers and tv's since katakana (phonetic spelling of "loan" words) is widespread and heavily used.

What is a mobile phone in Chinese? We use 携帯 in Japan which means carrying device or something. Hope I got the Kanji right.

Also, ni zai nali? Beijing zai wo zhu sange yue le. Sorry, my Chinese is shocking. I've forgotten so much!

[MMM]

Originally Posted by Lilongyue

Not at all, like Jasonvbr I was refering only to the negative side of the situation, womanizing. People being lied to, manipulated and taken advantage of only for sex ain't cool. This kind of behavior actually contributes to the racism that does exist towards foreigners. I've had to work really hard with my finacee to convince her that all American's aren't womanizers. That there are normal people in America raising families, have values, morals and a sense of responsibility to their family and spouse.

Fair enough...I know what you mean. I did see people like that when I was there, and it was probably out of boresom because they didn't speak Japanese, or probably care about the culture.

[MMM]

Originally Posted by jasonbvr

I wanted to explain a bit more about the term gaijin even chachava is right in saying it is just a shortened version of gaikokujin. Before I do though, you have to realize that 99% of gaijin living in Japan refer to themselves as gaijin and others as gaijin as well.

I have heard that some people take offence to being called a gaijin and here are some of my theories on it. When you look at the meanings for the character that makes up the first syllable gai 外, it can mean from the outside. So literally a person from a country outside of Japan for the term gaikokujin 外国人. Shortened to gaijin, some people may take it to mean outsider. Then there is another meaning that translates as bad. So gaijin becomes bad person.

But honestly, taking offence to being called a gaijin is just retarded. However sometimes their are people who have lived in Japan for quite a while, maybe even there whole life, but don't look Japanese. In this case they have a bit more to complain about being labeled a gaijin, but they are usually knowledgeable enough of Japan and Japanese to accept and expect this little faux paux.

I'll leave you with one of my new favorite phrases, just because we're both gaijin doesn't mean we're friends. HaHa...

Very true about the gaijin bit. If you are in Japan and you aren't a native, then you are a gaijin. Best thing to do is embrace it.

[Lilongyue]

Originally Posted by jasonbvr

I don't recognize those kanji. What about guai lo? What is the kanji for that? I think that one is outright offensive, isn't it? I can't recall the meaning.

As far as kanji for modern appliances and such, maybe the Chinese started borrowing for the Japanese, but I doubt it. Japanese also stopped assigning Japanese names to things such as computers and tv's since katakana (phonetic spelling of "loan" words) is widespread and heavily used.

What is a mobile phone in Chinese? We use 携帯 in Japan which means carrying device or something. Hope I got the Kanji right.

Also, ni zai nali? Beijing zai wo zhu sange yue le. Sorry, my Chinese is shocking. I've forgotten so much!

Gui lo is Cantonese pronunciation, I think the Mandarin is gui4 zi 鬼子, which means "foreign devil," a term not used any more. Laowai 老外 isn't officially derogatory. Rumour has it the term was coined hundreds of years ago when the foreigners that were coming to China were old sea captains, or something like that. Lao 老 means "old," and is also used in the word for teacher - 老师 lao3 shi1. By itself it has no negative connotations. 外 wai4 has the same meaning as the Japanese, it means "outside." Most foreigners come to hate the term laowai because every time you step out of your door Chinese say "你看，老外。“ Meaning, "Hey look, a foreigner!" It wears on your after a while. Two German classmates of mine told me their Chinese language teacher in Germany (herself Chinese) said that laowai was negative. I've never been told that.

黑鬼 hei1 gui3 is a very racist term, it means "black ghost,"the equivalent to "spook" in the States. Sadly it's commonly said. 白鬼 bai3 gui3 means "white ghost," but I've never heard that said around me. I could write a lot about Chinese racism, especially racism towards Japanese. The anti-Japanese sentiment in China is strong, and is state sponsored. There isn't any notion of political correctness in China, at least not that I've seen. Every time there is a Japanese person portrayed in a Chinese movie he's the bad guy. When Japan does something China doesn't like, they riot. There have been mass rallies and anti-Japanese protests in cities I've lived in. Someone told me that one time, where they were living, Chinese ran through the city and destroyed anything remotely Japanese, like Japanese restaurants. Later the idiots found out some of them were Chinese owned.

The article in Wikipedia said that Chinese refused to admit that they borrowed anything from Japan, due to the hatred of things Japanese and strong nationalistic pride. It's hard to know the truth, since China excels at re-writing history.

Mobile phone in Chinese is 手几 shou3 ji1, which literally means "hand machine." I think it's a translation of the British English "handy phone."

I'm living in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. It's about 2 hours south-west from Shanghai. I'm studying Chinese at Zhejiang University. I just finished my first semester, and was studying on my own before I started going to school. It's sort of a dream of mine to go to Japan after learning Chinese and study Japanese. Maybe find a job in an international Japanese company, but alas, it will probably just remain a dream. Picking up and moving to Japan and going to school for another few years isn't very practical, not since I'm marrying soon and have plans to start a family. If I could first get a job there, and study on the side, perhaps with the company's blessing and support, it might be possible. Who knows . . .

I started a blog, which I can't see in China because the Chinese government blocks a lot of websites, but you shouldn't have any problems. Haven't added anything to it in a while, but if you want to check it out the url is www.djdollainchina.blogspot.com. If you ever come back to China let me know, Hangzhou is a great city. Could show you around.

[samokan]

Originally Posted by Lilongyue

I know that Japanese uses many Chinese characters, but I was a little surprised to see that they use 外国人 as their word for foreigners. That's exactly what Chinese say, only it's pronounced wai4 guo2 ren2 (the numbers being tone markes). Another expression used in China, one you'll usually hear every day as you walk the streets, is 老外 and is pronounced lao3 wai4. Do Japanese use it also? For anyone interested in language, check out the Chinese language page on wikipedia. Some scholars believe that a lot of words to describe recent inventions, like telephone, etc., came originally form the Japanese. Since the Japanese used the Chinese characters to write the word, like 电话 (dian4 hua4) for telephone, it was easy for Chinese to adopt them.

Kanji (漢字） basically means Chinese Characters. All characters are derived from Chinese characters. Some are already simplified along the way so it may not exist in the original Chinese character list. "老外”　 I think this reads as "rougai" , am not entirely sure though. I'll check on this. Anyways, Kanji has 2 basic reading the "unyomi" and "kunyomi",which is Chinese and Japanese reading respectively. For Chinese, they usually don't have problems understanding the kanji, cause each kanji has basically interprets into the same meaning. But each characters have different reading depending upon the next character before it, so that is the hard part of it. And it does not have a specific rule to it.

lets take 人 as an example , basically this reads as "jin" , "hito".

外国人　- gaikokujin - in this case it is read as jin
旅人　- tabibito - in this case its read as hito --> bito
人間　－　ningen - in this case its read as nin

so in this example, the character for person can be read as jin, hito, bito, nin.


　

[MMM]

As I understand, in Chinese, characters don't have multiple readings. I taught Japanese to Chinese students before, and that threw them off the most. A character could be read many different ways depending on what characters were around it.

[samokan]

yeah, each chinese characters have only one reading. Lots of chinese actually would prefer to take the JLPT 1 or 2 rather than 3 or 4. because 1 and 2 is mostly compose of Kanji, so they can understand most of it even though they cant pronounced it.

[MMM]

I beleive it. I was teaching intro-level Japanese for a few years and the Chinese were also shocked that we didn't start learning kanji on day 1. (It was probably a good 3 to 4 months in, after learning hiragana and katakana). And the grammar was really tough for the Chinese language natives. The Korean students I had picked up on the grammar real quickly, as it is structured very similarly to Korean.

[samokan]

yeah Korean can master the language faster ( i think ) . Also some korean words have similar pronunciation with some Japanese words.

[Lilongyue]

Originally Posted by samokan

yeah, each chinese characters have only one reading. Lots of chinese actually would prefer to take the JLPT 1 or 2 rather than 3 or 4. because 1 and 2 is mostly compose of Kanji, so they can understand most of it even though they cant pronounced it.

There are some characters that have different readings, like 行,which can be read xing2, or hang2, or 还 which can be read hai2 or huan2, plus a few others. When the characters were simplified, characters with different pronunciations, or similar pronunciations but different tones, were rendered as the same 汉字. For example, 乾 (gan1) which means "dry" and 幹 (gan4) which means "to do" among other things, were both simplified to 干.

By the way, made a mistake in an earlier post. "Mobile phone" is 手机 shou3 ji1，not 手几 shou3 ji3.