--- Jon Johanning <zenner41 at mac.com> wrote:
> Have you actually tried learning Chinese yourself?
> Or Japanese?
My best friend from childhood, a New Yorker, speaks Chinese fluently. In fact, when he first started dating the Japanese woman who is now his wife, to communicate they used -- Chinese, because she did not know English and he did not know Japanese. It didn't seem overwhelmingly difficult to him.
>
> How many American students take and complete degrees
> in these languages
> compared with European languages?
Chinese is the third-most-popular second language for study in Russia after English and German (not counting indigenous languages).
Out of frustration, I am now going to engage in an anti-English-monolingualism rant. I have been doing some low-level, informal research on cultural crosspollination between the Chechens and Terek and Greben Cossacks, which was extensive, considering they have been intermarrying for centuries and have had historically had practically identical ways of life except for religion. Indeed the most famous Chechen epic poem is about a Chechen warrior and his Cossack friend, who together unite the Chechens and Cossacks to fight the Russian Empire. There is almost NOTHIN' on this in English I can find. NOTHIN'. Rant over.
===== Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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