為什么美國人把來自遠東(如中國、日本、韓國等)的人稱為亞洲人，而實際上他們應(yīng)該被稱為東亞人？

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Sway Deng, Web Developer at Alibaba
I am Chinese and we generally call people with European appearance as Europeans. What? they are maybe from Finland or East Europe or even the U.S., and they are different? I''m so sorry it''s terribly difficult for us to distinguish between them.
For Americans, I think, Asians like Chinese, Japanese, Korean are indistinguishable, in other words, these are classified as a group subconsciously because of similar appearance, culture, food habits etc. East Asian is more FOREIGN than West Asian and Central Asian.
Second, Calling Asians is more convenient than calling East Asians. East Asia, nowadays, is relatively more effervescent (on the good side and bad side) than most of Asian areas. Consequently, East Asia always attracts more attention in the world. Subtly Asians becomes short for East Asians. For instance, if you say "Mac is more friendly than PC." without exception, nobody will ask you which OS the PC runs. we universally acknowledge PC means a Personal Computer which runs Windows OS. Microsoft''s Windows controls dominant market share.
So, we became Asians.

我是中國人，我們通常把外表像歐洲人的人稱為歐洲人，啥？ 他們可能來自芬蘭，東歐，甚至美國，他們不一樣——抱歉，我們很難區(qū)分他們。
對于美國人來說，我認為，像中國人、日本人、韓國人這樣的亞洲人他們是無法區(qū)分的，換句話說，由于相似的外表、文化、飲食習慣等原因，他們下意識地被歸類為一個群體，東亞比西亞和中亞更外國化。

其次，稱呼“亞洲人 ”比稱呼“ 東亞人”更方便。
如今，東亞相對于亞洲大多數(shù)地區(qū)來說更加活躍( 好的方面和壞的方面 )，因此，東亞一直是世界關(guān)注的焦點，亞洲人變成了東亞人的簡稱，例如，如果你說“ Mac 比 PC 友好 ” 毫不意外，沒有人會問你電腦運行的是哪個操作系統(tǒng)，我們普遍承認 PC 意味著運行 Windows 操作系統(tǒng)的個人計算機，因為微軟的 Windows 操作系統(tǒng)控制著主導市場份額。
所以，我們變成了亞洲人。



Anonymous
I absolutely disagree with User-11726029917195839384 on this. Asia has been a continent long before the ''New World'' was discovered. So, the US needs to upxe its definition of classifying people based on geographical origins, as this is misleading.
Especially kids in the US with poor geographical knowledge will believe East Asia consists of only Vietnam, Koreas, China and Japan. There are close to 49+ countries in Asia.
If we begin to use the term East Asia more often kids will become inquisitive and might wonder there could be West Asia too, South Asia as well. There is no North Asia (Japan could be part of North Asia but as it is part of East Asia we could discount this.) strictly speaking as it is occupied by Russia which considers itself to be part of Europe though 90% of its area lies in Asia.
If we want to our kids to become aware of the world, we need to have clear definitions.

在這一點上，我完全不同意 User-11726029917195839384的說法。
在“新世界”被發(fā)現(xiàn)之前，亞洲早就是一個大陸了，因此，美國需要更新其基于地理起源的人類分類定義，因為這是誤導。
尤其是那些地理知識貧乏的美國孩子，他們會認為東亞只有越南、朝鮮、中國和日本，但事實上亞洲有近49個國家。
如果我們開始更經(jīng)常地使用東亞這個詞，孩子們會變得好奇，可能會想到還有西亞，還有南亞，沒有北亞( 日本可能是北亞的一部分，但由于它是東亞的一部分，我們可以忽略這一點) 嚴格來說，它被俄羅斯占領(lǐng)，俄羅斯認為自己是歐洲的一部分，盡管其90% 的地區(qū)位于亞洲。
如果我們想讓我們的孩子了解這個世界，我們需要有明確的定義。

Serena, B.E. Mechanical Engienering (2017)
Most people call East Asians “Asians” because they don’t know that the word Asian actually refers to 40 other countries such as India, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, Malaysia, Russia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Bhutan, etc…
It’s also a common thing to not differentiate the term Asian in national statistics. They simply record the statistics for Asians and lump all the countries together, ex: There are about 300,000 Asians in the Navy.
Sometimes I would like to just know the statistics for East Asians (China, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Singapore etc..), and it’s difficult since statistics tend to lump all Asian countries together as one, but in reality the word “Asian” is too broad of a term.

大多數(shù)人稱東亞人為“亞洲人” ，因為他們不知道“亞洲人”這個詞實際上指的是其他40個國家，如印度、土耳其、伊朗、巴基斯坦、巴勒斯坦、馬來西亞、俄羅斯、越南、阿富汗、不丹等。 .
在國家統(tǒng)計數(shù)據(jù)中，不區(qū)分亞洲這個詞也是很常見的，他們只是簡單地記錄亞洲人的統(tǒng)計數(shù)字，然后把所有的國家放在一起，例如：海軍大約有30萬亞洲人服役。
有時我只想知道東亞國家(中國、日本、韓國、菲律賓、新加坡等)的統(tǒng)計數(shù)字 ，這很困難，因為統(tǒng)計數(shù)字往往把所有亞洲國家放在一起，但在現(xiàn)實中，“亞洲”一詞是一個太過廣泛的術(shù)語。

Li Zhengmin
Because for some reason the term “Oriental” is considered colonial and racist, and saying “East Asian” requires too much thought. But mostly it’s because in America more of the Asian (already an exotic place of origin in the Western mind) population is from East Asia whereas in the UK more of the Asians are from the Indian subcontinent.
I’ve heard that British people just refers to Chinese, Japanese, etc. as such instead of calling them Asian. The same holds true for Americans referring to Indians, Pakistanis, and the like.

由于某種原因，“東方”一詞被認為是殖民主義和種族主義的，說“東亞”需要太多的思考，但主要是因為在美國，亞洲人更多的是來自東亞（在西方人看來，亞洲是一個充滿異域風情的地方），而在英國，大多數(shù)亞洲人來自中東、印度次大陸。
我聽說英國人有中國人、日本人等等這樣的稱呼，而不是稱他們?yōu)閬喼奕?，美國人提到印度人、巴基斯坦人等時也是如此。

Anonymous
As other pointed out, there is a good reason for the American usage of the term ''Asian'' (to refer to East Asian settlers) very similar to the way ''America'' is used, however, the term America has been accepted almost universally to refer to the US (contexts such as Geography excluded). On the other hand, the term ''Asia'' is confusing on an international forum - like when talking about the peculiarities of ''Asian languages'' or about ''Asian conformity''. Even top writers do this routinely even in places where precise terminology is required. The issue of other Asians being ''glossed over'' is only secondary.
I''m not sure if there are situations where ''America'' causes ambiguity. That should be a question on its own.

正如其他人指出的那樣，美國人使用“ Asian”(指東亞定居者)一詞與“ America”的使用方式非常相似，這是有充分理由的。
然而，“ America”一詞幾乎被普遍接受為指美國( 例如排除了地理因素 )。
另一方面，在國際論壇上談?wù)摗皝喼拚Z言”或“亞洲一致性”的特點時，“ Asian”這個詞會讓人感到困惑。 即使是（Quora）頂級作者也經(jīng)常這樣做，即使是在需要精確術(shù)語的地方也會如此，其他亞洲國家被“掩蓋”的問題只是次要的。
我不確定是否存在‘America’導致模棱兩可的情況。
這本身就是一個問題。

David Zheng, INTJ Lead Developer & Enterprise Architect
Because it’s this way for many years in US
It’s easier to place the individual into a group just by the appearance
There are lots of lazy people in US among us that don’t care about taking the extra effort to ask the question in a more specific way to get a better answer.
They (North Americans in US) should just ask the nationality of people and call them by their nationality. It’s the simplest thing to ask to get the accurate answer, then there won’t be many people who feel that they are being generalized into a group. I don’t think anyone who doesn’t feel proud of their heritage.
But this is only my wishful thinking.

因為在美國很多年都是這樣的稱呼的。
僅僅通過外表就可以很容易地將個人歸入一個群體
在美國，有很多懶惰的人，他們不在乎花費額外的精力，用一種更具體的方式提出問題，以得到一個更好的答案。
他們 ( 美洲的北美人) 應(yīng)該直接詢問人們的國籍，并按照他們的國籍來稱呼他們，這是最簡單的事情，要求得到準確的答案，那么就不會有很多人覺得他們被概括為一個群體，我認為沒有人會不為自己的傳統(tǒng)感到驕傲。
但這只是我一廂情愿的想法。

Anonymous
I don''t think this is exclusive to people in America. People in Asia do this too. E.g. Japanese don''t think of people of Uzbekistan or Lebanon as Asians. Also Israelis or Turkish people don''t generally refer to themselves as Asian.
In the UK it is more complicated. Only South Asians in the UK are referred to as Asian (not East Asians). But they would still refer to Korea or China as Asia, and for their inhabitants as Asians, as long as they don''t live in the UK.



Syd Chan, Sometimes knowledgeable, but ALWAYS curious
So people from Korea, Japan, and China shouldn''t be called Asians, even though they are still from Asia? That doesn''t really make sense. -- Yes, they are still from eastern Asia, but the term East Asian just serves to disambiguate them from people from other areas of Asia.
I would also like to point out that the term Far East can be seen as ridiculous, also, since from an Asian point of view, America is east of Asia. So can''t Far East then refer to people from New York or S?o Paulo?

那是不是說韓國人、日本人和中國人不應(yīng)該被稱為亞洲人，即使他們來自亞洲？ 這說不通啊——是的，他們?nèi)匀粊碜詵|亞，但是東亞一詞只是用來把他們和亞洲其他地區(qū)的人區(qū)分開來。
我還想指出，遠東這個詞可以說很荒謬，因為從亞洲的角度來看，美國是亞洲的東部，那么遠東就不能指紐約或圣保羅人嗎？

Andrew Lee, lives in The United States of America
maybe because Asia is big, and as the western people moved eastward they started to name specific parts of asia which they had the biggest connection too. such as the middle east (persia, ottomen empire etc) and India (part of british colony). and by the time they hit the far east, well that was the rest of Asia, and since the other parts already had a name, I guess it kind of makes sense to make it easy and just call them Asians.

也許是因為亞洲很大，隨著西方人向東移動，他們開始區(qū)分亞洲的某些特定地區(qū)，而這些地區(qū)與他們有著最大的聯(lián)系，例如中東(波斯、奧斯曼帝國等) 和印度( 英國殖民地的一部分 )，當他們到達遠東地區(qū)的時候，那就是亞洲其他地區(qū)，因為其他地區(qū)已經(jīng)有了名字，現(xiàn)在他們只想把它簡單化，就叫他們亞洲人是有道理的。

Stephen Flynn, Born and raised in the U.S. History enthusiast.
Well, speaking for myself, I''m not that astute enough geographically to decipher East, west, north, and south Asia!

好吧，就我個人而言，從地理上不足區(qū)分東亞、西亞、北亞和南亞，太迷了！