What happened to the rest of Asia?

[mbarrick]

OK, so it was a month ago, but I was just thinking about the Asian Excellence Awards and wondering what happened to eastern Russia and all the "-stan" countries, the Indian sub-continent (although one posthumous award was given to an Indian), and the middle east? Last time I looked there were a just a few people of Jewish descent in the American entertainment industry. Is Israel not in Asia anymore? There are also quite a few popular Arabian-descended people like Paula Abdul, Shakira, Jamie Farr, Paul Anka, and Salma Hayek to name a few. When did Asia become just China and Japan?

Comments

Kazakhstan

[sovietnimrod.livejournal.com]

I think Kazakhstan has fallen into association with Europe due to the huge Russian influence. There also used to be a large German population which left in the early 1990s. During Soviet rule, Kazakhs were a minority in large parts of the republic. Mind you, these Central Asian 'stans' were not designed to be viable nations but just propoganda countries for the USSR. No one ever expected them to actually become independent

Interestingly enough, an ethnic Kazakh citizen of Kazakhstan is called a Kazakh but a non-Kazakh citizen is a Kazakhstani

Some guy named Stan.

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

The same formation is true of all the "stan" countries. The suffix means "home of", so Kazakhs live in Kazakhstan, Afghanis live in Afghanistan, Pakis live in Pakistan, etc. and the "stani" ending means anyone living in the land of the people in question.