Bodvar says: One question I would have liked to ask regarding China is about language, but then there surely are several languages.
Roughly about 57 Bodvar but how many exactly I do not know. There are 57 "National" minorities here each with their own language, belief systems and cultural mores.Some can understand eachother some cannot. The National language is Putong Hua which is spoken by most Han people (the largest group...the dominant " Communist Party" group. Every child has to learn Putong Hua. This means for me (amongst other things), as English teacher that English is the 3rd language learned for a large majority of my students. Anyway, this is a bit of trivia but as you know the concepts Chinese people use to communicate are a brabble of sounds (same as ours ...to an outsider anyway,which still is only Chinese to me) but they write in 'characters', a combination of 'strokes', from relatively simple to very complex pieces of art. These 'symbols' represent 'meaning' and combinations thereof allow for the communication of these meanings (with their own set of very complex grammatical rules and proscriptions). What struck me first was the realisation that they think in these characters...not in subjects, objects, verbs etc etc. That's why they have such difficulty coming to grips with the English language. But by no means am I an expert in Chinese linguistics...not even in English. Following on from this talk of developing a new language to make sense of processes that happen at the quantum level...I 'sense' that the Chinese are slightly less "suspended in language" than we are in the West. And Bodvar, thank you for you snappy explanation on the "state of the MoQ". I will respond in a later edition. Chris writes: Allready shouted about socialism without respons. I will come back to you on this one Chris but am at present caught up in the October 1 celebrations where the garbage trucks outside my hotel window blast Happy Birthday through their megaphones. Ahhh these Chinese.... . But my internet connection is bad/unreliable from where I am now so must suspend communications for a bit. Peace to you all. Andre Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
