eschereal, I think the simplest explanation for that is that what Sheldon speaks (or approximates speaking) is Cantonese, but that he missed learning about the various Chinese languages (since, after all, linguistics isn’t particle physics), and thinks that what he knows is Mandarin.
Sheldon’s “Mandarin” teacher is Howard, and we’ve been given reason to believe that Howard’s grasp of the language is not as good as he thinks it is–e.g., in “The Dumpling Paradox,” Howard is called “your annoying little friend who thinks he speaks Mandarin” (my emphasis).
Howard’s grasp of Russian is iffy to. He totally mangles the pronunciation of “You’re a beautiful girl,” when he says it to Penny, but he seems to understand it when he hears it in the Soyuz capsule.
He probably had a grandparent, or set of grandparents, from Russia who spoke it, but not to him, at least much, or spoke it to him, but he answered in English.
Sort of like my understanding of Yiddish. My parents spoke it when they didn’t want us kids to understand what they were saying. In time, of course, I understood what I was hearing. But that doesn’t mean I can speak Yiddish.
Hard not to grasp the pronunciation of devushka when you’re learning through osmosis. I was straightened out on my first day of Russian camp; before that, I had only seen it in print.
“cathedra mea, regulae meae” … “My chair, my rules”)
Long hair on a beautiful woman is much better than short.
There are varying degrees of “wrong.” Calling a tomato a vegetable is a little wrong. Calling it a suspension bridge is very wrong.
Except that calling a tomato a vegetable is not wrong at all. There is no definition of “vegetable” which does not include tomatoes. There are some definitions of “fruit” which include tomatoes, but so what? We weren’t asking whether it was a fruit; we were asking whether it was a vegetable.
From Wikipedia: " It normally excludes other food derived from plants such as fruits, nuts, and cereal grains, but includes seeds such as pulses. "
This is the definition I grew up with and the people around me have used. You don’t eat the stems or roots of tomatoes (I hope), you eat the fruit.
If someone says “Do you want a tomato?” do you think you are getting the plant or the fruit with your salad?
Interesting, but where is it written that the fruit/vegetable dichotomy must be decided by which part of the plant is being consumed? I’ve seen it argued that, from a culinary perspective, fruits are those things we eat for their sweet flavors, and vegetables are more savory. That’s somewhat at odds with the botanical definition, but I don’t think it’s automatically wrong.
That’s the culinary definition, and excludes the culinary sense of fruit. A tomato is not a culinary fruit.
Actually we were asking whether Dick Grayson or Jason Todd should be the successor to Bruce Wayne as Batman.
I hope you’re being deliberately provocative.
Nah, if I were being deliberately provocative, I’d mention that balrogs have wings, but nonetheless can’t fly with them.
(have they ever addressed that question on TBBT?)
Yeah. More likely he realized he didn’t know it and intentionally tried to learn it.
So you and the people around you don’t consider squashes, cucumbers, brinjals or peppers to be vegetables, then?
Don’t miss the hovertext.
Creating an ersatz homosexual relationship can satisfy one’s desire for intimacy.