What's the most whack thing you've seen in Taiwan?

The Great Wall of Whiner wrote [quote]I saw a western guy in his 60’s with a girl who looked 12-14.

At first I didn’t think anything about it, until my GF said that they were speaking Taiwanese (not Chinese), and spoke intamately.[/quote]

Sir Donald Bradman wrote [quote]Maybe it was his daughter.[/quote]

Do all New Zealanders speak intamately with their daughters Sir Donald?

[quote=“amos”]The Great Wall of Whiner wrote [quote]I saw a western guy in his 60’s with a girl who looked 12-14.

At first I didn’t think anything about it, until my GF said that they were speaking Taiwanese (not Chinese), and spoke intamately.[/quote]

Sir Donald Bradman wrote [quote]Maybe it was his daughter.[/quote]

Do all New Zealanders speak intamately with their daughters Sir Donald?[/quote]

Can anyone spell intamately?

I dunno – my wife (a local) would never let you get away with calling her Chinese, ethnically or otherwise. Mmm, quite offended she would be, mmm. A surprising number of Taiwanese feel the same way.

Kaiwen

Whack thing of the day: A couple of foreigners on forumosa discussing the spelling of: intimately.

That takes the cake for me.

Check a dictionary. Intimate has two meanings. The first is close and friendly. The second is sexual.

Only the original poster (or his girlfriend), knows if their intimate talk was sexual or not, but I think in Taiwan, an old bloke (especially one that speaks Taiwanese) with a very young Tawianese girl is probably more likely to be her Dad, than a pedophile.

Brian

I was walking home recently when I passed two high school-age girls who were looking back in shock and horror at something behind them. I looked ahead to see an old man semi-hunched over, his back to me, apparently, in my guess, holding onto his dong while taking a piss. When I caught up to him, however, I watched him calmly and nonchalantly, with half his arm shoved into his fly, withdraw his hand, in which he held a neatly folded napkin containing a huge wet swath of shit. He took a glance at me, then, with no expression on his face, folded it, placed it in his breast pocket, and continued to move on. Wack?

More whack things from the freeway:

The police driving around slowing things down to 20 km, because a truck is parked at the side of the road.

A stray dog running back and forth between the 2 lanes. I once saw the same dog running there for 3 days -cute as far as I can tell. Must have starved to death. How do they get out there?

Just wandered past the Japanese trade office. Anyone hear of any demos planned there today (Monday July 7)?

I spied three bus loads of cops, a jeep with razor wire ready to roll, at least 150 cops forming up inside the foyer, fire extinguishes at the ready and batons in hand.

Is the New Party or some other group about to tie the anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in with the Tiaoyu Tai or just another whack Taiwan scene?

HG

Sorry to go off topic but a question on usage. Did I miss something or did the term “Jap” somehow become acceptable of late. I’ve seen a few people here on forumosa use it. I know the Germans get upset everytime today’s Germany is referred to as Nazi Germany and I imagine the Japanese feel the same about the term “Jap”. Unless you intended to be intentionally offensive, you might want to edit that post.

It’s just a shortenization of “Japanese”. No different from calling a British person a Brit, an Australian an Aussie, a German a Germ. :smiley:

Christ Neo,
You must be a fun bloke to get on the piss with! Should I start referring to Japs as Nips? I find the poetry on Forumosa much more offensive ('cause it’s a boring pretentious bag of @%&) than any of the ethnic slurs.

Neo has a point, and basically, we shouldn’t be using the term Japs here. But in the UK and NZ and Oz, it is acceptable, I am told from my friends there. In the USa and Janada, it’ s a no no. Let’s let the moderators decide.

It is NEVer used in newspapers anymore, so I think it is wrong to use it here, among us civillized forumosans. However, since in the UK, it carries no more meaning than BRits does for British people, let the mods decide for us here. I vote no JAP or JAPS on these threads, but I am open to other opinions. Also NIPS no. Just call them Japanese. It’s easy.

On another forum a poster who was a Pakistani was complaining about having his postings on the Guardian forum deleted because he used the word “Paki”. He tried to argue that only in the U.K. was “Paki” an offensive term, because in Pakistan it was a commonly used shortenization that Pakis themselves used. He also pointed out that along the same lines, the word “Polak” while offensive in America, wasn’t offensive in Poland - because “Polak” is simply the Polish word for “Polish person”; it’s what Polaks call themselves.

Also, “Orient” is the Latin word for “East”, while “Asia” is the Greek word for “East”. Yet by contemporary American politically correct logistics, one word is offensive while the other is the accepted term.

Recommendation: look up the word “arbitrary” in a dictionary sometime.

But it seems to be ok to use un-PC terms for Whites. In Singapore “ang-mo” is common while in Hong Kong “gweilo” is used. Indonesians use “bule”. In Japan it’s “gaijin”…and in Taiwan “ah-doah”.

That said, if a person finds a word offensive, I won’t use that word out of politeness. Even if “offensiveness” of certain words is pretty arbitrary and illogical. It is somewhat amusing how they keep changing the “correct” word to refer to an American person of mixed European/Native American/African descent every couple of decades
though: first the politically correct term was “Negro”, then that was deemed old hat and offensive, so it became “colored” in the 1950s & 1960s. Then in the 1970s “colored” was deemed old fashioned and “black” was the progressive term. Then in the 1990s “black” was deemed somewhat offensive and inaccurate, so they lobbied to have it changed to “African American”. Due 2010, the term “African American” will be deemed a racist slur (as “Negro” and “colored” are now, despite the NAACP keeping the same name) and a new term will be coined, if the timetable hews to the same trend.

[quote=“formosa”]Neo has a point, and basically, we shouldn’t be using the term Japs here. But in the UK and NZ and Oz, it is acceptable, I am told from my friends there. In the USA and Janada, it’ s a no no. Let’s let the moderators decide.

It is NEVer used in newspapers anymore, so I think it is wrong to use it here, among us civillized forumosans. However, since in the UK, it carries no more meaning than BRits does for British people, let the mods decide for us here. I vote no JAP or JAPS on these threads, but I am open to other opinions. Also NIPS no. Just call them Japanese. It’s easy.[/quote]
I wasn’t aware that the term “Jap” is considered ok in other English speaking countries. I was brought up to treat it as a definite no no in the US. Perhaps there’s a greater sensitivity here from Japanese Americans because of the internment of hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese-American civilians in camps in the US during WWII because they were considered potentially traitorous and unpatriotic, unlike Caucasians of European background like Italian-Americans and German-Americans. So there are probably greater historical sensitivities in the US.

[quote=“mod lang”]On another forum a poster who was a Pakistani was complaining about having his postings on the Guardian forum deleted because he used the word “Paki”. He tried to argue that only in the U.K. was “Paki” an offensive term, because in Pakistan it was a commonly used shortenization that Pakis themselves used. He also pointed out that along the same lines, the word “Polak” while offensive in America, wasn’t offensive in Poland - because “Polak” is simply the Polish word for “Polish person”; it’s what Polaks call themselves.

Also, “Orient” is the Latin word for “East”, while “Asia” is the Greek word for “East”. Yet by contemporary American politically correct logistics, one word is offensive while the other is the accepted term.

Recommendation: look up the word “arbitrary” in a dictionary sometime.[/quote]
I didn’t know that some of the other terms mentioned in this thread are potentially sensitive terms in certain countries. Now that I do, I’ll probably refrain from using them. To the point that ethnic terms go in and out of fashion and may be interpreted differently by different users, I don’t find that surprising. Words have different meaning to different people in different contexts. “Ni**er” is assumed to have negative meaning when it comes from a white person’s mouth, whereas it seems like the meaning is not interpreted as negatively when spoken by a black person, it’s taken more in jest when coming from a black person. The fact that “Paki” is interpreted neutrally among Pakistanis in their home country but negatively in Britain could probably be explained by the same reason.

Words have meaning, often multiple meanings. For example, the word love spoken in one context has grat romantic import, in another context it is a point score for a tennis game. Meanings are different to different people in different contexts, which is no great linguistic revelation. These meanings also change over time, again no great linguistic revelation. Why should this be any different with potentially offensive words that describe race? Words, depending on the speaker, the listener, the context, and the current usage of the times, have different meanings, and hence different levels of offensiveness.

It’s easy to be non-offensive. Just don’t use potentially ambiguous usages. I’m sure most of us consider ourselves civilized and non-racist. Using ambiguous words only lets people misinterpret your meaning and make them think you’re something you’re not.

My response as an American who has never lived in another English speaking country: I’m not sure if I want to get on the piss with you. I’m hetero. Whatever it is, it sounds kind of gross…and why would I want to do it with you? :laughing:

Remember this:
What’s the most whack thing you’ve seen in Taiwan?

Group hug time!

My friend took this in Hsinchu.

There are a few of them around the city.

We actually think it is hilarious.

I know I’m showing my age, but I don’t know what the definition of “whack thing” is. Maybe it’s this one from American Heritage.

wack (wk) Slang
n. A person regarded as eccentric.
adj. wack