[Wikipedia-l] Re: Peh-oe-ji on minnan.wikipedia.org

(I'm sorry for the lengthy response below, but I felt it was necessary to supply some historical context in response to a lengthy criticism of how a Wikipedia should be named. Neither the language/dialect nor the Wikipedia, as productive as it has been, is not well-known, particularly to Anglo/European editors.) Tim Starling wrote: Of course the Peh-oe-ji (hereafter POJ) orthography is used by a "small minority". This is in large part due to the fact that Min Nan everywhere is historically not a written language. In fact historically the vast majority of Min Nan speakers were illiterate. Those elite who could afford to read and write primarily did so in Classical Chinese, albeit pronounced in Literary Min Nan (a form of Vulgar Classical Chinese, if you will). But there were piecemeal and largely non-cumulative attempts to write down the speech, though nothing systematic has come out of it. Historically. More recent development: In the early part of the 19th century US and later British missionaries started to proselytize in Min Nan speaking regions, starting from the large "expatriate" communities in Southeast Asia, then Amoy (Xiamen), Shantou, eventually Formosa (Taiwan). The orthography used was thus not limited to the Taiwanese population. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Van_Nest_Talmage. I wrote this but feel free to check the sources.) Now of course, as you can imagine, its usage was at first limited only to the Min Nan-speaking Christian population, which had always been small, but the variety of works in this corpus was much broader, and not all of a blatantly religious nature, than anything that had been written in any other scripts including Chinese characters, to this day. Since the end of martial law in Taiwan, school children are no longer punished for speaking Min Nan and although no authority in Min Nan-speaking region anywhere has regulated how Min Nan *ought* to be written, in Taiwan POJ is taught. This could be misconstrued as evidence that POJ is intrinsically "Taiwanese" but that's simply not so. Also see my previous response to your contention that "[the POJ] writing there [i.e. minnan.wikipedia.org] is thus not representative of min-nan generally": http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-July/011024.html I quote: "To keep discussion short I'll just say, for now, that most variants of Minnan are generally and historically *not* written and when written, generally without reference to a standard (lots of words written inconsistently). The genra have also been limited to songs and other poetic forms. So it's difficult to talk about representativeness in that context. The current Minnan Wikipedia *is* the "state of the art" to the extent that Minnan has been written and read historically." Now I am puzzled by your assertion that using the Peh-oe-ji orthography to write Min Nan constitutes a "political viewpoint". Which viewpoint is that? A Christian viewpoint? A Taiwan-centric Min Nan viewpoint? A pro-alphabet, anti-character viewpoint? I will say for now that people use the orthography for many reasons. Many like the fact that they are able to write in a consistent manner in an orthography attested by a century-and-half of works. Many are Taoist, Buddhist, atheists, etc. (I am certainly not Christain in case you are wondering -- not that this should be relevant.) If some people would like to politicize a writing system, well, they are feel to do so but that does not necessarily mean their viewpoint has wide currency. Traditional Chinese has been widely taught in Taiwan's educational system since the end of WWII, for the purpose of writing the (de facto) official Mandarin language (or dialect, if you will). The ISO code zh-tw specifies the regional variety of the "zh language", which is generally interpreted as meaning Mandarin. But since the Taiwanese are a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual society, how official Mandarin is written does not dictate how other native languages must be written. The Government certainly does not prescribe that Min Nan in Taiwan should be written in Chinese characters. Note that Min Nan is not the native language of every Taiwanese and therefore only some Taiwanese speak Min Nan. Other people who are not Taiwanese also speak some form of Min Nan. When those Min Nan speakers (regardless of nationality) participate in an xx-language Wikipedia, they use whatever the dominant writing system is. Thus they do not attempt to, for example, write Japanese in Roumaji (romanization) in ja.wikipedia.org. Nor is every editor in minnan.wikipedia.org Taiwanese. We also have editors from Amoy, PRC. I hope you would not try to confuse the issue by implying that since Mandarin speakers write Mandarin in Chinese characters, that they therefore necessarily must write Min Nan similarly. It should not be difficult to understand that related languages, for historical reasons, may well be treated to different scripts. I need not cite the many examples in this category (but I will if requested). In June 2004 you very nicely asked: (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-June/010377.html) But to the surprise of several Min Nan editors, you went ahead without waiting for any feedback, even though you appeared to invite it in a non-rhetorical fashion. Given this experience I have concluded that I, as a Min Nan editor, is powerless to influence whatever you believe, rightly or wrongly, to be the best course of action. I trust your judgement as a developer but I am not convinced by your arguments to the effect that the Minnan Wikipedia, as written, is somehow unrepresentive (even "unauthentic"?). You are of course free to conduct further research and show Min Nan editors works that you regard as representive of Min Nan (or Min Nan Taiwanese) writing. ~~~~