What is the language "British"?

[jdow]

From: "Ed Greshko" <Ed.Greshko at greshko.com>
> Chong Yu Meng wrote:
> 
>> Whoa ! Any comment I make on this will no doubt insult some segment of
>> Chinese people everywhere. I'm going to be very unpopular or be rebutted
>> quite robustly before this thread is ended. 
>> 
>> But here goes, anyway... ;)
>> 
>> Well, Mandarin does not lend itself as easily as English to tongue
>> twisters, because, as you are probably aware, Chinese is composed of
>> ideograms, and the pronunciation of each character is very discrete.
>> There is no "liaison" as there is in French, and no concept of
>> syllables. I suppose there are tongue twisters -- I have not heard any,
>> but my grasp of Mandarin is not as good as it should be (my family has
>> been away from the "Old Country" for several generations now).
> 
> Trust me....  I am living here in Taiwan.  My wife is "Chinese".  Her
> family is originally from mainland China.  My wife was born and raised
> in Korea so she also speaks/reads Korean as well as Chinese and English.
> She doesn't speak the local Taiwanese dialect.
> 
> I asked her about Tongue Twisters and gave her the example of "She sells
> sea shells by the sea shore to sea sick sailors and shell shocked
> solders" and asked about tongue twisters.
> 
> She assured me that they also have tongue twisters.  If you want, I can
> have her tell them to me and write them out for you...but they will be
> in "Chinese" Big5 charset.
> 
>> But Mandarin is the "common language", the ISO standard, if you will.
>> With dialects, things are different: I have heard some tongue twisters
>> and puns and general linguistic cleverness in Hokkien and Cantonese
>> (some of them are unprintable and would not translate well anyway). In
>> fact, the Cantonese are famed for their cleverness in language.
> 
> Ahh...there is so much more to all of this....Mandarin is not an ISO
> standard....but never mind.
> 
>> The thing is, dialects are spoken differently, with a loose form of
>> liaison/syllables, so tongue twisters are possible and common in some if
>> not all dialects. I can only speak for Hokkien and Cantonese, though. A
>> friend in Hong Kong tells me that actually there are over a hundred
>> dialects in China itself, so I have only a very small representative
>> sample here.  
>> 
>> So that's my 2 cents. Time to put on my asbestos suit and wait for
>> replies ! ;)
> 
> No need....  You are really getting into a very complex area.  More than
> mere mortals normally treed.

Thanks both of you. It's fun. And it humanizes people who are somewhat
different from me. Humor is a wonderful tool for getting to know people.

{^_^}