What is the language "British"?
William Case
billlinux at rogers.com
Thu Aug 31 08:14:48 UTC 2006
Thanks Pascal;
That's the kind of thing I find fascinating.
On Thu, 2006-31-08 at 10:05 +0800, Chong Yu Meng wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-08-30 at 05:50 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:
[snip]
> 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.
>
Same skills, same problems, same results no matter what the language. It
is nice to know. Can I ask, does Mandarin have the equivalent of Tongue
Twisters or other word/language (nonsense) games?
--
Regards Bill
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