It was created after the May Fourth Movement in 1919,
Was it? I seem to recall many novels and anthologies, etc. written in something similar before the May Fourth movement. I actually think we have a similar situation here. In the old days, the standard Chinese was wenyanwen and baihua was seen as below par and people shouldn't write in baihua because it's "only a spoken language".
The May Fourth movement changed that. And now...
And now you should start another movement and let the public accept it before coming to ask for a Cantonese Wikipedia.
I can't speak for the situation in mainland China today, but it's definitely taught, not as a way of writing, no, but I've seen many people's attempt at writing it and some attempts are good enough to pass. I think many people, especially the older generations in Hong Kong, still write with a smattering of wenyanwen.
And I seem to recall something on the news a couple of years ago about a young man who managed to write an essay completely in wenyanwen in his university entrance exam or some such.
Yes, there was. But majority of the population know only how to read some wenyanwen, but not write.
It's a weekly magazine, I don't know if the headlines I read are the same as those you've read, but I'd say that more than one uses Cantonese characters and the sentence structure/grammar for all of them are in fact Cantonese.
If that is the case, that means the difference is to subtle to tell. And if so, there would be no need to have a separate Wikipedia.
1)Not even Cantonese native speakers can understand an article entirely written in Cantonese written language, if it concerns encyclopediac topics;
I think I understood the examples Felix provided just fine, thank you very much. Mind you, my Chinese education ended at Primary 5. So if I can understand it, it's pretty understandable. And as the article is written by a mainland Chinese, I assume there are at least some mainland Chinese people who can understand an article written completely in Cantonese.
His examples are just stubs. And in fact I can read it as well. But how about longer articles? Articles concerning obscure terms? There are only two possible solutions: 1) do not translate these terms into Cantonese, which makes a Cantonese Wikipedia a repetition of Chinese Wikipedia, or 2) translate, and no one understands.
3)Wikipedia should not advocate the use of Cantonese written language. Instead we should only allow it when it has already been accepted by the society.
So says the person who keeps insisting that Cantonese can't even be written.
But as I have suggested both Mandarin and Cantonese are just spoken languages, but when it comes to writing everyboy today in China, Hong Kong or Macau uses the same written language: Baihuawen.
And baihuawen is based on Mandarin grammar, syntax, etc. So essentially baihuawen *is* Mandarin.
Whatever it is, it is written. Cantonese is not.
formulax