WingColors

"While the "@" simple is familiar..."

Shouldn't that read "While the "@" symbol is familiar", and not "@" simple is familiar..?

I'll take a look at that article when I have more time to scrutinize for mistakes.

On the ethnocentric note, it's a hard tell because with the Chinese culture being one of the oldest cultures in history people forget that along with that comes a literally endless reserve of characters out there. You memorize characters--there is no finite number of them like there are 26 letters in the alphabet. Although some of the strokes give leads as to pronunciation, if you don't know what it means you are generally out of luck.

I see what you mean as far as that maybe implying the language is undesirable but in fact it is a really, really difficult language to speak much less write.

A Chinese couple tried to name their baby "@", claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said on Thursday.

Should be:

"A Chinese couple tried to name their baby '@', claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child," an official trying to whip the national language into line said on Thursday.

It's a quote but wasn't punctuated as such.

There are several mistakes in this article. The one I mentioned is just one of a few, and the one estarla mentioned is also one of a few.

estarla: Dubious, it may have ben paraphrased.

LorriM got the one I was thinking of, but she's right (as ever!) that there are rather a few errors in that article.

You kind of expect better from Yahoo! (Though I'm not sure whether it was a Yahoo! story or a re-printed AP story. No time to check at the moment.)

Yes, you do expect better from Yahoo!. It looks as if it is a Reuters story...out of Beijing. Either way, it should have definitely been proofread.

recognise is spelled wrong.

Depends where you are, jacks385. Americans tend to use 'z' where Brits use 's'.