text: how do you recognise a chinese from a japanese? without being racist in any sense, could anyone tell me how you can recognise a chinese person, from a japanese, from a vietnamese, from a korean e.t.c. without hearing them speak (it wouldn't make a difference for me anyway as i cannot speak/understand either language). i have come across many oriental people but find it difficult to describe one from another. is there anyway to know the difference? despite what you think, you can tell the difference between chinese, japanese and korean people by hearing them speak.  the chinese language sounds like the person is "swishing" liquid in their mouth. japanese is very staccato and monotone; they do not stress the syllables in words, and like english the language is very open to "loanwords", words borrowed from other languages (eg. "pan" for "bread", and "wanpisu" for "one piece dress").  the korean language is very nasal; it sounds like they speak through their noses (that's no more a criticism of korean than it is to say italians speak from their throat and sound vocal).    you can also tell the difference between the three written languages, but that's an even longer paragraph.  ask and i'll change this text to add it in.  many people will say that asiatic people look the same; it's partly true and partly false.  most caucasians and most africans look the same in many respects; it takes experience in recognizing facial shapes to know the difference.  i've lived in asia for years and i can recognize which part of mainland china a chinese person is from (never mind china or korea) and i'm white; i couldn't do that in the past.  part of the problem with differentiating chinese, korean and japanese people is that they are all descended from the same stock of people and there isn't as much variation as it is in europe; we have mongol, romany, moorish, african and other stock mixed in with caucasian.  (of course, if you're a young earth cretinist - oops, creationist - and reject human migration from 10000-40000 years ago, it's a different story.)  koreans are descended from the chinese, and the japanese are descended from the koreans (despite what any of them say; the entire japanese royal family is descended from korean, and not from a "goddess sent from the heavens").    koreans tend to look halfway between chinese and japanese, and could be mistaken for either.  i lived there for 2+ years and i never saw anything distinctively "korean" that set them apart.  the japanese, on the other hand, moved into japan and intermingled with the ainu who were there thousands of years before (the ainu came south from the same stock of people who went east into north america).  japanese faces tend to be angular and sharply defined (almost like cats), and chinese faces tend to be rounded and softer.  but given the amount of genetic diversity possible, those are only true at the most basic level.  you can also tell the japanese apart (though not koreans from most chinese) by mannerisms.  japanese people think of others first and self second; they are very courteous to strangers.  confucianist cultures like korea and china think that strangers don't need to be treated with the same respect as people they know.  a korean could greet you like a friend when you walk into his or her shop one day and the next day  bump through you on the street; to them, it's normal.  among southeast asians i really couldn't point out what sets apart each ethnicity (there are waaaayyyy too many, even within vietnam or thailand alone) but one characteristic seems true of many (though not all) people from the peninsula, south through malaysia, indonesia and out to the philippines: many people have flatter noses with round tips and nostrils.  there are some similarities among the northern thais, burmese and laotians because of the northern mountains keeping the chinese out.  the vietnamese have similarities to the chinese but have sharper chin and cheekbones.  southern thais, malaysians, indonesians, and filipinos tend to have darker skin and similar facial shapes across the entire region with differences that reflect foreign interaction (the chinese in indonesia, europeans in the philippines, etc.).