After not replying to most of the things you have said for obvious reason that you ignore my truths, I have still some question for you.
It is: How do you know majority of Chinese cannot read Minnan Wikipedia? I invite your evidences.
Mark
On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 18:48:13 +0800, Sheng Jiong sheng.jiong@gmail.com wrote:
"Baihuawen", based on Mandarin grammar, vocabulary, and suches. Is not like Wen Yan, which is more similar to Cantonese or Hakka's grammar and vocabulary, it takes many new characters and discards the widely accepted ones for example your Mandarin loving character 的 which replaces perfectly good already used character with even less strokes by far, still used often in writing Minnan in Hanzi.
Is Baihuawen not the standard Chinese? It was created after the May Fourth Movement in 1919, and has already been widely accepted in Chinese society before 1949. Are not newspapers in Hong Kong write in Baihuawen too?
You are deliberately associating the concept of "standard Chinese" with classic Chinese (Wen Yan), which is actually not the standard Chinese today (for it is neither taugt in schools as a way of writing, and neither is it used in most publications).
There IS SCHOOL TEACHING in WRITTEN CANTONESE. It is not primary school, no, but there is course at a Hong Kongs university about how to write in "colloquial cantonese", and expectation that when it finishes the courses series it can write long articles even books in colloquial cantonese and have some small experts knowledge about it.
So? You have missed my point entirely. The reason of my asking if there is any school teaching Cantonese is to question if written Cantonese has been widely accepted. Teaching in writing "colloquial Cantonese" is irrelevent in this argument because only a handful have ever attended the course and learnt to write. And just for my own personal interest, please tell me which Hong Kong university has this course.
There IS NEWSPAPERS writing in Cantonese
Which newspaper? Which magazine? Do specify.
(wait - you says that "Standard Chinese" is can be read as Cantonese? What are we talking here!!?).
Do you deny that most (if not all, as you insist) Hong Kong newspapers are written in standard Chinese(baihuawen)? Then what do you call the language they uses?
I do'nt know about these dailys, but it is for sure tabloid newspaper and some teenager and womens magazine which writes completely or largely in the Cantonese colloquial writing.
Take a look at EasyFinder(http://easyfinder.atnext.com/template/ef/front.cfm), one of the most read Hong Kong tabloids. Among the six headlines in their main page, only one uses Cantonese characters; and if you read the articles, all of them are written in baihuawen (if you prefer using this term and purposely confusing it with classic Chinese).
The Minnan Wikipedia has support on Livejournal from Taiwanese user who says they don't read Peh-oe-ji from school instead from readiong Wikipedia just, if ask you get a link to its post.
How many of them are there? Majority of the Taiwanese still cannot read.
And pray do reply my previous summary of my opinions as a whole. So far you still chooses to avoid directly answering my central thesis: 1)Not even Cantonese native speakers can understand an article entirely written in Cantonese written language, if it concerns encyclopediac topics; 2)Few people have written in Cantonese; 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.
You have argued that Cantonese is a written language, using the differences between Cantonese and Mandarin as evidence. 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.
formulax