User Comments - go_manly

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

So, if someone states an opinion you disagree with, that person is a troll?(whatever that means). And if someone else challenges that person's opinion, then they are in trouble for 'feeding the trolls'?

Posted on: Fog or Smog?

In the Expansion sentence:

我爷爷以 前是一名海 军。(Wǒ yéye yǐqián shì yì míng hǎijūn.)  My grandfather used to be in the navy.

Doesn't this say 'My grandfather used to be the navy" ?

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

CPod, I'd like to complain about this font size again - clicks looks like it has only 5 letters.

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

Are you suggesting its status should be higher or lower?

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

Thanks changye, I stand corrected. I wonder, is the average Shanghainese speaker aware of these 'scholarly' character assignments, and do they actually use them?

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

It has been stated a few times that Shanghainese is not a written language, and cannot be represented by 'regular' Chinese characters.

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

I bet you could have said it better in Dutch!

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

I'm not sure what relationship there is between the number of speakers and the number of sound changes. But I think change is the norm - languages tend to mutate over time and diverge from neighbouring languages. So the question for me is - what stops languages from changing? There have been relatively few changes in English in the last century due to the electronic media. And in the centuries before that, there was the influence of printing.

But back around the time of JC, new languages were sprouting up in Europe at an unbelievable rate, and often dying off just as quickly as groups of people were absorbed by growing cultures.

So what dampened the change in Southern China?

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

Dutch is not a dialect of German. German and Dutch are both dialects of the West-Germanic family of languages (as is English). And linguists say that it is Dutch that is phonetically closer to the parent language. Hochdeutsch (High German) underwent sound changes that Dutch did not. So, I'm afraid German is more 'dialectal' than Dutch'. People believe German is THE Germanic language simply because of the name.

Posted on: What's up?

I don't recall meeting a Zimbabwean in Australia. Are there many living in Brisbane?