[AccessD] You Guys make Me Sick

Thank you, Tina. I am humbled by your kind words.

But while it may seem difficult to one not yet acquainted with the lingo,
significant aspects of both Mandarin and Cantonese are vastly simpler than
their English equivalents: verbs, in particular -- a verb is a constant,
"person" (I, you, she, they) doesn't matter doesn't matter, nor does tense
-- the verb remains constant and past or future are indicated with a simple
addition of one tone. So that huge part of learning the language is trivial
compared with the English equivalent -- I am/was/shall be, not to mention
such syntactically and semantically correct constructs such as "I shall
have been being dishonest" LOL.

Try to teach that to someone unacquainted with the subtleties of English,
in which language it's relatively easy to construe the largest drug-dealing
operation in history (the Opium War) as a battle over tea. Who wooda thunk
it?

A.

On Thu, Jun 28, 2012 at 8:38 AM, Tina Norris Fields <
tinanfields at torchlake.com> wrote:

> Arthur,
> Among the many things I love about you is your decidedly philosophical
> approach to life.  Mandarin Chinese!  Wonderful!  I tinker with German, to
> add it to my English and French.  But, that is not the conceptual leap of
> going from alphabet and word sequence to the pictorial representation of
> thought that you are adventuring into.  Wow!  My hat's off to you, my
> friend.
>
> T
>
>