"Leon" wrote in message
om...

"Peter Lynch" wrote in message
...


I do agree with youthat teaching him spanish is probably not a good idea.
They should be teaching him chinese, that way he'll be able to get a job
when he grows up.

Pete


No kidding.. LOL Unfortunately you would have to be a genius to learn to
speak Chinese to "any" Chinese person. My neighbor is Chinese and cannot
understand what other Chinese neighbors are saying. Apparently there are
many many versions of Chinese.

Written Chinese is fairly standardized, spoken Chinese has region-specific
"dialects" that are as different from each other as Spanish is from French.
Mandarin, which was the language of the ruling class until the Communists
came in (and may still be for all I know), has the most speakers--my
impression is that an "educated" person learned Mandarin in addition to any
regional dialect but I'm a long way from an expert on China.