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They tend to pronounce it like the soft "R" in Spanish.

The Mandarin dialect has a repertoire of over 30 consonants. I'll bet my left ball if a Mandarin speaker can't pronounce any of the consonants in English language, & some more. Cantonese, OTOH, has only half as many. All, however, tend to drag lone consonants, turning them into semi-syllabae.

BTW, Cantonese speakers, who made up the bulk of oversea Chinese population prior to the 1970's, do tend to have a harder time with the consonant "R".

Omission of the verb "to be", another common problem of Sinitic speakers. In standard Mandarin the verb "to be" is omitted whenever the object is an adjetive. Conversely, equally retarded-sounding is the overuse of 是 by foregin beginners in Chinese languages.

As a part-time Chinese-Spanish interpreter, it's a huge problem for me when my Chinese clients try to show off their knowledge of English. I can't understand them half of the time: I no likuh Mekesican fooduh, you know? Stop dragging those consonants!

Sino-Tibetan languages, being heavily syllabic (one consonant followed by one vowel, sometimes ending with soft consonants), do tend to present some handicap, shall a native speaker intend to learn a language of another family. Countrary to popular belief, most Sino-Tibetan speakers do not have...

A regiment is not the equivalent of a squadron; instead, it's intermediate between squadron & group/wing. That's because Soviet-style suqadrons tend to have fewer aircrafts than Western ones. Thus, a PLAAF regiment would consist of 2~3 squadrons of 10~12 aircrafts each.

Because most members here are non-Westerners who have never heard of April Fool.

My cousin (of Chinese father & Jewish mother) is in the IDF auxilliary. He's very religious, even though his mother is largely non-observant.

April Fool!

The US tends to guard the source codes more closely than Europeans. Hence, while just about anyone could integrate foreign weapons on the Mirage, only the handful "approved allies" could do so with F-16. It's not exactly discriminatory policy against Turkiye, just standard US security practice.

Civil liberty is ensured through check & balance; however, one does not need populist democracy to achieve this. An independent court system is just as effect as a watchdog.

Instead of different parties, the government should just have independent branches that are not controlled by a single entity. I still think the Hong Kong government is the best.

The West like to focus on the legislative process of China, fallaciously claiming it to be flawed, but I think the Chinese system is FAR more professional than Western populist democracy. What I find wanting is China's judiciary independence. Court decisions can be overriden in a whim when other...

And that's precisely why Japanese & Koreans tend to have a harder time learning foreign languages than Chinese do.

In a race to build railroads in Africa you say?:mamba:

China actually paid the licensing fee for that one.

Outsourcing responsibility to the government again. Instead of asking the gov. to be fiscally responsible, what about keep American families together, spend less time playing hookies at local clubs & bars, spend more time with kids, provide them a stable environment where they can grow, thus...

Thinking about a starting a thread on non-Christian archery.

And you wonder why one of them could take on 200 of us (that was the population ratio between Jurchens & Ming dynasty). The AVERAGE Manchu war bow had a draw weight of 60 catties (70~80 lb).