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

[Redstone]

"Antoine J. Mechelynck" wrote:

>
>
> 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.

Something that my fiance told me about the languages.. Cantonese have 8
different tones (accents) where Mandarin is only 4. (That was what I meant by
watered down.)