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Comment by Karrot_Kream | Hacker News Reader

I know this is off-topic and not your fault in any way, but I'm tired of the "spousal perspective" on this site when it comes to East Asia. Somehow most of the East Asian perspectives we get here are partners of East Asian folks, despite East Asia having lots and lots of engineers.

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I understand your perspective. However the solution is for those native to East Asia to post, not non natives to post less. I agree that more viewpoints is better, just wanted to point that

Has it occurred to you that on an English-speaking board, posters in non-English speaking countries might be more likely to be spouses/expats? Just as the same would be true for Japanese speaking spouses on a Japanese board?

Does that make my perspective as someone who lived there invalid?

In this case the "spousal perspective" is that we aren't subject to many of these barriers and we STILL aren't purchasing one due to the remaining barriers and issues.

It most definitely does not, and as I said it's not your fault in any way. I would just appreciate more non-spousal perspectives, especially when it comes to things like Japanese nationalism where it helps to have a Japanese perspective.

Speak Japanese then.

もう分かりますけど？

You're going to have to take what you can get on an English-speaking forum. Move to a Japanese forum and you can find all the Japanese perspectives you want.

HN tends to be US-centric, and there are not a ton of Japanese immigrant engineers in the US last I checked. Some but not all that many. Most of the immigration from Japan to the US occurred generations ago. Plenty of Chinese people who chime in on these threads though.

The level of English in Japan is very low generally. Among engineers it is higher but mainly for reading and writing, and even then it's generally not fluency or anywhere near good enough to read or write comments on HN and (probably) not attract downvotes, more of the level to be able to get just enough from technical documentation so that you can get on with your day.

That's not true for all but the vast majority. I don't mean any of that as a slight - my Japanese is terrible, you wouldn't find me on whatever Japan's version of HN is. (That the level is so low is perhaps a valid criticism of the education system or society in general but certainly not valid against any individual).

Source: I'm a partner of an East Asian folkperson, living in Japan, giving a spousal perspective whilst reading a site in my native language. I save struggling with a foreign language for study and finding the login button on Japanese websites (harder than it should be[1]), I can understand why a Japanese engineer would be doing similar.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25148942

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