"... shows that for a long time Western writers have been overestimating the number of inhabitants of China who are actually conversant in Mandarin. The lower t

"... shows that for a long time Western writers have been overestimating the number of inhabitants of China who are actually conversant in Mandarin. The lower than expected percentage of Chinese persons who can understand one another in Mandarin illustrates how little provision of primary education, broadcasting, or telephony has reached the hinterlands of China. The comparable percentage in Taiwan, which a generation ago had a much lower percentage of families with any family heritage of speaking Mandarin, is much higher, a sign of Taiwan's greater success in providing education and mass communications to all inhabitants." I think the more interesting question is how the Chinese were able to hold together a culture as diverse as having many separate, unintelligable dialects, yet still live with the popular myth that they "speak Chinese". Personally, having these ideograms isn't a bad thing. It makes it harder for me to type in Chinese. However, the way the language is setup has allowed me to think along different lines I would not have had, if I only knew English. A different line of thought: our decendents may look back and say that the Internet had changed things profoundly, but not for the reasons we think of it now. The legacy may well end up being the ubiquitous use of the Unicode standard.