On Mon, Jul 30, 2018 at 10:47 AM, Steven White <Koala19890(a)hotmail.com>
wrote:
Wikipedia Pinyin Chinese
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Chinese_%28Pinyin%29_2>
(coded for now as cmn, Mandarin Chinese): Here's a proposal that I think
needs some serious discussion. Please read the discussion on the linked
Meta page.
*Arguments against:*
- No separate ISO 639-3 language code
- It is proposed that this can be handled with a script converter, per
(for example) T193366 <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T193366>.
- One respondent objected to such a project taking manpower away from
other Chinese-language projects.
*Arguments supporting:*
- Extremely widely used, and much on-line work in Chinese happens in
Pinyin, not in ideographic characters.
- Proponents state (I cannot confirm) that there are many people who
are "illiterate" in Chinese, not having mastered 3000 characters, who can
potentially contribute to such a project. If so, that is closer to the
ideal of creating projects that "anyone can edit".
I would also note that several other Chinese projects use Romanized
Chinese. (All the min-nan projects are exclusively in Romanized
language—see Wikipedia here
<https://zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A2u-ia%CC%8Dh>; Min Dong
Wikipedia <https://cdo.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A0u_Hi%C4%95k> has pages
in both scripts.)
If this project is deemed eligible, I'm pretty sure that it should not be
coded with "cmn". (I can let it stay that way in Incubator for now, or give
it a q-code.) Test has 250 mainspace pages, and has been active
periodically. Last period of substantial activity was during summer 2017.
I am going to hold back my opinion on this just yet.
I would support an effort to explore the use of LanguageConverter here (and
for zh-min-nan). I agree that the language code should not be bare 'cmn'
but should include a script suffix. BCP47 suggests 'zh-Latn-pinyin' as a
valid code:
http://schneegans.de/lv/?tags=zh-Latn%0D%0Azh-Latn-pinyin%0D%0A&format=…
--scott