Quote:
Originally Posted by ahi
essary.
Do Chinese / Japanese people not find entire books written by foreigners about why the Chinese/Japanese are fools not to convert to the superior latin alphabet somewhat offensive, or at least arrogant?
- Ahi
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I would suspect that Chinese actually would find such writings amusing. Especially those that stress the "unimagineable difficulties".
A funny thing, too, are cultural sensibilities. In HK all foreigners are routinely called "鬼老". That literally means "old ghost", more accurately translated as "foreign devil". Even customers in a store, you stand there at the counter ask for the something and the sales person yells to someone else in the back: "Hey, this foreign devil wants those shoes in size 8, do we have any left?". Everybody uses it and HK people feel calling foreigners this way is alright. They do it in Cantonese, of course, but I know enough to understand that. I do find it offensive. And imagine such usage in the US! Talk about political correctness. This is limited to HK and parts of Guangdong province, though.
Also some Chinese tend to laugh at foreigners speaking Chinese. Something that would be considered insensitive to the extreme in the West. And there is the old saying: "天不怕，地不怕, 怕外國人講中國話!" Don't fear heaven, don't fear earth (hell), fear foreigners speaking Chinese!