I usually chide someone who uses it like that with ‘Rugs are Oriental, people are Asian.’
If a term was commonly used at a time when people were not as fully enlightened as we are today, then the term is racist and/or insensitive and shouldn’t be used.
So, we shouldn’t say “Asian” either then.
It’s OK now, but it will be racist before long - ten years, maybe twenty. Same with African-American. It’s a conveyor belt.
I seem to recall, in my ancient youth in the 1970s, that women’s voices were distinctly lower in pitch than the voices of girls my own age.
Today, even adult women seem to talk in high-pitched girly voices.
Is that a generational thing?
Many years ago when I was in a graduate school, a freshman from Inch’ŏn wanted to date me. A mutual friend was pushing us together. But when I talked to her, she would go off into a singsongy high-pitched voice as though she was still in grade school. That was a deal-breaker. She seemed too young for me in the first place, and her childish manner settled it for me. I always thought it was just her, though, and didn’t think of attributing it to any national customs.
I’m glad people get my point. I was trying to find a video of her talking like that, which is worse, but had to settle for this.
And my favourite “Because I Am a Woman” by IU (the only K-Pop singer I like) :
This is part of the reason why, while I’m an anime fan, I generally prefer dubs. Not that all Japanese voice actresses sound like that, thankfully, but it’s a tad skewed…in English, at worst, at least there’s a different variety of squeaky girl’s voices.
(Also why Japanese porn doesn’t do it for me…it always sounds like the Monty Python Mouse Xylophone.)
I’ve lived in Korea since 2000. The word you’re looking for is “WHINE”.
If it’s not taught to children outright, then it’s completely tolerated–Korean youngsters often learn from a young age to whine and they’ll get what they want (like children all over the world), and it often carries over through their adult life. We were taught to expect a slap or worse if we behaved like that, especially in public, and I think it’s a better way, to be honest. Mind you I don’t have kids, nor do I want any.
Young couples here play fight all the time and it’s really something to see the broad whine and mock slap the fella on the shoulder, as if to say: “oh, you masher!”
EdwardLost I tried to PM you but you don’t have them enabled - any chance of starting a thread about your NK experience?
chinese children in chinese tv are far worse. excessively cloying “cuteness” where high pitched children play cute for the camera is pretty common, its mugging to the nth degree, it just grates on my ears.
the women also have annoyingly high voices, its not just the voices but the wailing and over acting.
but i guess thats just part of the mediocrity of their media in general…
korea is a different thing as they have some decently creative media now.
Cute girls being girlish…
What the hell’s wrong with you all?
They’re not being “girlish”, they’re being like squeally babies. It’s annoying at best, disturbing at worst.
I do understand the idea of youth being attractive in women, but youth basically just means not having wrinkles or saggy tits, attributes you’ll find in the normal 23 year old. It doesn’t mean being a frigging kid.
Yes, that’s the word. I work with a school of Korean exchange high school girls, and that’s how I would describe it. However, they only turn it on in certain contexts.
We constantly create (and re-create) our identity on an on-going basis by the way we choose to talk–whether consciously or not–and Korean girls are no exception. This particular kind of speech just happens to be marked for many of us.
The “cute girls are girlish” idea allows an element of pedophilia to enter mainstream Japanese pornography far more than would be tolerable for mass production in the West (even Germany).
Lolicon, and it’s mandatory school-uniform complement, is a standard genre.
That was six minutes and fifteen seconds of utterly awful. Seems like an odd choice if your intent is to not have people give up on the genre.
I am in Korea right now. There’s definitely a “culture of cutesiness” here, but not all womwn (and not all girls; I’m a teacher) buy into babytalk as a way of being attractive. One of the most popular girl groups here is 2NE1, a quartet of gals who definitely know how to use the lower register of their voices.
As soon as I started to read that paper, I could tell it was written in the mid 90s. I checked and sure enough. 1995.
The 1980s were an interesting period in Japan. I was here in 81-83, 84, 87, 89 and then 1990.
All these young women doing kawaii in the 80s and now in their late 40s and early 50s now. How they’ve changed.
Kawaii came, but changed. Can’t say I terribly miss it.
Ya, not even sure if I lasted even that long. Eye of the beholder, matter of taste and all bla bla bla, but my god that’s awful.