[Aerich]

Yes, you've got the rationale down for why Japanese was taught in my area. My level of Japanese is the same as yours; picked up entirely in the dojo.

I think the percentage of Cantonese speakers in the rest of the world is possibly a reflection of the historical population movement. I know that is the case in western Canada, as Chinese workers were brought from Canton to work in coal mines and on the railroads (My great-grandfather was one of them).

And it is true that Mandarin and Cantonese are very similar. AFAIK, the difference is in intonation (although that is a LARGE part of Chinese pronunciation). They also use the same alphabet, I believe.

EDIT: a note on French in Canada. It gets much more useful the farther you go east. It's almost never used in general conversation in BC and the prairie provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. It's used a little more in Manitoba because of it's history (a large settlement of French-speaking Metis, being people of mixed European-Native heritage). Lots of French in use in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia; they also had sizable French settlements, historically.

[ 07-07-2004, 07:31 PM: Message edited by: Aerich ]