Lemon's drop-inn

[Lemon Cheesecake]

Shamus: That is so exciting you will have all your kids for the Thanksgivng holiday!I bet thee will be lots of hugs!!

[galled]

That's so awesome! One tends to take family gatherings for granted when growing up, but you sure miss them when you don't have them. I think it's become worse in modern times--people tended to stay put a half century ago. You guys will have a wonderful time!

Back to language:

I've taken Spanish and French in school (and picked up a little Chinese), so I do understand the gender bits, and conjugations. I think of these as kind of "language specific secondary rules" because I've been able to "communicate" (and I use the term *very* loosely) with people who do not speak English (my native language). Granted there is a lot of pointing and hand gestures involved, and in my broken x (fill in the language) I sometimes can recite some nouns (or I can point at it), but I'm at a loss of how you can get beyond some basic adjectives. I have have a hard time understanding the concepts like in Chinese. It seems the same word (at least in sound) can many many different things depending I suppose on context or how it's said?

Like the word "yes." I watch subbed Chinese shows and movies. They'll say "yes" on audio (sounds like "shur"), but the sub title will say various things, which are all in the "positive." Like I said, I'm an English speaker, so perhaps English is more complicated than it needs to be. (One-off illogical bit English rules, pronunciation different, but spelling is the same, etc..)

Thanks for taking the time!

Lemon, I've heard the same origin of writing in Asia by archeologists on the various documentaries (I can't stop watching them... if I can stay awake!). I seem to recall it happened 5000+ years ago (way before the imperials). The key was writing. Without it, it was difficult to pass ideas along of distances (crossing the China sea back then was quite an undertaking!). Another interesting tid-bit was writing back them was on strips of wood (I want to say bamboo strips).