Asian people don't have long noses, but a good sense of making the most of small spaces (photo Ludigel - although that was Korea)
However in Taiwan, the Taipei Times (LINK to article) discussed today if the Taiwanese (not Mandarin-Chinese!) term "Adoah", being used for Western foreigners, would be an insult or not. Taiwan people believe this term would mean "long nose" as it most likely comes from a Japanese or ancient Taiwanese word for a ... long nose, however no-one can scientifically prove what it means. But I guess it is important what people actually think it means, when they use it, and that is "longnose". My wife has trained two of our little nephews to dance around me and call me "Adoah", a longnose, and make a hand guesture indicating a long nose. While it is somewhat cute to watch them, I never got used to all my little nephews laugh about the funny foreigner, but unfortuantely that seems to be quite common in Taiwan and people don't get why they shouldn't call one of those bloody longnoses a longnose. You call an apple an apple, right?
The Taipei Times does not want to draw a conclusion and instead ends with the moronic statement "The jury is still out on whether the word adoah serves a useful purpose today or not. The real judges will be the Taiwanese themselves." Well, yeah, I guess.
Taipei Times asserts in this article, the term "laowai" would be totally normal however. Note, laowai actually means "boss from outside/foreign country" or "respected person from outside", but always has a comical subtone when being used. It is quite similar to the way German people sometimes call an exotic foreigner a "foreign chieftain" (Auslaenderhaeuptling), even this term is viewed racist and degratory, so hardly anyone uses it.
BTW, there is an upside-down version of "laowai" which becomes "wailao" and only relates to blue collar workers from East Asian countries.
The correct Mandarin Chinese term for a foreigner would be "waiguoren", meaning "person from foreign country/outside".
So I guess we longnoses have to live with the shortnoses call us longnoses and chieftains and whatever else. They don't mean it badly, those cute little Taiwanese who are running around foreigners giggling to themselves. Better than people back home who hate foreigners. They would rather beat you up - so I clearly prefer the giggling of the Taiwanese here.
The Taipei Times article has a quote from a Taiwanese person living in the US being asked if they call the Americans "Adoah". The persons says, "no, there are so many of them, we call them laowai instead".
Well, yeah, too many chieftains (laowai) and not enough Indians I guess...
EDIT: And yes, people are friendly here and it is easy to feel welcomed. Just, if you are here long time, this name calling by your little nephews really gets a bit ... annoying. Though they are kind of cute doing it. They make the long nose gesture on the top of heir heads somewhere because they don't get it's about the nose. So there is light at the end of the tunnel :-)
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other pages:
homepage: teichert-online.de
tech blog: techblog.teichert-online.de
blog overview in categories: globalforeigner.com
taiwan stray dog rescue: stray-dogs.org
11 Kommentare:
Hello, Bonjour, This was a very good post about the adoah article in today's Taipei Times. I like what you wrote and will keep in in my files. My purpose in writing today's article was just to get a discussion going islandwide, among both expats and locals, and I was glad to see your discussion here and learn some new things about how Germans call foreigners etc. Yes, slant eyes is used is the USA too. Terrible. What might be interesting if you have time would be to write a letter to the editor of the Taipei Times, letters@taipeitimes.com with subject line reading LETTER TO EDITOR, that's all in the subject line, and sign your name and tel number and city location. The part about the nephews dancing around you saying ADOAH is great story, and terrible! Actually, I also hate the word ADOAH, which is why I wrote the article in the first place, but in public print, I wanted to let readers make up their own minds. But I am on your side of this entirely. ADOAH needs to go. It should never be used anymore. but i guess it will stay around for another 200 years or so. To Taiwanese minds and ears, the word sounds CUTE and WARM. If they only knew how WE feel. -- SMILe
dan bloom
email me offline for more chat anytime: danbloom AT gmail DOT com
Nice to hear your response. And excuse the "moronic" in my article, I was a bit frustrated with this Adoah thingy (grin)...
Cheers,
Ludigel
Hi Bob Honest Ludigel,
I forget what does bob honest mean? Is it from the UK? something like "honest to God, I am not kidding you?" i like it, good phrase
Dan here, no problem on the moronic comment, i fully understand what you meant and how you meant it, i did not take offense, re
["The Taipei Times does not want to draw a conclusion and instead ends with the moronic statement "The jury is still out on whether the word adoah serves a useful purpose today or not. The real judges will be the Taiwanese themselves." Well, yeah, I guess."]
Since I was writing that commentary as a news report/commentary, as a personal report, and since i do not work for the newspaper but just as a freelance writer, so i did not want to speak my own opinion too strongly, because I knew there will be many different kinds of readers, Westerners and Taiwanese, so i wanted to end the story with a line like that THEY JURY IS STILL OUT.....but actually, as you know from my emails to you, I ALREADY VOTED THAT WORD OFF THE ISLAND....hehe...but it seems my vote does not count....hehe....it will take a long time to do this....but discussions are good, both pro and con, Please keep commenting.
here is what a medical doctor from taiwan now living in USa for a long time told me today:
"Dear Dan,
....."Wa go(k) Lang" in Taiwanese would be fine and often used but it just says "foreigners", including the not-so-Doah Asians, Africans, Middle Easterners, etc. "Adoah" was used to be reserved only for the lovable Americans, but now-a-days refers to other Caucasians who has beautiful "Tall Noses", like the British, Canadians and other Europeans. Due to the bad propaganda against the Russians during the white terror era, Russians were (not sure still) called "Big Noses" (Da-Bi-z 大鼻子) instead, a derogatory term for sure.
"Se Hong Lang" in Holo, or "Si fang Ren" in Mandarine would be more specific for Caucasian foreigners and is a neutral word without negative or positive connotations.
Words do carry meanings other than the obvious and do affect one's feelings. But, I like the phrase "Black is beautiful!" as many African Americans would proclaim, thus turn a derogatory word "black" into a proud adverb. So, "Slant eyes are beautiful!" or, "ADOAH is beautiful" could be mind changers.
Let's see what others would say in response to your article."
by the way, Ludigel, your tel number is listed as Tel. +886 9 656587651 on your blog site, but there are too many numbers in it. what is the correct number
09 xx xxx xxx
Dear Dan: re ADOAH
[this is from a top Taiwanese newspaper editor in Taipei who refused to print my article in a different publication ! ]
Dear Dan Bloom
I think it's a misunderstanding. "Atoah" means 阿督仔 that is because when foreigners fisrt came to Taiwan.Most of them are priests or 信基督.So they are called "atoah". Because similar pronounciation, "atoah" transforms to "big nose." The definitions of "atoah" not necessarily bad. So we won't run this article.
Best Regards
SIGNED
Very interesting. "Bob Honest" is actually my Forumosa.com identity and comes from my very short history as a (German) hobby used car salesman. Finding this side business horrible I started to make jokes of it and call myself "Honest Bob" or Bob Honest. Ah... phone no. on the blog is no good idea, thank goodness you posted an old one :-)
Hi Again
I found this post on another blog from 2007
http://pinyin.info/news/2007/a-nose-for-foreign-food/
Imagine some white guys in a fairly large U.S. city open a restaurant named “Mr. Taiwan Slant-Eyes Asian Cuisine.” And imagine that this restaurant specializes in distinctly Americanized dishes such as egg foo yong, fortune cookies, and California wraps. Now imagine the response. Isn’t this fun?
OK, now imagine a different situation: In Taiwan’s fifth-largest city some locals open a place specializing in Taiwanized Western food and dub their restaurant “Miss UK Cafe Pointy-Nose Foreign Food.”
As you’ve probably guessed, the second scenario is real. The “Miss UK Cafe ㄚ度仔 異國美食” (Miss UK Cafe a-tok-a yìguó měishí) recently opened not far from my apartment in Banqiao.
A-tok-a (ㄚ度仔) is Taiwanese for “pointy nose” (i.e., Westerner), though perhaps the common translation of “big nose” conveys the spirit a little better. As Tempo Gain explains in the Forumosa thread on this word, “the initial ‘a’ often preceds names, and the final ‘a’ often is attached to nouns like the Mandarin ‘zi’ haizi, chezi, etc.”
Although most foreigners I know in Taiwan find the use of a-tok-a offensive to some degree, reactions are usually tempered by the knowledge that the word is very seldom used intentionally as a pejorative. It’s just the word most Hoklo speakers would use for “Westerner,” and they mean nothing bad by this and perhaps even see it as “cute” in a favorable way. So since I’m certain the restaurateurs didn’t intend any insult in choosing this name, I’m not going to carp about this any more than I already have — which is not to say that I will ever buy anything from that restaurant.
It’s still an interesting name, though. (Actually, this is probably two names: the standard one (ㄚ度仔 異國美食), which is for most people, and the English one (Miss UK Cafe), which is probably there in an attempt to look modern/foreign/cool.)
thanks for sharing this!
This is a response to “Adoah: A demonstration of familiarity or an insult?” from a North American woman in Taipei who also hates the word adoah too. She says on her blog:
"In my opinion, the newspaper article was, from beginning to end, nothing but one long rambling apology for bad behavior.
The liftout quote by Liu Yu-hsia states, “Taiwanese people are not as sensitive as Westerners to some terms associated with a person’s body, such as weight or height or the eyes.”
Really? This is why stick-thin women have muscle groups removed by plastic surgery to look even thinner; brides-to-be go on insane fad diets to prepare for their wedding photos; the airwaves are jammed with commercials for miracle weight-loss products; and I know women who have not left their homes for years over a few gained pounds. Just because a person remains silent in the face of insults doesn’t mean they are not hurt!
Furthermore the introduction (deck and lead) sounds like a stroll through the garden of “broken eggshells.” Between the lines I read: “Oh so sorry that you Western foreigners don’t like being called ‘big sharp hook-nose’, but we Taiwanese only mean it as a joke, so you should get a sense of humor.”
According to this logic, anything that conjures up images of humorous body shapes — including terms like ”jungle bunny” and “spear chucker” — should also be acceptable.
Bad behavior is simply bad behavior; and screaming out “A-doah” every time one encounters a Western person in a public place is simply flat-out rude.
Taiwanese people who do this look like backward hillbillies, and have no right to take offense when they are on the receiving end of like ”verbal vomitage” – for example the indignation over Kuo Kuan-ying’s use of the term ''Taibazi.. ''
Spare me the cultural relativistic double-speak and get some manners.
Rosanne Lin, ChungHe City
http://pcofftherails101.blogspot.com/2009/07/time-magazine-1967-american-soldier.html
this is new news re ADOAH big nose here. DANNY
A Taiwanese reader of this blog, a woman, 35, Buddhist, tells me:
"You point out a very important issue here. That is 99% of Western people, including you, in Taiwan dislike and hate the term. And most of Taiwanese people don’t even sense that problem including me.
People use it because they think it’s harmless and even a cute way of expression.
But they will stop using it if they know you don’t feel comfortable with that.
I think most of the people will disagree about “ADOAH” is a mean or bad word, but they will agree that they should stop using the word if it makes you feel offended.
I am sorry that this is bothering you but this term is rarely used by people nowadays and mostly used by elders who speak Taiwanese.
But what’s the impression on Taiwanese people about foreigners at early time? And why they have a special term for them, I think maybe people started to use it at the time right after Japanese colony and during the period when US army came to Taiwan. In fact, I don’t know exactly and not familiar with that part of history of Taiwan, I am just curious and try to find some clues via internet.
I found a thesis about” U.S. Army under the Rest and Recuperation Program” -- R and R -- with a picture as attached: The picture was published by Time magazine on Dec. 22, 1967 and taken from a hot springs hotel in Taipei county. The soldier’s name is Alley Bailey, 21 years old from Cincinnati. It introduced that there are 75 spring hotels in Taipei County. I am pretty shocked by this photo which shows part of the history of Taiwan. Probably American soldiers made such impression on Taiwanese people at that time, and that’s why people called them “ADOAH”.
So, here is my observation,..... Taiwanese tend to use “A-XXX-AH” to call people who are from other country. This expression is mixed with a feeling of *teasing, *banter and even *hostile, anyway, not in a friendly manner.
As you know, we privately call Chinese people “A-LA-AH” recently as well. Also, I have ever heard people call Japanese people “A-BUN-AH”.
* A LA AH : LA means “mainland China”
* A DO AH : DO means “tall, stiff nose”
* A BUN AH : BUN means “Japan”
There is nothing wrong with the middle words, but the AH sound is the distinction of this way of expression. Do you see now?
I think, to a certain degree, those foreigners are the invaders to Taiwanese people whether it was a truly invasion or the invasion of cultural or economic.
As you also know Taiwanese people used to call Dutch people “Un-Mo” (red hair). So let’s make a list for these terms in the order of the eras below.
1.Dutch colony :
Un-Mo – no longer used in Taiwan
2. Japanese colonial period :
A-BUN-AH – rarely used now
3. US army stationed :
A-DO-AH – seldom used now
4. Chinese tourist group :
A-LA-AH – a new term used recently in 2009
Now I think you are right......“A-DO-AH .....was not a friendly word to foreigners in the very beginning, and as time goes by, people don’t know why the term came from or for what reason. You can’t really tell from the meaning of the word itself sometimes. I believe each special term has its unique background and story.
This is just an idea from my own thought, maybe it is not correct, but it is good to help me thinking things deeply and know more history about my country."
A Taiwanese reader of this blog, a woman, 35, Buddhist, tells me:
"You point out a very important issue here. That is 99% of Western people, including you, in Taiwan dislike and hate the term. And most of Taiwanese people don’t even sense that problem including me.
People use it because they think it’s harmless and even a cute way of expression.
But they will stop using it if they know you don’t feel comfortable with that.
I think most of the people will disagree about “ADOAH” is a mean or bad word, but they will agree that they should stop using the word if it makes you feel offended.
I am sorry that this is bothering you but this term is rarely used by people nowadays and mostly used by elders who speak Taiwanese.
But what’s the impression on Taiwanese people about foreigners at early time? And why they have a special term for them, I think maybe people started to use it at the time right after Japanese colony and during the period when US army came to Taiwan. In fact, I don’t know exactly and not familiar with that part of history of Taiwan, I am just curious and try to find some clues via internet.
I found a thesis about” U.S. Army under the Rest and Recuperation Program” -- R and R -- with a picture as attached: The picture was published by Time magazine on Dec. 22, 1967 and taken from a hot springs hotel in Taipei county. The soldier’s name is Alley Bailey, 21 years old from Cincinnati. It introduced that there are 75 spring hotels in Taipei County. I am pretty shocked by this photo which shows part of the history of Taiwan. Probably American soldiers made such impression on Taiwanese people at that time, and that’s why people called them “ADOAH”.
So, here is my observation,..... Taiwanese tend to use “A-XXX-AH” to call people who are from other country. This expression is mixed with a feeling of *teasing, *banter and even *hostile, anyway, not in a friendly manner.
As you know, we privately call Chinese people “A-LA-AH” recently as well. Also, I have ever heard people call Japanese people “A-BUN-AH”.
* A LA AH : LA means “mainland China”
* A DO AH : DO means “tall, stiff nose”
* A BUN AH : BUN means “Japan”
There is nothing wrong with the middle words, but the AH sound is the distinction of this way of expression. Do you see now?
I think, to a certain degree, those foreigners are the invaders to Taiwanese people whether it was a truly invasion or the invasion of cultural or economic.
As you also know Taiwanese people used to call Dutch people “Un-Mo” (red hair). So let’s make a list for these terms in the order of the eras below.
1.Dutch colony :
Un-Mo – no longer used in Taiwan
2. Japanese colonial period :
A-BUN-AH – rarely used now
3. US army stationed :
A-DO-AH – seldom used now
4. Chinese tourist group :
A-LA-AH – a new term used recently in 2009
Now I think you are right......“A-DO-AH .....was not a friendly word to foreigners in the very beginning, and as time goes by, people don’t know why the term came from or for what reason. You can’t really tell from the meaning of the word itself sometimes. I believe each special term has its unique background and story.
This is just an idea from my own thought, maybe it is not correct, but it is good to help me thinking things deeply and know more history about my country."
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