I need a little help, My characters are getting together for takeaway, one character says to the other "What do you want out of pizza and Chinese?" I need to know if it is offensive to mention in as chinese. If it is how else can i word it? Thanks in advance
First I kinda' need to understand what the question is even asking. "What do you want out of pizza and Chinese?" sounds like the person asking the question is making a comment in the form of a question to the tune of "you get what you ask for". Are the two choices pizza and Chinese? If so, no I don't personally think using Chinese to refer to what we call Chinese food in the west is offensive, but the wording of the question is strange. "What do you want, pizza or Chinese?" Is the question something other? Have I gotten it wrong?
If you're asking if it's offensive to refer to Chinese food as "Chinese", know this: somebody, somewhere, sometime, will be offended by literally ANYTHING you say or do. That being said, I often refer to Chinese food as "Chinese", or Thai food as "Thai", as do my friends, as do my family, and I would assume society at large. It might not be the formally correct way of expressing it, but people tend to speak informally, so in terms of dialogue I think it's fine. However, you're still structuring the question in an awkward way. A more natural way would be, "What kind of pizza do you want? And what Chinese food do you want to order?" Or better yet, simply asking the other person what they want from [insert name of the pizzeria] and [insert name of the Chinese restaurant]. A key to natural sounding dialogue is setting things up contextually.
I think it is fairly common to call Chinese food, just Chinese. I would ask my wife if she wants something Italian for dinner. I would think about the character asking the question. Would the character care about using the term that way? Would it be offensive to them? Is it part of his culture to refer to it simply as Chinese? As Foxxx stated, anything you write could be found offensive to anyone. Unless there is a really good reason to be unoffensive (like trying to teach kids something proper) I would just write for the character not for the audience so much.
In the US, it used to be that "Chinese" was taken to mean "Cantonese." And in most cases, it's still the default, but now that people are getting better educations in cuisine, most people would now find it too vague to use as a common phrase, and would rather use "Cantonese" or "Szechuan" or some other more descriptive term. But I've never heard of it being taken as derogatory. Your use of the term "take-away" rather than "take-out" identifies your English as British rather than American, so I can't speak for what folks across the pond think. As for the phrase "what do you want out of..." That seems strange in the context. That phrase is usually equivalent to "What do you expect to get from ..." or "What would you like to get from..." In other words, you're not being asked for a preference but a more general opinion on the merits.
