On Dec 2, 7:26 pm, F. George McDuffee gmcduf...@mcduffee-
associates.us wrote:
....

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This is called the Whorfian hypothesis.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis

While plausible, the problem is that both Japan and Korea use
similar and in some cases substantially identical "alphabets"
[more exactly ideograms or logogram] such that most Japanese can
read "Chinese" even if they cannot speak Chinese.
click onhttp://www.geocities.com/athens/academy/9594/seasia.htmlhttp://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0027-0741(199024)45%3A4%3C391%3ATVIT...http://www.asahi.ch/english/japanese_writing_system.php



Interesting. I didn't know that. But it makes a fair bit of sense
when you realize that 'Chinese' is a written language only. The
Chinese speak a variety of dialects such that folks from one
region often cannot understand the language spoken in another,
but both can read Chinese, with the exception of idiomatic
expressions unique to a dialect

Mandarin, the most common dialect has been adopted as the
'official' language.for radio and television so most Chinese,
especially the younger ones, can communicate orally in it.

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FF