II. Some distinctive features of Chinese

Things are normally arranged from general to specific, parcticularly for dates and time, locations and addresses, structures and system, and names, etc. This, to some extent, reflects the way Chinese people think and their culture: priority is given to the larger unit or more senior status first. Contrast to the practice in English, date is put in an order of "year - month -date", and address is written in a fashion of "country - province - city-road/street -building/house". A person's family name always precedes his/her first name; likewise, parents and older siblings are addressed first in letter writing. When there are more than one attributes to modify a noun, they also follow the rule from large to small, from general to specific, from more important to less important. Compare these two sentences in the ordering of their attributes:

15) English: Shanghai is one of the largers citeis in the world.

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Chinese:

Sh3ngh2i sh* sh*ji7 sh3ng zu* d3 de ch5ngsh* zh%y%

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Shanghai is in the world the largest cities of one

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