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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sig who wrote (125763)	3/8/2004 9:40:49 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

An excellent point. I understand that the term "dialect" is a misnomer for some of the differences, which are similar to German/Dutch/Danish...........

To: Sig who wrote (125763)	3/8/2004 2:45:18 PM
From: Noel de Leon	Respond to of 281500

"China will have to fix a problem with language barriers to become a real superpower. Eight major dialects and hundreds of variations could prevent them from capitalizing on (using) the best minds available from all regions." I spent almost 3 years in China and didn't get the impression that dialects are a problem which hinders China's march towards super power status. "The dialects from the seven groups are quite different. For example, a Mandarin speaker in northern China usually understands little Cantonese, but a non-Mandarin speaker usually can speak some Mandarin with a strong accent. This is largely because Mandarin has been the official national language since 1913. Mandarin or Putonghua is mainly based on the Beijing dialect. Despite the large differences among Chinese dialects, there is one thing in common for them -- they all share the same writing system based on Chinese characters." from chineseculture.about.com