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I think we should have expected that Mandarin is weird but Cantonese is very normal - in the same way that Japan has a weird primary writing system, but its secondary writing system (Hiragana) is one of the most regular in the world. In fact the same reasoning could apply to Hindi - it's (or was until recently) a secondary language in India, with English as the language of government. Do other countries with two languages follow the same pattern? E.g. I would predict from this that Afrikaans would be a very non-weird language.


If Afrikaans is a non-weird language that would be because it's a creole (indiginous African and Dutch).

Don't know about Hindi, but since it's used as a lingua franca of sorts that might also be the reason behind its normalness.




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