number of nd language speakres  roughly how many people speak standard chinese as a nd language I want to exclude those for whom its their native language   Chinese language grammer section too dry  Chinese language slated for extinction IMO I had my example of aspect rather than tense for Chinese grammer removed by User talkLDHan I used the example of how boiled water is equivalent to boiling water since there is no tense in Chinese  But instead of this concrete example the grammer section is as follows  Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction pronoun dropping and the related subject dropping and the use of aspect rather than tense  Too dry  On top of that my observation that Chinese when translated into English seems verbatim was also removed  I guess this is another example of the wellknown tendency to save face when faced with embarrassing factsa sure sign of weakness and an inferiority complex  A language without tense is like a civilization without the wheel  The Incas come to mind and we see where that led them extinction  In another  years with globalization Chinese may well enter the panoply of extinct languages IMO    Can you give an example in Chinese of what you mean when you say that saying boiled water is equivalent to saying boiling water or water to be boiled   If Chinese is to become extinct it would have done so  years ago Nice try nevertheless