Talk:Shina (word)
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I applaud this page. It is impartial, objective, and enlightening. The amount of uninformed prejudice towards the term found in China has to be experienced to be believed, and this page forms a useful antidote.
Bathrobe 29 Dec 2005
- The amount of Japanese misunderstanding surrounding the term is also appalling. An analogy would be the entire North American white population being unaware that "nigger", "Jap", or "Chinaman" are derogatory. -- ran (talk) 02:24, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Inappropriate analogy. 'Nigger', 'Jap', etc. are known to be derogatory and are deliberately used that way by white people. That is why people take offence at them. It is hard to find a term that is analogous to 'Shina' in English. Perhaps 'Scotch', which people use quite innocently but is objected to by the Scots themselves has some distant similarities. Of course, the Scots use it themselves (with regard to whisky), but that's OK!
The Chinese are within their rights to object to 'Shina' if they find it offensive, but they are not within their rights to impute a derogatory or offensive motive to the Japanese if it is not meant that way. The Chinese have no case historically for claiming that 'Shina' is 'inherently derogatory' and to do so is a distortion of the facts.
Bathrobe 31 December 2005
- There are likely many people in North America ignorant enough to believe that "Chinaman" and "Jap" are harmless. These people are ignorant, but that doesn't make these terms any less derogatory, and that doesn't make it okay for those people to hang on to those terms. -- ran (talk) 20:31, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
There is one aspect of the use of the word 'Shina' that is not strongly brought out in the article, and that is that 'Shina' tended to be used by the Japanese in preference to 'Chugoku' 中国 - central country - as a way of resisting a Sinocentric view of the world. By using the Western term 'Shina/China', the Japanese could opt out of treating China as the centre of the world. The Chinese naturally would not be pleased with this refusal to use the name they chose for their own country. Given that Japan uses kanji/hanzi, it could reasonably be expected to use 中国. The refusal to submit to a Sinocentric view also underlay much pre-war Japanese nationalism and the Japanese willingness to invade their erstwhile mentor. So in a roundabout sense, Shina is perhaps an affront to the Chinese, although not in the exaggerated sense that the Chinese make out. Perhaps this is the real reason for Chinese fury?
Bathrobe 3 January 2006
- Then why is it that no one except for insane ultranationalists reject the English term "China", with the same etymology as Shina, and equally devoid of Sinocentric connotations? Etymology has nothing to do with this. Shina is offensive because of historical context. -- ran (talk) 20:31, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Oh, God, how retarded can Chinese people get? Please give them an IQ-boosting pill... I doubt there is another country on the face of this planet with so many delusional people.
The terms "Chuugoku" (中国) and "Chuuka" (中華) are inherently Sinocentric (i.e., racist/biased/unbalanced) terms and thus are certainly not preferable to the neutral term "Shina" (シナ) in a world that tries to emphasize human rights and equality. Chinese people who try to force others to call their country "中国" or "中華" are infinitely worse than anyone who calls their country "China," "Shina," "Cina," "Kina," or any other variation of that old and well-established name.
- And I suppose "Nihon" (日本) is better than "Chuuka" (中華)? By your logic, if a name that means "Central Flowering" is racist and biased, then how would a name that means "the root of the Sun" be any better?
- (The point here being, of course, that neither 日本 nor 中華 is racist or biased.)
- I've already said it several times. Shina is offensive because of historical context, just as Jap is offensive because of historical context, although etymologically it is simply a shortening of the term "Japanese". Feel free to call China チャイナ even, if you insist. But 支那 is as offensive as "Jap", not because of etymology, but because of historical context.
- -- ran (talk) 06:18, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Romanization
There is quite a lot of spurious romanization from the Chinese going on in this article; it looks like Wade-Giles, but imperfectly executed. It would be far better if we could transform it all to Hanyu Pinyin. 62.57.0.221 16:11, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
