Yim writes:

> Mandarin is NOT a national WRITTEN language but an official/national
> spoken language (dialect).  People spoken difference dialects (Mandarin,
> Cantonese) in China write the same Chinese characters.

When you mention this to the average European, they generally find it very
strange that the same glyphs are used throughout China, but are pronounced in
the various dialects so differently that a person speaking one dialect won't
understand a person speaking another, even though the symbols are precisely
the same.

Of course, on the other hand, most Europeans don't think it strange at all
that the glyphs !,@,#,$,%,^,&,*,(,), 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11, etc.
universally mean the same thing in all European languages, but are also
pronounced widely differently, so much so that a person speaking one language
won't understand a second speaker's pronunciation of the same symbol.

Wirt Atmar