Re: Half of all Chinese people can't speak Mandarin!

Lee Sau Dan wrote:
>>>>>>"Tak" == Tak To <takto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> Even better: avoid such a complicated construction. That sentences
> can be broken down into simpler sentences, making it much more
> intelligible and removing the ambiguity:
>
> China has 1.3 billion people. 53 percent of them can speak
> Mandarin. But many of these are not frequent Mandarin users.
>
> Or:
>
> Many people who can speak Mandarin are not frequent users of
> the language. They consititute 53 percent of the Chinese
> population of 1.3 billion.
>
>
> The simpler, the better. Less is more.

And so literary licence goes out with the bath water...of course, that
is why you are a programmer and not a journalist, hmmm? See spot run.
Run spot run. How is it you can splice either into the original sentence
without sounding banal?

I personally do not see the ambiguity that (many of) you seem to think
exists. And I don't think that replacing "who" with "that" changes
anything...

"...many (of the 53 percent (of China's 1.3 billion people)(who can
speak Mandarin)) are not frequent Mandarin users."

This is how the sentence is properly "parsed".

<my pardons if this was already presented>

The question then is how would you guys have written the sentence in a
form that would convey the meaning you *thought* it meant?

Easiest way would be to get rid of "...of the 53 percent...".

Austin





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