为什么美国人把来自远东(如中国、日本、韩国等)的人称为亚洲人，而实际上他们应该被称为东亚人？

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Sway Deng, Web Developer at Alibaba
I am Chinese and we generally call people with European appearance as Europeans. What? they are maybe from Finland or East Europe or even the U.S., and they are different? I''m so sorry it''s terribly difficult for us to distinguish between them.
For Americans, I think, Asians like Chinese, Japanese, Korean are indistinguishable, in other words, these are classified as a group subconsciously because of similar appearance, culture, food habits etc. East Asian is more FOREIGN than West Asian and Central Asian.
Second, Calling Asians is more convenient than calling East Asians. East Asia, nowadays, is relatively more effervescent (on the good side and bad side) than most of Asian areas. Consequently, East Asia always attracts more attention in the world. Subtly Asians becomes short for East Asians. For instance, if you say "Mac is more friendly than PC." without exception, nobody will ask you which OS the PC runs. we universally acknowledge PC means a Personal Computer which runs Windows OS. Microsoft''s Windows controls dominant market share.
So, we became Asians.

我是中国人，我们通常把外表像欧洲人的人称为欧洲人，啥？ 他们可能来自芬兰，东欧，甚至美国，他们不一样——抱歉，我们很难区分他们。
对于美国人来说，我认为，像中国人、日本人、韩国人这样的亚洲人他们是无法区分的，换句话说，由于相似的外表、文化、饮食习惯等原因，他们下意识地被归类为一个群体，东亚比西亚和中亚更外国化。

其次，称呼“亚洲人 ”比称呼“ 东亚人”更方便。
如今，东亚相对于亚洲大多数地区来说更加活跃( 好的方面和坏的方面 )，因此，东亚一直是世界关注的焦点，亚洲人变成了东亚人的简称，例如，如果你说“ Mac 比 PC 友好 ” 毫不意外，没有人会问你电脑运行的是哪个操作系统，我们普遍承认 PC 意味着运行 Windows 操作系统的个人计算机，因为微软的 Windows 操作系统控制着主导市场份额。
所以，我们变成了亚洲人。



Anonymous
I absolutely disagree with User-11726029917195839384 on this. Asia has been a continent long before the ''New World'' was discovered. So, the US needs to upxe its definition of classifying people based on geographical origins, as this is misleading.
Especially kids in the US with poor geographical knowledge will believe East Asia consists of only Vietnam, Koreas, China and Japan. There are close to 49+ countries in Asia.
If we begin to use the term East Asia more often kids will become inquisitive and might wonder there could be West Asia too, South Asia as well. There is no North Asia (Japan could be part of North Asia but as it is part of East Asia we could discount this.) strictly speaking as it is occupied by Russia which considers itself to be part of Europe though 90% of its area lies in Asia.
If we want to our kids to become aware of the world, we need to have clear definitions.

在这一点上，我完全不同意 User-11726029917195839384的说法。
在“新世界”被发现之前，亚洲早就是一个大陆了，因此，美国需要更新其基于地理起源的人类分类定义，因为这是误导。
尤其是那些地理知识贫乏的美国孩子，他们会认为东亚只有越南、朝鲜、中国和日本，但事实上亚洲有近49个国家。
如果我们开始更经常地使用东亚这个词，孩子们会变得好奇，可能会想到还有西亚，还有南亚，没有北亚( 日本可能是北亚的一部分，但由于它是东亚的一部分，我们可以忽略这一点) 严格来说，它被俄罗斯占领，俄罗斯认为自己是欧洲的一部分，尽管其90% 的地区位于亚洲。
如果我们想让我们的孩子了解这个世界，我们需要有明确的定义。

Serena, B.E. Mechanical Engienering (2017)
Most people call East Asians “Asians” because they don’t know that the word Asian actually refers to 40 other countries such as India, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, Malaysia, Russia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Bhutan, etc…
It’s also a common thing to not differentiate the term Asian in national statistics. They simply record the statistics for Asians and lump all the countries together, ex: There are about 300,000 Asians in the Navy.
Sometimes I would like to just know the statistics for East Asians (China, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Singapore etc..), and it’s difficult since statistics tend to lump all Asian countries together as one, but in reality the word “Asian” is too broad of a term.

大多数人称东亚人为“亚洲人” ，因为他们不知道“亚洲人”这个词实际上指的是其他40个国家，如印度、土耳其、伊朗、巴基斯坦、巴勒斯坦、马来西亚、俄罗斯、越南、阿富汗、不丹等。 .
在国家统计数据中，不区分亚洲这个词也是很常见的，他们只是简单地记录亚洲人的统计数字，然后把所有的国家放在一起，例如：海军大约有30万亚洲人服役。
有时我只想知道东亚国家(中国、日本、韩国、菲律宾、新加坡等)的统计数字 ，这很困难，因为统计数字往往把所有亚洲国家放在一起，但在现实中，“亚洲”一词是一个太过广泛的术语。

Li Zhengmin
Because for some reason the term “Oriental” is considered colonial and racist, and saying “East Asian” requires too much thought. But mostly it’s because in America more of the Asian (already an exotic place of origin in the Western mind) population is from East Asia whereas in the UK more of the Asians are from the Indian subcontinent.
I’ve heard that British people just refers to Chinese, Japanese, etc. as such instead of calling them Asian. The same holds true for Americans referring to Indians, Pakistanis, and the like.

由于某种原因，“东方”一词被认为是殖民主义和种族主义的，说“东亚”需要太多的思考，但主要是因为在美国，亚洲人更多的是来自东亚（在西方人看来，亚洲是一个充满异域风情的地方），而在英国，大多数亚洲人来自中东、印度次大陆。
我听说英国人有中国人、日本人等等这样的称呼，而不是称他们为亚洲人，美国人提到印度人、巴基斯坦人等时也是如此。

Anonymous
As other pointed out, there is a good reason for the American usage of the term ''Asian'' (to refer to East Asian settlers) very similar to the way ''America'' is used, however, the term America has been accepted almost universally to refer to the US (contexts such as Geography excluded). On the other hand, the term ''Asia'' is confusing on an international forum - like when talking about the peculiarities of ''Asian languages'' or about ''Asian conformity''. Even top writers do this routinely even in places where precise terminology is required. The issue of other Asians being ''glossed over'' is only secondary.
I''m not sure if there are situations where ''America'' causes ambiguity. That should be a question on its own.

正如其他人指出的那样，美国人使用“ Asian”(指东亚定居者)一词与“ America”的使用方式非常相似，这是有充分理由的。
然而，“ America”一词几乎被普遍接受为指美国( 例如排除了地理因素 )。
另一方面，在国际论坛上谈论“亚洲语言”或“亚洲一致性”的特点时，“ Asian”这个词会让人感到困惑。 即使是（Quora）顶级作者也经常这样做，即使是在需要精确术语的地方也会如此，其他亚洲国家被“掩盖”的问题只是次要的。
我不确定是否存在‘America’导致模棱两可的情况。
这本身就是一个问题。

David Zheng, INTJ Lead Developer & Enterprise Architect
Because it’s this way for many years in US
It’s easier to place the individual into a group just by the appearance
There are lots of lazy people in US among us that don’t care about taking the extra effort to ask the question in a more specific way to get a better answer.
They (North Americans in US) should just ask the nationality of people and call them by their nationality. It’s the simplest thing to ask to get the accurate answer, then there won’t be many people who feel that they are being generalized into a group. I don’t think anyone who doesn’t feel proud of their heritage.
But this is only my wishful thinking.

因为在美国很多年都是这样的称呼的。
仅仅通过外表就可以很容易地将个人归入一个群体
在美国，有很多懒惰的人，他们不在乎花费额外的精力，用一种更具体的方式提出问题，以得到一个更好的答案。
他们 ( 美洲的北美人) 应该直接询问人们的国籍，并按照他们的国籍来称呼他们，这是最简单的事情，要求得到准确的答案，那么就不会有很多人觉得他们被概括为一个群体，我认为没有人会不为自己的传统感到骄傲。
但这只是我一厢情愿的想法。

Anonymous
I don''t think this is exclusive to people in America. People in Asia do this too. E.g. Japanese don''t think of people of Uzbekistan or Lebanon as Asians. Also Israelis or Turkish people don''t generally refer to themselves as Asian.
In the UK it is more complicated. Only South Asians in the UK are referred to as Asian (not East Asians). But they would still refer to Korea or China as Asia, and for their inhabitants as Asians, as long as they don''t live in the UK.



Syd Chan, Sometimes knowledgeable, but ALWAYS curious
So people from Korea, Japan, and China shouldn''t be called Asians, even though they are still from Asia? That doesn''t really make sense. -- Yes, they are still from eastern Asia, but the term East Asian just serves to disambiguate them from people from other areas of Asia.
I would also like to point out that the term Far East can be seen as ridiculous, also, since from an Asian point of view, America is east of Asia. So can''t Far East then refer to people from New York or S?o Paulo?

那是不是说韩国人、日本人和中国人不应该被称为亚洲人，即使他们来自亚洲？ 这说不通啊——是的，他们仍然来自东亚，但是东亚一词只是用来把他们和亚洲其他地区的人区分开来。
我还想指出，远东这个词可以说很荒谬，因为从亚洲的角度来看，美国是亚洲的东部，那么远东就不能指纽约或圣保罗人吗？

Andrew Lee, lives in The United States of America
maybe because Asia is big, and as the western people moved eastward they started to name specific parts of asia which they had the biggest connection too. such as the middle east (persia, ottomen empire etc) and India (part of british colony). and by the time they hit the far east, well that was the rest of Asia, and since the other parts already had a name, I guess it kind of makes sense to make it easy and just call them Asians.

也许是因为亚洲很大，随着西方人向东移动，他们开始区分亚洲的某些特定地区，而这些地区与他们有着最大的联系，例如中东(波斯、奥斯曼帝国等) 和印度( 英国殖民地的一部分 )，当他们到达远东地区的时候，那就是亚洲其他地区，因为其他地区已经有了名字，现在他们只想把它简单化，就叫他们亚洲人是有道理的。

Stephen Flynn, Born and raised in the U.S. History enthusiast.
Well, speaking for myself, I''m not that astute enough geographically to decipher East, west, north, and south Asia!

好吧，就我个人而言，从地理上不足区分东亚、西亚、北亚和南亚，太迷了！