04-14-2003, 10:02 PM
Hey there lonehunter,
Get this, There are 8,000 counties in all of China. There are about 8,000 dialects of Chinese. It's too complicated to even outline. Actually, the two main streams of spoken Chinese are Mandrin and Cantonese. The written language is universal throughout China BUT...... gottcha! There is the traditional (old style) and the simplified (communist inspired abbreviated style which I hate, hate, hate) style characters.
In Tiawan there are two dialects of Chinese spoken in the main and they officially use only the traditional style characters. Oh ya, I forgot, some words use different characters because they are politically incorrect to the politcal party.
Japanese has two main dialects: standard dialect (Hyojungo) and the Kansai dialect (Kansai-ben) which is spoken in the Osaka, Kobe areas. Like China, there are hundreds of spoken regional dialects. Lots of mountians with a village on each side of the hill speaking a different dialect. Just about everybody can speak it just the understanding that hard!!!Can't forget the Ainu up in Hokkaido either.
JapanRon
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