It was a problem of sorts, for the international people in my group at Uppsala University; they were generally not 'allowed' to speak Swedish at work, because everybody else's (technical) English was so much better than their Swedish. Of course, that meant they never got a chance to practice their Swedish and therefore didn't improve...
I, too, thought that written Chinese was entirely dialect independent, but my Chinese colleague here at Queen's implied that was not the case. However, I was mostly referring to the fact that the spoken Chinese is very different in different dialects.
Knowing both Swedish and German, I can see the Germanic roots in (some parts) of English; there are definitely very strong other influences as well. Sometimes knowing English actually helps me with my French, with words like 'liberty'; the Germanic 'freedom' is not quite as recognizable in Swedish 'frihet' and German 'Freiheit'.
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I, too, thought that written Chinese was entirely dialect independent, but my Chinese colleague here at Queen's implied that was not the case. However, I was mostly referring to the fact that the spoken Chinese is very different in different dialects.
Knowing both Swedish and German, I can see the Germanic roots in (some parts) of English; there are definitely very strong other influences as well. Sometimes knowing English actually helps me with my French, with words like 'liberty'; the Germanic 'freedom' is not quite as recognizable in Swedish 'frihet' and German 'Freiheit'.