Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 September 20

= September 20 =

Collective term for "Indian-ish" people
Is there a recognized term in English ethnographic literature for collectively referring to the "brown" people of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, etc? A term that differentiates them from the (more or less "white") Middle Easterners to the west and the "yellow" people to the east. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 12:22, 20 September 2014 (UTC)


 * In the UK, it's "Asian". That won't work in the USA and Australia, at least. In cricketing circles the term "the sub-continent" is used to describe that area and people from it. HiLo48 (talk) 12:27, 20 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure if "cricket playing asians" would make it past a competent ethnography journal editor. :) Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 12:33, 20 September 2014 (UTC)


 * South Asian. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:15, 20 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I've seen South Asia(n) used to refer to places such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc, so it's not unambiguous. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:06, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I've mainly heard South Asian used to refer to India, Pakistan, etc, and Central Asian for Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and most countries ending in "-stan" that weren't former Mughal territory. Since Kazakhstan's about as far north as Mongolia, I can't figure out why anyone would call it South Asian.  Ian.thomson (talk) 17:49, 20 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Per Bugs, who is correct here, see South Asian ethnic groups. The countries that Roger names are always referred to as Central Asia.  -- Jayron  32  17:54, 20 September 2014 (UTC)


 * In my part of the world a lot of folks of Indian, Pakistani, etc., origin or descent refer to themselves as "Brown". But it's not a term I've heard many (non-racist) white folks use. - EronTalk 17:43, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * That would refer back to old colloquial terms for the races: white, black, red, yellow, brown. (What, no green?) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:45, 21 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I'll agree with Bugs and Jayron above. The two largest broad ethnic groups of India are the Indo-Aryan peoples, mostly of the north and the Dravidian peoples (pictured,left) of the south, although India is far more ethnically diverse than Europe.  The first is a branch of Indo-European and the second speak a linguistic phylum with no proven relations.  Many Indo-Aryans of the north are quite fair-skinned. μηδείς (talk) 01:00, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks all, I was indeed misremembering the label used for "the ...stan" countries (formerly part of the Soviet Union), They are indeed usually grouped under the "Central Asian" label, so South Asian makes the most sense. Apparently the Indo-Aryans are related to the Persians and thus are "Caucasians" insofar as that term still has any validity ouside of tv series police jargon. Is there a common (genetic) lineage between Dravidian people and the superficially similar looking "brown" people of the Malaysia/Indonesia region? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:35, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

thumb|right|The 'Caucasians' of South Asia
 * Well, User:Dodger67, the Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages form the Indo-Iranian sub-branch of the Indo-European languages. See our article Afghan Girl (pictured, right) for a very famous picture of a Pashto (an Iranian language) woman from Afghanistan.  She would definitely be considered "Caucasian" if she had been born in Europe, and people of her appearance brought the Indo-Aryan languages (e.g., Sanskrit, Hindi) to India.  You will find people resembling her in Kashmir and other parts of (northern) India.  The Dravidians seem to have entered India from the northwest as well.  They may have been related to the Harappan culture and to the Elamites of the Fertile Crescent.  The evidence I have seen for this is highly dubious and speculative, but those are the best guesses given the evidence.  There has recently been evidence showing a rare Y-haplotype in extreme souther India to one found in Australian Aborigines.


 * The supposition is that the wave of hunter gatherers that reached Australia did so 10's of thousands of years ago by following the coast of the Indian Ocean eastward from Africa. They would have left behind relatives along the way.  The Dravidian speakers probably then brought farming and animal husbandry into India much more recently, largely interbreeding with and simply displacing the indigenous tribal peoples.  Then the Indo-Aryan speaking wave entered following the same path, conquering the north with superior war technology, namely horses and chariots.  The Mitanni people of the Fertile Crescent are poorly known, but they spoke an Indo-Aryan language, and used horses in war.


 * There's no linguistic or direct genetic link between the Dravidians and the SE Asians that I am aware of. (But the science advances so rapidly I may be wrong on the genetics.) Skin color evolves rapidly and is subject to biological convergence.  The greater Malayo-Indonesian area is subject to a huge influence from the west, with the introduction of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism all coming in waves.  One would expect intermixture has been going on for millennia.  But I suspect that rather than from Indonesia, that the Dravdians' original closer relatives were from the Indus valley and the Middle East μηδείς (talk) 19:37, 21 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Is desi too specific? --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  11:45, 21 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Good find User:JackofOz, it appears to be an endonym used by Indo-Aryans, unfortunately the article isn't clear about whether the term includes Dravidian peoples or not. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 12:47, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * It's a funny one. I remember once asking my partner, a Sri Lankan immigrant to Australia, about this word, but it meant nothing to him.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  12:53, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * It should not be confused with Desi Arnaz.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 15:04, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * And all these years I've taken you for a nerd par excellence (not a bad thing), without the slightest hint of a sense of humour. Thanks for sharing this hitherto unsuspected aspect of yourself, Wavelength.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:58, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Although I do have a sense of humor, I did post my comment in seriousness. The Hindustani word Desi really can be confused with the given name Desi.
 * Here are three Desis: Desi Arnaz and Desi Lydic and Desi Relaford.
 * Here are three Scotts: Andrew Scott (actor) and Bruce Scott and Scott Campbell (author).
 * Here are three Romans: Roman Eremenko and Roman Polanski and Brian P. Roman.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 21:05, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * There's a fairly popular filesharing forum called DesiRulez. For a while, I assumed the word was about Indian TV, a Desi scene to go with the Bollywood one. Still stuck thinking that, somewhat, despite the evidence. Still a bit weird calling them "pirates", too, as it must have been for Kanhoji Angre sometimes. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:04, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Usage note: Desi is mainly popular among the South Asian diaspora, who use it as a form of self-identification to reflect a mix of self-depreciation and cultural pride. However the use of the term by "outsiders" (depending on the speaker, audience and context, of course) can come across as (mildly) pejorative; roughly equivalent to calling someone unrefined or a yokel. So don't regard desi as a neutral substitute for South Asian. This Ben Zimmer column goes into some of these issues. Abecedare (talk) 19:23, 22 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Following up, it should be noted that the Austroasiatic peoples, remnants of whom live in eastern India, and who include the Vietnamese may have ben the first rice farmers, and were likely spread through SE Asia before the advent of the Dravidians, Sino-Tibetans, and others. Racial commonalities in the area may be a result of them as a genetic substrate.  Note also that the originally Indian Buddhist liturgical language, Pali, survives now largely in Thailand and Cambodia.

related question
This isn't what was asked by the OP above... but are their common pejorative terms for people from the sub-continent? Blueboar (talk) 16:16, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * See List of ethnic slurs, particularly under P and W. The latter term (but not, unfortunately, the attitude behind it) is rather old-fashioned in the UK. Tevildo (talk) 16:48, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh great, I've been calling them Pakis my whole life. Are there any other "slur" abbreviations I should know about (aside from the J-word)? InedibleHulk (talk) 22:04, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Many, Lebo, Abo, Jap (unless you mean this by the J word, in which case while Jew isn't really an abbreviation per say and is perfectly acceptable in some cases, it's best avoided in other circumstances), Indon. These are mostly from memory but are in our list, there are one or two others I didn't mention. Of course there are some not in our list. And some depend on the circumstances. E.g. referring to Bangla even though Bengali is the more common English transliteration for the people, is probably acceptable in Bangladesh and some other places. It's best avoided in Malaysia where the term usually refers to Bangladeshis anyway rather than Bengali people per se . Nil Einne (talk) 22:45, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * How about Pom, the popular Australian term for English people? ( As a keen vegetable grower, there's a variety of pumpkin called Jap. No idea where it comes from I always bothers me just a little.) HiLo48 (talk) 23:20, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * In the sans-serif font my browser uses to render these things, your edit summary appeared to me to ask "Is Porn OK?". This is a rather different discussion from the one I was expecting. --Trovatore (talk) 23:53, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Pom is short, but I don't think it's clear Pom is an abbreviation of anything Alternative names for the British. I presume, but I'm not sure, IH is also excluding abbreviations of slurs them, e.g. fag and nig are clear slurs, but if anything the full word is often more offensive. Only one of these is ethnic, but IH didn't seem to specify only ethnic slurs. (Yank is a more complicated case.) Nil Einne (talk) 20:11, 23 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I would have never even thought to say Lebo. Wrong vowel. Adding an -o suffix to things feels like a taunt (sicko, wino, lesbo, preggo). Maybe I'm just a weirdo. Abo, maybe, but probably not. Not now, anyway. Any reason in particular it became offensive in the '50s? That was indeed the J-word. I'd like that one to be cool again, but I've agreed elsewhere that Wikipedia isn't the place. I call Bangladeshis "Bengals". It's not really a good excuse to blame the TV, but "Bengali" makes me think of them as hybrid human bengal tigers more than that exact word makes me think of them as completely dehumanized. Hybrids are more offensive, humans generally agree. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:05, 23 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Although both of those only seem common in the UK. The one covered under C (which our article used to say refers to East Indians but I changed to South Asian) is I think used in more countries (well according to our article and I know it's also used here and a search seems to confirm it's also used in the UK). Nil Einne (talk) 14:51, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Playing sasa
In a West African context, what is "sasa", and what does it mean that someone is "playing sasa"? It's clearly not Sasa (dance), seemingly not Sasa (plant), and definitely not Solvent-accessible surface area. In 1988, Liberia issued a stamp captioned "Sasa Players" (image), and I can't figure out what's going on. The catalogue is unhelpful; it says only "Sasa Players" as well. Nyttend (talk) 22:37, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm wondering whether "sasa" is a variety spelling of sansa/sanza/sanzu, a type of thumb piano (see also mbira). ---Sluzzelin talk  22:52, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Does this help? It appears to be a Liberian percussion instrument, possibly a pot full of stones/beads in a string bag. Fiddlersmouth (talk) 23:53, 20 September 2014 (UTC)
 * "A percussion instrument with a loud, sharp sound. Made from a gourd covered in a net of beads". From Cracking the Code: The Confused Traveler's Guide to Liberian English. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:33, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Now I really feel silly — I work for IU Digital Libraries, and I'm in the middle of setting up an online image collection that (when finished) will be available through Image Collections Online. I never thought to look in our own online documentation!!!  Thank you for finding that, and Andy, thanks for bringing up this book.  My only textbook of Liberian English is Warren d'Azavedo's Some Terms from Liberian Speech, and I don't remember ever seeing this book or anything else like it.  Nyttend (talk) 03:42, 21 September 2014 (UTC)