J. Maarten Troost Quote
Remembering that human beings cannot produce 20,000 unique sounds, even if you were to include belching and hawking great globs of phlegm (which I think counts in Chinese), the linguistic powers that be--whoever they are--threw in tones, possibly to ensure that no foreigner over the ages of thirty would have any chance whatsoever of understanding that Chinese language.
J. Maarten Troost
Remembering that human beings cannot produce 20,000 unique sounds, even if you were to include belching and hawking great globs of phlegm (which I think counts in Chinese), the linguistic powers that be--whoever they are--threw in tones, possibly to ensure that no foreigner over the ages of thirty would have any chance whatsoever of understanding that Chinese language.
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About J. Maarten Troost
Jan Maarten Troost (known professionally as J. Maarten Troost; born 1969) is a Dutch-American travel writer and essayist.