aliG said:
they mean only the people from Oriental countries? there are 48 countries in Asia, and not 5. I recently asked a philipino friend what he meant by Asian and he replied all the oriental people. and when I asked him about russians, turks, saudis, kuwatis, iranis, pakistanis, srilankans, burmese, armenians, etc..he was puzzled, surprised, and confused.
Hi there !
The meaning of words depends on the people who use them. Usually, in Britain, "Asian" means South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan...), while in North America (and Australia, I think), Asian refers to East Asians (Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Malay, Indonesian, etc.). Central Asian, Turks, Iranians, Iraqi, Syrian, Israli, Saudi, Omani, etc. tend to be called "Middle Eastern" by all Westerners.
Of course, logically, "Asian" includes all people from the Asian continent. Yet, that would have to exclude "non-Asian" immigrants (e.g. Westerners living in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore...) or even newly arrived settlers, like the Russians East of the Ural mountains.
But then it becomes more difficult to decide who is really Asian and who isn't. How far can we go back to determine whether someone is Asian, or immigrant/settler/invader like Russians in the huge Asian part of their country ? India was invaded by the Aryans (=common European ancestor, from Caucasus/Black Sea) 5000 years ago. The local Dravidian people had black skin like Africans, and the Aryans had white skin and fair eyes (and maybe hair too). The Aryan invaders created the Hindu religion (probably based on an older Aryan polytheism, that derived as Graeco-Roman and Norse mythology in Europe) and the caste system. The caste system had for aim to separate the Aryan invaders (higher-castes) from the local Dravidian (lower and outcastes), by prohibiting intermarriages between some castes, so that nowadays there are still white skinned and fair-eyed Indians (look at Bollywood actors and actress). As they are originally the same ethnic and cultural group as Europeans, they should not even be called Asian.
On a historical point of view, 5000 years is very little for a ethny to change. But then Finnish and Hungarian people aren't really Europeans either, as 1000 years ago, they were still roaming the plains of Central Asia. Needless to say that intermarriages have help a lot to make them look truly European, although their language is still unrelated (some say closer to Japanese, Korean and Mongol than to Indo-European languages).
For me the word "Oriental" (which only means "Eastern", after all), refers more to East Asian. It may be easier to specify the geographic area when talking about "Asians". Saying "East Asian" (incluing South-East and North-East Asian), South Asian, Central Asian, Middle-Eastern or Russian avoids a lot of confusion.