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