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Understand Asia as a continent/cultures. | ||
Tags: Cultural Identity | Asian Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Thor1987 Groupie Canada Joined 4546 days ago 65 posts - 84 votes  Studies: German | Message 1 of 21 29 December 2011 at 12:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm starting to learn asian languages, mandarin and hindi, and having trouble
resolving the contrast from learning european languages versus asian. I.E. europeans are a race or at least share a great deal of common ancestry, whereas asia is very mixed and diverse. Europe for the most part has indo european language, while asia has many many language groups completely unrelated to each other. Europe is relatively unified politically, asia is a mix of everything. Europe is economically predictable, and is well established. Asia, is unified, and it's future is very unpredictable as it's emerging from the bottom. Europe's history, and it's people, have large themes that unify them, whereas asia is much more diverse. Anyhow I'm hoping this thread will not just be limited to what I've mentioned but your issues as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5772 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 2 of 21 29 December 2011 at 2:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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Much of this problem is resolved by realizing that Asia is an artificial construct drawn up arbitrarily by Europeans. The term "Asia" is so all-encompassing that it borders on meaningless. It's better to think of East Asia and South Asia as entirely separate entities and forget about the term "Asia".
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| JimmyJameskun Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5760 days ago 35 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian | Message 3 of 21 29 December 2011 at 3:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hmm, yeah I was always wondering why the label Asia encompassed something so huge... like a 'miscellaneous'
pile. Don't forget to add the "Middle East" along with East Asia and South Asia. At the same time, you have these different kinds of politics and odd Western classification systems that don't line up with Asia. If we look in China, we have Cantonese and Mandarin as part of the Chinese language but they are as diverse as French and Italian where speakers trying to decipher the other language may understand a bit. If we look at Japan, the Japanese have borrowed the Chinese writing system and many of their words, but if we go back in time, we see that the Japanese language is unrelated to Chinese. The closest relative seems to be Korean... but this releases a whole lot of other questions in my head... such as what does this language history mean for the history of the people? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6968 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 21 29 December 2011 at 5:37am | IP Logged | |||||
Pretty much what has been said so far is needed for you to examine this contrast and then some. Our reference points are based heavily on what a handful of scholars based in Europe thought (who ironically couldn't have gone as far as they did without a bunch of "Asians" sometimes called "Arabs" who preserved some conclusions drawn by Ancient Greeks and passed on something called Indo-Arabic numerals). Why is it called "The Middle East" and the "Far East"? Longitudinal 0 was devised to cross some village in Britain called Greenwich. In some ways, Europe is hardly a continent but just a densely populated peninsula of western (Eur)Asia. However it would never do for people considering themselves "Europeans" to be lumped in with the easterners... I mean the nerve of those people in Cathay to call their land "The Middle Country/Kingdom"! :-P Another thing that I think you may need to reconsider is the idea that Europeans who speak Indo-European languages share some ethnic kinship. The trouble is that languages don't really mix in the way that genes do (i.e. they don't have sex) and the idea of tying ethnicity to language doesn't really solve anything (in fact I'd argue that the equation creates more problems than it supposedly solves). It's compromised fatally when confronted with entities such as Canada, the USA or even Russia where many people there of acknowledged different ethnic backgrounds speak only one of two Indo-European languages. I'll leave it to you to figure out which those are. Your points of reference seem skewed toward today's alignment. The concept of Europeans cooperating or trying to work toward relatively even-handed intra-integration is striking when compared with events such as the Great Schism, The 100 Years' War, The 30 Years' War, WWI, WWII, Napoleonic Wars, and the Vikings' expeditions/raids among many conflicts. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Thor1987 Groupie Canada Joined 4546 days ago 65 posts - 84 votes Studies: German | Message 5 of 21 29 December 2011 at 8:28am | IP Logged | |||||
I do agree for some part, I prefer the east and indian subcontinent versus asia, but there are some problems with this. People from say the phillopines, singapoor, etc, would rather be grouped with a continent, instead of cultures like china or india, which is what happens when you people get grouped in with east asians or south asian`s etc. Asia for the most part has little connection to the atlantic, making it very much isolated from the western countries. Asia is rising as an economic entity in a way that is unique in contrast to brazil and russia. Eurasia is I guess a better way to look at thing, but it seems hard to convert to the concept. Asian as a immigrant group are a important player demographically in canada where I live. P.S. don`t think I`m overly caught up on the issue I prefer the discussion over a defined answer. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6394 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 6 of 21 29 December 2011 at 9:30am | IP Logged | |||||
In which you include Indians and people from the Middle East? "Asian" as an ethnic term tends to mean "East Asian", in my experience. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5215 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 7 of 21 29 December 2011 at 10:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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Few years ago I stopped looking at Europe as a continent but simply as a sub-continent or
a large peninsula of Asia. In that case, Europe is equivalent to for example China, India, Russia, Persia or Arabia, i.e. it is mostly unified in one way or another, but just as much diverse in terms of language, religion, politics, etc. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Thor1987 Groupie Canada Joined 4546 days ago 65 posts - 84 votes Studies: German | Message 8 of 21 29 December 2011 at 10:13am | IP Logged | |||||
as much as east asian. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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