necoandjeff wrote:
> "Declan Murphy" <declan_murphy@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:40BC18E9.8080704@hotmail.com...
> 
>>necoandjeff wrote:
>>
>>>"Rodney Webster" <rgw_news001@knot.mine.nu> wrote in message
>>>news:rgw_news001-C16AA6.14270901062004@news01.so-net.ne.jp...
>>>
>>>
>>>>In article <2i25jbFi9cjjU1@uni-berlin.de>,
>>>>"mr.sumo.snr" <llanelli14NOSPAM@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>BTW using the expression 'haafu' around these parts i.e. this
> 
> newsgroup,
> 
>>>>>probably goes down about as well as a fart in a spacesuit.
>>>>
>>>>Personally I don't find anything wrong with 'haafu' - after all, it's
>>>>only a word, and certainly not meant to offend or degrade anyone.
>>>>
>>>>I'm been referring to myself as "half-German" since I was a kid, and
>>>>always assumed that "half-something" was the standard way of referring
>>>>to someone with mixed parentage in English.
>>>
>>>But that's precisely the problem. It is only "half," full stop. Not
>>>"half-something." The fact that the half isn't specified implies that
> 
> the
> 
>>>Japanese don't really care what the other half is. You're only half of
> 
> what
> 
>>>everyone else is and nothing more. <snip>
>>
>>I don't know where you get that idea from. In its contextual use, it is
>>clear that it means half-gaigin.
> 
> I think you are missing the point. When you say someone is simply "half" it
> could be interpreted to be the opposite of "whole." You may not think so,
> but I know plenty of people who do. And I'm not unsympathetic to their
> argument. In America, specifying that someone is "half something" is most
> important because of the "something" part. You are specifying a specific
> culture/nationality other than the implied U.S. half, and it is most often
> used to explain something of interest about a person (like why they speak a
> particular language so well, etc.) In Japan the term "half" is simply a
> label. People use it to refer to the fact that a person is only "half"
> Japanese (i.e. half of what everyone else is) and half something else
> without even taking the trouble to specify or even care about what the other
> half is. It's kind of like the term mulatto in English which has fallen into
> disuse for obvious reasons here in the U.S.

In Japan the half-something is by definition half-foreign. And in the
Japanese context it doesn't matter if someone is half-czech or
half-slovak, since there are basically two ethnicities in the world,
nihonjin and gaigin.

I understand what you are trying to say, but you are applying the
American context. Of course in that context the "half-something" has the
emphasis on the "something". You are talking about the context of a
country (sepponia) that specifically asks for race on official
documents. I have US citizens writing "Japanese-American" or "white,
non-hispanic" into the nationality section of their applications to
Yamasa because some of them are so damn confused about the clear
difference between ethnicity and nationality.

I agree pretty much with Rodney - you are perceiving the use of haafu in
Japanese to be negative, when in almost all daily usage a native speaker
of Japanese is using it as a positive or in the majority of cases simply
as a neutral statement. I've been a "half" all my life, my
half-kashmiri, half-french nephews and nieces will be what? Half-irish
or half-french when in Australia? half-australian or half-irish or
half-french when in India? Both? Whats next? Half-muslim? Who cares? -
they, like me, won't. And when they come to Japan for a visit they will
all be gaigin, and their cousins in Japan haafu-gaigin.



-- 
"Oh don't give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit/ No, don't you give
me none more of that Old Janx Spirit/ For my head will fly, my tongue
will lie, my eyes will fry and I may die/ Won't you pour me one more of
that sinful Old Janx Spirit"