Over at JP Button, they have some questions asked by NA players for JP players that were posted on an anonymous BBS. Some of the answers are pretty consistent with what I remember reading from Dreams in Vana’diel a few years ago (primarily concerning /check and why Japanese go JP only), but there are some other interesting things in here too!
Personally, I also feel the same way they do about communicating in party. I know some people do not mind it, but as someone who has elementary understanding of the Japanese language, it is very frustrating to see a wall of kana fly past your screen and not fully understand what is going on. Or when you ask a basic question in alt-tab and the question goes ignored (which the one who was able to understand and communicate in Japanese exceptionally mad…). Then again, who knows? Maybe what I asked didn’t come out correctly on the other end. Kind of like how it took ages for S-E to release a (|Reward:|) tab to replace the BST Command (|Reward|) to make sense to JP what the heck EN were going on about.
I also agree with the rudeness that is sometimes in NA parties and I sometimes wish things were different. Sometimes I am also guilty of it! I caught myself a few times, and as someone who is always trying to teach 2 – 6 year olds to say please, thank you, and you’re welcome, I try to remember to do the same even to those people I am close and familiar with (Haha, like Orophen). It is a hard pill to swallow, but I also don’t think it helps with the culture differences. The Japanese are pretty high on the politeness scale, but many NA don’t quite understand all the distinct mannerisms or what could be offensive or not. I think more could be done to harvest some understanding, and I kind of wish that S-E could have given us tools to help understand what might be offensive or not instead of letting us run loose and letting chaos ensue. But I guess that would require a whole class on etiquette and mannerisms that I doubt many players would have the patience for…
That was both interesting and depressing. Personally, I try my best when I’m in a party with at least one Japanese player to use auto-translate as much as possible to allievate the burden of language barriers but I do realize that auto-translate does not cover everything (would it kill S-E to add in some more wildly used terms like “link” or “other words I can’t think of at the moment”). I’m surprised to hear some of the things that the Japanese players said (such as the fact that FFXI was introduced as a JP-only game, never knew that). It kinda embrasses me that some English speaking players can be such jerks though (persistent players are such pains ><). Just wish I spoke more Japanese or at least could use kanji because I only know some romanji. :P Take care and that was an interesting post. ^^
Well, there are some players who don’t even realize they are jerks to begin with. Take for example those refer to Japanese as “japs” instead of JP. It always astounds me when those people are puzzled as to why that is such an offensive term! I always remembered it from WWII history lessons as an offensive term to brand the Japanese during that era. There are people who think its a perfectly legitimate term to use, and I often have a hard time making sure they understand why its *NOT* ok to use it.
About the “japs” thing, a friend of mine got kicked from a ls for that.
People should remember that if you talk english doesn’t mean you are a native speaker. We DO NOT KNOW that some terms are offensive. For a “foreigner”, “JP” “japanese” “japs” is totally THE SAME. I wouldn’t have know yet if it wasn’t for this friend’s kick.
As for the question thing, I am impressed how racist most of them are. I always put my best efforts to communicate with them (I know a basic JP, can read kana and hira, and I use babelfish -yes, that helps) but yet I get ignored or “JPONLY”
I do heal/raise/assist them if someone is in trouble but they are rude as well.
It’s the same thing, generalizing. Italians are all mafia mandolino and spaghetti, americans are fat assholes voting bush, spanish are nationalist, japanese are elitist, all chinese are RMTs…..just really really have to stop this shit, it’s annoying as hell.
I have good “friends” from around all the world and all this generalizing makes me sick :D
Quite an interesting article there. I will probably read it fully when/if I get the time to read. Yay for work and school cutting off all said time…
Categorization seems to be popular cross culture I have seen over the years of my life. It seems to boil down to something most are guilty of, and that is assuming that their culture is “natural” or “standard” where culture is defined by social standards and structure and not the more colloquial meaning of the word, and how people in general react to stuff that does not fit the norm of said standards.