There’s an easier way to tell them apart without causing emotional distress. Give him a bottle of aquavit.
If he’s still standing after he finishes it, he’s a Swede.
If he’s still making sense, he’s actually Finnish.
If he isn’t breathing, he’s Danish.
Actually I’ve been mistaken for a Finn when I was in Helsinki - sitting at a bar near the hotel where I was staying watching the karaoke action when a couple of women turned to me and spoke to me in Finnish. Blew their minds when they found out I was a Yank. I figure it had to do with the forehead - only a Scandinavian sports such a prominent skull structure.
There seem to be 2 questions people are dealing with here:
How can Asian people tell whether another Asian person is Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc.?
How can Asian people tell individuals apart? (i.e., that person is Bob and that person is Joe and that fellow is Chang)
Personally, I think the question is valid, and can, indeed, be applied to Europeans, etc.
I think we’re talking about first glances here, especially–and I can think of plenty of occasions when I’ve thought that people on the street might be people I know (or even my wife!) when I haven’t gotten a really good look at their faces. So number 2 can hold for anyone–of any ethnicity-- with similar build, walk, hairstyle/color, manner of dress. I would guess that Asians have as much trouble with that as the rest of us.
As for number 1, and to some people who have asked “what does it matter?”–let’s face it, people often like to hang out w/ people of their own culture/background.
My family and I (Americans) are of Finnish descent, and while on a trip to the UK, we met up w/ my brother who was stationed over there in the Navy. He had recently visited Finland and brought us souvenirs. So here we are, walking outside of Parliament when two young blond girls run up to my brother and start speaking to him in excited gibberish.
It turns out they saw his sweatshirt–which read “SUOMI”–and thought that they had met a kinsman in this foreign land.
So you can’t really blame people for trying to figure it all out.
I think I can top the mistaken ethnicity stories. One of my girlfriends is half African-American and half Native American. She herself is a petite, cute woman with almost straight, very dark brown hair and a round face. A good friend of hers is Filipino, and the two of them sometimes travel to the Philippines to visit and shop. All the shop people think my friend is Filipino and speak Tagalog to her!
i’m half Chinese, half Irish/English/Scottish. in accordance with variations in context, hairstyle, clothing, tan, beholder, and presumptions, i have passed for any of these ethnicities (in order of most common occurence to least):
Chicano/Latino
Native American (long braid helps here)
White
Asian
with four out of the five major groups in America covered, i’m never quite sure how i’m being perceived. always makes meeting people an adventure. of course, i think it’s a huge benefit. i’ve noticed that if people don’t know what the hell you are, they tend to believe that you’re one of them.
Lifestyles of the Racially Ambiguous. it’s a mysterious world most people aren’t even aware of
I am half Filipino Half White. Everyone here in my area of California thinks I am Latino.
As to the OP, It’s not always easy to tell. I can generally tell Filipinos apart from say Vietnamese, but it’s harder with Indonesiand and Malaysians (Afterall Filipinos, Malaysians and Indonesians all share a similar history (although, Indonesians dont always look like Malaysians or Filipinos). For me, I can generally tell who in my townis Korean or Japanese. I cant really say how, but I usually can (well, a lot of Japanese tend to have much rounder eyes than Koreans, but that isnt always the case).
Filipinos are also very varied in appearance. You have everyone from “full” native Filipino (like the Kalinga for instance) to Mestizos like myself. You even have the Aeta who would be mistaken for a Papua New Guinean or to the really uninitiated, a black person. So pug, the shop keepers who saw your girlfriend may have thought she was a mixed Filipina (if this happened in Manila, i wouldnt be surprised as there’s a lot of different people from all over the country there)
We’ve been talking about this in linguistics class, actually. It’s really interesting to me, so I’m going to blather on about it for a minute.
It’s strange to me how much early childhood acquiring of sounds affects what one can pronounce. I remember my French class trying to wrap their tongues around “huitres” (oysters, and I forget how to do the accent thing), and I read this big linguistic explanation about how Americans simply cannot get it right because our phonology doesn’t include an aspirated h. Pretty much any speaker of a foreign language will default to the closest sounds available in their own language.
Another thing: if you take sounds that come from the same area of the mouth, for example “p” or “b” (they’re bilabial; one is voiceless, the other is voiced) and you play the sounds to someone whose language doesn’t contain one or the other, they will hear the sounds as the same. “Pat” and “bat” will sound like the same word… Isn’t that neat?
Okay. I’m a dork. Continue with your regularly scheduled discussion.
I’m a Korean adoptee and I’m most often mistaken for Chinese by other Asians…I’ve lived in the Midwest all of my life and it was not until just recently that I was able to get some grasp on what some of the tip-off’s are as to an Asian’s “origin” (keeping in mind that I’m coming from the “white” perspective given my upbringing). I think I’ve made a similar post on this before.
I’ve made some observations about Northeast Asians (getting into the Southeast territory is somewhat more of a mystery to me as I don’t personally know a lot of Southeast Asians to make those observations) - these are SWEEPING GENERALIZATIONS…
Koreans tend to have that “frying-pan” face - really round, flat face shapes with “jolly” - pronounced cheeks…think Margaret Cho. My sister (also an adoptee) has this face.
The Japanese tend to have somewhat longer faces with a more pronounced brow (sometimes made fun of by other Asians) and can have really strange over-bite like teeth. Usually the longer face is the tip-off though.
The Chinese tend to be what my sister and I call “everyday Asians”: usually folks who don’t fall obviously into one of the above categories. I’ve found this to be mostly true (maybe 7 out of 10 times).
Major Feelgud made a really good point about clothing - you can usually tell right off the bat what ethnicity the person is by the clothes…Asians have a way of giving themselves away like that
Don’t panic Insider: your question is valid - Asians ALWAYS want to guess what I am.
What might be more interesting is how the different Asian groups might describe each other. Do the Chinese describe the Japanese as being taller? And/or vice/versa? I have heard that Asians regard Anglos as being “big-noses”. Are Asian noses taxonommi…taxonomiccal…really smaller?
I remember seeing some archive Life magazines from early WW2. One page had side by side pictures to compare the noble features of our glorious allies, the Chinese, with the brutal physiognomies of the Japanese, with arrows pointing out “small, shifty eyes” and “oversize ears” to “straight nose” and “firm chin”.
Of course, no such features were discernible. They might have been switched, for all I could tell.
What would be really interesting would be to hear what the Asian stereotypes about each other are! If a Korean tells an “Ole and Lena” joke about Chinese, what are the characteristics that are satirized?
That’s only one “style” of the Korean face. My wife rents a lot of Korean videos and all the women on these videos have narrow faces and tall thin noses. I’d call these the “glamour” or “star” style of Korean face. I used to think they were surgically enhanced, but I don’t think so now since I see these women in restaurants and grocery stores too.
I once met a Nepali trying on rock climbing shoes at the local REI. It was pretty amazing that I’d see someone from Nepal in Seattle! I immmediately guessed and asked if he was from Nepal.
After looking at pictures of Tenzing Norgay and other mountain guides in National Geo for years, I could sorta guess that he was Nepali, especially since he was trying on climbing shoes! I would say they all have the very weatherbeaten but friendly looks. Gurkhas kinda look the same, without the weatherbeaten looks.
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.
— No I didn’t mean Manchu, she was Chinese. Recently I met a couple of guys from Harbeng and I asked him about Manchus. They said that nowadays, they look the same as Chinese and completely blend in. They have Manchu as well as Chinese names and they often just use Chinese names. I can’t remember if Manchus are one of the other 6 races or if they are Han.
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.
— Turkic accents? Where are you writing from? I’d be very surprised if any of these people are in the US, since Xinjiang is considered a major backwater. They’ve also found a bunch of mummies with blond hair there, so some of the people there have mixed blood.
And are you using the word Turkic as present day or the ancient Turks? Do you consider the Turks as Mongols, white or Middle Eastern type?
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).
— Whether they like it or not, they’re supposed to be descended mainly from Koreans, actually Koreans who killed and blended in with the native indiginous people.
They have the Ainu component.
— Only in the north, I believe.
If you ask me, the Ainu, Polynesians, and Northwest Coast Indians like the Kwakiutl, Haida, & Tlingit share similar looking artistic motifs.
— Well, the original Americans (Kennewick man) are supposed to be from the same group of people as the Ainu before the newer people killed them.
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.
— Could that be co-incidence? The NW coast Indians don’t have the warrior ethos and they are between the Japanese and the Plains Indians.
As for fry-pan faces of Koreans… some of them do have round faces (one of my students has the Engish nick-name “Fry-pan”), but that is the exeption rather than the norm…
The typical Korean face, for me… slightly oval, almond eyes (with no crease in the upper eyelid), small nose, and sort of shapless lips (hard to see if they’re wearing lipstick)…
Anyways, if you refer to my previous post, it’s all but impossible for asians to tell one another apart!!
And for you whities: Can you tell an American from a Canadian from an Englishman from a German from a Norwegian…etc?? I think not! Maybe after a minute of observation, but not immediately!
Yeah. I’ve noticed that too. The “glamour” face you refer to seems to be the Korean equivalent African American woman with “white features” (Tyra Banks, Iman, etc).
Not being raised in an Asian culture has left me with questions about what makes Asian women “beautiful” to other Asians…is it a face shape, a nose, the hair color?
I’ve never met an Asian who can explain this to me without getting extremely upset/offended by the notion that their culture holds to those shallow stand-byes (note sarcasm here ;)) I have noticed that the whiter and less “yellow” the skin color - the better (try purchasing a yellow-based foundation at the Shiseido counter and you’ll know what I mean).
to say that Asian people have “yellow” skin is like saying Europeans have “white”, Native Americans have “red” and Africans have “black.”
no wonder you couldn’t find that shade at the makeup counter. who wants to look like Homer Simpson?
besides, i thought what people find attractive in the face is pretty much the same across cultures. something about symmetry? why would Asian people be any different?
Major, one thing the Manchu are definitely not is Han. Even though they “blend in.” First they conquered China. Then China assimilated them to the point where their language is virtually extinct, not to speak of their original culture. This happened already during the Manchu dynastic period (did you see The Last Emperor?). Their language is totally unrelated to Chinese. It’s Altaic. Even the Hui are officially not considered Han, even though they are, in fact, ethnically Han. Only being Muslim gets them counted as a non-Han “ethnic” group. The Manchu are of totally different ethnic and linguistic stock. They are outnumbered in their own homeland by something like, I don’t know, onnthe order of a hundred to one. Manchuria has even lost its name; now it’s Heilongjiang (Black Dragon River).
I met the Uyghurs in Saudi Arabia, where they were pilgrims there for the Hajj.
[quote]
And are you using the word Turkic as present day or the ancient Turks? Do you consider the Turks as Mongols, white or Middle Eastern type?
[quote]
Turkic is the name of a family of languages that are all very closely related to one another. When I met the Uyghurs, I practiced speaking Istanbul-type Turkish to them and we were able to understand one another.
Your question is interesting. The historical sources on the earliest known Turks say that they were white-skinned and red-haired. In the early Christian era they lived in southern Siberia near the Altai Mountains on the border with Mongolia. Over time as they moved south, they mingled with Central Asian Sarts and with Mongols, which made their coloration turn darker. The early Turkic kingdoms recorded in Old Turkic inscriptions on the Orkhon stelae were in Mongolia; the tribal confederations there, such as the Tatars, were made of both Turks and Mongols side by side, so there was a lot of mingling and the two peoples were not ethnically distinguished; what counted for identification was not ethnicity but the political allegiance of the tribal confederations.
The only “Middle Eastern” looking Turks are those of present-day Turkey. Which is easily explained because in the Seljuk and Ottoman periods they moved into Anatolia and the Balkans, so that ethnically the Armenian, Greek, Slav, and Albanian stock far outnumbers the Altaic in modern Turkey. (I would guess in the main they are descended from the peoples of ancient Anatolia: the Hittites, Phrygians, Lydians, etc.) Again, the Ottoman identity had nothing to do with “ethnicity” as we understand the term; the Ottoman Empire was organized along religious communities, a survival of the ancient steppe confederation system they had brought from the Altai. In Ottoman times a “Turk” was any Muslim regardless of ethnic origin, so Turks are about the most mongrelized people in the world now.
The Jomon culture? We don’t know who they were. Were they Ainu? Probably. But yes, I have also read that the present-day Japanese are mainly descended from ancient Korean immigrants.
I already said that in my post, that according to physical anthropology, Kennewick Man’s skull resembles the Ainu type of skull more closely than any other type. But then, there was a skull from South America several thousand years older, and this one looks like the Papua New Guinea type! We have not even scratched the surface of Ancient America. It will turn out to be much more complex than anyone had imagined.
BTW, Major, you seem to have a thing about killing the indigenous inhabitants. I would hope that’s not the only model for population movements!
The NW Coast peoples probably moved in much later than the ancestors of the Plains Indians. Their languages are of the Na-Dene family, which is a relative latecomer to America and is unrelated to Amerind languages. Study of blood types and mitochondrial DNA shows that they are not related to other American Indians. The beards should be a dead giveaway, if nothing else.
