From owner-freebsd-chat Mon Nov 17 13:18:29 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id NAA15953 for chat-outgoing; Mon, 17 Nov 1997 13:18:29 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-chat) Received: from kakapo.pinnacle.co.nz (pinsoft.internet.co.nz [202.37.141.181] (may be forged)) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id NAA15940 for ; Mon, 17 Nov 1997 13:18:22 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jonc@pinnacle.co.nz) Received: from tui.pinnacle.co.nz (tui.pinnacle.co.nz [202.37.163.3]) by kakapo.pinnacle.co.nz (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA24618; Tue, 18 Nov 1997 10:19:25 +1300 (NZDT) Received: from localhost (jonc@localhost) by tui.pinnacle.co.nz (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id KAA05172; Tue, 18 Nov 1997 10:19:18 +1300 (NZDT) X-Authentication-Warning: tui.pinnacle.co.nz: jonc owned process doing -bs Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 10:19:18 +1300 (NZDT) From: Jonathan Chen To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The Language Barrier [Was: Could FreeBSD be ...] In-Reply-To: <3642.879762062@jkh.cdrom.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 17 Nov 1997, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > 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? Aside from Mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore; I'd say that Cantonese will get you by in most Chinese communities in the world. What's > the official language of Hong Kong, now that it's been handed back? Officially, it's Mandarin; but almost everyone in Hong Kong speaks Cantonese. It's unlikely to change, for one thing swearing in Cantonese sounds like you really mean it, whereas swearing in Mandarin just sounds a wee bit too cultured. -- Jonathan Chen | "Vini, vidi, velcro... | I came, I saw, I stuck around"