…well, I really don’t get it, but I didn’t mean to make my last post look like I’m so annoyed…I just haven’t yet learned to preview my responses as to not look so much like an idiot.
Sorry about the bold accentuations.
“Yeah, mom, I’m checking this time…!”
IMHO, no, and no…
It’s just knowledge to have. Perhaps if you meet someone, you’ll get a warm fuzzy feeling when he says that he’s from Korea, which you knew already. If we only wanted information that was useful, we wouldn’t be at this web site, would we?
Anyways, at first I suspected that the OP was going to be a really ignorant question about how Asians can actually tell each other apart (the “well they all look the same to me” mentality). So, in comparison, I didn’t find a question about how they can determine ethnic background better than us whitefolk to be at all bad. My roommate, who is from Taiwan, has commented that among several of his friends, they can often borrow each others’ IDs to get into bars (as a few of them are still under), even though they don’t really look much like each other.
At the risk of sounding really snotty;
Why don’t you spend time with some Asian friends sometime? After a while the differences are fairly obvious to anyone who isn’t deaf, and blind.
I commend hapaXL for a well measured post that is as informative as you can be about something so vague.
Hearing a sentence or two or a glance at facial structure is all that I need to make a pretty reliable guess. Admittedly this is after many years of working with Asian people and having a Philippine girlfriend for three years.
The point is that the best guide is your own experience. You have to want to know. If you are sincerely interested in Asian culture do something about it. There are few Asian people I have met who aren’t happy to share about their heritage.
PS: As you can tell, I may have too easily taken your inquiry in the usual bigoted fashion. However, I stand by my post.
Seconded. I don’t think this question is even goofy.
For some reason, I can usually tell if someone is Asian but is NOT Chinese or Japanese far more easily than telling those two races apart. I can’t really describe what features I look for, though.
And I myself am half Japanese and half Chinese. I used to enjoy stumping people with my ethnicity. It occurs to me that I shouldn’t have revealed this–I should have posted my picture on the people pages and had you all guess.
[sub]Good thing for you all that I decided that my picture was too ugly for human consumption[/sub]
I don’t think it is important at all. I just have heard more than a couple people claim they can tell an Asian’s ethnicity just by facial structure. I think it’s weird.
OTOH, when I was in St Maarten, I was mistaken for a resident…not a specific person, I just looked Dutch. What? Do the Dutch have a “look” too?
Well Northeast Asians (Japanese, Chinese, and Korean)can’t necessarily reliably tell each other apart. Otherwise my old girlfreinds from Shanghai and Seoul wouldn’t have been regularly (several times a week) mistaken for Japanese.
There’s no surefire way, but in many cases it’s possible to tell whether someone comes from Sweden, Norway or Denmark. Don’t ask me how I do it, though, it’s just a gut feeling, based not only on facial features but also on clothing, haircut and other factors.
Wéll I can reasonably tell the difference between a western Asian, Central Asian, Eastern Asian or South-Eastern Asian. Most people can. Or do you mean more specifically (Arabs, Indians and Malaysians are fairly easy to tell apart).
It’s just the getting to know them bit. After living in Europe for 2 years I am now able to tell the difference between some of the white people here. Spotting German tourists is easy, and the british have something about them too that I can identify (although I occasionally confuse them with Americans).
When I first came here I couldn’t tell the differnce between a Swede, Austrian, Italian, Estonian or Brit. And I am a white boy. I can now though. But I can sort of tell the difference between a Vietnamese, Malay, Indonesian, Korean or Chinese. It’s just what you are used to.
How about Americans and Canadians? Both would be horrified to be misidentified as the other (Co-worker: “Astro, you’re Canadian, right?” Me: “Oh GOD no!”… another {Canadian} co-worker: “WHAT??? I am SO NOT American!!!”)
I think we (Ams and Cans) can tell each other apart, not by sight, but after a minute or so of observation… but can anyone else tell us apart?
I doubt it…
Sure. Ask “Are you Swedish?” The one that starts having conniptions is Norwegian 
There are stereotypical Japanese and Koreans looks, just like your stereotypical Swede vs. your stereotypical Spaniard. With Koreans, it might be higher cheekbones, smaller eyes, and taller noses. With Japanese it might be a flatter face etc. But it’s just a stereotypical look, any single Chinese or Japanese could look Korean, etc.
But there are some rules of thumb, Someone who is tall, has very light skin will almost never be southern Chinese. Some one who is very dark and short will almost never be Korean.
Other hints: Any guy who wears a beard or a ring beard is almost certainly Japanese, it’s really rare to see Koreans keep facial hair. And if you see an Asian guy with a lot of facial hair (shaved or not), he’s almost certain to be Japanese, I think that might be because of blending in of Ainu blood.
In practice, many times you can cheat and tell by clothes and how they dress up. In the US, you can often tell immigrants because they still wear what they bring, especially people from China, because the increased costs of living means it’ll be a while before they can buy a new wardrobe.
One thing about Asian kids born in the US is that they can look different from Asian kids born in their native lands. This is not some unfounded ignorant comment, but it is cause for a lot of speculation amongst first generation immigrants here. The elderly have a theory that it has to do with the water(?).
Another example of that is that Chinese born in Korea often look Korean. (There was a huge exodus of Chinese to Korea after the Chinese Communists took over).
And like some of the above posters said, the Chinese are not one big group of people. There are 7 different “races” of Chinese, of which 90% are Han which is everybody in regular China, and then there are 6 others, all of which are trying to separate and form their own countries! Obviously they don’t think of themselves as Chinese. These others include Tibetans, people from Siangkiang, etc.
Even in the Han “race” there is a big difference between many of them. Northern people look very different from Southern people etc. I once met a woman from north of the Black Dragon River (which was the subject of a National Geo magazine last year). Even though she said she was Chinese and spoke Chinese she looked completely different than any other Chinese I had ever seen, she was very very white, had a round face, and very small eyes.
And then you might meet the Hakka people who have a history like the Jews in Europe. They originally lived in the middle or north of China but kept driven south. However, they managed to keep their customs separate from the other people they lived with and didn’t blend in. Even their name means Guest People.
And also, the Chinese people we know of today only fairly recently moved down to the south of China. They used to live up towards the northern part. As they came south, they drove the indiginous people into IndoChina, or killed or blended in with them. But pockets of the indiginous people remained. I think they have protected status now. One interesting group is called the Miao, who have their own customs and again look very different. I have only ever met one Miao person and did so at a banquet here. Her husband said, yes, no one could ever tell she was Chinese.
So, to answer the OP, how do Asians tell each other apart?
Actually, Koreans tend to pronounce “z” as a “j”… there is no “z” sound in Korean… but they DON’T all pronounce it the same way. There are dialects in Korean as well as in every other language, and some would pronounce it as “j” some would pronounce it as an aspirated “j” and some would pronounce it correctly (if they had a good teacher!)
Astroboy: My wife is Chinese from Korea and she pronounces zebra as “gee-bra”, and zoo as “jew”. In 6 years of marriage I’ve not been able to get my wife to say Z correctly yet, but now I know why! And anyway, I get my hair cut at a Korean store, eat Korean food and as result, hear a lot of Korean-English.
I imagine everyone I meet is from the cities, so I don’t know about other dialects, I’ll ask. As an aside, I’ve heard that the North Korean dialect has changed so much (esp with vocabulary) that it’s now difficult for N and S Koreans to talk with each other.
Here in Vegas, there are a lot of Asians from all over Asia, and I’m starting to learn to tell them apart. I can usually tell Chinese from Korean from Vietnamese from Laotian. Most of the “Japanese” here are actually from Hawaii, as are a really high percentage of the “Filipinos”.
Of course, I’m not a hundred percent, but since most Asians aren’t either, I don’t feel bad.
When they start talking to each other in their native languages, I can tell right away. I have gotten to the point that I can hear the difference between the various Asian languages and know which one I’m hearing with pretty close to 100% accuracy, even though I don’t speak a non-food related word of any of them.
Of course, names are a dead giveaway. Unless they’re married to an American or European, and have adopted an “American” name.
I used to work with a guy named Vu Khan. His parents were Vietnamese, but he was born and raised in Texas. There’s something very strange about hearing someone with yellow skin, jet black hair and slanted almond-shaped eyes speaking with a Texas drawl…
Last year my Taiwanese friend lost her student ID and got by borrowing her Japanese roommate’s ID for the rest of the year. They didn’t look the same at all, but as my friend said, “We all look alike to Americans”. She confessed to having trouble herself in distinguishing between two white people if their hair was a similar color and length.
That would be Manchu. The Manchu are an Altaic people related to the Tungus (Evenki) of Siberia (think Dersu Uzala). They are related more distantly to the Mongols, Koreans, and Turks.
The Uyghur of Xinjiang are Turks. When I once met a group of people with sort-of-Chinese faces but speaking in Turkic accents, I immediately pegged them as Uyghurs.
In the southwesternmost part of China are Tajiks who do not look the slightest bit Chinese. They look like Iranians–because they actually are Iranians, racially. They also exist in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan. They are descended from the ancient Sart peoples who inhabited Central Asia before the Turks moved in from the Altai.
The Japanese are of many diverse facial types all blended and mingled over the centuries. They have a lot of Korean, from way back (their Altaic side). They have the Ainu component. They also have some totally Polynesian-looking people in Japan–especially the Ryukyuans. The Japanese language shows connections to Altaic, Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian), and Ainu languages. There is also some Chinese ancestry mingled in Japan, to account for the Chinese-looking faces there; though the Japanese language is not in the least related to Chinese, they have borrowed a huge amount of Chinese loanwords.
If you ask me, the Ainu, Polynesians, and Northwest Coast Indians like the Kwakiutl, Haida, & Tlingit share similar looking artistic motifs. The Northwest Coast Indians are the only American peoples who grew beards (like the Ainu). The Japanese share with the Plains Indians in America a similar warrior ethos and an outlook that has been called “Hyperborean Shamanism” connecting Shinto with American Indian religion. Physical anthropologists say the 9000-year-old Kennewick Man’s skull most closely resembles the Ainu.
Major Feelgud,
My husband is Nepali and can’t pronounce his “z’s” either. One time, some friends asked if I had been to Patan, and I said I didn’t think so. My husband said, “Yes you were. We went to see the jew”. I’m thinking, “Jew? What Jew? I don’t remember going to see a Jew”. Finally he said, “You know, the place with the animals”.
I still tease him about that.
I’m a white guy who’s lived in Southern California, Japan and Hawaii.
I left Hawaii over seven years ago, so my “Asian-dar” isn’t what it used to be, but there was a time when it was usually very easy to tell a Malay (Filipinos, Malaysians, Indonesians) from a Polynesian, from an Indochinese (Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam), from Chinese, from Japanese. The differences are pretty easy to distinguish if you’re around them all the time.
Even now, I can see a woman from behind and guess pretty accurately if she’s Asian, even if I can’t see her hands. I’m not sure why; something about body shape and hair, I suppose. It doesn’t work with men.
in Shenzen, China, i visited this Wonders of the Chinese World themepark (you might have seen it–it has miniature replicas of Chinese sights) and one section of the park was devoted to the minorities of China.
hate to correct anybody, but they had in the neighborhood of 55-56 officially recognized minorities in China. for a mixed Asian person, it was fascinating to see all the possible mixtures and combinations.
you grow up in America and you always hear about mixed people being “new” and “the future” and you leave the US and see that people have been mixing forever.
makes you wonder if Asian ethnicity is any less complicated and confusing than European.
on a side note, the government has (supposedly) a system of “affirmative action” for the minority people. they are given preference in admissions and the one-child rule is waived for them. i thought it was interesting since so many people see China as this ruthless country with little regard to human rights.
also, Major Feelgud, they say the reason that Asian-Americans are bigger than Asians is the major difference in what we eat–much more meat and dairy in American diets.