SHANA had said to me, quite a few times in CHINA...that even though she could speak the language to be understood, relatively easily and was reading novels in PUTONGHUA...a very advanced stage of language learning...the more that she found out about CHINA, the less she knew...it was an odd state of affairs...but sometimes things threw her back to square 1 and she felt as if she didn't understand anything at all...

I then thought about SUSAN BASSNETT's 'BRITISH STUDIES' lecture to a mainly Japanese audience - stressing that the UK was an immense collection of islands...and that the British thought of it as a 'country' whereas in fact it was more of an archipelago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archipelago

I then thought - every time I go on holiday in the BRITISH ISLES - I discover something new....something odd...in a way, the BRITISH ISLES are a 'foreign country' to me too...

I then thought about AERIAL MAPS of the UK...because the ill often 'blot out' the small islands that they are using for nefarious purposes...has anybody ever counted up just how many islands surround the 'main isle' as in Scotland, England and Wales?

BASSNETT had but I cannot remember the number as such...a pity.