[Ads-l] Question on Chinese writing

[Randy Alexander]

They use largely the same character set, but they are not mutually
intelligible and there are a number of characters that are used commonly in
one but not the other. There is a common myth that among speakers of
languages that use this character set written texts are mutually
intelligible. This is not true.

Randy

On Tue, May 14, 2024, 01:54 James Landau <
00000c13e57d49b8-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       James Landau <jjjrlandau at NETSCAPE.COM>
> Subject:      Question on Chinese writing
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I was under the impression that all dialects of Chinese, such as Mandarin
> a=
> nd Cantonese, use the identical Chinese writing system.
> However, I have in front of me an announcement of interpreter service from
> =
> Humana.=C2=A0 It is in English, Spanish, Tagalog, French, Vietnamese,
> Germa=
> n, Korean, and "Chinese Mandarin" and "Chinese Cantonese".=C2=A0 The
> charac=
> ters shown for Mandarin are totally different from those for Cantonese,
> and=
>  there are not the same number of characters.
> Can someone please clear up what is happening here?
> I can email a scan of the sheet to anyone who requests it.
> James Landau
> jjjrlandau at netscape.com
>
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