RE: Dropping the you? The Asian response to imperative voice. (was: Re: you or he/it)

["James Jones" <doc-x -at- earthlink -dot- net>]

Just asked a Chinese friend about this, because we like talking about
language stuff. He (who, by the way, does not work in documentation,
although he is a professional interpreter) said that it seems like they do
use the American style (sometimes they use the second person 'ni', sometimes
they suppress it. Sometimes, though less commonly, they use the third person
style).

By the way, it seems to me that Chinese writing in general is pretty much
very simple and direct. But like writing everywhere it can be improved I'm
sure... I don't know anything as to how that could be accomplished though. 

Jim Jones    http://www.tinyurl.com/4arjc

TECHNICAL writing| editing| illustration || cartooning |schematics |other

Chinese, German, Spanish to English translation and technical translation

-----Original Message-----
... Yet none of them responded to my question with an 
enthusiastic "yes, and your Western style is so much more efficient and 
enjoyable than our circular/inductive/whatever Asian style of rhetoric 
that we wish everyone wrote that way in [Chinese, Japanese, etc.]". So 
perhaps they're just being polite.

Any data points from our Asian techwhirlers, or from Western 
techwhirlers who routinely work with Asian colleagues? I'd be happy to 
update the EPROMs that store my cross-cultural software. <g> ...

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