Is she trying to say that written Chinese hasn't be standardized?

I am aware there are dialects of Chinese that can't be understood by speaker/hearers of other dialects, but the National government standardized Mandarin as the government language.

In truth, that was standardized a very long time ago. There's a reason why the term "mandarin" crept into English to mean "an appointed official".

Wow, that Twitter response was epic.

I was curious as to what sort of person could be so soft and offendable, so I went to her employer's website and read her bio there.

Although she's married, she claims to enjoy speed dating.

Asked and answered. Moving on now.

I R A Darth Aggie: I was about to make a similar comment, but a little research shows that the written Hanzi has been simplified for the Mandarin dialect, while Cantonese uses the original format. It's like of like switching from cursive to block letters.

"snout in your bag of Doritos"

LOL, that reminds me, I was rather disappointed in the Superbowl commercials, Doritos, Cheetos or other snack food ones had a low hanging fruit gag of people trying to eat while wearing a mask, but I didn't see it used.

Some people have no sense of humor. Some people are jerks. The internet lets them broadcast their jerkiness.
How was an american supposed to know that cantonese can't read mandarin? I just learned that from this post. An awful lot of mind-reading required these days. You are supposed to know the pronouns of someone whose name you don't even know. You are supposed to know that a red (not maga) hat is triggering. Or that wood paneling is triggering to some college students. Or that a garage door closing rope makes people think of a noose. (still ok to order "crackers" in a restaurant though). I'm not even sure professor-X could read minds that well.

Since when is reading the package important to enjoying a snack?

"Since when is reading the package important to enjoying a snack?"

Stop shaming the illiterate! They might be reading this.

Every time I see the word "microaggression," I'm reminded of Edith Macias, a student and victim of the Berkeley effect, who stole another student's MAGA cap right off his head and turned it in to Student Life, who promptly gave the hat back.

As Edith Macias turned to leave in disgust, she was met by campus security, who, without a word, pointed to one of the couches, making it clear that Edith was going nowhere and she was going to take a seat.

"Really?" she said in disbelief.

One of the comments she made during the course of the her complaint to Student Life (as she repeatedly demanded they back her up, which they didn't) that truly struck me as remarkable was when she unironically said, "I deal with microaggressions on a daily basis!"

Yeah, so does everyone. It's called human interaction.

NerdyPam (the person who complained about the "well-intended microaggression") has since set her Twitter account on private, apparently too snowflakey to deal with the "toughen up, Buttercup" responses.

In looking at the responses to NerdyPam, it looks like she privatized her account because she got caught in a lie. If these several replies are to be believed, Mandarin and Cantonese are written exactly the same. The difference between the two dialects is tonal.

To say that her husband can't read Mandarin is akin to any of us Americans saying we can't read Australian.

This gives a quick and dirty explanation of the differences in Cantonese and Mandarin - basically backing up what Patrick was saying about the difference being mainly spoken and not written.

Generally, the same pictograph has the same meaning, although the words may be differently pronounced or even entirely different. However, the mainland China schools that teach only in Mandarin also teach simplified pictographs. Fayd came up with a fairly good analogy above: it's like the difference between block lettering and cursive writing, up to a point. In this case, a man taught only in cursive could not read block lettering.

And that identifies where the analogy breaks down - the western world never printed books in cursive so any 2nd grader knows block lettering, but older Chinese books (Cantonese or Mandarin) were all printed in the older ornate pictographs, so overseas Chinese are likely to have been taught only the old style.

Not a huge fan of the Twitter porcelain device, but after reading this I searched for the term "microaggression" amongst the countless tweets.

And ... wow. What a horrific sampling of vile human stupidity. I'll never do it again.

@markm: I brought snacks back from Japan. I gave them out to my co-workers. Luckily one noticed they had shrimp in them and said something about it...another co-worker who is deathly allergic to shrimp had luckily not opened the snack I had given him.

I just talked to my relative (by marriage) who is Cantonese and she said that pretty much all adults who know Cantonese can pretty well make out written Mandarin...get the gist of it at least.

> I'll never do it again.

Balaji Srinivasan talked about that the other day— As with all podcasts, skip the introduction and interruptions from the hosts, who are desperate to prove that they understand clever things, too! Just like the successful person they've begged to come on their podcast!

Balaji sez: Try to understand how many millions of people are using these platforms... Yeah, sure... Some of them use curse words, never wash, and are inconsistent in their charitable giving. And some are robots, and some are foreign agents sent to piss you off.

Seriously, that guy talks a mile a minute and says a book's worth of interesting things in that interview. I deeply heart♥ Srinivasan… He's a total dreamboat. Except for weird pronunciations from his native Long Island.