It’s just scientific fact that they love being slaves to corporations unlike us, the proudly independent and individualistic Westerners 
Source: I was on a Discord with a Japanese dude
but a Japanese in the group
When someone uses $ethnicity without the word person or equivalent following it up, you can just feel the racism oozing from their very soul.
I would argue against you by pointing out that plenty of users here talk about “an italian” or “a brit” or whatever, but then that would require me to recognize the italians and british as people.
I don’t know there are just some that sound weird and stilted like that: a spanish, for example.
a spanish, for example
I think people would more commonly say “a spaniard.” I’m happy Spanish people are white because otherwise it would sound super racist
Agreed. Some countries have a word specifically for a person from their country. But if you’re just using the adjective, it’s weird.
It’s not about the adjective, it’s about the suffix - adjectives ending in -n are considered normal (an american, a german, a paraguayan), but adjectives ending in -ese are considered to sound weird and need a “person” adding afterwards (a chinese, a congolese, a portuguese).
For once I’m pretty sure this isn’t a racism thing, just an “the english language is a fucking mess made up of more exceptions than rules” thing.
I think the weirdness comes from the fact that words ending in -ese are both singular and plural, while you need to add an -s as a suffix for other nationalities.
“That chinese is riding a bike” / “the Chinese are riding bikes” vs “that German is riding a bike” / “the Germans are riding bikes”There we go, you see it in “a Dutch” and “an Irish” too, because they’re singular and plural, and don’t see it in stuff like “a Pole” or “a Scot” because they have a different plural form.
Guess I was wrong, for once it is an actual rule.Who knows if its an actual rule though? I think -ese can be singular as well as plural, so it should be fine, but it sounds wack. Maybe it’s a rule like “I before E, except after C (weird!)”
a Japanese
When people drop the noun meant to follow the adjective they are almost always telling on themselves about something, in this case racism
What? This is the stupidest shit ever lol. How is this racist? If referring to someone as “an American” or “a Kenyan” or “a French” is not racist, why would saying “a Japanese” be any different? Japanese is literally the noun and adjective depending on how you want to use it just like any other demonym
It’s not inherently rascist, I should have took more care in my phrasing.
What I meant was: people who who drop the person or personhood identifier in favor of national/racial/other sorts of identifiers are often those who engage in broad strokes judgements based on origin.
A key part of English, at least based on my understanding of it, is the clear delineation between person and non-person. Removing that reference to personhood by simply using an adjective of origin is closer to calling them an “it” than otherwise.
That’s just my read on the topic though, I’m welcome to hearing otherwise because this could be an interesting convo.
it also just depends on the word for some reason, english is very vibes based and inconsistent in its rules and connotations.
A Greek
sounds decently normal
A Kenyan
seems fine
An Egyptian
commonly said
A Chinese
This sounds weird and bad. Couldn’t tell you why but it just sounds racist compared to the other ones.
Yeah, turns out the lingual patterns my grampa used to refer to Chinese and Japanese people is not great, in 2024.
edit: To be clear, he used different slurs, he wasn’t so racist as to use the same slur for Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Laoceans, and island people.
That guy shouldn’t have said that but I see plenty of Japanese people who are fairly fluent in English say things like “As a Japanese” or “I am a Japanese and I…” It appears in quite a few youtube comments and other social media comments from what I’ve seen. They’ll also say it out loud in interviews and stuff.
It’s technically correct as a noun for a Japanese person, like “a German” or “an Italian.” It just sounds weirdly antiquated and kinda racist in modern day.
What’s racist about it though? Like isn’t just because most people that would say “I met a japanese” are the same people who use the words “a female” when they talk about women? Is there anything actually racist in the phrasing itself, that makes it different from referring to other nationalities?
Like someone else said, the vibes are just off in a way I can’t quite articulate.
“A German” sounds okay but “a Japanese” or “a Chinese” just don’t without a “person” or some other word after them
“A German” sounds okay but “a Japanese” or “a Chinese” just don’t without a “person” or some other word after them
Oh well that’s easy. That’s because the chinese are people, while the germans aren’t
I had once wanted to do a private film streaming within my own private Discord server, but a japanese in the group objected to it, saying that Discord TOS did not allow us to stream films, and if we did that would be piracy.
I encounter plenty of anti-piracy nerds day-to-day. What makes this dude so special it warrants handwaving their whole country? My brother complained about piracy for a time I downloaded a movie to watch in a place without broadband. I finally bought a digital copy on Google Play just to shut him up about it.
These
dweebs are absolutely everywhere.You can’t fool me- your brother’s clearly also Japanese
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Is this Sean Connery, noted expert on Japan from the 1993 action thriller film Rising Sun?
Dude 100% watched youtube history videos and anime and concluded he knew everything
just tell them you bought a license
Ok so this may not be the majority, but I have seen this kind of behavior from Japanese people personally. An example I can think of when someone I know wanted a Japanese person to help them reading a novel. They basically wanted a native to help with any grammar/vocab points, etc. The Japanese person really wanted to make sure that the book was purchased legally (the person I knew obv pirated the book and just lied about it). Another example I can think of is Japanese game streamers will always mute the stream if they are playing a game section where a copyrighted song is played because they fear Japanese copyright laws (e.g. playing Kingdom Hearts but muting during the opening theme). I’ve also been to a small Japanese library/bookstore where I was maybe 15 minutes past the closing time but they were having some sort of group activity in there, so all the staff were still there. I bought some books, so they had no problem with that, but when I wanted to check out some books, the lady told me “come back during the hours we’re open.” In my mind I was like “yeah but you’re all still here and it’s not like you’ve closed anything down.”
To be fair I’ve also seen this sort of rule-following in a few Chinese ppl I’ve interacted with (Chinese ppl in China not in the west).
But then again I’ve also seen Japanese ppl that don’t really give a fuck and will stream whatever on Discord, and plenty of Chinese people pirate the shit out of things so I don’t know the numbers here.
And it goes without saying that the most annoying rule-followers are the LIBS that inhabit the top tiers of western society.
i live in america. people are like this here.
Another example I can think of is Japanese game streamers will always mute the stream if they are playing a game section where a copyrighted song is played because they fear Japanese copyright laws (e.g. playing Kingdom Hearts but muting during the opening theme).
Not trying to dunk on you but have you just started watching twitch or youtube? This is something everyone on these platforms has to do because the automatic copyright systems these platforms use are so ridiculous that a 5 second clip of copyrighted material can allow permament theft of the revenue of hours of content. Youtube lets the copyright law of all states effect everyone easily.
Yeah non-official streams of the Game Awards are like 75% the streamer muting the audio do avoid copyright strike.
“A Japanese”
エミュレーター 違法 is now only the 4th auto-complete suggestion. The first is エミューレーターとは (What is an emulator?) I guess there’s been a sudden surge of lawlessness in Japan.
Right below “Emulator illegal” is “Emulator recommendation” lmao.
And “emulator game console” right below that, and “emulator download” at the bottom
“I’m just googling the recommended emulators and how to download them so that I don’t accidentally violate my moral convictions by downloading one”
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Yes that was a cringe comment so who knows if the story is true.
But regarding the point over piracy it is not entire impossible, you know Japan is one of the places where they will criminaly persecute people for piracy and I totaly understand, specialy if you’re not particularly tech savvy, someone become paranoid over being put into some random criminal “investigation” for watching pirated shit on Discord.
The part about “Japanese culture” aside, the discord story is plausible to me as pathetic as it sounds.
I’ve had so many weebs try to tell me that Japan doesn’t give a shit about copyright laws based solely on the way the names of certain stands from JoJo’s bizarre adventure had to be localized in the west lol.
I think it stems more from how a lot of companies turn a bit of a blind eye towards fan creations when in reality it’d just be far more damage to their public image going after stuff for close to no actual gain. Though from rumors I’ve heard the Yakuza connected with horse racing were making threats towards people that drew the girls from Uma Musume naked which is kinda funny TBH.
Yakuza
is hilarious.
Yeah, Japan’s copyright laws fucking suck ass and I can’t blame anyone living there for sweating about getting caught in their sham of a criminal justice system
discord guy sounds like a massive fucking nerd ngl
I don’t get this thread. Did everyone forget japan’s notorious corporate and conservative culture? They absolutely do adhere to the rules. Whether it’s voluntary or because of pressure or fear is another story. I would never want to be an employee over there, especially with the way they treat non white migrants.
It’s still iffy to imply they as a people are bunch of corpo loving drones
Have you ever independently confirmed this by talking to Japanese people and people working in Japan or have you only been exposed to whitey writing about Japan?
I worked in Japan for a Japanese company for a few years. The working environment was pleasant, people left at 5:30 and nobody was ever yelled at or abused that I saw. None of these things I can say about working for Westoid companies in countries that ostensibly have better work culture.
Like yeah, “Black companies” do exist and some people do work horrendous hours under poor conditions. That’s hardly a Japanese thing is it?
I worked for a Japanese company and i had to cut off my pinky because of a minor work mistake
Yoooooo, send tattoo pics
Did bucho instruct you to get a huge back tattoo as well?
Of course, i am loyal to my 親分
Truly like a dragon.
but a Japanese in the group objected
This phrasing kinda has similar vibes to someone insistently calling trans people “the transgenders.” It’s such a weird, petty way to signal bigotry and ignorance.
I thought so too, but then I sort of realised that it’s pretty normal “a german, a frenchman and a swede walks into a bar” doesn’t sound weird. Nor does “I met an american yesterday, they were very loud”.
“A japanese” still looks weird and signals weirdo energy, but it shouldn’t. I wonder why?That’s a fair point!
I think it could be the -ese at the end. “A chinese” has the same weird vibe whereas “a korean” sounds better, so I don’t think it’s (necessarily) the history of bigotry against East Asians that makes it sound off.
To me, the -ese ending kinda implies that the speaker is referencing a group. Words ending in -ese seem to lean more plural by default and using them to refer to singular individuals feels off, at least in my opinion. English is a very strange language though and I could very easily be wrong.
Yeah I think it’s the -ese too. I thought it was wrong to use for a person in singular, but apparently not for all nationalities. English is all vibes.
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You also can’t pluralize -ese words without adding “people”, while you can make the other ones plural with just an “s”. Very inconvenient. English is weird.
This is also exactly the way someone who speaks japanese natively would talk in english as it’s a direct translation.
It’s less that it’s a direct translation and more that a natively Japanese person isn’t likely to be aware of the vaguely racist vibes “a Japanese” has to a native English speaker
There is no word that means just “Japanese” in Japanese. 日本人 specifically means Japanese person and is just the words Japan and person smashed together
As someone who has played a couple Yakuza games, i consider myself very familiar with Japanese culture. Most people’s days involve getting in random fist fights while walking between caberet clubs, restaurants, Club SEGA arcades, underground cage fighting arenas, and karaoke joints
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Japanese people don’t go to a hospital after getting brutally beat up in a street fight, they just eat some yakisoba and feel a lot better.
Yup. Also, the real estate business is super easy. Mostly just about beating people up, and hiring peoole you’ve met in your adventures. Yeah, getting into adventures randomly as you’re walking around is super common over there. Its part of their culture
