I have a whole stack of quotes dealing with why people favoured English, and yes, advantages are pretty much everything. There was an outcry in Hong Kong when they switched to teaching in Cantonese, and the schools permitted to continue in English were immediately sought after. But as a language, English can be painful to learn. I would suck at explaining why without a proper set of terminology, but a linguistics freak/friend (who's spent years in Latin, French, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese and obviously English) constantly pulls his hair out at English, so I trust his authority even though I cannot quote his arguments.
The Japanese use 'I love you', and it crops up quite frequently in Mandarin. Cantonese is the taboo zone, probably at least partially to do with how much the spoken version deviates from the written. When I look at Hong Kong serials, for example, shockingly few of them actually have the Chinese equivalent of 'I love you' anywhere, despite the premise being love triangles or what have you. It's simply more of a written phrase than one that feels natural when spoken. They tend to use 'I like you' or 'I like you a lot' or 'I have feelings for you' at the start of relationships, but 'I love you' appears rarely.
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Date: 2004-12-12 07:35 pm (UTC)The Japanese use 'I love you', and it crops up quite frequently in Mandarin. Cantonese is the taboo zone, probably at least partially to do with how much the spoken version deviates from the written. When I look at Hong Kong serials, for example, shockingly few of them actually have the Chinese equivalent of 'I love you' anywhere, despite the premise being love triangles or what have you. It's simply more of a written phrase than one that feels natural when spoken. They tend to use 'I like you' or 'I like you a lot' or 'I have feelings for you' at the start of relationships, but 'I love you' appears rarely.