Chinese language in the real world

If anything sums up Chinese language in action it has to be this report from ChinaRealTimeReport:

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2010/10/15/the-most-chinese-chinese-character/

For a couple of reasons it is better that you read the report itself, but this gives an idea of its content.

Culled from an initial pool of 374 characters suggested by an unidentified committee of historians and linguists, the most Chinese of Chinese ideograms was identified as ...{removed by me}(pronounced ‘huh’ and typically Romanized as ‘he’)—the character for an indistinct concept often (though clumsily) translated as “peace” or “togetherness.”

The irony? The most Chinese of Chinese characters is also one of the most sensitive on Beijing’s list of banned words .......................