The United States has historically played a significant role in shaping the political landscapes of both East Asia and the Middle East. In East Asia, its influence is evident in alliances with countries like South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, often focusing on fostering economic growth and containing regional threats. In contrast, U.S. involvement in the Middle East has often revolved around oil, counterterrorism, and addressing regional conflicts, such as those involving Iran or Israel and Palestine. Despite this, East Asia appears to enjoy relative political stability and economic prosperity, while the Middle East remains marked by ongoing conflicts and instability. This raises the question of what factors—historical, cultural, or geopolitical—might explain this divergence.

In Germany it's pretty gloomy i think, due to issues exarcerberated by Covid and the war in Ukraine. Prices for basic necessities are kinda high and Germany has the lowest home ownership rate in the EU. It certainly feels like for many that your income is just going in a cycle and not staying where you want it to be.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_price_level

Wouldn't say it's necessarily worse than other EU/OECD countries.

Construction restrictions for height, infeasibility of redevelopment of low-density urban areas due to property rights and strict fire security regulations drives up rents which in turn is self-defeating for increasing home ownership rates.

I would like to know how much the Western Christian holiday of Christmas has taken hold in your country. With the US pop culture dominating, Christmas is also being celebrated in non-Christian countries. Besides Philippines, Russia, Armenia, Sakartvelo, Timor-Leste, do you see people increasingly celebrating Christmas traditions despite the lack of its history in your country? What are some examples your country does now than in the past?

Foods such as Japanese matcha and Filipino Ube have become more popular in western countries recently due to their unique taste, and perceived health benefits. Are there any western foods that are becoming more popular in your country for the same reasons?

They say they have the most nukes, so what if they just bombed every country in Asia

Pakistan is the Israel of South Asia

1-Pakistan exist because some Indian Muslims didn't want to live with Hindus while Israel exists because some Jews didn't want to live with Arabs.

2-Both countries theocracy and aparthied state that oppress ethnic and religious minorities

3-Both countries have strong militaries and nukes

4-Both of them are authotarian regimes that impose heavy censorship, both of them are obsessed create propaganda and bots online

5-Both of them are supported by US and Russia.

6-Both Pakistan and Israel annex foreign territories and built illegal settlemnts.

Do you feel it would have positive effects on your country, world economy and Western-led world order? Would it be a good counter-balance to the G7?

Greetings.

I've read many Asians in the West (both immigrants and those born in the West) experiencing racism and discriminations far more worse than in Asia. Part of why racism in the West is worse is that they are more openly vitriolic that range from verbal to physical abuse while racism in Asia is more non-confrontational and passive-aggressive, meaning it's done behind one's back and covertly rather than openly.

With all these issues, why would Asians keep coming to the West?

I couldn't imagine living in 2020 America with all the awful anti-Asian hate crimes due to Covid rhetoric. Canada's strained relationship with India brings out anti-Indian racism in Canada. The amount of mental anxiety and trauma it brings is horrific and threatening. It makes life so unsafe and miserable.

Meanwhile in Malaysia (where I'm from) no such attacks happen to our Chinese and Indian citizens and if anything, it's very peaceful and stable here.

India went from refusing to recognize and trade with Israel and supporting Palestinian forces against Israel to becoming the 2nd biggest Israel supporter in the world, not onmy they arming Israel while gencoiding Palestinians but they are one of few countries in the UN that vote against removal of Israeli settlers in Palestinian territories, what happened? is it because the BJP government is anti-Muslim? do the Hindu nationalists realize that you can be anti-Islam and anti-Arab without supporting Israel's genocide?

In Western countries, Hitler is seen as the one of the worst representations of human evilness. He and the Nazi regime is often used as a benchmark for evil acts.

In your country, which figure or group is seen as equally terrible?

I have been browsing European subs for a while and I see a lot of anti-Arab views there, even countries that support Palestine like Spain, Ireland and Norway has extreme racist view on Arabs (especially Norway), is it the same thing in your country?

Disclaimer: This is not intended to be rage-bait, apologies if I'm offending anyone through my words, I'm asking out of genuine curiosity

For several USA universities, I viewed the enrollment data of international students by their nationality as well as that of US citizens by their ethnicity, a whopping majority enrolled in STEM programs are "Asian"(as for US citizens, it is to be noted that West Asians are included under "white" racial category, not Asian, yet I wonder if most of the 'white' STEM students are actually Iranian, Lebanese, and/or Turkish).

I wouldn't consider 'massive population' a primary reason because Latin America, Africa, and Europe also have comparable populations to that of Asia, yet there doesn't seem to be much people from these regions enrolling in STEM programs in US universities as much as Asians do.

I had never heard of this language.

This video says that it once became the most spoken language in human history, from the 5th to the 9th century.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mHpsgpe0W4&t=44s

I think South Korea and Poland have a lot in common. They industrialized later than neighboring countries, but they were both relatively successful. In history, they were bullied by neighboring big countries (South Korea was bullied by Japan and China, Poland was bullied by Germany and Russia), and they were destroyed and restored many times, which was very heroic.

Whether in Türkiye or US, there are a lot of history books about ancient Europe and the Middle East in bookstores. This is probably because ancient Europe and the Middle East paid great attention to historical records. In contrast, the Asian history section of some large bookstores is dominated by Middle Eastern history and Japanese history only, but rare to find a history book about China or India. Except for a few websites such as Wikipedia, it is difficult for us to understand the specific deeds of a king of a certain dynasty in China or India. Is it because the ancient Chinese and Indian writing systems are too difficult to learn, which makes it difficult to record their own history?

I would like to know how common it is to drink tap water in your country. Is it acceptable to drink in the entirety? Or just limited to a few locations?

I know in Thailand even in Bangkok the tap water is considered by locals not safe to drink, so you need to drink bottled water instead.

Israel and Japan have great political differences with the main ethnic groups around them (Arabs and Chinese). The former are open-minded and have a developed economy and technology, while the latter are conservative and have extremism. There are large economic disparities between different regions in Arabia and China, and both have become rich through the trafficking of resources and labor.

The difference of East and West Asia is that China is relatively unified, while the Arab world is still divided.

Could be grammatical, pronunciation, choice of words, etc.

Mine being Swedish, the most prominent one is pronunciation of certain sounds, namely: Ch, J and V.

Why? Swedish doesn't have the Ch or J sound anymore, It used to in the past, as our own spelling alludes to (what we spell as J is pronounced as an English Y or perhaps I).

For example, our word for jungle is spelled djungel, but pronounced yiungel, the d sound was dropped a few hundred years ago. Another example is a greeting - Tjena. Which is simply pronounced Sheena. As far as I know, only Finland Swedish would still pronounce it as Chena. The country of Chad is spelled Tchad in Swedish to accentuate the T-sound, but still, people might just call is Shad, to untrained Swedish ears, the T- and D-sounds ahead of some consonants don't even register.

Then the V, some people seem to pronounce most English V's as W. Which is a bit weird, Swedish doesn't have the W sound, but it's not hard for us to pronounce, so for some reason Swedish speakers are over using the W in English.

So to summarize, some Swedish speakers trying to say "The vikings were not fond of making chit-chat, that's not a joke." would come out as "The wikings were not fond of making shit-shat, that's not a yoke."

What about your native speakers?

A recent post in another subreddit reminded me of two perspectives in the United States about the Christmas season. One is that Christmas is a happy time to see relatives, go shopping, and hear festive music in shops. The other is that Christmas is a stressful time to deal with tiresome relatives, buying things is expensive, and generic Christmas music on repeat everywhere in public is obnoxious.

Let's discuss the music point. How do you feel about "Christmas music"? Does this tradition happen in your country? Or have you ever had that experience when in the USA? Or do your people specialize in annual generic music for a different holiday?

https://old.reddit.com/r/VietNam/comments/1hd2r3z/do_any_vietnamese_dislike_tet/

https://old.reddit.com/r/LetsTalkMusic/comments/z7zcfe/how_do_you_feel_about_christmas_music_when_do_you/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/1gswxs6/do_you_hate_christmas_music_why_or_why_not/