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A Chinese couple tried to name their baby "@", saying the character best represents their love for the child,
according to an official trying to whip the national language into shape. The unusual name stands out especially
in Mandarin (普通话), which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke (多笔画的)
characters to represent words. "The whole world uses it to write emails, and translated into Chinese it means
'love him'", the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming.
While the @ symbol is familiar to Chinese email users, they often use the English word "at" to sound it out.
With a drawn-out "t", this sounds something like "ai ta", or "love him", to Mandarin speakers. Li says the name
is an extreme example of people's increasingly adventurous approach to Mandarin, as commercialization and the
Internet break down conventions (习俗).
Another couple tried to give their child a name that in English sounds like "King Osrina".
Li did not say if officials accepted the "＠"name. But earlier this year the government announced a ban on
names using Arabic numerals and foreign languages. Sixty million Chinese face the problem that their names
use ancient characters so uncommon that computers cannot recognize them and even fluent speakers are left
scratching their heads, said Li, according to a transcript on the government website. One of them is the former
Premier Zhu Rongji, whose name has a rare "rong" character that gives newspaper editors headaches.
1. Why did the Chinese couple try to name their baby"@"?
A. Because they wanted their baby to have a special name.
B. Because they wanted their baby to haw an international name.
C. Because the @ symbol is familiar to email users all over the world.
D. Because die ＠symbol sounds something like "ai ta", which means "love him" in Chinese.
2. It can be inferred that _____.
A. Li Yuming is in favor of the baby's name
B. many Chinese people use Arabic numerals in their names
C. a majority of the Chinese people are having longer names
D. there is little possibility for the "@" name to be officially accepted
3. The underlined part in the passage probably means "_____".
A. even native speakers find it hard to accept these strange names
B. even native speakers can't find these characters in their computers
C. even those who are expert at Chinese can't recognize these characters
D. even those who are expert at Chinese find it hard to accept these names
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