Uhh... hello, did you read my e-mail? I listed native
speakers
supporting a Wu Wikipedia.
Mark
On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 14:36:57 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong(a)gmail.com> wrote:
It is totally absurd to set up so many Wikipedias
for various Chinese
dialects. Being a native Shanghainess, my mother tongue is Wu. But I
have never seen any books written in the Wu dialect in my entire life,
and I have only heard of one book that was written in Wu in the 1930s,
and apparently it received very limited attention. Speaking language
is very different from the writing system, and in Chinese although
there are hundreds of dialects there is however only one writing
system. Wikipedia being a *written* encyclopedia would mean that we
only need *one* Chinese Wikipedia, written in Chinese characters.
Speakers of the different dialects can pronounce each characters in
very different ways (A Wu speaker can hardly understand Cantonese or
Min-nan, and vice versa), they all have the same grammar and similar
ways of expression, after thousands years of cultural integration
within the unified country. (And by the way Mandarin also has a long
history of being the "offical" spoken language in China: since Qing
dynasty in the 1600s it has been adopted as the language spoken in
Emperor's palace, and during the Republic of China period it was
selected by the parliament as the official spoken language of the
government after a democratic voting.)
Different dialects of course have their own distinct cultures: in
traditional Shanghainese Opera the actors speak only Wu (just like in
Beijing Opera the actors speak in Mandarin); there are also other
similar operas for Cantonese or other dialects and these operas still
receive much attention today in China. However the writing system of
China has been unified since Qing Shihuang's time in around 220BC, for
the convenience of the communications among all Chinese. It will be a
big joke if today someone want to return to the old days when no one
can understand each other.
Interestingly also Mark seem to neglect the fact that really no native
speakers of all these dialects support the proposal, knowing that it
is a totally unworkable proposal.
[[User:Formulax]]
On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 13:34:36 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all,
In this e-mail I don't want to personally introduce new arguments but
I want people to know that further debate on this topic is continuing
at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
Some speakers of these languages have lent their support: Steve,
Instantnood, and Felix Wan for Yue/Cantonese, and Nishishei,
Pangguanzhe, and alaya for Wu/Shanghainese (Wu also includes the
varieties of the surrounding areas including for example Suzhou).
Interestingly, on that page, no native speakers have directly
condemned the idea (only direct opposition is from Shizhao), although
Toytoy, a Cantonese speaker, has some concerns.
Mark
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