On Thu, February 3, 2005 8:54 pm, Sheng Jiong said:
Are there schools being set up to teach written vernaculars as opposed to standard Mandrin, are there novels, dictionaries etc. being published in large numbers, is there a movement. In short, has someone shown a notable and documentable desire to separate dialects from Chinese? My research (posted some time ago) found a case, but not an overwhelming one, for some degree of linguistic separationism in progress.
A very good point indeed. And I also agree with Andrew's view, that Wikipedia's chief aim is to write encyclopedias, not promoting any kind of promoting of languages. If any Chinese dialects any other than Mandarin has received significant attention in the world, and that people have gotten used to writing/reading these languages, there is of course a need to set up a Wikipedia in this language. But the truth is, all Chinese dialects other than Mandarin remain a spoken language, and extremely few books/articles/etc. are published in dialects. In fact we do not even know what writing system we should use should there be a Chinese dialect Wikipedia.
Max Weinreich: "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy". If we follow that line of thinking, then yes, since there is no public education in the world that teaches written Cantonese, we should not have an encyclopedia in it.
Although I cannot find the official language policy of Wikipedia, but from what I observe, Wikipedia does encourage minority languages, even allows those without official status, even constructed and fictional ones. I appreciate this respect of our rich human culture.
Compare to most other minority languages, Cantonese is more qualified to have a Wikipedia. Although written Cantonese has not obtained any official status from any government in the world, it is at least an official spoken language in Hong Kong. Written Cantonese is used in police reports to record words of witnesses verbatim. The *official* language policy of Hong Kong recognizes "2 wen 3 yu" - 2 written languages (wen): Standard British English and Standard Chinese (Mandarin vernacular); 3 spoken languages (yu): British English, Cantonese Chinese and Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua).
Compared to the huge amount of publication in Standard Vernacular Chinese (Mandarin baihua), publication in Cantonese appears to be few, but the number is significant. There are more and more articles and novels written in Cantonese. People have gotten used to writing and reading in Cantonese, especially among the younger generation of Hong Kong. They discuss in Net forums in Cantonese. Sometimes they receive requests from Mandarin speakers to translate what they are talking about. Who say those two are the same when written?
Although most Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong knows how to read and write in Cantonese if written in traditional Hanzi, many people do not find it a serious language just because writing in it has been discouraged in schools. However, even that is changing. There has always been dictionaries on how to pronounce Chinese characters in Cantonese. There are more publications on the study of Cantonese vocabulary, grammar, and most importantly, on orthography of Hanzi to represent Cantonese words not found in Mandarin. Those publications are, however, written in Standard Vernacular Chinese.
Writing something as serious as an encyclopedia in Cantonese will be unprecedented, and will not gain any support from a government in today's political climate, but I do not think denying it with that reason is consistent with the policy of setting up Wikipedia in a new language.
And to Mark: please do note that I speak Shanghainese rather than Min-nan. Therefore among those opposers there is also a native speaker of the language. It is not as you wrote that only those who do not speak the language oppose the proposal. I am still strongly opposed to the set up of any Chinese dialect Wikipedias. And I am not actually glad to see the Min-nan Wikipedia too. I simply doubt if any Min-nan speakers can understand the current Min-nan Wikipedia.
Actually, I appreciate that the setting up of the Min-nan Wikipedia in spite of opposition from unglad Chinese speakers. I can read peh-oe-ji, and I can find enough cognates to understand what is going on, but I just do not know enough Min-nan to contribute. The complete Bible has been translated into Min-nan using peh-oe-ji and many Min-nan speakers can read it. Surely ZH-MIN-NAN people need to get more Min-nan speakers involved.
There is one complication about Chinese dialects though: every literate Chinese can read Standard Vernacular Chinese, even if they cannot speak Mandarin. Probably no one has ever spoken Classical Chinese, yet it has been the standard written language for thousands of years. Chinese are so accustomed to writing in a common language they never speak that some do oppose writing in their own dialect. In the early 20th century the literate elite strongly opposed writing in Vernacular Mandarin for similar reasons: vernaculars are not for serious literature and so on. So don't be surprised if we find Cantonese speakers strongly oppose written Cantonese.
Let's do a thought experiment. How much linguistic difference from standard English dialects is required for a Wikipedia to be set up in a new English dialect? While previous examples like "British vs. American English" or "New York English" fail to illustrate the point, if there is a request for a Wikipedia in "Ebonics" (African American Vernacular English), or "Singlish" (Singaporean Vernacular English), will it be strongly opposed? That's about how those strong opponents feel against written Cantonese. We need to understand their concern to communicate with them effectively.
That is why the concern that written Cantonese on a serious subject may look too similar to that in written Mandarin have really got my attention, so I proposed an experiment. So far no one opposed the experiment. I will go ahead and try.
I consider myself a strong proponent for common languages: Putonghua, English as an international language, even constructed IAL, because they are useful for mutual understanding and communication. But I just do not believe we need to suppress minor dialects to achieve the goal.
So my stand point is still this: if there is enough interest in a Wikipedia in a Chinese dialect, let them try.
Felix Wan