Of course. That's easy. But it's not speaking a language.
>Mandarin has nothing in common with European languages
Course not. Why would it?
>... the word for mother, and if you miss the tone, you are
>saying horse, hemp, or curse instead).
All the same thing.
>pronunciation is not good, but I can still tell a taxi driver a couple
>of destinations successfully, so rudimentary communication is possible.
Yes, of course. But that's nothing like learning a language. One normally uses at least a couple thousand words, plus the grammar of a language. When you get half that far you've learned something.
>I think there is room for both cases (broo learning nothing,
>broo picking up some phrases).
They can pick up a few phrases, but communicating more than simple things
requires learning a language.
If you don't believe what I've written to this list then read anything on
linguistics, or try learning another language. I don't have any more time as
con is coming. I've tried to inform people on this list about simple
linguistic matters/basic facts. If you don't like it then just do what you
want to. If you wanna learn but won't listen to me then maybe someone else
will repeat what I've said and you'll listen to them. If not then read
something. Any books will say what I said.
Daniel
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