can we get rid of the -ese suffix?

[Guest greenpine]

first, they were invented by uneducated (as in not enough knowledge of the english language) chinese to label different dialects, which means they don't conform to the english suffix rules.

secondly, the "-ese" is an indigified suffix which means something similar to worm and why would ourselves look down on our own culture and language.

thus, shanghaiese should be called shanghaian like hawaiian, cantonese should be called cantonian.

[pazu]

CantonESE sounds fine to me though I've read somewhere about the derogatory manner of "-ese", I think whatever the meaning at the beginning, it is totally without any derogatory implications now.

Cantonian sounds strange, if you ask me for a change of the name, why not just choose it from a more accurate romanization? Gwongdung is a better form of Canton indeed.

[PollyWaffle]

funny, i regard calling chinese people 'chinamen' insulting... but i don't know why...

[Quest]

Derogatory or not, why do we care. If we are not respected, even if we change to a new word, that new word would become derogatory sooner or later. If we make ourselves respected, we can change derogatory words into compliments.

[pazu]

Quest, oh you must be a fan of Ah Lam~

[Quest]

男儿当自强？ ^^

[Guest greenpine]

by all means, i know that only if we make ourselves respectable that the others will respect us, of course changing an alias does not make us respectable, but it is the intention of trying to be better and trying to respect ourselves from those little things that will start our path...

fundamentally, the word chinamen is not an insult, because frequently people refer to english and the french englishmen and frenchmen, they are not insults, but its the special context that made chinaman an insult.

[roddy]

the "-ese" is an indigified suffix which means something similar to worm

Quiet, the Portugese will hear you . . .

thus, shanghaiese should be called shanghaian like hawaiian, cantonese should be called cantonian

Perhaps the Japanese should be called Japaninian's after all.

The first I heard of the 'ese' suffix being derogatory was in 1998, I think there was an article in the People's Daily or something. All I can say is that in 27 years of speaking English (ok, 26 or something if you don't count the bit between being born and learning to say 'sweetie') I've never thought of -ese as being anything other than a handy way of making certain nouns into adjectives.

Good luck - this first people you need to convince are here

Roddy

[pazu]

Roddy, but I've checked from the Oxford Advanced Dictionary 4th ed(on my bookshelf) that:

-ese:

2. (with nouns forming nouns) (esp derog) in the literary style of ... journalese * officialese.

[roddy]

Hmmm, that's right - it's a rare usage though, used to describe a particular style of writing - especially one that if full of jargon or hard to understand for some other reason.

There's some more discussion here

Roddy

[Guest greenpine]

hehe, we will try hard ...

[roddy]

This is worth reading too

Is Hunan Province in China populated by Hunaners, Hunanese or Hunanians? Or Hunan beings?

Roddy

[bathrobe]

The first I heard of the 'ese' suffix being derogatory was in 1998, I think there was an article in the People's Daily or something. All I can say is that in 27 years of speaking English (ok, 26 or something if you don't count the bit between being born and learning to say 'sweetie') I've never thought of -ese as being anything other than a handy way of making certain nouns into adjectives.

Thanks for telling us where this utter hogwash and malicious disinformation came from. I was totally taken aback a couple of years ago when a sweet young lady asked me why the word 'Chinese' uses the derogatory suffix '-ese'. I had a look into it and told her that there was no such implication. But I guess we can expect to hear this little gem repeated again and again thanks to the uneducated lunk who wrote the article in the first place (wouldn't mind seeing it, actually). Whoever it was, he/she has more misplaced 'patriotism' than erudition.

[holyman]

funny, i regard calling chinese people 'chinamen' insulting... but i don't know why...

cos in english grammar u dont put the geographic name of a place with 'man' when u are trying to say where he's from. like u call someone an englishman or a frenchman, not englandman or franceman. its wrong grammar usage, and when that happens it usually means insult or mockery.

[holyman]

The first I heard of the 'ese' suffix being derogatory was in 1998, I think there was an article in the People's Daily or something. All I can say is that in 27 years of speaking English (ok, 26 or something if you don't count the bit between being born and learning to say 'sweetie') I've never thought of -ese as being anything other than a handy way of making certain nouns into adjectives.

Thanks for telling us where this utter hogwash and malicious disinformation came from. I was totally taken aback a couple of years ago when a sweet young lady asked me why the word 'Chinese' uses the derogatory suffix '-ese'. I had a look into it and told her that there was no such implication. But I guess we can expect to hear this little gem repeated again and again thanks to the uneducated lunk who wrote the article in the first place (wouldn't mind seeing it, actually). Whoever it was, he/she has more misplaced 'patriotism' than erudition.

thats right, it all over chinese websites some time ago, including the xinhua news forum i often visit. think its easy to make those people believed that foreigners are always trying to insult them, esp when they had no understanding of the language at all.

[Guest greenpine]

i totally agree that present people have little or no knowledge of what -ese really means and thus by calling using it means no insult at all. however, just because people don't know what it is doesn't make it non-existant the act of correcting or changing the alias has a different point that people might have overlooked, the point is not that people are insulting us by calling with -ese superficially, the real point is to demostrate to OUR OWN people that we, ourselves care what we are, working as a catalyst to make our own people respect themselves and love themselves...but of course that is just one of many ways to achieve the same end result.

if you still can't see the real point in changing alias now then i guess you won't get it later since we are not thinking on the same path ...

[roddy]

i totally agree that present people have little or no knowledge of what -ese really means and thus by calling using it means no insult at all

It was never an insult.

If you really think changing the names of dozens of languages / peoples is really going to 'make our own people respect themselves and love themselves' then good luck. From what I can see though, the Chinese, Cantonese, and even the Portugese are already capable of respecting and loving themselves, regardless of some imagined insult in a foreign language.

Have a look at the second definition of '-ish' here. It's 'derogatory' - yet we have both British and English, not to mention Scottish and Irish.

Any more doubts?

Roddy

PS Out of curiosity, what word would you choose to replace Chinese?

[holyman]

maybe chin-nah...

[holyman]

i totally agree that present people have little or no knowledge of what -ese really means and thus by calling using it means no insult at all.

we dont really live by the dictionary do we? in ancient times being called fengliu/fengsao is a great thing, meaning that person is well versed in the arts and literature. nowadays it usually means he's living a pretty loose private life. if it doesnt hurt both sides and both sides are generally ignorant of its original meaning, why dwell much further?

[bathrobe]

The dictionary appears to be the source of the confusion. The person who first spread this misinformation looked in the dictionary and noticed that '-ese' has a secondary meaning, as in 'journalese'.

In fact, the secondary meaning is created through the use of '-ese' as a productive suffix -- 'journalese' has the meaning 'the language of journalists'. Saxonists would no doubt be upset that the imported suffix '-ese' has become productive at the expense of native suffixes like '-ish'. People like Tolkien, who was a scholar of Anglo-Saxon, deliberately used names like 'Elvish'. (Sorry, I'm sure this would go over the head of those who decide to take affront based on a superficial knowledge of the language they're criticising).

There is absolutely no derogatory meaning in words like Portuguese, Viennese, Bernese, Japanese, Chinese, Senegalese, Togolese, Lebanese, or any other comparable word. So please don't make one up.

'Speak' also has a derogatory meaning in 'politican-speak'. I guess now we can wait for someone to be doubly affronted when someone asks 'Do you speak Chinese?'

I'm sorry, this has more to do with a persecution complex than garnering respect. There are more pressing things for China to attend to than come up with totally fictitious and imaginary slights about the connotations of English words.