Re: The pitfall of Chinese/Mandarin

On Sun, 9 Dec 2001, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Patrick Dunn wrote:
> >And no one guesses at the properties of an element in  chemistry.  Have
> >you ever studied chemistry?
>
> Actually, you sometimes do. One of the nice things of the periodic table is
> that it allows you to make very educated guesses about an element's
> properties if you know the properties of neighbouring elements.
>
Well, an educated guess and a bald guess are two different things.  I
think Su Xiansheng was suggesting that people who don't memroize the
periodic table just stab in the dark at an element's properties.  But
then, he might not have been -- I sometimes have difficulty understanding
him.  :)


Prurio modo viri qui in arbore pilosa est.
                        ~~Elvis

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