I wrote:
>I think this is a question for the speakers of the
language to talk
>to us about; it's really a question of mutual intelligibility, isn't
>it?
Mark Williamson wrote:
In a manner of speaking, perhaps; but technically it
is not because
Chinese writing, in either of the two forms, is only partially
phonetic, I believe the proper terminology has something to do more
with "mutual literacy" or something like that.
"mutual intelligibility" implies nothing about phonetics. It just
means that people can understand each other easily enough.
Just curious, Jimbo, but how is my *age* any more
relevant to /this
particular issue/ than the number of pets I have or my favourite
colours?
It does not matter, and I apologize for mentioning it. My only purpose
was to say that it does not seem that the mainstream of the zh community
wants this right now, at least not without some very serious thought and
discussion.
--Jimbo