Chinese not a language

From the Mountain View Whisman School District [Mountain View, CA] Home Language Survey [in connection with applications for kindergarten]:

*If you have indicated Chinese above, please specify as to Cantonese or Mandarin, as Chinese is not a language.

(Hat tip to Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky.)

You see what they were trying to get at: Chinese is not the name of a single language. But this isn’t a good way to say that.

This entry was posted on January 8, 2009 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Words. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Chinese not a language”

James Says:
January 10, 2009 at 12:25 am | Reply
Especially weird: You don’t really need anything after the comma for that request to work.

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The Ridger Says:
January 10, 2009 at 3:36 pm | Reply
Indeed. Stopping at the comma would have avoided the whole problem.

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