[SpamCop-Social] Re: Oh great, like I needed more bad news today....

[Antoine J. Mechelynck]

"Redstone" <redford_stone> a écrit dans le message
de news: 3E42D631.10C43575
[...]
> Hong Kong was a bit tough for them to swallow. Particularly since the
> people there don't have as much as they once did while under British
> rule. (From what I gathered, the Chinese government have removed the
> English classes and replaced it with Mandarin classes. Kind of screwy
> since that Mandarin is a watered down version of Cantonese.)

IIUC it's a different language altogether, albeit a related one, like
Italian compared with French. Of course, thanks to ideographic writing,
written Mandarin is almost (though not totally) identical with written
Cantonese. My grandfather told me that, as a judge, he once had to judge a
Chinese, so he had a sworn interpreter brought in. And he discovered to his
surprise that the interpreter and the accused could understand each other in
writing, but not orally. (One of them spoke Mandarin aka Pekingese aka North
Chinese, and the other Cantonese aka South Chinese.)

Tony.

P.S. Neither about Mandarin and Cantonese, nor French and Italian, shall I
argue about which of them is or isn't a watered-down version of the other.