The seasons in Australia are not like ours. When it is winter in China, it is summer there. Australia is a southern country-it is in the south of the world. June, July and August are the winter months; September, October and November are spring, the summer is in January, February and December, and March, April and May are the autumn months. The north of the country is hotter than the south.

A very large part of this country has no rain at all. The east coast (东海岸地区) has rain all year, and there are no dry months there. The southeast winds blow (吹) here all the year. They bring rain from the sea. There is not much rain on the west side. The southeastern part of Australia has summer rain from the southeast winds. They only blow here in summer.

The southwestern part of Australia has winter rain. The west winds blow over the southwest in winter only. In summer, the southwest of the country has no rain. In the north of Australia, there is no rain in winter. The rain comes in summer. The northwest winds bring it.

If you ask someone in China about Russia, you might hear something about how it’s a “nation of warriors”, or zhan dou min zu in Chinese. They drink a lot. They keep bears as pets. But still people name Russia the “nation of warriors” for reasons.

Russians do well in sports. They never finish below fourth place for every Summer Olympic Games. The country’s long winters make its people become good at winter sports, including ice skating and skiing.

Its literature(文学)and art are also very famous. You can see them in War and Peace by famous Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, Swan Lake by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and the traditional nesting dolls(套娃).

China has been Russia’s top business partner for eight years. Besides, two countries are joining hands to develop economy through the Belt and Road Initiative(一带一路倡议). For example, a Pipeline(管道)has been built across the two countries. We hope people can bring gas to China in 2019.China is also helping to build Russia’s first high-speed train from Moscow to Kazan.

Russia is China’s largest neighbor, and the two neighbors are getting ever closer.

Throughout history, people have been interested in knowing how language first began, but no one knows exactly where or how this happened. However, we do know a lot about languages, the language of today and also the languages of earlier times. There are probably about three thousand languages in the world today. Chinese is the language with the most speakers. English, Russian and Spanish are also spoken by millions of people. On the other hand, some languages in the world have less than one hundred speakers.

There are several important families of languages in the world. For example, most of the languages of Europe are in one large family called Indo-European. The original language of this family was spoken about 4,500 years ago. Many of the present-day languages of Europe and India are modern forms of the language of 4,500 years ago.

If a language has a number of speakers, or if it is very old, there may be differences in the way it is spoken in different areas. That is, the language may have several dialects. Chinese is a good example of dialect differences. Chinese has been spoken for thousands of years by many millions of people. The differences between the dialects of Chinese are so great that speakers of Chinese from some parts of China can’t understand speakers from other parts.