Gaijin, laowai, farang and mat salleh

The other day I was pleased to spot a new restaurant in Tokyo near where I am working since there aren’t too many choices for eating there in the evening – but was immediately disappointed by a sign saying it was off limits to foreigners. Whether trying to be encouraging or humourous I’m not sure, but my colleague commented: Don’t worry, it probably doesn’t mean you!



No Foreigners signs are not unusual in Japan, especially outside bars or in advertisements for apartments to rent. The only law specifically prohibiting racial discrimination is an international one that Japan signed up to in 1995: The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. There is some doubt about whether it has much force, especially since many Japanese laws, such as gender-equality legislation, require people to ‘make efforts’ without punishing them if they don’t. However, it was used successfully in 1999 to obtain compensation for a Brazilian woman who had been refused entry to a shop with a No Foreigners poster on the door. In web forums participated in by foreigners living in Japan, many people express shock at these bans, although some are sympathetic to bar-owners and apartment-owners wanting to avoid the possibility of foreigners getting aggressively drunk or having noisy parties at night and failing to dispose of their rubbish properly.

Replying to a Youtube complaint by Meaphe about her difficulty in finding an apartment, for example, Gimmeaflakeman and Tomoko advise her that it is ‘nothing personal’ and that there are many places that do rent to foreigners – some that rent only to foreigners, indeed.



Debates about whether foreigners should expect the same rules against discrimination in Japan as they have in their own countries, and whether it is better to be openly discriminatory rather secretly so, are interesting, but in this blog on language around Asia I want to concentrate on various words for ‘foreigner’ and what they seem to mean.



Gaijin (外人 – literally ‘outside person’) is one of the first words foreigners learn in Japan. When gaijin were rare, many of them got annoyed to hear this word constantly called out. The old lady who ran the public bathhouse I used when I lived in a provincial city used to address me as gaijin-san whenever she wanted to tell me off for not drying myself off properly as I stood in front of her naked and steamy. In most of Japan today no one notices gaijin much, and most non-Japanese don’t seem to mind the term. However, Arudou Debito, an American-born naturalised Japanese whose campaigns include a lawsuit against a Hokkaido bathhouse that banned all foreigners after having trouble with foreign seamen, believes the term is harmful because of the simplistic way it divides the world between Japanese and everyone else. He uses the example of a group of Japanese tourists he heard in Italy referring to locals – rather than themselves – as gaijin.

My own feeling is that for most Japanese, gaijin are Europeans or North Americans, especially white ones. Asians and Africans are more likely to be called gaikokujin (外国人=outside country person), which sounds more formal but to my ears is less friendly.



This distinction has a parallel in China, where the formal word (also 外国人=wàiguórén) is heard less often by white people than 老外(lǎowài = old outsider). Depending on the context, lǎo can mark respect (老师= old teacher), disrespect (老东西=old fool) or nothing much at all (老虎= a tiger regardless of age), and thus there are frequent discussions about whether lǎowài is acceptable. Like gaijin in Japan, many lǎowài in China use the local term about themselves and prefer it to the suspiciously sweet wàiguópéngyou (外国朋友= foreign friends). Dark-skinned foreigners are more likely to be called (黑人= black person).


Hong Kong and Singapore Chinese have a longer experience of living alongside Europeans than do mainlanders and have a variety of words for them. In Singapore, where the biggest first language is Hokkien, white people are most commonly referred to as angmo (红毛= red hair) and opinion is divided as to whether it is harmless or insulting. The Cantonese term gweilo (ghost man) is considered racist by many people in both Singapore and Hong Kong. I was reprimanded for saying it by an Italian long-term resident of Hong Kong who finds it typifies the deep racial divisions there. Singapore-based blogger Aussie Pete suggests its use in a sports game in Australia would lead to a player being suspended. Yet I often hear foreigners themselves using it. Is it because they don’t know its historical associations, coming in to being when there was great hostility against Europeans? Or is it that by making fun of it they make it less harmful, just as gay people in the 1990s started to use the previously insulting word ‘queer’ about themselves?



The term farang is also used by many farang in Thailand. Its origin may be the same as the word for Frenchman. Like gaijin and lǎowài it refers mostly to white people and there is disagreement about whether it is harmful. Mat salleh, which somehow got transformed from the name of a rebel leader who killed a lot of white colonialists into a name for white people themselves, is generally regarded by both locals and foreigners in Malaysia as harmless and even affectionate. One contributor to a web forum commented that it doesn’t sound so affectionate when referring to noisy, drunken foreigners, however. The same could be said for farang and indeed most of these terms: it depends on what is in the mind of the person who says the word and the one who hears it at the time. I had never thought that Indon was anything more than an abbreviation for Indonesian, for example, until I used it in a text message to an Indonesian friend. He was upset because it is often used by Malaysians to insult Indonesians and there had recently been tension between the two countries.



There will always be terms to group people who are different from ourselves, and sometimes they will be used innocently or affectionately, and sometimes maliciously. Gaijin, lǎowài, farang and mat salleh can be considered part of the English of Asia since they are words used by both foreigners and locals in the English spoken there, but clearly they have a range of meanings and should not be used without some thought. There has always been racism around the world, but when white people start complaining about racism in Asia there must be many Asians who think about the old days when European colonialists put up signs in Shanghai parks saying ‘No dogs or Chinese’. Indeed, Debito didn’t get much sympathy from the largely Chinese and Korean audience when he complained on Japanese TV about discrimination against white people (including white people with Japanese citizenship) in the Hokkaido bathhouse.

As for that sign at the new restaurant in Tokyo, it is interesting that it is in Chinese and Korean, as well as ungrammatical English. Just like the landlady I visited about renting an apartment with a No Foreigners sign, I suspect my colleague was trying to tell me that it does not mean ‘your kind of foreigner’. But I think it will be better if I don’t try to find out what kind of 'foreigner' it does mean.

Police policies

The first time I got into trouble with the police in Japan was about two years after I’d started living there and already spoke the language fairly well. I’d borrowed a friend’s car but hadn’t been able to return it before going away on a 3-day skiing trip, so I parked it in a quiet suburban street. When I returned I found lots of plastic tags tied to the car’s wing-mirrors. In some countries, when you park a car illegally they clamp the wheel or tow the vehicle away. In Japan they just clamp your mirror, believing that drivers will be embarrassed into paying their fine immediately. I am not easily embarrassed. But I didn’t want to cause my friend any trouble. So I phoned to say I would go straight to the police. “Just be very apologetic, “ she advised me. “And don’t speak Japanese!”

When I arrived, a huge cop led me into a small room with bars on the windows. So it was easy to feel apologetic. However, since he didn’t seem to speak English, it was hard for me to avoid using Japanese. But I decided to speak it as badly as possible. The big cop told me I had committed a very serious offence and the fine would be heavy. Then he looked up and changed to English. “Hmm, seem you not live in Japan so long. Maybe not understand Japanese customs. Ok, just go. But next time no parking.” I have often wondered how much I would have had to pay if I had spoken in fluent Japanese.


I realise some foreigners don’t get treated so kindly (especially if they are from Asia or Africa). But I’ve heard many tales from English-speaking friends about how they escaped trouble – as long as they didn’t use Japanese, or Chinese, or Korean, or whatever the language of the place they were in. Perhaps it is because the police are busy and don’t want to go through the embarrassment of explaining things in English unless a serious crime is involved.


While most Asian police officers hardly speak English, I have come across several exceptions, such as a very fluent young Tokyo cop who came to investigate when my New Zealand colleague had his apartment burgled, and a Bangkok friend who had to study English, often with foreign instructors, in order to enter the commando force there.


And then there are the tourist police. Countries whose economies rely heavily on tourism, such as Indonesia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand, have special police forces to deal with crimes against (or sometimes by) tourists, and they have to be fluent in English.

Thailand’s Thammasat University has produced a textbook entitled English for Tourist Police. Its chapters, which include Giving Directions (“Make a left turn.”) and Complaining and Showing Sympathy (“Oh that’s too bad!”), give an idea of what situations Thai police expect to encounter when dealing with foreigners. A section on robbery has a story of a foreigner being given whisky with sleeping pills in it; another is about getting refunds from jewelery shops who overcharge tourists.

China made English lessons compulsory for officers in Beijing during the Olympics. It even produced a 252-page book: Olympic Security English. This has the usual sections on traffic accident, thefts and lost passports, but seems to hold the view that foreign men are likely like to get drunk and molest local women. It is full of expressions such as: “Please blow into the intoxiliser” and “Don’t take too many liberties with the waitress”.

Common law – common language?

It is sometimes claimed that English law is the last bastion of British colonialism and of the English language. Long after their countries gained formal independence, lawyers throughout the Commonwealth continue to study laws that evolved centuries ago in England. Many of them still complete their training in London. And all of them require a high level of proficiency in the English language. Because of this, lawyers often have a reputation for trying to preserve ancient privileges and outdated practices. But if we look at the situation of the law in several Asian countries we can see that there are often good reasons for the conservatism of the legal profession. Moreover, it is no easy task to change the language of the law from English to an Asian language.

Most of the Asian countries that inherited English law continue to rely on the English language to administer the law. A great deal of Singapore’s legislation dates from the colonial era; new laws are drafted in English and court proceedings are conducted only in that language, with a centralised system of courtroom interpretation for witnesses and litigants who prefer to use Chinese, Malay, Tamil or other languages. Law in Brunei, which was once a British protectorate, also operates in English, and some of the judges come from Britain.

In the Philippines, a mixture of Spanish and common law is used since the country was a Spanish colony before being occupied by the US more than 100 years ago. But hardly any lawyers use Spanish now. Nor do they use Tagalog, the national language. Almost everything is in English.




However, there are some countries that have tried to introduce another language into the courtrooms. Nearly all cases in Myanmar are now heard in Burmese. In Pakistan, Urdu is commonly spoken in the lower courts (but English remains the language of the constitution, statutes and higher court proceedings). Several state-level courts in India permit Hindi or official regional languages in court. All laws in Hong Kong are written in both English and Chinese, and trials may be in either language. Malaysia started using Malay in its courts in the 1980s, and it is now the main language in the lower courts and in criminal cases. However, English is still used extensively in the higher courts and in civil cases, and even cases conducted in Malay often use a lot of English words.

Since trials are public events, it makes sense for courtrooms to use the language that most people understand best. But changing the language of a legal system is easier said than done. A Hong Kong lawyer who trained in English may not be comfortable speaking Cantonese in court, even if she uses it at home every day. In Malaysia, many laws are yet to be translated into Malay, and so many lawyers feel it is natural to speak English when referring to them. The thousands of previous cases, or precedents, which lawyers base their arguments on all over the Commonwealth and in America may never be translated – there are simply too many of them, and some have been in use for hundreds of years. An attempt to use Tagalog in some courts in the Philippines has had limited success. Not all Filipinos speak Tagalog, and many court clerks and recorders were trained in English and do not have time to retrain.

Some lawyers also worry that by changing the language of the law the meaning of the law will somehow change. After all, even changing the language of old English laws into more modern and simple English is not easy.

Many Asian legal systems have adopted a compromise, adopting both English and a local language. Sri Lanka has a trilingual system of law. In the lower courts, Sinhala or Tamil is used, depending on where the case is held; English is used for the higher courts.

While some common law countries are starting to use more Asian languages, alongside English, one or two countries that never used English in their legal systems are stressing its importance. The Thai government, for example, is encouraging judges to study in English-speaking countries so that they can deal directly with business documents without having to wait for a translation. In Macao, the legal system operates bilingually in Portuguese and Cantonese, but nearly all lawyers are fluent in English. If they weren’t, they could not collaborate with law firms in neighbouring Hong Kong, which is much bigger and richer.

What’s in a name?

Until fairly recently, most people around the world had only one name. Only the rich, with property to pass down, or those who travelled far from home, needed anything more than a personal name. Even today, many Indonesians go by a single name.

When Chinese started using family names these were often borrowed from their local lord. Thus whole communities in some parts of the country have the same name. For example, most people called Huang claim a connection to Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor.

While the English tended to form surnames either from their fathers’ personal name (Johnson, Richardson, Williams, Edwards) or from their profession (Carpenter, Mason, Smith), the Japanese turned to the natural environment, producing Fujibayashi (wisteria woods) Tanaka (in the middle of the field), and Yamashita (below the mountain).



It can be difficult to know which is a family name and which a personal one. Some Asian communities place personal names first, as in most European societies (Thaksin Shinawatra). Others begin with the family name (Lee Kwan Yew, Abe Shinzo). In many Muslim communities it is common to put your father’s personal name after your own personal name, but it is not the same as a family name because it changes with each generation. And so in Malaysia, Zubaidah Ibrahim is listed under Z, her personal name, and not I, the name of her father.

Even if we can distinguish personal and family names, we still need to know which one to use. Thais hardly ever use family names. They either use a personal name – Khun (Mr) Abhisit – or a nickname (Daeng = red; Yai = big; Lek = small). Sometimes I only learn the real names of Thai friends when we travel together and I see their passport.

In contrast, there are some Asian societies where personal names are rarely used. Goh Chenchuan may not mind being called Chenchuan – or even Charlie – while in America, but he may expect his colleagues to call him Mr Goh back home in Hong Kong.

Many Chinese around Southeast Asia have English personal names used alongside Chinese ones. A Singaporean child might be called Kelvin by his schoolfriends but Chun Pay by his grandmother. The practice is also spreading to Singapore’s Malays, such as actors Sharon Ismail and Aron Aziz. It is also happening in China, where many people make very imaginative choices. While there, you may meet a Jackal Chang, Apple Zhang, Weenie Wang or even Satan Han.

In many situations we have to address people whose name we don’t know. This can be difficult in English ('sir' and 'madam' may only be suitable for formal occasions), but most Asian languages have a wide range of titles, such as the Japanese terms untenshu-san (driver); sensei (teacher); onii-san (‘older brother’) or obaa-san (‘grandmother’) for people of appropriate professions or ages. These practices often get transferred when Asians speak English. For example, many Indians and Chinese call middle-aged ladies ‘aunty’ even if they have never met them before.