On Fri, February 18, 2005 6:22 pm, Sheng Jiong said:
That is why it has made Minnan Wikipedia a big joke. Extremely few Minnan speakers (even in Taiwan) can understand what the hack these guys are writing about in their Minnan Wikipedia. Because Minnan simply do not yet have a standardised writing system (despite Taiwanese government's effort to establish one, most grown-ups in Taiwan sitll cannot comprehend written Minnan, and there is no Minnan newspaper, only one TV channel)
Here, I invite people from zh-min-nan: to speak.
People who know written Chinese may read this nice article at zh: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%99%BD%E8%A9%B1%E5%AD%97
Of course, even that level of usage will not meet the popularity requirement of Sheng Jiong, so actually I am inviting other people to read and to judge if we can call that a standardized writing system.
There are not standard. No one has formalised these "characters", not the Hong Kong government (both before and after 1997), not the Guangdong government, not any governments in the world. There is also not a standard developed by any influential non-government organizations.
Does the work of respected scholars count? See the reference section of the second link below. The following pages are in Chinese. http://www.cantonese.org.cn/ungoo/master/dictionary1.htm http://www.cantonese.org.cn/ungoo/master/dictionary2.htm
I believe that does not count according to Sheng Jiong's standard, but I invite other people to make a fair judgement.
Your edit is reverted because you used these non-standard characters. But put characters aside, the grammar is the same for Cantonese and Chinese.
Sheng Jiong has ignored all the examples given in this list. They are not the same. Cantonese speakers can testify that for a passage written in Baihuawen, even if we replace all the non-cognate functional words with their equivalent ones, e.g., dik1 with ge3, liu2 with zo2, zoi6 with hai2, etc. The passage still does not sound like natural Cantonese. The statement that "the grammar is the same for Cantonese and Mandarin" is plain wrong.
People who are interested to learn the facts may read this book: Gao Huanian, /Guangzhou Fangyan Yanjiu/, Commerce Press, Hong Kong, 1984 ISBN: 962-07-4003-3 (In Chinese)
(Sorry, my email client does not process Unicode characters correctly, so I will have to stick to Hanyu Pinyin for Mandarin, and Jyutping for Cantonese.)
The stand point of that author was that "Chinese is one language" and "Cantonese is a dialect", but he honestly said that "Guangzhou fangyan he xiandai Hanyu yiji Hanyu de qita fangyan dou you hen da de chabie." (The Cantonese dialect is very different from modern [standard] Chinese and other Chinese dialects.)
That book go on to explain the sound system, grammar and vocabulary of Cantonese. He collected 2400 commonly used words and expressions that are distinct from modern [standard] Chinese. Distinct meant different even when written.
He also acknowledges that most Cantonese specific words has customary written forms in Cantonese communities. Those forms are used in his book.
That book is full of examples, and there are several prolonged passages at the end. The first one is a translation of the first chapter from Lu Xun's novel /Kong yiji/.
We are now seeing a small portion of Cantonese speakers who believe that there should be something as a Cantonese Wikipedia. But for most Cantonese speakers (even if you just limit that to Hong Kongers), most people object such proposals because most people know that Cantonese is NOT a written language. Again I want you to show me evidence that Cantonese IS a written language (do not tell me X books are written in Cantonese, because these are just 1 or 2 exceptions. What I want to see is 1) has any school began teaching WRITTEN CANTONESE; 2) has any newspapers/magazines started writing in Cantonese)
I wonder how Sheng Jiong know that most people from Hong Kong will object such proposals. I believe there are some support and some opposition, but most people are indifferent. We never know unless we can do a scientific poll.
I believe that earlier on Sheng Jiong claimed that there is not even one book written entirely in Cantonese. Now obviously he has raised the bar: even if X books are written in Cantonese, those are exceptions. I don't know how many will be significant.
Even if we can find a school teaching written cantonese, I believe that will be an exception. He may require that it must happen in government sponsored grade schools.
If we can many articles written in Cantonese, he may require a newspaper or magazine written completely in Cantonese. And if there is one, then of course that on newspaper is an exception.
I understand that the main point of Sheng Jiong is that Cantonese has to be widely accepted as a written language before we consider using it to write Wikipedia. However, we all understand that there are different degrees of acceptance. How much acceptance is enough?
Written Cantonese does not have an official status, but it surely exists and is practiced by many. It is not taught in grade schools, but every literate Cantonese speakers can understand it without much training. It is not a prestige written language, so there is always a risk that someone will ridicule Wikimedia foundation if Cantonese Wikipedia is allowed.
To avoid controversy, perhaps Wikimedia should disallow new Wikipedia whenever there is opposition, and set that as a policy. That may not sound good, but that could be a prudent decision. But if that is not the goal, I will invite the board to read all the arguments, learn the facts, weigh the pros and cons, and make the best decision.
Felix Wan