Hugh Jackman was on the Tonight Show recently, talking about making a film in Shanghai. As part of his role, he had to learn a song in Mandarin.

See if you can understand the words.

There are lots of stereotypes about the differences between Western and Asian cultures. Things like:

• Westerners value individuality, Asians value collectiveness.
• Westerners are opinionated, Asians are reluctant to express their thoughts.
• Westerners show emotions, Asians keep them inside.

Of course stereotypes have lots of exceptions, so they don't really tell you anything concrete. So if you are looking for a no-nonsense example of east/west dichotomy, street addresses are perfect.

The custom in Western countries is to write addresses from the small to the big. But in Asian countries, they go from the big to the small:

上海市 (Shang Hai City)
曲阳路 (Quyang Street)
834号 (#834)
三楼 (3rd floor)

The Mandarin particle 在 (zài) is very versatile. It can be a verb (to be somewhere), a preposition (in, on, outside etc.), and can also indicate an action which is happening now (similar to English -ing verbs).

When used as a preposition, 在 is used before a place-word which may have a positional suffix, as in this example:

他在房子裡面
他在房子里面
tā zài fángzi lǐmiàn
He is in the house.

Here are some other examples:

在桌子上
zài zhuōzi shàng
on the table

在學校外面
在学校外面
zài xuéxiào wàimian
outside the school

在他們那裡
在他们那里
zài tāmen nàli
at their place

A blog post over at TomBomb.com talks about the dominance of English on the Internet. The author, Tom Hayes, says it's no surprise that English is the lingua-franca of cyberspace because the Internet was developed in the United States, and the early users were English-speakers.

All that could change, though, with the increasing online use of Mandarin Chinese. Hayes says that online Mandarin is "growing at 700 percent a year," and that it "will soon become the most-used language online."

Mandarin is the most widely-spoken language in the world, so it's natural for it to have a strong presence on the Internet. And Mandarin is just the beginning. We already have a multi-lingual Internet, so the presence of new languages will continue to grow.

How will we communicate with each other? Well, there's a whole slew of online digital translators (which can be a bit awkward in their translations, but sure to improve with time), or as an alternative, Hayes proposes that Globish could be the new lingua-franca of cyberspace. Never heard of Globish? Me neither, but according the Globish website, it "allows you to communicate in English, using only 1500 words."

Hmmm - why not Globarin?