A
supplemental note involving
Mandarin Chinese:
This node suddenly reminded me of something a
professor told me when I first began learning
Mandarin.
"If a native
Chinese speaker came up to you and said 'Me
Chinese,' that would sound pretty silly, right? Well, thats what you sound like to native
Chinese speakers when you sprinkle 'shi'* all over your sentences. For every
Chinese speaker who drops 'to be' when they speak
English, there's an
English speaker picking it up in
Chinese."
* - Basic translation, 'to be'