upgrading to a REAL language :-)

[MZGuy]

[TBone]

[Paul]

[TBone]

[Paul]

[Warren]

[Keira]

Brake for Moose!!!<br>Thats the best<br>

[Robby]

warren. stereotypical yank. i was saying hebrew is pointless. as you may have noticed, yiddish, hebrew, welsh, gaelic, latin are all dead and dying languages becasue they are a waste of time.  and maggie, i told you not to be annoyed. so dont be.<br>i have to agree with thomas to a certain extent. my girlfriend is from hong kong, so she is teaching me a little cantonese, and it is stupidly easy, however english is wider spread and has an alphabet instead of a different character for every word.  chinese has more speakers, but thats because china is about the same size as europe, and more tightly packed.<br>and stop being so excited about german warren, its not that amazing, and its not headed to be a big world language, although it will last a long time before dying out, just like french, because the people are very nationalistic.<br>no offence shape.

[Paul]

are you saying cantonese is easier than english? surely a language based entirely on 26 characters is better than one where you have to learn a character for every damn word.... even though it'll take up less space, of course.<br><br>i'd only learn cantonese and languages like that so i can do those crazy dubbed action films. haha.

[TBone]

The thing about Chinese languages is that we look at them incorrectly regarding their writing system. English encodes letter by letter, so each word contains phonetic content but no meaning. Hanzi (the Chinese system) doesn't always include phonetic content (although some characters include a radical for mnemonic sounding), but it does incorporate meaning. You can actually figure out what a character signifies without having to resort to a dictionary.<br><br>In other words, writing systems are not like we're taught in elementary school, where pictographs and symbols are inferior to phonetic alphabets. They're inferior in one area, but superior in another, so it balances out.<br><br>And Rob, good luck with the Cantonese. I'm told once you know one Oriental language it's very easy to learn the others, so I'm looking forward to it myself. I want to be able to watch Hard Boiled and The Killer without dubbing.

[jaybot]

i'm pretty sure warren isn't a yank. in fact, i believe he is an israeli. correct?

[Robby]

seeing as i'm learning fro my girlfriend, i'm only learning the words and writing them in english, not chinese characters.  its gonna help me with me and my friends extensive collection of jackie chan videos. (thats about 75% of the 250ish films he ever made.)<br>and its a bit of fun.<br>and i believe warren is a yank, in a post a while back about 999's car, he said that if he ever moved to europe he'd get a bmw C1, which is that ugly little motorbike with a roof over the top. i ride a proper bike, and if i ever saw anyone on one of those i'd have to set fire to it for the sake of the world.<br>

[Warren]

I'm not a Yank, and yes, I am Israeli, but I currently live near Boston, US. So shut up Rob.<br><br>I have decided not to learn Russian in college, but to learn Japanese. It sounds cool, looks real cool, and is a good challenge. It will be extremely useful too. Therefore I will be learning German and Japanese.