The Astronaut Farmer English, French, and Spanish. Bonus features include "How to Build a Rocket: The Making of The Astronaut Farmer", a blooper and outtakes reel, and an interview with former astronaut David Scott. The Astronaut Farmer The Astronaut Farmer is a 2006 American drama film directed by Michael Polish, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Mark. The story focuses on a Texas rancher who attempts to construct a rocket in his barn and launch himself into outer space. Charles Farmer is a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot and astronaut-in-training who reluctantly resigned from the space program and was discharged from
Chinese as a foreign language Chinese in Europe. In 1837, Nikita Bichurin opened the first European Chinese-language school in the Russian Empire. Since then sinology became an academic discipline in the West, with the secular sinologists outnumbering the missionary ones. Some of the big names in the history of linguistics took up the study of Chinese. Sir William Jones dabbled in it; instigated by Abel-Rémusat, Wilhelm von Humboldt studied the language seriously, and discussed it in several letters with the French professor. Local Chinese variants were still widely used up until a Qing dynasty decree in 1909 that mandated Mandarin as the official language of