What is the language "British"?

[Chong Yu Meng]

On Wed, 2006-08-30 at 05:50 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:
> William Case wrote:
> 
> > As a followup question to the list: Do languages other than English have
> > Tongue Twisters or other word games they use?  I am sure they must, but
> > I have never heard any.
> 
> Yes.  The Chinese certainly do.  And due to the nature of their text
> their puns are much more complex and clever than what English variants
> produce.


Actually the Chinese language has a lot more variants than English, and
there isn't even a body of water like the Atlantic to create that
diversity. 

There are two written script systems and one common language -- what you
Westerners would call Mandarin -- and many, many dialects. But even with
Mandarin, there are many variations in usage and terminology similar to
the examples of "lift" and "elevator" given previously. So, even when
someone speaks only Mandarin, you can tell where that person is from,
based on accent and terminology used -- similar to the Southern term
y'all. You can also tell if the person speaking Mandarin is an "overseas
Chinese" (someone whose family has lived outside China for generations)
or someone from PRC, Taiwan or Hong Kong.

-- 
Pascal Chong 
email:  chongym at cymulacrum.net 
web:    http://cymulacrum.net
pgp:    http://cymulacrum.net/pgp/cymulacrum.asc

"La science ne connaît pas de frontière parce que la connaissance
appartient à l’humanité. et que c’est la flamme qui illumine le monde."

-- Louis Pasteur
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