Bruce W. Smith refers to the Chinese dialects. I would argue that the word languages is a more acceptable term. Normally, dialects are intelligible to people who speak different ones (e.g. Australian English, British English, American English, etc.), whereas languages are not. In China, although the written form of a character is universal (of course, I am not considering traditional versus simplified forms of the characters), the pronunciation is completely different. Hence, although two individuals are able to read the written characters, they are unable to speak to each other. For example, it may be said that a person can read Chinese but you cannot say they speak Chinese. They speak, Mandarin, or Cantonese, or Taiwanese or whatever. So, I believe the term languages is more appropriate than the term dialects.

On a similar note, people quite often refer to the different Filipino dialects. Again, this is incorrect. Although the different languages in the Philippines often share the same grammatical construction, the words (spelling & pronunciation) is different. As such, they too are languages and not dialects.

For what it's worth, the British Museum also has a 1796 quarter eagle, no stars, in proof, another donation from Miz Banks, around 1798. The woman had TASTE...

Leon Saryan wondered about the reason behind the award. Looking at the edge inscription “POUR BUFFLE” means either “FOR BUFFALO” or “FOR BUFFING WHEEL” in French.

Let's hope they are not turned into pillars of salt…

I found this interesting even before I read the name of one of the people arrested.

I've spent some time studying ancient Greek at Colorado University, and suggested that they do something similar online and the Classics department accepted a donation to get it off the ground. The online course is likely as intense as the on-campus ones, and highly recommended as the faculty are motivated, knowledgeable, and patient. One can't really do anything else for the duration of the course - commitment is required, but in the aftermath one will never again be intimidated by language.