A Celebration of China

I don't remember watching the Turin or Athens Games. I have vague memories of watching some of the Salt Lake Opening Ceremony and vivid memories of watching the Sydney Opening Ceremony, while writing out lesson plans for Latin at KCS.

The language of the host country is irrelevant because one hears the commentary in the language of the broadcaster one is watching, in this case, NHK, Japanese Public Television.

Thus I'm enjoying reading a live-blogger from Seattle so that I can know what the pageantry represents. His English notes are just the jump-start I need for the "understanding lag" my brain is having in following the Japanese announcers.

I understand the Parade of Nations is "not in alphabetical order," according to our English way of thinking. I can imagine the order in which Japan would place it, because there is an order to the Japanese phonetic "alphabet". But does China have a phonetic alphabet? Wikipedia to the rescue. Chinese "alphabetical" order is based on the number of strokes in the first character of each country's kanji rendering. Zambia comes last only because the first syllable, written in Chinese, has 16 strokes.

赞比亚

Whew!