1st place?

First place means the highest prize, the highest honor for one's work.

So, do you think his essay Econocracy is an good article.
I've read the Econocracy through this morning. It refreshed me through, too.

I didn't read the entire article--it was difficult to read, because it is poorly written.

OK, i read the entire thing--i made myself do it. It is badly overwritten, both in terms of sheer volume (the case could have been clearly stated in half the space) and in lame attempts to write metaphorically. The English is clumsy. The ideas which the author wanted to expressed are obscured by the attempts to use metaphor, rather than illuminated, which is (or ought to be) the purpose of metaphorical writing. I have nothing to say against the concepts in the article, only that the writing is bad enough to make it hard to get at them.

If that won a first prize, the competition must have been truly awful.

I can't believe the first-place-winning article is so lame in the skill of English expression.
I think why I thought that was a good writing in English is that Japanese language is more or less the same as Chinese. I read it through quite easily.

I have noticed in the past that among European languages, certain usages--such as the use of the present participle--are sufficiently common that one encounters native speakers of other European languages making the same mistakes in English expression. It is entirely possible, to my mind, that you should have recognized speech patterns in that article with which you are comfortable, and which sound odd or incomprehensible to a native speaker of English.

I have read that Korean and Japanese are members of Altaic language families, which are more closely related to languages such as the Turkic and Mongolian language families, and that these languages are not (in their origins, at least) closely related to Chinese at all. Do you find that Japanese and Korean expression are very similar to the expression of Chinese? If so, do you think that arises simply from the historical context--that is to say, the long contact between cultures?

Have you noticed that there are many Chinese characters in Japanese language or in historical relics of Korea? If Chinese language is in a language family different from that of Jap and Korean, well, as you've pointed out: it is the close oriental culture background that makes my reading of the article easy.

That's what i would have thought.

Very well.
Would you like to edit my previous post, please?

"Have you noticed that there are many Chinese characters used by the Japanese or in the historical relics of Korea? If the Chinese language is in a language family different from that of Japanese (the word "Jap" is a pejorative and considered an insult in the American language) and Korean, well, as you've pointed out, it is the close oriental cultural background that makes my reading of the article easy."

There you are . . . you didn't do badly with that paragraph.

Thank you Setanta.

Hi JTT, do you mean to drop the indefinite article there?

Yup, drop the 'the', the definite article, Oristar.

Thanks