Delete if already posted.
Brit here, woke up and saw loads of Americans calling us racist for referring a Chinese takeaway a ‘Chinese’ We say it as a way of being lazy. The same way we would get an ‘Italian’ or an ‘Indian’.
Do you actually care and think its actually racist. Or is it just a few American tiktokers trying to find something to offended about?
40 comments
Da fuq?
Nah that’s not offensive. I don’t know of anyone in the real world who would take offense to that. It’s just a bunch of perpetually outraged types trying to find the next thing to agitate themselves and scold the general public on.
That’s completely fine.
no.
…but I saw pics of UK ppl consider Chinese food, and _that_ was offensive.
Who exactly is saying this because this isn’t odd in America.
No
I am guessing a few idiots with too much time on their hands. We use the term Chinese to describe food served in Chinese restaurants. Nothing offensive about that.
Is the question whether we would be offended if you referred to “a Chinese takeaway” as just “a Chinese” and drop the “takeaway”?
(Note we’d probably say restaurant instead of takeaway but I’m leaving it that way for simplicity.)
If so, no, I wouldn’t find it offensive. A little odd maybe but I don’t see how it could be offensive.
You all are being trolled or are just wildly taking some fringe chronically online people and applying it to a nation which, for the most part, isn’t on TikTok.
It is perfectly normal for us to say “I’m getting Mexican” with the implicit meaning of it being food and not human trafficking.
Despite what the UK subs would have you believe, we’re far more alike than we are different.
No.
We don’t say “get a Chinese” we say “get Chinese” or “get Chinese food” the food is implied usually.
I would just assume it is a Britishism and not anything racist but I could see the miscomprehension, especially since that’s just not a phrase we use.
There’s a similar difference with saying someone is “a Jew” vs. “Jewish.”
Saying “that man? He’s a Jew” sounds kind of offensive. Saying “he’s a Jewish man” or just “he’s Jewish” doesn’t carry the same connotation.
It’s not offensive, but we drop the article *ie* it’s simply “Chinese”.
I didn’t see any TikTok videos of people saying it was racist or offensive just a weird way to say “going out of for Chinese food”. Shortening “let’s get a Chinese takeaway” to “let’s get a Chinese” sounds weird to US ears. If instead, you said “let’s get Chinese” it would sound much similar to the US “let’s get Chinese food”.
Also, that single color pile of food covered in curry sauce looks horrible.
Another point that seemed to cause confusion was the difference between “takeaway” locations and “restaurants”. In the US, you mostly get food to-go from regular restaurants. We don’t usually have standalone shops that just sell food for takeaway.
We say “Chinese” in the context of food as well
I don’t think it’s offensive, it just sounds weird. It’s like when I hear you guys say “I’m in hospital”.
> Or is it just a few American ***tiktokers***
There’s your problem.
Tiktok isn’t even the bottom of the barrel. It’s the earth 12 kilometers below the bottom of the barrel.
Tiktok makes Twitter look sane.
Disregard anyone who uses Tiktok.
To answer your question. I would phrase it as: “I’m going to get Chinese. Do you want anything?”
Just gonna be brutally honest and say I don’t care what British people call their food even if it *was* racist, which I don’t think calling Chinese food Chinese qualifies.
No. I’d confidently say a vast majority calling it racist are doing it as a joke
My partner is Irish and I made the same lame joke like 3 years ago
It sounds racist to us, or at least very weird, because we wouldn’t say “a Chinese”: It sounds like you’re saying that you’re buying a Chinese person, or something. We don’t say “A Chinese,” or “a Mexican,” or “a” anything that’s a cuisine. You’re abbreviating “a Chinese meal” by dropping “meal,” which is a countable noun. But we don’t say it that way: We eat “Chinese food,” a non-countable noun. So if we’re ordering food, we’re ordering Chinese [food], or we’re getting Italian, or we’ll eat Mexican. We’d never get “a Chinese [meal].”
I’m familiar with the drama you’re talking about, and it isn’t necessarily that it’s racist, it’s just the phrase “getting A Chinese” is odd. We’d say “we’re getting Chinese” or “we’re getting Chinese food”. The “A” makes it sound like you’re talking about a person and sounds odd, which is what people have been “taking the piss” out of.
Now I also have heard that, maybe not as much anymore (I hope), but at least in the past, Brits would say, “Getting A C_____y”, where the blank is a slur for Chinese people. That’s absolutely racist.
When I see “a Chinese takeaway”, I’m confused as to whether it’s referring to a Chinese restaurant that just does takeout or to the actual food.
If it’s the actual food, we treat it as a collective or uncountable noun, and hence there’s no article. It’s not “a takeout”, it’s just takeout, e.g., I’m going to the restaurant to get takeout.
“Italian” is interesting because there are sub sandwiches called Italian. Don’t ask me what’s in them, as I never get them, but in that specific example, it’s ok to say “get me an Italian” as shorthand for “get me an Italian sub” (though there’s plenty of opportunity to joke about it).
We call that particular kind of reaching for outrage “terminally online” and we don’t like it any more than anyone else does.
“I’m going to get a Chinese” or “Let’s get a Chinese” just sounds odd but I don’t see it as racist.
We just say “Want to get some Chinese food?” or “I’m ordering Chinese”. Adding “a” before Chinese just sounds odd.
No. And no you didn’t see that, liar.
Uhhhh why the hell would you not call Chinese food Chinese???
>just a few American tiktokers trying to find something to offended about?
It’s this.
Though the phrasing does sound awkward in North American English, so I would try not to use it in the US or Canada.
We’d rather give the UK shit for what it considers to be Chinese food. (With love, of course.)
While I disagree with them, you missed the point entirely. It’s the article “a” that’s got people upset. I’m going to get “a Chinese” is kind of weird.
Not at all. You asked “a Chinese” in your question, however it would still be understood; the only difference would be to say “some Chinese.” Just as we’d also say, “I’m going to get some Italian,” or whatever other cooking style it is.
We say “Get Chinese”. The same way we say “Get Italian” or “Get Indian”, “Get Mexican”, etc.
To say “Get a Chinese” makes it sound like you are trying to kidnap a person.
No. Virtue signaling from useless harpies.
I’ve never heard of that, and use the same terminology myself. Usually we get “Chinese” or “Thai” for take-out.
There a segment of the American population which glories in finding new things to call “racist,” and that’s what you’ve probably come across. I expect you have some of those folks in the UK, as well.
If you say, “get _**A**_ Chinese” then yeah that would be seen as weird and like you possibly meant offense. We would just say, “get Chinese today” or “get some Chinese food”, etc. So it is pretty much the usage of the article before the type of food that makes it possibly bad.
Using something ending in “ese” as a noun (instead of an adjective) just sounds wrong to me.
Ignore anything you see on tiktok-it does not represent reality.
Just tell them you said you could murder an Indian but then your mates all wanted a cheeky Nandos so you got peri-peri instead.
Then turn off notifications for a while 😉
No. It’s a descriptor of the food. We would say Chinese, italian, Greek, thai etc as well.
I think you just ran into a group over over zealous karens.
No. Just weird.
Like “What do you want to get for dinner”, “How about Chinese?”. It’s fine.
Honestly, we could cut it finer (ie *types* of cuisine adopted from China), but your basic ‘order by numbers, somehow ready from scratch before you finish ordering’ corner place is a mix of stuff. (My recent favorite serves *chicharron*, because that’s what the neighborhood likes, for instance.)
We also say “Italian” or “Mexican”, or “Thai”, or “Greek”, meaning the origin of the type of food. We don’t say *a* Chinese/Thai/Mexican/Italian, but that’s just a quirk of grammar, seems to me? I don’t take that to mean you’re going to go find a person of those nationalities, or whatever. That’s… a radical interpretation of the text, as they used to say.
I think you were being trolled. We routinely say, “Do you want to get Chinese/Italian/Indian/Mexican?” Don’t let the snowflakes fool you.
TikTok is not real life.
>Whilst you are correct, it is unfair to pull the ameritard card as it is too overpowered
You seem like a great person
It’s not just the word “Chinese” it’s the article with it. “A Chinese” sounds to us like you’re talking about a person. I saw a good explanation that involved adding “meal” after it in the uk and “food” after whatever kind of takeout in the US (like “I’m going out to pick up Chinese”). Little things crop up when you share a language but not the usage.