I'm not sure who the first people were to enter China and attempt to learn the language. As far as I am aware, the first real attempt made by a foreigner to learn Chinese was by Michele Ruggieri in 1579 and Matteo Ricci in 1582.

I know that missionaries were able to show up in Macao before that, but I'm not sure how much Macao used the Chinese language at the time.

Anyways, despite all this, how would the first people to explore China have learned the language? How would they have been taught the language when there are some incredibly difficult ideas to communicate with the writing system the Chinese had.

Things for example like 日 I imagine would have been easy, then 月 as well, 山、川、口、(sun, moon, mountain, river, mouth respectively )would also have been easy. But what about stuff like 混亂 (confusion), 愛 (love), etc. How would these things have been communicated to the foreigners?

I read the wikipedia article and didn't really understand it. Is it a metaphor of some kind?

The US sent a lot of equipment by the Lend-Lease program, but I wonder if it ever sent military advisors/trainers. Either unofficially before the US joined the war, or officially after it had joined.

Obviously they wouldn't have used that exact phrase, but the idea of leaving out short words like "is", using "me" or their name instead of "I", etc. seem to be pretty popular in culture, where did this come from?

In the book "Sears, Roebuck, USA" (1977) by Gordon Weil it says that "President Franklin Roosevelt once suggested that the best way to deal with anti-American propaganda from the Soviet Union would be to fly planes over Russia and drop sears catalogs.” However Weil doesn't provide a source for this and online I found a few different versions of the story. Did Roosevelt actually say this?

Was there an institutionalized system to accommodate illiterate petitioners? Did this extend to the overseas discoveries?

Were there professional or freelance scribes/secretaries who serviced the illiterate population in general or would they typically get their close confidantes to prepare their legal documents and correspondence for them?

I've been on this Sub long enough to have grasped that the Romans didn't go around in togas literally all the time, but this makes me think, when would they have to wear a toga as opposed to just a tunic? If a Roman was going to a fancy dinner party, what would he wear? Or to put it more broadly, what was Rome's equivalent to the jeans-and-T-shirt, the business suit, and the tuxedo?

As for era, we'll call it Late Republic to Mid-Principate.

As far as I know, they have a unique language in comparison to their neighbors. Were they a tribe that moved into the region during the migration period, are they the descendents of the Epirots or Illyrians, or do they have another origin?

So the story I've commonly heard is that Wittman took a few Tiger tanks and attacked a British division at Villers-Bocage in June 1944 and caused so much destruction that the division was forced to withdraw, containing a potentially dangerous breach in the German line. Is this accurate? Was Wittman just that much of a badass that he and 3 other tanks could cause such destruction and chaos among the Brits?

I've heard before that the Polish barely collaborated with the occupying Germans. Why is this? Why was there no Quisling within Poland?

Looking at the night sky the stars appear as dots to me, where did this symbol come from and why was it used? Why 5 points? Why gold/yellow?

It would've been just as easy, if not easier for them as Europeans. Yet nowhere in the New World has large Asian-decended populations. Does anyone know why?

My history teacher mentioned some things so I'll outline it here, but I'd like to see what you guys say.

It started from the Middle Ages. The majority of people were Catholics and largely uneducated. The Church wasn't educating anybody and would not allow the people to read. (Because the Bible has that heartless liberal named Jesus and we can't have that-end sarcasm) So the Jews started taking higher education jobs, such banking(and doctors etc) And everyone hates the idea of compound interest so they naturally think they are cheating them and are greedy.

So I don't have any sources, as it was just a lecture, but I'm wondering how accurate that thought was or if there's other origins.

I've always wondered this, especially since it seems to be talking about Neil in a negative way. If someone could answer this since I can't find a solid answer else where that'd be great!