[Foundation-l] Klassical Chinese

[Milos Rancic]

On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 12:31 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Also, languages don't substitute cleanly for each other in this
> manner. I believe Arwel Parry explained this here a while ago - pretty
> much everyone who speaks Welsh also speaks perfect English, but Welsh
> is his native language so he still thinks (and hence writes) better in
> it. (Arwel, correct me if I've stated this wrongly!)

I am not so sure that Welsh is the best example. According to the
books (which may be wrong), English [dialect] is the first language of
the most of [young] inhabitants of Wales. The best example are maybe
the billions of non-native English speakers (including myself) who
think in their native language and speak and write in English.

My "linguistic competence" for English exists, indeed; but it is at
very low level. The most of my English is equivalent to writing
mathematical calculus by non-mathematicians: Even I know what "or",
"and", "by", "from"... mean, I don't process them as I process
equivalent words in Serbian. If it is not about relatively simple and
straight forward sentence, I have to analyze them like any student of
mathematics analyzes some mathematical problem.

And note that I read and wrote much more text in English than one
average non-native English speaker who uses English as a medium for
communication with foreigners.