Is this face blindness?

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Nope...not weird....or maybe I am just as weird. I too do that. But, anatomy is actually one of my special interests. So, I look at everything. There is no part of the human body I will not analyze. And, it's gotten me into trouble many times. Japan would be easier to identify facially because of their long standing zenophobia in the past. Any isolated group will eventually deviate from their base group if separated long enough. But, there are so many, and has been for thousands of years of cross breeding and immigration from the mainland cultures. Also, China is physically huge, so they will always have a lot of variations in anatomical differences.

So far I think I've seen three different songs by that title. I like the first one I saw best.

Are these songs laments about being alone--or are they accepting of being alone?

Face blindness definitely is a strange thing, and hard to explain. I don't recognize my own immediate family members unless they're inside the house. If I randomly see them in town - nope, no clue who they are (even after they say hello to me).

And yet, I understand the above conversation about different types of Asian faces, and can see differences between Japanese vs. Korean vs. Chinese. Still, I can't tell two blonde women apart on a TV show.

I think it's basically that in a social (or tv drama?) situation, my brain chooses not to focus on facial features, but to focus on other things, such as what's being said, what's the plot, etc. I can recognize pictures of people that I know, so it's not that I'm completely unable to tell one face from another. My brain just chooses not to do so, in certain situations.

I will ask my wife and will be back with an answer soon......

I have Face Blindness. It takes a while for me to learn a new face, but once I learn it, well, once I couldn't tell the difference between Moe and Shemp of The Three Stooges. Now, after seeing them for so long, they look like two different people to me.

According to my wife, it's complaining about being alone.

Thanks.

One thing I am gifted in is the ability to lock onto visual images. Oddly though, I fail at the quick short term visual memory thing, but it's really there. Just takes a while to process it though.

That's useful to know. Right now my knowledge of Mandarin is basically things like "the spoon is under the table", "my dog is very fat", "it takes 2 hours to get to Shanghai by plane", "yesterday I bought two cows".

Not really very useful in understanding everyday speech,

I'm pretty sure i have Face Blindness. I've even walked by my Mom at the airport, even though I was looking for her. She had to call out to me for me to find her. The reason? I'm not used to seeing Mom at the airport. She was out of her normal Mom environment. My ability to recognize someone is partly contextual, so that if I see someone in a place where they are not normally found, they are harder to recognize. I've run into co-workers at the theater or grocery store and didn't recognize them for several seconds.

Like KraftieKortie, I will have trouble recognizing them if they change their appearance at all (wearing a hat that covers their hair, changing their hairdo). I had a co-worker a few years ago who would change her hair style about once every 3 weeks--braids, twists, up-puffs, straightened, dyed. It was like she had gotten a head transplant!! I was afraid to admit that I wasn't sure it was her, because she was of African descent and I didn't want her thinking, "stupid white woman thinks all black people look alike." The truth was, I have equal issues with all races. Older people are easier than young people, since young people have a sort of similar smoothness and lack of detail.

Fortunately, I'm pretty good at recognizing voices, and that's helped me quite a lot.

Haha, that reminds me of the 'Japanese for kids' course I took one summer... They mostly taught us phrases, such as "My grandfather is dead but I live with my grandmother in Tokyo". Which wasn't true for anyone in my class, but hey we learned how to say it just in case!

Sometimes I almost panic when I meet someone because I start thinking 'Is it really them? Is it really them? What do I do now???'

That's funny
Yes, some of the phrases I learn are really ridiculous. The one I laugh about most is something like "the chopsticks are inside the restaurant". When am I ever going to need to say that? Of course the chopsticks are inside the restaurant!

I used to do that when I had to work in customer service. If I was dealing with someone, then again saw them, I didn't know that it was the person I had just been helping earlier, unless they were distinctive in some way. I would panic, and sometimes they would realize I didn't recognize them and it was embarrassing.

I like the congruence of languages. Here are two examples from Mandarin to English:
1) "Shi" (Pronounced Shure with a downward tone) Sounds like the English word "Sure" (Bu Shi (Boo shure) is 'not yes'
Love how the questions are asked like " Ni, Shi bu shi, hoa ren, ma?" (are you a good person?") Cantonese would be
"Hai m Hai hou yan-aaaaa?" They sometimes stretch the "a" sound to emphasize it is a question. Modern Cantonese
Would use 'Ma" to signify it is a question.
2) "Ni" Prounounced Knee with an upward slide in the tone.
Tried to teach a woman how to say "knee" as a body part. Took me forever to get her to stop saying it with the tonal shift.

English is so not musical compared to Chinese.