Hmm, this seems a little unjustified to me. You wrote:
> Well I know that the vietnamese alphabet was devised by French Jesuit
> missionaries in the late 1700's, mainly because the spoken vietnamese is a
> distant variant of chinese and they couldn't deal well with the
characters.
Mark then wrote:
> Specific corrections: Vietnamese has a lot of Chinese loan-words, but is
> not a "distant variant of Chinese."
> The 17th century is not "the late 1700's."
> The old writing scheme, chu'~ no^m, really didn't work very well, quite
> apart from any possible missionary's discomfort with Chinese writing. I
> can't read it myself, but I understand that it requires two ideographs for
> each Vietnamese word -- one to indicate meaning and one to indicate
> pronunciation.
In addition, he explained the limits of his knowledge, and gave a source for
his information.
So, after Mark did due dilligence with his research, and corrected a point
that you asserted with far greater confidence than was warranted, you then
jump all over him. Seems to me a "thanks, I guess I didn't remember things
as well as I had thought" would have been far more appropriate.
Of course, maybe this is just one of those South Park, swearing as a form of
endearment, things that I don't understand.
- Jim