Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 02:21:02 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The Language Barrier [Was: Could FreeBSD be ...] Message-ID: <3642.879762062@jkh.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 17 Nov 1997 01:26:22 PST." <Pine.BSF.3.96.971117002710.5225A-100000@andrsn.stanford.edu>
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> [a number of comments on english's new dominance elided] Yep, all agreed. I often stop to congradulate myself on my extraordinary good fortune to have been born a native speaker. We americans often take this for granted, to say nothing of our occasional reluctance to even learn it well! And no cracks from the British, please, or I'll start talking about east-enders or Glaswegians. :) Sometimes I wonder if it's only the non-native speakers who truly concern themselves with proper grammar now. :) > Maybe in 20 or 30 years the language we will all want to learn as a > second language will be Chinese. Do you mean Mandarin or Cantonese? :-) Mandarin seems to be the "official" dialect and the one you'll learn at Berlitz if you sign up for their language course, but everyone I seem to meet in California speaks Cantonese. In the martial arts, for example, all of our instruction is in Cantonese (not english) and though I'm steadily increasing my vocabulary in this dialect out of necessity, I wonder how practical a skill it's going to be in the future. Anyone know the current ratio of Mandarin/Cantonese speakers world-wide? What's the official language of Hong Kong, now that it's been handed back? Jordan
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