Waiguoren v.s. Laowai
Tom Vamvanij asks an important language question, at least for us Americans:
Waiguoren v.s. Laowai
It’s full of all kinds of interesting etymological tidbits–to summarize:
… “laowai”, which you say is supposed to be “the most polite word the Chinese have for foreigners” (p. 119, 7th edition). Under no circumstances is that true — not even in theory.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005 at 11:27 pm and is tagged with polite word, language question, foreigners, laowai, circumstances. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.
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on October 20th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
乜野啦. Anything polite can be said sarcastically. I’m not usually offended by it, but sometimes I am. Entirely depends on context.
I think I’m usually less offended by a plain ‘ol waiguoren than I am by laowai. There’s just less underhandedness to be had in the more descriptive waiguoren, not as much room for sarcasm.