Not because it’s funny, but because I’m so pleased. Homestead is being translated into Hebrew. Hebrew. Ha! I can’t wait to see it.
I have all the Homestead translations lined up in a row, some of which are: Dutch, German, Spanish, Catalan, Chinese, and here comes Hebrew.
No Italian. I’m told that Italian publishers don’t much like acquiring American authors who happen to have Italian names. Seems odd, but there you go.
PS: I know Chinese is written with ideographs (a symbol equals a word), but I still wonder if one variety of Chinese is favored when it comes to the written language in ways that are obvious to native speakers. Can anybody tell me?
You've stumbled across my official website and landed on the front page of my weblog.
It is actually a myth that Chinese characters are ideographs. As for which “variety” is favored in writing, that is modern standard Mandarin. The reason speakers of different so-called dialects of Chinese are able to read this language is simply because that’s what they’re all taught to read and write, not because Chinese characters can do anything special that the alphabet can’t; this is similar to how people in early medieval Europe were taught to be literate in Latin rather than in their native tongues.
The best book on this subject is The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, by John DeFrancis.
thank you so much for that information. Very useful.