I'm in middle of The World in a City: Traveling the Globe Through the Neighborhoods of New York by Joseph Berger. It's a genial enough book, even if it's not as good as it could be. But, it seems to me that there are a lot of errors in it. Consider the following:
"A young New York Times reporter, Yilu Zhao, wrote movingly in an article in 2002 about how newcomers from Fujian are bewildered by a world set up for Cantonese and Mandarin speakers. (Fujianese is as different from those languages as Yiddish is from German.)"
Yiddish and German are not the same, but with effort they can be mututally understood. However, Cantonese and Mandarin are completely different and cannot be mutually understood. Therefore, Fujian is what?
"A young New York Times reporter, Yilu Zhao, wrote movingly in an article in 2002 about how newcomers from Fujian are bewildered by a world set up for Cantonese and Mandarin speakers. (Fujianese is as different from those languages as Yiddish is from German.)"
Yiddish and German are not the same, but with effort they can be mututally understood. However, Cantonese and Mandarin are completely different and cannot be mutually understood. Therefore, Fujian is what?