.:Gotta Drop a Blog in The Corner:.

these are two topics that i've had a real fascination with as time has passed. as i think about it, i would perhaps, expect not to think about them as much if i were a caucasian growing up in north america, or an asian growing up in taiwan/china.

i was thinking earlier about how interesting it is given the different places chinese have settled and established chinatowns. there are some in african countries, european countries, the americas, etc. these countries themselves have their own native languages which would be specific to the country, or could be spoken internationally. for instance there's a chinatown in bangkok where the native language would be thai, on the opposite end there are chinatowns in morocco and paris where the official languages are arabic and french respectively. what i think is kind of neat is that one who knows how to speak chinese could go visit these foreign countries and not know how to speak a lick of the native language and talk with the locals, but be able to converse using a third language based on their ancestral heritage (given that the majority of the ethnic foreign population of the enclave speak the same dialect). it's weird for me to think that i could probably go to montreal, get lost, and head over to chinatown and probably end up getting clearer directions asking questions in chinese if i didn't know french (and maybe english).