Dear all:
Finally I have found my way here where the discussion takes place. There has not been much in meta. I have read arguments from both sides here, and I would like to contribute my ideas to the question we have.
Let me first introduce my language background. My parents' native language is actually Shanghainese, so I know it. I was born and raised in Hong Kong, so I am most fluent in Cantonese. My elementary school used Mandarin as the language of instruction, so I am also fluent in Mandarin. My education later was more and more in English, so I also know the British English dialect. Then I went to USA and became fluent in American English. I also know a little Japanese.
It is very interesting but not surprising to see that the strongest opposition against setting up Wikipedia in Chinese dialects came from Chinese speakers. Yes, we are educated to believe that Chinese is one language and that Qin Shihuang has unified the written language thousands of years ago. One user correctly pointed out that the unified writing system was Classical Chinese (Wenyanwen). Today's Xiandai Hanyu / Baihuawen is actually based on the Mandarin vernacular. People not speaking Mandarin Chinese suddenly became illiterate when they first encountered Baihuawen but education has successfully established the Mandarin vernacular as the new standard of Chinese writing.
Cantonese Chinese : Mandarin Chinese :: British English : American English?
One user has correctly pointed out that the analogy is improper. All linguists agree that the first two dialects are not mutually intelligible but the last two dialects are. The reason that Mandarin speakers can understand writing by people from Hong Kong is that formal education requires students to writing in Mandarin vocabulary and Mandarin grammar. Many students are unaware of the fact just because they do not speak Mandarin. That fact is that every literate Cantonese speaker can understand text written in the Mandarin vernacular. That is why some users argued that text written in Cantonese may not be needed.
Colloquial vs. Vernacular
There could be some misunderstanding that I have to make clear. Standard written Chinese is not in colloquial Mandarin but in vernacular Mandarin. There should be a sense of formality in written literature, and the vocabulary should be standardized, but it should sound natural and grammatical like it is spoken everyday. Standard written Chinese does not sound like Cantonese when every character is pronounced in Cantonese. I must say that the literary vernacular Cantonese standard is not as developed as Mandarin, but as many users has stated, there are people creating Cantonese literature. Although writing a Cantonese encyclopedia will be unprecedented, I supported the idea because I already found Wikipedia in minority languages and fictional languages. I thought: why not give major dialects of China a try?
As an illustration, the language I am writing in is vernacular English. Colloquial English will be like this: http://www.langmaker.com/db/bbl_englishcolloquial.htm
I found that later in the discussion, the opposition started to get focused on the real issue that got my attention: If I am writing the encyclopedia in vernacular Cantonese using traditional Chinese script, how much will it be different from the existing ZH Wikipedia? We can only try it out to see. So far linguistic studies concentrated only on the spoken varieties of Chinese.
Proposal
I propose that we agree on some policies on setting up a Wikipedia in a new language. Since a new Wikipedia will need some good articles to start with anyway, we may ask people who propose new Wikipedia to pick some topics from the 1000 essential articles and write say at least 3 good articles of moderate length and 20 good stubs in the proposed script. A possible location without new setup for those experimental articles will be on meta by using pages with prefixes like "Wikipedia:New/zh-yue-han/", "Wikipedia:New/zh-wuu-han/", "Wikipedia:New/zh-guoyu-pinyin/". (By the way, I support Pinyin Wikipedia. If there is a "Simple English" version, why not a pinyin version for people to learn Chinese?)
That is just a thought. How feasible is the idea? Please fill me in on the technical issues. I hope that further discussions here can work on the details formalize the procedure so that every language/dialect can have a fair chance to start a new Wikipedia and have a reasonably good foundation if started.
As for the doubt on how much time I will spend on the Wu Wikipedia? I dont know. How much commitment is required to support an issue on Wikimedia? Is there a policy? The reason I am only active in EN is because I want not only to edit, but to participate in the community. I prefer spending more time on one community first. I have already made some edits on ZH, and I will contribute more.
Felix Wan
Felix, that's a good summary of the issues.
Right now, I would encourage Chinese-savvy, prospective Wikipedians to work on ZH rather than spawning many, small Chinese-dialect Wikipedias. Jimbo's statement is the most compelling argument for this:
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." -Jimmy Wales, July 2004
To me, that means encouraging most of the labour towards making a "Mandarin" Wikipedia. As a side effect, Wikipedia can be an experiment in Internet democracy or a way to preserve/promote languages. But the primary goal should be to write an encyclopedia.
One done in Mandarin will benefit over 1 billion people who simply don't have a good free encyclopedia, in both senses of the word - free as in beer, and free as in freedom. The faster we get there, the better. And I don't think that's a selfish notion.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 18:55:15 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan felixwiki@earthsphere.org wrote:
Dear all:
Finally I have found my way here where the discussion takes place. There has not been much in meta. I have read arguments from both sides here, and I would like to contribute my ideas to the question we have.
Let me first introduce my language background. My parents' native language is actually Shanghainese, so I know it. I was born and raised in Hong Kong, so I am most fluent in Cantonese. My elementary school used Mandarin as the language of instruction, so I am also fluent in Mandarin. My education later was more and more in English, so I also know the British English dialect. Then I went to USA and became fluent in American English. I also know a little Japanese.
It is very interesting but not surprising to see that the strongest opposition against setting up Wikipedia in Chinese dialects came from Chinese speakers. Yes, we are educated to believe that Chinese is one language and that Qin Shihuang has unified the written language thousands of years ago. One user correctly pointed out that the unified writing system was Classical Chinese (Wenyanwen). Today's Xiandai Hanyu / Baihuawen is actually based on the Mandarin vernacular. People not speaking Mandarin Chinese suddenly became illiterate when they first encountered Baihuawen but education has successfully established the Mandarin vernacular as the new standard of Chinese writing.
Cantonese Chinese : Mandarin Chinese :: British English : American English?
One user has correctly pointed out that the analogy is improper. All linguists agree that the first two dialects are not mutually intelligible but the last two dialects are. The reason that Mandarin speakers can understand writing by people from Hong Kong is that formal education requires students to writing in Mandarin vocabulary and Mandarin grammar. Many students are unaware of the fact just because they do not speak Mandarin. That fact is that every literate Cantonese speaker can understand text written in the Mandarin vernacular. That is why some users argued that text written in Cantonese may not be needed.
Colloquial vs. Vernacular
There could be some misunderstanding that I have to make clear. Standard written Chinese is not in colloquial Mandarin but in vernacular Mandarin. There should be a sense of formality in written literature, and the vocabulary should be standardized, but it should sound natural and grammatical like it is spoken everyday. Standard written Chinese does not sound like Cantonese when every character is pronounced in Cantonese. I must say that the literary vernacular Cantonese standard is not as developed as Mandarin, but as many users has stated, there are people creating Cantonese literature. Although writing a Cantonese encyclopedia will be unprecedented, I supported the idea because I already found Wikipedia in minority languages and fictional languages. I thought: why not give major dialects of China a try?
As an illustration, the language I am writing in is vernacular English. Colloquial English will be like this: http://www.langmaker.com/db/bbl_englishcolloquial.htm
I found that later in the discussion, the opposition started to get focused on the real issue that got my attention: If I am writing the encyclopedia in vernacular Cantonese using traditional Chinese script, how much will it be different from the existing ZH Wikipedia? We can only try it out to see. So far linguistic studies concentrated only on the spoken varieties of Chinese.
Proposal
I propose that we agree on some policies on setting up a Wikipedia in a new language. Since a new Wikipedia will need some good articles to start with anyway, we may ask people who propose new Wikipedia to pick some topics from the 1000 essential articles and write say at least 3 good articles of moderate length and 20 good stubs in the proposed script. A possible location without new setup for those experimental articles will be on meta by using pages with prefixes like "Wikipedia:New/zh-yue-han/", "Wikipedia:New/zh-wuu-han/", "Wikipedia:New/zh-guoyu-pinyin/". (By the way, I support Pinyin Wikipedia. If there is a "Simple English" version, why not a pinyin version for people to learn Chinese?)
That is just a thought. How feasible is the idea? Please fill me in on the technical issues. I hope that further discussions here can work on the details formalize the procedure so that every language/dialect can have a fair chance to start a new Wikipedia and have a reasonably good foundation if started.
As for the doubt on how much time I will spend on the Wu Wikipedia? I don't know. How much commitment is required to support an issue on Wikimedia? Is there a policy? The reason I am only active in EN is because I want not only to edit, but to participate in the community. I prefer spending more time on one community first. I have already made some edits on ZH, and I will contribute more.
Felix Wan
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
I still believe that is being extremely, extremely, extremely selfish.
Why not instead tell people to focus their energy on English, since there are more English speakers?
Again, you are making it sound like the zh.wikipedia community will be split into thirds or fourths, when in reality it will remain totally intact with only a few small exceptions.
Now, what I find especially outrageous is that even after people like Alex have expressed their tentative support, you continue to say no, work on the Mandarin Wikipedia instead.
If these people want to work on a separate Wikipedia, you should stop harassing them (or as you call it "encouraging" them).
Quit being so focused only on yourself and your own language community and think of others for a change.
Mark
On Thu, 3 Feb 2005 11:35:58 +0800, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
Felix, that's a good summary of the issues.
Right now, I would encourage Chinese-savvy, prospective Wikipedians to work on ZH rather than spawning many, small Chinese-dialect Wikipedias. Jimbo's statement is the most compelling argument for this:
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." -Jimmy Wales, July 2004
To me, that means encouraging most of the labour towards making a "Mandarin" Wikipedia. As a side effect, Wikipedia can be an experiment in Internet democracy or a way to preserve/promote languages. But the primary goal should be to write an encyclopedia.
One done in Mandarin will benefit over 1 billion people who simply don't have a good free encyclopedia, in both senses of the word - free as in beer, and free as in freedom. The faster we get there, the better. And I don't think that's a selfish notion.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 18:55:15 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan felixwiki@earthsphere.org wrote:
Dear all:
Finally I have found my way here where the discussion takes place. There has not been much in meta. I have read arguments from both sides here, and I would like to contribute my ideas to the question we have.
Let me first introduce my language background. My parents' native language is actually Shanghainese, so I know it. I was born and raised in Hong Kong, so I am most fluent in Cantonese. My elementary school used Mandarin as the language of instruction, so I am also fluent in Mandarin. My education later was more and more in English, so I also know the British English dialect. Then I went to USA and became fluent in American English. I also know a little Japanese.
It is very interesting but not surprising to see that the strongest opposition against setting up Wikipedia in Chinese dialects came from Chinese speakers. Yes, we are educated to believe that Chinese is one language and that Qin Shihuang has unified the written language thousands of years ago. One user correctly pointed out that the unified writing system was Classical Chinese (Wenyanwen). Today's Xiandai Hanyu / Baihuawen is actually based on the Mandarin vernacular. People not speaking Mandarin Chinese suddenly became illiterate when they first encountered Baihuawen but education has successfully established the Mandarin vernacular as the new standard of Chinese writing.
Cantonese Chinese : Mandarin Chinese :: British English : American English?
One user has correctly pointed out that the analogy is improper. All linguists agree that the first two dialects are not mutually intelligible but the last two dialects are. The reason that Mandarin speakers can understand writing by people from Hong Kong is that formal education requires students to writing in Mandarin vocabulary and Mandarin grammar. Many students are unaware of the fact just because they do not speak Mandarin. That fact is that every literate Cantonese speaker can understand text written in the Mandarin vernacular. That is why some users argued that text written in Cantonese may not be needed.
Colloquial vs. Vernacular
There could be some misunderstanding that I have to make clear. Standard written Chinese is not in colloquial Mandarin but in vernacular Mandarin. There should be a sense of formality in written literature, and the vocabulary should be standardized, but it should sound natural and grammatical like it is spoken everyday. Standard written Chinese does not sound like Cantonese when every character is pronounced in Cantonese. I must say that the literary vernacular Cantonese standard is not as developed as Mandarin, but as many users has stated, there are people creating Cantonese literature. Although writing a Cantonese encyclopedia will be unprecedented, I supported the idea because I already found Wikipedia in minority languages and fictional languages. I thought: why not give major dialects of China a try?
As an illustration, the language I am writing in is vernacular English. Colloquial English will be like this: http://www.langmaker.com/db/bbl_englishcolloquial.htm
I found that later in the discussion, the opposition started to get focused on the real issue that got my attention: If I am writing the encyclopedia in vernacular Cantonese using traditional Chinese script, how much will it be different from the existing ZH Wikipedia? We can only try it out to see. So far linguistic studies concentrated only on the spoken varieties of Chinese.
Proposal
I propose that we agree on some policies on setting up a Wikipedia in a new language. Since a new Wikipedia will need some good articles to start with anyway, we may ask people who propose new Wikipedia to pick some topics from the 1000 essential articles and write say at least 3 good articles of moderate length and 20 good stubs in the proposed script. A possible location without new setup for those experimental articles will be on meta by using pages with prefixes like "Wikipedia:New/zh-yue-han/", "Wikipedia:New/zh-wuu-han/", "Wikipedia:New/zh-guoyu-pinyin/". (By the way, I support Pinyin Wikipedia. If there is a "Simple English" version, why not a pinyin version for people to learn Chinese?)
That is just a thought. How feasible is the idea? Please fill me in on the technical issues. I hope that further discussions here can work on the details formalize the procedure so that every language/dialect can have a fair chance to start a new Wikipedia and have a reasonably good foundation if started.
As for the doubt on how much time I will spend on the Wu Wikipedia? I don't know. How much commitment is required to support an issue on Wikimedia? Is there a policy? The reason I am only active in EN is because I want not only to edit, but to participate in the community. I prefer spending more time on one community first. I have already made some edits on ZH, and I will contribute more.
Felix Wan
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
--
Andrew Lih, Assistant Professor Journalism and Media Studies Centre University of Hong Kong Email: alih@hku.hk | Web: http://jmsc.hku.hk/faculty/alih AOL IM: fuzheado | ICQ: 231894253 Yahoo Messenger: andrew_lih | MSN Messenger: andrew_lih@msn.com _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 21:06:20 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Why not instead tell people to focus their energy on English, since there are more English speakers?
Because as smart as I thought you were, you still don't see recognize the problem of having less than 20,000 articles for the most widely spoken language in the world.
And since you consistently assail the character of those who disagree with you, and maliciously reinterpret peoples' comments, I'm done with with you.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
On Thu, 3 Feb 2005 13:17:20 +0800, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 21:06:20 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Why not instead tell people to focus their energy on English, since there are more English speakers?
Because as smart as I thought you were, you still don't see recognize the problem of having less than 20,000 articles for the most widely spoken language in the world.
"as smart as I thought you were" - am I supposed to interpret that non-maliciously?
And I still don't see the problem with having less than 20k articles. Every Wikipedia will always have less than _______ articles, and will you always be worrying about that? When zh.wikipedia has 1 trillion articles, will you be worrying that it doesn't have two trillion?
Again, it is extremely selfish of you to do this. And supposedly, if second-language speakers are included for both English and Chinese, and Chinese is limited to those literate in Baihua (ie, excluding illiterates), English exceeds Chinese by far.
And since you consistently assail the character of those who disagree with you, and maliciously reinterpret peoples' comments, I'm done with with you.
Again, I don't see how your comments can be interpreted as anything other than telling people "quit agitating for your own Wikipedia. edit ours instead!!!" which is very selfish and inconsiderate of others.
And if you're done with me, bear in mind that that does not mean I will no longer respond to YOUR messages.
Mark
Hello,
Andrew Lih wrote:
One done in Mandarin will benefit over 1 billion people who simply don't have a good free encyclopedia, in both senses of the word - free as in beer, and free as in freedom. The faster we get there, the better. And I don't think that's a selfish notion.
I understand what you're saying and where you're coming from. But I can't help but see Mark's point, too. To me, you're coming across as, I don't want to let you have your pet project because my pet project benefits more people.
So *I* will be selfish and ask you, so what if it benefits more people? Why should that be my concern just because it is yours? Especially when you're giving me the vibe that you could care less about my pet project? You're asking for my/our help and yet you're dismissive of my/our wants and wishes.
*And* you're assuming that a number of us will be working on the "Mandarin" wikipedia if we don't have a Cantonese/Yue wikipedia to work on, which isn't necessarily true. I, for example, write better and faster in English and I'll probably spend more time on the English wikipedia if I can't help in a Cantonese/Yue one.
little Alex
On Feb 3, 2005, at 11:03 AM, Alex Kwan wrote:
Hello,
Andrew Lih wrote:
One done in Mandarin will benefit over 1 billion people who simply don't have a good free encyclopedia, in both senses of the word - free as in beer, and free as in freedom. The faster we get there, the better. And I don't think that's a selfish notion.
I understand what you're saying and where you're coming from. But I can't help but see Mark's point, too. To me, you're coming across as, I don't want to let you have your pet project because my pet project benefits more people.
So *I* will be selfish and ask you, so what if it benefits more people? Why should that be my concern just because it is yours? Especially when you're giving me the vibe that you could care less about my pet project? You're asking for my/our help and yet you're dismissive of my/our wants and wishes.
I thought the question is what the *readers* want.
Hello,
Stirling Newberry wrote:
I thought the question is what the *readers* want.
We don't have the resources to find out (I mean, do we do an Internet poll to find out, what?), so we'll probably have to stick with what the writers are willing to contribute.
And even going from your perspective, waving around the figure of 1 billion+ people in China doesn't work that well. How many of those 1 billion+ people have frequent access to a computer, to the net? And can find their way to the wikipedias?
I don't know how to find out, but there is a possibility that the percentage of Cantonese/Yue and Wu speakers who have frequent access to the net is higher than the purely Mandarin speakers... Because some of the fastest growing/most developed regions are Guangdong and Jiangsu province. And Jiangsu is specialising in computer chips, etc.
little Alex
On Feb 3, 2005, at 12:41 PM, Alex Kwan wrote:
Hello,
Stirling Newberry wrote:
I thought the question is what the *readers* want.
We don't have the resources to find out (I mean, do we do an Internet poll to find out, what?), so we'll probably have to stick with what the writers are willing to contribute.
I don't think an argument from ignorance works here. Is there a large body of readers who want wikipedias in vernaculars that diverge from Mandrin? This should be something which is documentable. 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. However, a stronger case could be made for a desire to incorporate vernacular idioms into standard mandrin, or as an important cultural dialect within the whole, as there are many culturally significant dialects in English which, never the less, are not under going the process of linguistic separation.
This resource is here to provide readers with information, those of us who write for it have our own motivations, of course, but it must be the readers interest, to the extent we can document it, which ought to be the final criterion for making decisions.
Instead of arguing with each other about what "we" would like, it seems better to spend time finding out what the readers want, and then finding a means to provide that.
There is no definitive way to find out what "readers" want.
Also, even the 'majority' of readers aren't interested, doesn't mean there aren't a great deal of people who are: there are over 100 million Muslims in India, yet they are a minority because there are over 1 billion people total in India.
Mark
On Thu, 3 Feb 2005 12:52:42 -0500, Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:
On Feb 3, 2005, at 12:41 PM, Alex Kwan wrote:
Hello,
Stirling Newberry wrote:
I thought the question is what the *readers* want.
We don't have the resources to find out (I mean, do we do an Internet poll to find out, what?), so we'll probably have to stick with what the writers are willing to contribute.
I don't think an argument from ignorance works here. Is there a large body of readers who want wikipedias in vernaculars that diverge from Mandrin? This should be something which is documentable. 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. However, a stronger case could be made for a desire to incorporate vernacular idioms into standard mandrin, or as an important cultural dialect within the whole, as there are many culturally significant dialects in English which, never the less, are not under going the process of linguistic separation.
This resource is here to provide readers with information, those of us who write for it have our own motivations, of course, but it must be the readers interest, to the extent we can document it, which ought to be the final criterion for making decisions.
Instead of arguing with each other about what "we" would like, it seems better to spend time finding out what the readers want, and then finding a means to provide that.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Oh, and also, here you seem not to fully understand the complex relationship between Chinese vernaculars, comparing them to "culturally significant English dialects" which according to you are only a little bit less divergent.
Chinese vernaculars are extremely, extremely divergent from one another. When written in Han characters, they're still divergent, but not as much (since in han characters, all that shows is vocabulary and grammar, not pronunciation).
The "desire" to "unite" fangyan (languages, dialects, regional speech) with Baihua is mostly one felt by the government of the Mainland. Very few actual speakers of these languages feel strongly about trying to use a united written form, and if they do, they usually feel strongly against it.
We have Wikipedias in languages now where there are a very very small number of books published in them annually only, we have at least a couple of Wikipedias in languages which many would argue are dialects. Cantonese has a stronger claim to separate literature than most of these, both Cantonese and Wu have a stronger claim to number of speakers.
If a reader doesn't want to view a particular Wikipedia, and neither does the next one, there is always one that will. There is no way to tell what the interest will be, and it would be a bad decision, I think, to say "no" just because only 5% or 10% (this is just a scenario - for all I know, 99.9999% or 0.0001% are actually interested) are interested when even they number in the hundreds of thousands on their own.
Mark
On Thu, 3 Feb 2005 12:52:42 -0500, Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:
On Feb 3, 2005, at 12:41 PM, Alex Kwan wrote:
Hello,
Stirling Newberry wrote:
I thought the question is what the *readers* want.
We don't have the resources to find out (I mean, do we do an Internet poll to find out, what?), so we'll probably have to stick with what the writers are willing to contribute.
I don't think an argument from ignorance works here. Is there a large body of readers who want wikipedias in vernaculars that diverge from Mandrin? This should be something which is documentable. 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. However, a stronger case could be made for a desire to incorporate vernacular idioms into standard mandrin, or as an important cultural dialect within the whole, as there are many culturally significant dialects in English which, never the less, are not under going the process of linguistic separation.
This resource is here to provide readers with information, those of us who write for it have our own motivations, of course, but it must be the readers interest, to the extent we can document it, which ought to be the final criterion for making decisions.
Instead of arguing with each other about what "we" would like, it seems better to spend time finding out what the readers want, and then finding a means to provide that.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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.
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.
[[User:Formulax]]
I am sorry, I confused your name with somebody else's.
My question for you however is: do you have any objection to having these Wikipedias on a /trial basis/ to see what happens?
Mark
On Fri, 4 Feb 2005 12:54:46 +0800, Sheng Jiong sheng.jiong@gmail.com wrote:
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.
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.
[[User:Formulax]] _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hello,
Sheng Jiong wrote:
is, all Chinese dialects other than Mandarin remain a spoken language, and extremely few books/articles/etc. are published in dialects.
...citation? How do you know? From what studies are you pulling this information from? You can't just say it and assume it to be true.
I mean, many printed ads in Hong Kong that are written in Cantonese/Yue, using puns and so on. Many slogans of those products are written in Cantonese/Yue. The most recent example I can think of, in fact, is a government ad (from the Equal Opportunity Committee) trying to discourage racism.
fact we do not even know what writing system we should use should there be a Chinese dialect Wikipedia.
Well, I would suggest Hanzi script first and consider whether we should do the romanization later on, though I think romanization would be too confusing to really be useful.
little Alex
is, all Chinese dialects other than Mandarin remain a spoken language, and extremely few books/articles/etc. are published in dialects.
...citation? How do you know? From what studies are you pulling this information from? You can't just say it and assume it to be true.
From my common sense and my frequent visits to bookshops and libraries
all around the world! I have never, in my entire life, seen a single book that is written *completely* in any dialects in China, apart from Mandarin. And as I have said before, apart from some tabloids in Hong Kong, no Chinese newspapers in the world would write in dialects too!
I mean, many printed ads in Hong Kong that are written in Cantonese/Yue, using puns and so on. Many slogans of those products are written in Cantonese/Yue. The most recent example I can think of, in fact, is a government ad (from the Equal Opportunity Committee) trying to discourage racism.
I'm not sure about that honestly. But are the books completely written in Cantonese? Or just some puns? And slogons are quite, quite different from encyclopedias, where millions of words have to been written.
fact we do not even know what writing system we should use should there be a Chinese dialect Wikipedia.
Well, I would suggest Hanzi script first and consider whether we should do the romanization later on, though I think romanization would be too confusing to really be useful.
That is not the point! It is not important what *you* think. It is important whether our readers can understand? Some HKers may, but how about people in Guangdong? If you are writing an encyclopedia for them and they have not even seen such characters, what is the point. Reminder you one more time: There is no standardised writing system for Cantonese/Wu/etc. dialects.
[[User:Formulax]]
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
On Feb 4, 2005, at 7:15 PM, Felix Wan wrote:
On Thu, February 3, 2005 8:54 pm, Sheng Jiong said:
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.
In our case, a language is a dialect that can support the writing of, and whose readers desire, its own encyclopedia.
I'll leave aside my quarrels with Weinreich's definition of language. That was a long time ago, in a different professional incarnation.
Please don't use the term "dialect" or "language" in this case without understanding the background.
Thousands of years ago, when Chinese was first written down, the language was already splitting into different dialects, with very minor but noticable differences. They were called 方言 or regional speech (read in modern Mandarin as fang-yan).
Over hundreds of years these dialects diverged further, but being spoken in a relatively small area (this is still thousands of years ago), they still were not remarkably different.
When the Chinese empire began expanding, these dialects (still called "regional speech") were spread to the far reaches of the empire, and learned as a second language by indigenous people who were eventually assimilated, and loaned some words, grammar, and phonology to the dialect of the locale they were in.
Over such a large area, these dialects diverged and by the 1700s could be counted as languages (語言), but this term was used generally to distinguish Chinese from foreign tongues and sometimes foreign tongues from one another. Even as separate languages, they were termed "regional speech" 方言 because that is really what they are - spoken within the Chinese empire and related to one another, together forming the Han family of languages, with a standard based roughly on the spoken language of around 2000 years before but matching somewhat closely the modern Cantonese or Hakka.
With the ever-increasing polarized view of the world as Chinese vs Foreign, the speech, habits, and country of the Chinese were seen as more and more united, as one opposed to "Foreign". Also, Chinese does not mark plurals, so "漢語" (modern Mandarin han-yu) can be translated as both "Han language" and "Han languageS".
However the issue of terminology only came when Western lexicographers needed to translate Chinese words to Western languages for their dictionaries. Using a Western linguistic model of the time, "regional speech" maps almost directly to "dialect".
So in the Chinese languages, this is not really a concern as you refer neutrally to "the speech of Shanghai" or "Wu speech" or "the speech of the northern region".
However, in English, it has been a cause for debate, many people saying the term "language" should be used, but others saying "dialect" should be used.
In fact, the amount of time for which Chinese speech varieties have been diverging for one another is longer than that between French and Spanish or Dutch and German.
Mark
On Fri, 4 Feb 2005 19:21:35 -0500, Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@xigenics.net wrote:
On Feb 4, 2005, at 7:15 PM, Felix Wan wrote:
On Thu, February 3, 2005 8:54 pm, Sheng Jiong said:
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.
In our case, a language is a dialect that can support the writing of, and whose readers desire, its own encyclopedia.
I'll leave aside my quarrels with Weinreich's definition of language. That was a long time ago, in a different professional incarnation.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Fri, February 4, 2005 11:27 pm, Mark Williamson said:
Please don't use the term "dialect" or "language" in this case without understanding the background.
[snipped]
Thank Mark for the accurate description of the situation of Chinese speeches. Much misunderstanding has been caused by the translation: yu3yan2 <-> language fang1yan2 <-> dialect Usually words in unrelated dialects cover different semantic spaces.
Let me explain some more to the list.
When I use the word "language" and "dialect", I try to be careful to stick to its definition in English. So I say "Chinese languages". But to avoid controversy with Chinese speakers, I will say "Chinese dialects", but not the inaccurate "One Chinese language".
The concept that "Chinese is a group of related but different languages" can be represented as "Chinese consists of many related dialects that are not mutually intelligible among each other", and I believe no one will object to the second statement.
The current situation of Chinese is more complicated because all spoken varieties share a common formal written language. See [[en:Chinese Language]]. It is comparable to the time when all Romance languages shared Latin, when serious literature should all be written in Latin.
Now, there is a growth in number and extent of publications in some local Chinese vernaculars, and some of those speakers requested for their own Wikipedias. How should we respond?
I have started an experiment without requesting too much resources. I say: let them try and see what happens. Meanwhile we can think about the possibility of setting up a fair language policy.
Felix Wan
Hi Felix,
as regards what term can be used in English without causing controversy, I would say "Chinese speech variety" instead of "Dialect", or "Shanghai speech" or "The speech of Shanghai" instead of "Shanghai dialect" or "Shanghainese language".
Also possible to use is "regional speech variety", a more literal translation of fangyan, which translates the Chinese intent and meaning more accurately: it doesn't suggest how similar or unsimilar this speech is with other related varieties, it merely distinguishes it from others as "Shanghai regional speech variety" vs "Guangzhou regional speech variety".
This can even be used to refer to different languages, such as "Tibetan regional speech variety" or "Nei Menggu regional speech variety", or "Japan regional speech variety" and it is still an accurate description - it is the speech variety unique to that region.
As far as the expiriment you've set up, it doesn't seem anybody has written yet. Maybe Alex and co. are away on the weekend? Do you know any Cantonese to write a sample article, Felix?
Mark
On Sat, 5 Feb 2005 11:27:36 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan felixwiki@earthsphere.org wrote:
On Fri, February 4, 2005 11:27 pm, Mark Williamson said:
Please don't use the term "dialect" or "language" in this case without understanding the background.
[snipped]
Thank Mark for the accurate description of the situation of Chinese speeches. Much misunderstanding has been caused by the translation: yu3yan2 <-> language fang1yan2 <-> dialect Usually words in unrelated dialects cover different semantic spaces.
Let me explain some more to the list.
When I use the word "language" and "dialect", I try to be careful to stick to its definition in English. So I say "Chinese languages". But to avoid controversy with Chinese speakers, I will say "Chinese dialects", but not the inaccurate "One Chinese language".
The concept that "Chinese is a group of related but different languages" can be represented as "Chinese consists of many related dialects that are not mutually intelligible among each other", and I believe no one will object to the second statement.
The current situation of Chinese is more complicated because all spoken varieties share a common formal written language. See [[en:Chinese Language]]. It is comparable to the time when all Romance languages shared Latin, when serious literature should all be written in Latin.
Now, there is a growth in number and extent of publications in some local Chinese vernaculars, and some of those speakers requested for their own Wikipedias. How should we respond?
I have started an experiment without requesting too much resources. I say: let them try and see what happens. Meanwhile we can think about the possibility of setting up a fair language policy.
Felix Wan
On Sat, February 5, 2005 11:41 am, Mark Williamson said:
As far as the expiriment you've set up, it doesn't seem anybody has written yet. Maybe Alex and co. are away on the weekend? Do you know any Cantonese to write a sample article, Felix?
Check this out: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-WP/zh-yue
I have written the instructions on adding sample articles in Cantonese and English, and started to write the Main Page.
To echo the words from the opposition: I don't want to live in a lonely Wikipedia either. ^_^ So I will not try to write all the articles, but start the experiment like any other wiki project: let the enthusiasts contribute their parts. I will also work on it at a slow pace, using just the time I will normally spend on Wikipedia. If the experiment becomes successful, we will not only see its feasibility, but also have a group of initial contributors.
Since there is no time limit on the request for a new Wikipedia, and there should not be any, we can wait until we gain enough support.
Felix Wan
On Mon, February 7, 2005 10:39 am, Alex Y. Kwan said:
Hello,
Felix Wan wrote:
I have written the instructions on adding sample articles in Cantonese and English, and started to write the Main Page.
Oooh, cool.
You okay if I edit some bits to make it even "more" Cantonese/Yue?
You are surely welcome to edit. It does not matter who started the test. It is a wiki. Everyone may edit.
Felix Wan
Yes, of course it's OK! After all, it is a Wiki...
Mark
On Tue, 08 Feb 2005 02:39:49 +0800, Alex Y. Kwan litalex@gmail.com wrote:
Hello,
Felix Wan wrote:
I have written the instructions on adding sample articles in Cantonese and English, and started to write the Main Page.
Oooh, cool.
You okay if I edit some bits to make it even "more" Cantonese/Yue?
little Alex
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Keep up the good working, guys, show them that how different Cantonese is from Mandarin, even when it's written in hanzi. I myself could only guess to understand, and I agree a lot with the idea that such wikipedia should reflect the cultural distinction of Hong Kong and Guangdong.
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 16:58:20 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, of course it's OK! After all, it is a Wiki...
Mark
On Tue, 08 Feb 2005 02:39:49 +0800, Alex Y. Kwan <litalex@gmail.com > wrote:
Hello,
Felix Wan wrote:
I have written the instructions on adding sample articles in Cantonese and English, and started to write the Main Page.
Oooh, cool.
You okay if I edit some bits to make it even "more" Cantonese/Yue?
little Alex
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
So you can confirm for the list that it is difficult for a native speaker of Mandarin to understand?
Shizhao had the audacity to say « 这个不还是用汉字写的吗？和 zh wp有什么区别？», even when I had to use a colloquial Cantonese dictionary to get anything but the most basic understanding from my knowledge of Mandarin and Baihua.
zh wp有什么区别, you ask Shizhao? For one, it uses distinctly Cantonese words and phrases, and follows Cantonese grammatical structures, all of which would probably not be allowed in zh.wp. The use of Hanzi is almost totally irrelevant, if you used Hanzi for all words on ja.wp (it is possible, just not common), it would be even more difficult to understand. Just because it uses the same ideographic writing system does not mean you can understand it.
Mark
On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 11:15:18 +0800, MilchFlasche瑋平 robertus0617@gmail.com wrote:
Keep up the good working, guys, show them that how different Cantonese is from Mandarin, even when it's written in hanzi. I myself could only guess to understand, and I agree a lot with the idea that such wikipedia should reflect the cultural distinction of Hong Kong and Guangdong.
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 16:58:20 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, of course it's OK! After all, it is a Wiki...
Mark
On Tue, 08 Feb 2005 02:39:49 +0800, Alex Y. Kwan <litalex@gmail.com > wrote:
Hello,
Felix Wan wrote:
I have written the instructions on adding sample articles in Cantonese and English, and started to write the Main Page.
Oooh, cool.
You okay if I edit some bits to make it even "more" Cantonese/Yue?
little Alex
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- 2005, make signs happen!
Hello,
Stirling Newberry wrote:
Mandrin? This should be something which is documentable. Are there schools being set up to teach written vernaculars as opposed to standard Mandrin,
No, but I know plenty of HKers can write in Cantonese (with Hanzi) without having been taught.
are there novels, dictionaries etc. being published in large numbers, is there a movement.
How large is large? Does net forums count? Especially when wikipedia started as a Internet project? Many HKers in HK net forums/boards/bbs write in Cantonese.
In short, has someone shown a notable and documentable desire to separate dialects from Chinese?
I don't view it as a separation from Chinese, but a separation from Mandarin.
some degree of linguistic separationism in progress. However, a stronger case could be made for a desire to incorporate vernacular idioms into standard mandrin, or as an important cultural dialect within the whole, as there are many culturally significant dialects in English which,
The differences aren't as minimal as the differences among dialects in English. And while incorporating slang words, etc. from different "dialects" into Mandarin is possible, that doesn't stop Cantonese/Yue from being something completely different from Mandarin.
Instead of arguing with each other about what "we" would like, it seems better to spend time finding out what the readers want, and then finding a means to provide that.
Well, a wikipedia is a new enough concept to the potential users that I doubt they would be unhappy to learn that there's a Cantonese/Yue wikipedia, in addition to the "traditional" Mandarin vernacular one.
little Alex
Mandrin? This should be something which is documentable. Are there schools being set up to teach written vernaculars as opposed to standard Mandrin,
No, but I know plenty of HKers can write in Cantonese (with Hanzi) without having been taught.
But tell us how much difference are there between "Cantonese characters" and proper Chinese characters? Aren't you still using Chinese characters, with the addition of a few distinctive Cantonese characters? And Hong Kong is not the only place that speaks Cantonese, please do remember. Majority of the Cantonese speakers live in Guangdong, and extremely few, if any, of these people can comprehend or write. Since Wikipedia is set up based on languages rather than countries, it is questionable if a Cantonese Wikipedia should be set up if only a minority of the speakers can understand a non-standard writing system created by a few people. Same objection goes for Min-nan Wikipedia, which can only be understood by a handful Taiwanese, while most Taiwanese and all native speakers of the dialect in Fujian will not have a clue of what is going on.
are there novels, dictionaries etc. being published in large numbers, is there a movement.
How large is large? Does net forums count? Especially when wikipedia started as a Internet project? Many HKers in HK net forums/boards/bbs write in Cantonese.
Again, only HKers can understand your "written Cantonese"! Have you forgotten your neighbours in Guangdong??
some degree of linguistic separationism in progress. However, a stronger case could be made for a desire to incorporate vernacular idioms into standard mandrin, or as an important cultural dialect within the whole, as there are many culturally significant dialects in English which,
The differences aren't as minimal as the differences among dialects in English. And while incorporating slang words, etc. from different "dialects" into Mandarin is possible, that doesn't stop Cantonese/Yue from being something completely different from Mandarin.
There is a big difference I agree. But "completely different from Mandarin"? I doubt if the grammar is different?
Instead of arguing with each other about what "we" would like, it seems better to spend time finding out what the readers want, and then finding a means to provide that.
Well, a wikipedia is a new enough concept to the potential users that I doubt they would be unhappy to learn that there's a Cantonese/Yue wikipedia, in addition to the "traditional" Mandarin vernacular one.
And I doubt how many people can really understand your Cantonese Wikipedia? There are 77 million Cantonese living in Guangdong, and how many of them can really understand "Cantonese characters"? If the majority of the potential readers of your Wikipedia cannot understand you, what position are you in to propose for a Wikipedia written in their native languages?
[[User:Formulax]]
On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 11:06:55 +0800, Sheng Jiong sheng.jiong@gmail.com wrote:
Mandrin? This should be something which is documentable. Are there schools being set up to teach written vernaculars as opposed to standard Mandrin,
No, but I know plenty of HKers can write in Cantonese (with Hanzi) without having been taught.
But tell us how much difference are there between "Cantonese characters" and proper Chinese characters? Aren't you still using Chinese characters, with the addition of a few distinctive Cantonese characters? And Hong Kong is not the only place that speaks Cantonese, please do remember. Majority of the Cantonese speakers live in Guangdong, and extremely few, if any, of these people can comprehend or write. Since Wikipedia is set up based on languages rather than countries, it is questionable if a Cantonese Wikipedia should be set up if only a minority of the speakers can understand a non-standard writing system created by a few people. Same objection goes for Min-nan Wikipedia, which can only be understood by a handful Taiwanese, while most Taiwanese and all native speakers of the dialect in Fujian will not have a clue of what is going on.
So what? Does that mean that those speakers who DO have an idea what is going on, shouldn't be allowed to have a Wikipedia?
I recently read a testimonial from somebody, and let me tell you it really surprised me, who said they don't really know Peh-oe-ji but they picked it up fast enough sounding out pages on the Minnan Wikipedia and now read that Wikipedia regularly (although they don't write in it).
Why would the people in Guangdong have no idea what is going on?
Most of the characters used are already known by everybody, it is just that their position and use is different - grammar between Chineses is very different, as is vocabulary (Mandarin, for example, is often disyllabic where southern sinitic varieties are monosyllabic, this is due largely to the greater loss of tones Mandarin had under Manchurian and Mongolian influence, than the southern varieties which mostly still have 6 or 7 or sometimes even 15 tones). For example in Shanghai, you say "侬叫啥名字？" where in Beijing you say "您叫什么名字？" where in those two phrases, only 3 out of all the characters are the same, and there are some very important differences: Mandarin and Baihuawen use "shenme", a two syllable, two character word, where Shanghai uses "saa", a one-syllable word.
In more complex discourse, many other differences become readily apparent. I don't want to detail all of them here, but I will give a few examples.
(from zoenghee syangkho deeu, 上海乡下头）
mevong kajyi ngu jyeeu teuq ngugeuq bangyeeu nieung veuqwe tugeuq, tseo tu khaveuq coeku seegeuq nieung daka daq chyaqdaqco toe syangkho qyi beuq syang.
每逢假期我就○我○朋友人无会多,○最多○无超过三个人大家踏脚踏车到乡下去○○.
Now, every "○" is a word that doesn't have a cognate in Mandarin. Even if you filled those in (mostly grammatical markers), it still wouldn't be proper Baihua.
Also, you say "proper Chinese characters". This suggests to me you have some sort of contempt for fangyan in general.
are there novels, dictionaries etc. being published in large numbers, is there a movement.
How large is large? Does net forums count? Especially when wikipedia started as a Internet project? Many HKers in HK net forums/boards/bbs write in Cantonese.
Again, only HKers can understand your "written Cantonese"! Have you forgotten your neighbours in Guangdong??
some degree of linguistic separationism in progress. However, a stronger case could be made for a desire to incorporate vernacular idioms into standard mandrin, or as an important cultural dialect within the whole, as there are many culturally significant dialects in English which,
The differences aren't as minimal as the differences among dialects in English. And while incorporating slang words, etc. from different "dialects" into Mandarin is possible, that doesn't stop Cantonese/Yue from being something completely different from Mandarin.
There is a big difference I agree. But "completely different from Mandarin"? I doubt if the grammar is different?
As I demonstrated above, the grammar is very different. Are you sure you speak Shanghai speech variety?
Instead of arguing with each other about what "we" would like, it seems better to spend time finding out what the readers want, and then finding a means to provide that.
Well, a wikipedia is a new enough concept to the potential users that I doubt they would be unhappy to learn that there's a Cantonese/Yue wikipedia, in addition to the "traditional" Mandarin vernacular one.
And I doubt how many people can really understand your Cantonese Wikipedia? There are 77 million Cantonese living in Guangdong, and how many of them can really understand "Cantonese characters"? If the majority of the potential readers of your Wikipedia cannot understand you, what position are you in to propose for a Wikipedia written in their native languages?
Again you bash this proposal with no considerance for fact. Nobody here is proposing to write this Wikipedia in an alien writing system. You are taking remarks out of context. What Alex meant is that Cantonese is often written in a Hong Kong context and people are able to read it without any special training (ie, the characters they learn at school for baihua is enough), by extension the same should apply to Guangdong. http://cantonese.org.cn is based in Guangzhou.
I...disagree. I've been to Guangzhou many, many times. There are tons of local TV and radio programs in Cantonese/Yue, in addition to the Hong Kong programs they watch/listen to. Every time I was in a taxi, if the driver is from the local region, his radio is always tuned to a radio station that speaks Cantonese/Yue.
So? We are discussing if we should have a Wikipedia "written* in Cantonese or any other dialects (which all do not even have a standardised writting system, which means that not all native speakers can understand the written encyclopedia should we have one), not discussing about whether we should have a spoken encyclopedia in these dialects. I totally agree that dialects are living spoken languages in China, but it is absurdly ridiculous to attempt to write in them, as there is *no* **standardised** writing system for them!!
Where do you get the idea there is no standardised writing system? People write in these languages all the time, millions every day.
Yes, there is no official standardised writing system, but there are literary standards that have been set (especially for Cantonese) and what is most important is that PEOPLE CAN READ WHAT EACH OTHER WROTE.
is, all Chinese dialects other than Mandarin remain a spoken language, and extremely few books/articles/etc. are published in dialects.
...citation? How do you know? From what studies are you pulling this information from? You can't just say it and assume it to be true.
From my common sense and my frequent visits to bookshops and libraries all around the world! I have never, in my entire life, seen a single book that is written *completely* in any dialects in China, apart from Mandarin. And as I have said before, apart from some tabloids in Hong Kong, no Chinese newspapers in the world would write in dialects too!
Apparently you haven't been very far around the world. There are many books (off the top of my head, "Diarie of a Yuppie" comes to mind), tabloids, and magazines written in colloquial Cantonese. There are a few books in Wu, too.
I mean, many printed ads in Hong Kong that are written in Cantonese/Yue, using puns and so on. Many slogans of those products are written in Cantonese/Yue. The most recent example I can think of, in fact, is a government ad (from the Equal Opportunity Committee) trying to discourage racism.
I'm not sure about that honestly. But are the books completely written in Cantonese? Or just some puns? And slogons are quite, quite different from encyclopedias, where millions of words have to been written.
Yes, entire books. Imagine that.
What makes you think an encyclopedia can't be written in Sinitic vernaculars? Do you doubt their viability for use as written languages in a modern context? Do you think, that it's not possible to write doctoral dissertation in Cantonese or Wu?
Did you know how many times this same things has been said to minority languages such as Hawaiian, Maori, Basque, Catalan, and do you know what? Every time, they have proved opponents as "wrong". You can find now text on computer science in Catalan (even a Wikipedia in Catalan), a Wikipedia in Maori, one in Basque, and the beginnings of one in Hawaiian, as well as many other texts in modern topics in these languages.
If these people want so much to write an encyclopedia in their language, and you are SO SURE they will fail, why can not let them try, and if you are so smart your point will be proved and it will be failure and these projects will be shut down? Or are you afraid to be wrong?
fact we do not even know what writing system we should use should there be a Chinese dialect Wikipedia.
Well, I would suggest Hanzi script first and consider whether we should do the romanization later on, though I think romanization would be too confusing to really be useful.
That is not the point! It is not important what *you* think. It is important whether our readers can understand? Some HKers may, but how about people in Guangdong? If you are writing an encyclopedia for them and they have not even seen such characters, what is the point. Reminder you one more time: There is no standardised writing system for Cantonese/Wu/etc. dialects.
Wah lau!!! So pushy what! Always yelling one, a bit the loud lah.
Now anyways back to what we talk about. The majority will be able to read Cantonese in Hanzi. It is not difficult, if you already have some basic characters knowledges, or especially if you can read Baihua, even just a little
A recent well-publicized Chinese-government study, for example, claims that only half of the Chinese population are capable of speaking Mandarin ("neng2 shuo1 Pu3tong1hua4"; http://www.beijingtimes.com.cn/news.asp?newsid=88058). This is likely to be shocking only to those who never venture outside of the circles of urban, well-educated elite (of whom the Chinese Wikipedia can count many members).
You are confusing Mandarin with Chinese in its written form. Yes, only 50% can speak Mandarin, but over 80% are literate and they can read Chinese characters (although not in Mandarin). Chinese dialects have more or less the same grammar (probably due to the interaction among the people over thousands of years), therefore not being able to "speak" Mandarin does not mean they cannot "read". The fact is, zh: is a *Chinese Wikipedia*, not just a *Mandarin Wikipedia*.
This is a common myth circulated between monolinguals speakers of Mandarin. Grammr is not the same, it is very different between them. If you know Shanghai speech as you said, why do'nt you try to read out the text with Mandarin character but Shanghai reading, and see if it sound right? It sound unnatural, forced, and sometimes impossible to make sense.
If it is such a "Chinese Wikipedia", how will you feel if I post a new article in the Cantonese or the Wu? It will be either deleted, or the text will be "corrected" to Mandarin.
Mark Mark
Hello,
Sheng Jiong wrote:
But tell us how much difference are there between "Cantonese characters" and proper Chinese characters? Aren't you still using Chinese characters, with the addition of a few distinctive Cantonese characters?
I've never done a study and I don't have any reference books on that topic. But I would highly appreciate it if you drop the "proper", the word "standard" or "typical set of" would work equally well for your purpose without the connotations.
Sure I'd be using the usual Chinese characters in addition to the Cantonese/Yue characters. I can only say that whenever I type in Chinese, it's usually in Traditional Chinese and I've found all the characters I need, even the Cantonese ones, when I use the Changjie system.
please do remember. Majority of the Cantonese speakers live in Guangdong, and extremely few, if any, of these people can comprehend or write.
...write at all or write Cantonese/Yue? Again, have you done a study in this? If not, then citations please?
up if only a minority of the speakers can understand a non-standard writing system created by a few people.
I doubt it's a non--standard writing system created by a few people. Many Cantonese/Yue characters are from the ancient times; only that we've kept those characters when they fell out of use in Northern China where they speak Mandarin.
Again, only HKers can understand your "written Cantonese"! Have you forgotten your neighbours in Guangdong??
And again, you know this...how? Citations?
There is a big difference I agree. But "completely different from Mandarin"? I doubt if the grammar is different?
All right, "completely" is an overstatement, but the grammar is *definitely* different.
And I doubt how many people can really understand your Cantonese Wikipedia?
It's not just *my* Cantonese wikipedia...
There are 77 million Cantonese living in Guangdong, and how many of them can really understand "Cantonese characters"?
I don't know. And we won't know until there is a study or a trial. Can you name any studies?
And really, how many people understand *Klingon*?! Yet it was set up in the past... There are 6.8 million people in Hong Kong; even if only one percent uses the wikipedia, that's sixty thousand people. I think that's enough reason for a trial.
little Alex
On Sun, February 6, 2005 8:57 am, Alex Kwan said:
Hello,
Sheng Jiong wrote:
But tell us how much difference are there between "Cantonese characters" and proper Chinese characters? Aren't you still using Chinese characters, with the addition of a few distinctive Cantonese characters?
I've never done a study and I don't have any reference books on that topic. But I would highly appreciate it if you drop the "proper", the word "standard" or "typical set of" would work equally well for your purpose without the connotations.
Hi Alex:
Every Wikipedian understands what is NPOV. Do not feel bad about those words and his attitude. That will only make his arguments less credible. Why not spend our time and energy in something more creative?
I have created a test site: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-WP/zh-yue Please try to write some articles in Cantonese, and invite other people to write. Let's prove the concept to gain support.
Felix Wan
Hello,
Felix Wan wrote:
I have created a test site: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-WP/zh-yue Please try to write some articles in Cantonese, and invite other people to write. Let's prove the concept to gain support.
Sorry, but I'm visiting Japan tomorrow. Might have to wait a bit before I can contribute, but I definitely will. :)
little Alex
On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 01:41:43 +0800, Alex Kwan litalex@slashyalex.com wrote:
And even going from your perspective, waving around the figure of 1 billion+ people in China doesn't work that well. How many of those 1 billion+ people have frequent access to a computer, to the net? And can find their way to the wikipedias?
One of Wikipedia's goals is to provide the source for CD, DVD and print editions, so that it's not just people who have computer and net access.
(From Guardian UK, October 26, 2004, http://tinyurl.com/5z937): 'However, Wales and his community of volunteers are not resting on their laurels. He is in negotiations to print part of the content, and distribute it in Africa as part of their ambition to "put a free encyclopedia in the hands of every person on the planet".'
Also, see: [[en:Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team]]
I don't know how to find out, but there is a possibility that the percentage of Cantonese/Yue and Wu speakers who have frequent access to the net is higher than the purely Mandarin speakers... Because some of the fastest growing/most developed regions are Guangdong and Jiangsu province. And Jiangsu is specialising in computer chips, etc.
Interesting point, though in the PRC, not sure what "purely Mandarin speakers" refers to. For most PRC folks, there is the local dialect for the household and community, and putonghua for schooling and formal business. I gave a talk to Jiangsu Media Group last year (part of it about Wikipedia) and the majority of regional radio and television content is not in the local dialect, but in putonghua. For Guangdong's local media, it's largely the same case.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
Hello,
Andrew Lih wrote:
television content is not in the local dialect, but in putonghua. For Guangdong's local media, it's largely the same case.
I...disagree. I've been to Guangzhou many, many times. There are tons of local TV and radio programs in Cantonese/Yue, in addition to the Hong Kong programs they watch/listen to. Every time I was in a taxi, if the driver is from the local region, his radio is always tuned to a radio station that speaks Cantonese/Yue.
little Alex
On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 15:12:28 +0800, Alex Kwan litalex@slashyalex.com wrote:
I...disagree. I've been to Guangzhou many, many times. There are tons of local TV and radio programs in Cantonese/Yue, in addition to the Hong Kong programs they watch/listen to. Every time I was in a taxi, if the driver is from the local region, his radio is always tuned to a radio station that speaks Cantonese/Yue.
That's somewhat true, as folks native to southern Guangdong tune into HK-based and local Cantonese sources. Certainly they have the strongest local dialect programming in China, especially arts, culture and popular programming.
However, more and more, the region is being filled by migrants from other regions, because of the economic prosperity and worker shortages. In the extreme case of Shenzhen, Cantonese is not widely spoken among the 4.5 million inhabitants because the population is largely transplanted from other places. Because of this, and the ambition to be national satellite broadcasters, putonghua makes up the bulk of the content of these media groups. But your point is valid.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
I...disagree. I've been to Guangzhou many, many times. There are tons of local TV and radio programs in Cantonese/Yue, in addition to the Hong Kong programs they watch/listen to. Every time I was in a taxi, if the driver is from the local region, his radio is always tuned to a radio station that speaks Cantonese/Yue.
So? We are discussing if we should have a Wikipedia "written* in Cantonese or any other dialects (which all do not even have a standardised writting system, which means that not all native speakers can understand the written encyclopedia should we have one), not discussing about whether we should have a spoken encyclopedia in these dialects. I totally agree that dialects are living spoken languages in China, but it is absurdly ridiculous to attempt to write in them, as there is *no* **standardised** writing system for them!!
[[User:Formulax]]
Hello,
Sheng Jiong wrote:
dialects. I totally agree that dialects are living spoken languages in China, but it is absurdly ridiculous to attempt to write in them, as there is *no* **standardised** writing system for them!!
Big5-HKSCS, which is standardised in Hong Kong. And we can go on from there in order to acconodate people who only know Simplified Chinese. I don't know the situation in Guangdong province, but I do know that you won't be a good person to ask, not when you've already assumed the answers without any actual research.
little Alex
On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 00:03:02 +0800, Alex Kwan litalex@slashyalex.com wrote:
I understand what you're saying and where you're coming from. But I can't help but see Mark's point, too. To me, you're coming across as, I don't want to let you have your pet project because my pet project benefits more people.
No, it's nothing like that. Unfortunately, Mark's mischaracterizations have not helped. The point from the start - a Wikipedia with a single contributor is a very lonely place. Make sure we're helping to nurture sustainable efforts before sending onesies-and-twosies to start a new edition.
I've been across Asia encouraging the growth of SE Asia language Wikipedias, like Malaysian, Indonesian, Vietnamese and Cambodian Wikipedias. Some efforts have been successful, some not. Veterans on this list know I'm all for encouraging more editions.
So *I* will be selfish and ask you, so what if it benefits more people? Why should that be my concern just because it is yours? Especially when you're giving me the vibe that you could care less about my pet project? You're asking for my/our help and yet you're dismissive of my/our wants and wishes.
Most people seem to like working on Wikipedia because it benefits others. One can certainly work on Wikipedia for different reasons.
It's not being dismissive. It's great if folks have the critical mass to start a new Wikipedia, and that's why there's been discussion about defining a "starting set" of articles, front page, initial contributors, etc. However, Mark has an exuberance in starting new language Wikipedias, often without any prospect of sustainability.
*And* you're assuming that a number of us will be working on the "Mandarin" wikipedia if we don't have a Cantonese/Yue wikipedia to work on, which isn't necessarily true. I, for example, write better and faster in English and I'll probably spend more time on the English wikipedia if I can't help in a Cantonese/Yue one.
That's fine. The Wikipedia project has never hesitated to highlight where help is needed, and it's never forced people to commit to only one thing. The same is true here.
It's not being dismissive. It's great if folks have the critical mass to start a new Wikipedia, and that's why there's been discussion about defining a "starting set" of articles, front page, initial contributors, etc. However, Mark has an exuberance in starting new language Wikipedias, often without any prospect of sustainability.
1) http://scn.wikipedia.org/ - created October 2004, well-maintained by a number of regular contributors with now nearly 300 articles. 2) http://fur.wikipedia.org/ - created 25 January 2005, currently has 5 articles and appears to be doing good rather than bad so far. 3) http://sc.wikipedia.org/ - created a very long time ago, when I was still new to Wikipedia. No regular contributors, 3 articles. The difference between the other two is that for them, support came before creation rather than after.
Mark.
(of all those other Wikipedias I have supported creating which were eventually created, ang: is doing well, got: is not, and tum: appears to be a bit stale though this had no opposition from anybody)
On Wed, February 2, 2005 7:35 pm, Andrew Lih said:
Felix, that's a good summary of the issues.
Right now, I would encourage Chinese-savvy, prospective Wikipedians to work on ZH rather than spawning many, small Chinese-dialect Wikipedias. Jimbo's statement is the most compelling argument for this:
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." -Jimmy Wales, July 2004
To me, that means encouraging most of the labour towards making a "Mandarin" Wikipedia. As a side effect, Wikipedia can be an experiment in Internet democracy or a way to preserve/promote languages. But the primary goal should be to write an encyclopedia.
One done in Mandarin will benefit over 1 billion people who simply don't have a good free encyclopedia, in both senses of the word - free as in beer, and free as in freedom. The faster we get there, the better. And I don't think that's a selfish notion.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
Hi Andrew:
I do not find anything selfish about wanting to create a good free ZH encyclopedia, but I do not believe we must forbid creation of encyclopedia in other Chinese dialects to acheive the goal.
The main page of the ZH Wikipedia says, "hai3 na4 bai3 chuan1, you3 rong2 nai3 da4" (The sea receive hundreds of rivers. It accepts, so it is large.) People become editors for various reasons, and obviously some do not share our goal of producing a good free encyclopedia. Wikipedia accepts them, and it becomes great. Most Internet users are not Wikipedia editors. Let's think about getting more people involved rather than grabbing existing human resources.
My vision is different from yours. If a ZH-YUE Wikipedia were to setup, some people originally active in ZH may go there to help its start, but according to the current demography, I believe most resources will be initially drained from EN. Eventually ZH-YUE will either die out or attract new editors. Those new editors may also edit on ZH and EN, and there may be good articles in ZH-YUE to be translated into ZH and EN.
I am not really an advocate of literature in Chinese dialects. But if someone requests, I will testify that they exist and are not the same as standard written Chinese (Bai2hua4wen2), I will not oppose those that have reasonable number of readers and potential editors, and I will support those that I can contribute.
I consider myself an active EN editor, though not Wikiholic enough. Eventually I will spend most effort on EN, second most on ZH, and some effort on ZH-YUE and ZH-WUU if they can be successfully created. In terms of writing, my skills is EN > ZH > ZH-YUE. I still need to learn which characters to use to write in ZH-WUU from examples.
Here, I would also like to encourage Chinese people who know English to write more on China-related topics in EN because I think EN is the Wikipedia closest to completion, and it will benefit even more people than the ZH Wikipedia. However, I will not say that they should work on EN *rather than* Wikipedia in other languages.
Also, please remember: Wikipedia was an experiment, it still is, and we should not stop innovation just because we see some success.
Felix Wan
Andrew Lih ti 2005/2/2 EP 10:35 sia-kong:
To me, that means encouraging most of the labour towards making a "Mandarin" Wikipedia. As a side effect, Wikipedia can be an experiment in Internet democracy or a way to preserve/promote languages. But the primary goal should be to write an encyclopedia.
One done in Mandarin will benefit over 1 billion people who simply don't have a good free encyclopedia, in both senses of the word - free as in beer, and free as in freedom. The faster we get there, the better. And I don't think that's a selfish notion.
No, but it is a statement of (nationalist?) faith in the ubiquity and all-empowering contemporary relevance of Mandarin to today's Chinese population, one not necessarily backed by empirical evidence and ordinary experience. A recent well-publicized Chinese-government study, for example, claims that only half of the Chinese population are capable of speaking Mandarin ("neng2 shuo1 Pu3tong1hua4"; http://www.beijingtimes.com.cn/news.asp?newsid=88058). This is likely to be shocking only to those who never venture outside of the circles of urban, well-educated elite (of whom the Chinese Wikipedia can count many members).
That is not to deny that a Chinese encyclopedia to benefit millions is not a worthwhile goal. Only that we should not delude ourselves of the power and grandeur of such a project which, after all, serves but one language -- one spoken by hundreds of millions but nevertheless hardly the primary, everyday language of millions more. And that is assuming a very high literacy level, which again is supported neither by studies nor our experience interacting with those outside of the elite classes. (To be sure, Wikipedia could be voice-recorded, by human or machine, or printed for the millions and millions too impoverished to own a PC, but these media require more expensive -- not to mention, censorship-prone -- means of presentation and delivery.)
Unfortunately it is all too common for both non-Chinese and Chinese alike to imagine a kind of monolithic, timeless cultural norm, be it to serve nationalism or to depict a simplistic other (see B. Anderson's "Imagined Community"; Said's "Orientalism"), rather than engaging with the reality on the ground. Ultimately Wikipedians should not fall prey to such imagination.
~~~~
Also important, in my mind, is this: nobody argues that simply not participating in a Wikipedia you don't like is bad, but would it be right of us to override popular support of language-speaking Wikipedians and deny creation of these Wikipedias citing a desire for "linguistic unity" in a move that would be more expected of Gongchandang/Gungchaandong/Kongchetaz than Weijidang/Waigeidong/Viqitaz?
Mark
On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 05:47:09 -0500, Henry H. Tan-Tenn share2002nov@lomaji.com wrote:
Andrew Lih ti 2005/2/2 EP 10:35 sia-kong:
To me, that means encouraging most of the labour towards making a "Mandarin" Wikipedia. As a side effect, Wikipedia can be an experiment in Internet democracy or a way to preserve/promote languages. But the primary goal should be to write an encyclopedia.
One done in Mandarin will benefit over 1 billion people who simply don't have a good free encyclopedia, in both senses of the word - free as in beer, and free as in freedom. The faster we get there, the better. And I don't think that's a selfish notion.
No, but it is a statement of (nationalist?) faith in the ubiquity and all-empowering contemporary relevance of Mandarin to today's Chinese population, one not necessarily backed by empirical evidence and ordinary experience. A recent well-publicized Chinese-government study, for example, claims that only half of the Chinese population are capable of speaking Mandarin ("neng2 shuo1 Pu3tong1hua4"; http://www.beijingtimes.com.cn/news.asp?newsid=88058). This is likely to be shocking only to those who never venture outside of the circles of urban, well-educated elite (of whom the Chinese Wikipedia can count many members).
That is not to deny that a Chinese encyclopedia to benefit millions is not a worthwhile goal. Only that we should not delude ourselves of the power and grandeur of such a project which, after all, serves but one language -- one spoken by hundreds of millions but nevertheless hardly the primary, everyday language of millions more. And that is assuming a very high literacy level, which again is supported neither by studies nor our experience interacting with those outside of the elite classes. (To be sure, Wikipedia could be voice-recorded, by human or machine, or printed for the millions and millions too impoverished to own a PC, but these media require more expensive -- not to mention, censorship-prone -- means of presentation and delivery.)
Unfortunately it is all too common for both non-Chinese and Chinese alike to imagine a kind of monolithic, timeless cultural norm, be it to serve nationalism or to depict a simplistic other (see B. Anderson's "Imagined Community"; Said's "Orientalism"), rather than engaging with the reality on the ground. Ultimately Wikipedians should not fall prey to such imagination.
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
A recent well-publicized Chinese-government study, for example, claims that only half of the Chinese population are capable of speaking Mandarin ("neng2 shuo1 Pu3tong1hua4"; http://www.beijingtimes.com.cn/news.asp?newsid=88058). This is likely to be shocking only to those who never venture outside of the circles of urban, well-educated elite (of whom the Chinese Wikipedia can count many members).
You are confusing Mandarin with Chinese in its written form. Yes, only 50% can speak Mandarin, but over 80% are literate and they can read Chinese characters (although not in Mandarin). Chinese dialects have more or less the same grammar (probably due to the interaction among the people over thousands of years), therefore not being able to "speak" Mandarin does not mean they cannot "read". The fact is, zh: is a *Chinese Wikipedia*, not just a *Mandarin Wikipedia*.
[[User:Formulax]]
På 3. feb. 2005 kl. 03:55 skrev Felix Wan:
Proposal
I propose that we agree on some policies on setting up a Wikipedia in a new language. Since a new Wikipedia will need some good articles to start with anyway, we may ask people who propose new Wikipedia to pick some topics from the 1000 essential articles and write say at least 3 good articles of moderate length and 20 good stubs in the proposed script. A possible location without new setup for those experimental articles will be on meta by using pages with prefixes like "Wikipedia:New/zh-yue-han/", "Wikipedia:New/zh-wuu-han/", "Wikipedia:New/zh-guoyu-pinyin/". (By the way, I support Pinyin Wikipedia. If there is a "Simple English" version, why not a pinyin version for people to learn Chinese?)
There exist such a list on meta, i belive it hasn't been updated lately and perhaps could need a "de-americanization".
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ List_of_articles_all_languages_should_have
mvh. Lars Alvik User:Profoss
Hi Felix,
I also noticed what you said in Meta about not supporting having a separate edition for Penkyamp and a separate edition for romanized Wu. I think this point is important to emphasize.
I don't see why these separate editions are nessecary. The difference is only between scripts, and Han characters can be converted to Penkyamp or a Wu romanization system by computer with great accuracy.
Having separate editions for Chinese vernaculars is in my view a good thing, but as you said it may be a little bit hard to gather support at first. Imagine how much harder it will be if it is divided across 3 entirely separate Wikipedias for different scripts?
I think we should all start out using the Han script, and from there we can develop conversion technology if nessecary.
What I think is most important here however is this:
The board needs to make an ultimate decision on whether groups of native speakers should be allowed their own Wikipedia when they request it amid objections from a group of speakers of a different language.
IE, should a Cantonese and Wu Wikipedia be created with the full support of people like Felix Wan and Nishishei and Pangguanzhe, and the tentative support of people like Alex, all of whom actually speak these languages, as well as the support of some non-speakers (Pektiong, MilchFlasche, Kaihsu, and encouraging words from a few other zh.wikipedians who don't actually know any of these languages), against the strong wills of non-speakers such as Andrew Lih, Sheng Jiong (who, it should be noted, does speak Minnan), Shizhao, and such?
What I think is particularly compelling about this particular case is that no Cantonese or Wu speakers have come out yet to say outright "No", even skeptical native speakers like Toytoy have not given such a strong opinion.
I also think a decision should be made in the near future so this issue can stop being argued over in slow motion.
Mark
On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 18:55:15 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan felixwiki@earthsphere.org wrote:
Dear all:
Finally I have found my way here where the discussion takes place. There has not been much in meta. I have read arguments from both sides here, and I would like to contribute my ideas to the question we have.
Let me first introduce my language background. My parents' native language is actually Shanghainese, so I know it. I was born and raised in Hong Kong, so I am most fluent in Cantonese. My elementary school used Mandarin as the language of instruction, so I am also fluent in Mandarin. My education later was more and more in English, so I also know the British English dialect. Then I went to USA and became fluent in American English. I also know a little Japanese.
It is very interesting but not surprising to see that the strongest opposition against setting up Wikipedia in Chinese dialects came from Chinese speakers. Yes, we are educated to believe that Chinese is one language and that Qin Shihuang has unified the written language thousands of years ago. One user correctly pointed out that the unified writing system was Classical Chinese (Wenyanwen). Today's Xiandai Hanyu / Baihuawen is actually based on the Mandarin vernacular. People not speaking Mandarin Chinese suddenly became illiterate when they first encountered Baihuawen but education has successfully established the Mandarin vernacular as the new standard of Chinese writing.
Cantonese Chinese : Mandarin Chinese :: British English : American English?
One user has correctly pointed out that the analogy is improper. All linguists agree that the first two dialects are not mutually intelligible but the last two dialects are. The reason that Mandarin speakers can understand writing by people from Hong Kong is that formal education requires students to writing in Mandarin vocabulary and Mandarin grammar. Many students are unaware of the fact just because they do not speak Mandarin. That fact is that every literate Cantonese speaker can understand text written in the Mandarin vernacular. That is why some users argued that text written in Cantonese may not be needed.
Colloquial vs. Vernacular
There could be some misunderstanding that I have to make clear. Standard written Chinese is not in colloquial Mandarin but in vernacular Mandarin. There should be a sense of formality in written literature, and the vocabulary should be standardized, but it should sound natural and grammatical like it is spoken everyday. Standard written Chinese does not sound like Cantonese when every character is pronounced in Cantonese. I must say that the literary vernacular Cantonese standard is not as developed as Mandarin, but as many users has stated, there are people creating Cantonese literature. Although writing a Cantonese encyclopedia will be unprecedented, I supported the idea because I already found Wikipedia in minority languages and fictional languages. I thought: why not give major dialects of China a try?
As an illustration, the language I am writing in is vernacular English. Colloquial English will be like this: http://www.langmaker.com/db/bbl_englishcolloquial.htm
I found that later in the discussion, the opposition started to get focused on the real issue that got my attention: If I am writing the encyclopedia in vernacular Cantonese using traditional Chinese script, how much will it be different from the existing ZH Wikipedia? We can only try it out to see. So far linguistic studies concentrated only on the spoken varieties of Chinese.
Proposal
I propose that we agree on some policies on setting up a Wikipedia in a new language. Since a new Wikipedia will need some good articles to start with anyway, we may ask people who propose new Wikipedia to pick some topics from the 1000 essential articles and write say at least 3 good articles of moderate length and 20 good stubs in the proposed script. A possible location without new setup for those experimental articles will be on meta by using pages with prefixes like "Wikipedia:New/zh-yue-han/", "Wikipedia:New/zh-wuu-han/", "Wikipedia:New/zh-guoyu-pinyin/". (By the way, I support Pinyin Wikipedia. If there is a "Simple English" version, why not a pinyin version for people to learn Chinese?)
That is just a thought. How feasible is the idea? Please fill me in on the technical issues. I hope that further discussions here can work on the details formalize the procedure so that every language/dialect can have a fair chance to start a new Wikipedia and have a reasonably good foundation if started.
As for the doubt on how much time I will spend on the Wu Wikipedia? I don't know. How much commitment is required to support an issue on Wikimedia? Is there a policy? The reason I am only active in EN is because I want not only to edit, but to participate in the community. I prefer spending more time on one community first. I have already made some edits on ZH, and I will contribute more.
Felix Wan
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Thu, February 3, 2005 3:41 am, Mark Williamson said:
Hi Felix,
I also noticed what you said in Meta about not supporting having a separate edition for Penkyamp and a separate edition for romanized Wu. I think this point is important to emphasize.
Actually, if someone propose a romanized Cantonese or Wu edition, I will consider each proposal on its own merits. My main concern in Meta was to stick to what the section title says, and that when people need to make a decision, they know exactly who support what.
I myself am not an advocate of literature in Cantonese or Wu, but I want to present a picture of what is going on, as accurately as I can do, and if some people are willing to try, I want to support their effort.
I don't see why these separate editions are nessecary. The difference is only between scripts, and Han characters can be converted to Penkyamp or a Wu romanization system by computer with great accuracy.
I have not considered that. It will not be straight forward though. The complexity should be larger than the conversion between traditional and simplified Han scripts in the existing ZH Wikipedia.
Moreover, if a Chinese dialect is not written in Han script but in Latin script, it may result in a different literary standard. For example, a Latin script will discourage play of words using homophones. Try creating a Wikipedia using Hanyu Pinyin, following all the official orthographic rules, and we will discover the difficulty in automatic translation. Translation in the other way round need even more artificial intelligence.
Having separate editions for Chinese vernaculars is in my view a good thing, but as you said it may be a little bit hard to gather support at first. Imagine how much harder it will be if it is divided across 3 entirely separate Wikipedias for different scripts?
I think we should all start out using the Han script, and from there we can develop conversion technology if nessecary.
What I think is most important here however is this:
The board needs to make an ultimate decision on whether groups of native speakers should be allowed their own Wikipedia when they request it amid objections from a group of speakers of a different language.
IE, should a Cantonese and Wu Wikipedia be created with the full support of people like Felix Wan and Nishishei and Pangguanzhe, and the tentative support of people like Alex, all of whom actually speak these languages, as well as the support of some non-speakers (Pektiong, MilchFlasche, Kaihsu, and encouraging words from a few other zh.wikipedians who don't actually know any of these languages), against the strong wills of non-speakers such as Andrew Lih, Sheng Jiong (who, it should be noted, does speak Minnan), Shizhao, and such?
What I think is particularly compelling about this particular case is that no Cantonese or Wu speakers have come out yet to say outright "No", even skeptical native speakers like Toytoy have not given such a strong opinion.
I also think a decision should be made in the near future so this issue can stop being argued over in slow motion.
Mark
Please notice that Shizhao said he will not oppose ZH-YUE or ZH-WUU if they are written in Latin scripts, as ZH-MIN-NAN currently is. His concern was that the difference between written Mandarin and written Cantonese may not be different enough to need a new encyclopdia. That concern was also shared by Toytoy. It was their concern that motivated me to suggest writing experimental pages for each proposed new Wikipedia project. I believe that can address their concern.
People support or oppose the same thing for very different reasons. We can still use some discussion to understand each other better.
Felix Wan
Hi Felix,
I agree that conversion TO han characters is very difficult and not reasonable, however conversion to romanization FROM han characters is very simple, especially in the case of Mandarin (it's a bit more difficult for Cantonese and Wu).
Perhaps you are right - perhaps we should have separate Wikipedias for the romanization.
My suggestion, however, is that we start with a single Yue Wikipedia on a trial basis, and if it has any measure of success, we explore the issue of opening others for romanization.
As for the opposition of Shizhao and Toytoy, you are right. I think that now is a good time to start these experimental articles on meta: I think a good URL would be http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test:Yue/Articlename , my suggestion would be to write one Hong Kong related article, and two other articles.
Mark
On Thu, 3 Feb 2005 16:57:35 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan felixwiki@earthsphere.org wrote:
On Thu, February 3, 2005 3:41 am, Mark Williamson said:
Hi Felix,
I also noticed what you said in Meta about not supporting having a separate edition for Penkyamp and a separate edition for romanized Wu. I think this point is important to emphasize.
Actually, if someone propose a romanized Cantonese or Wu edition, I will consider each proposal on its own merits. My main concern in Meta was to stick to what the section title says, and that when people need to make a decision, they know exactly who support what.
I myself am not an advocate of literature in Cantonese or Wu, but I want to present a picture of what is going on, as accurately as I can do, and if some people are willing to try, I want to support their effort.
I don't see why these separate editions are nessecary. The difference is only between scripts, and Han characters can be converted to Penkyamp or a Wu romanization system by computer with great accuracy.
I have not considered that. It will not be straight forward though. The complexity should be larger than the conversion between traditional and simplified Han scripts in the existing ZH Wikipedia.
Moreover, if a Chinese dialect is not written in Han script but in Latin script, it may result in a different literary standard. For example, a Latin script will discourage play of words using homophones. Try creating a Wikipedia using Hanyu Pinyin, following all the official orthographic rules, and we will discover the difficulty in automatic translation. Translation in the other way round need even more artificial intelligence.
Having separate editions for Chinese vernaculars is in my view a good thing, but as you said it may be a little bit hard to gather support at first. Imagine how much harder it will be if it is divided across 3 entirely separate Wikipedias for different scripts?
I think we should all start out using the Han script, and from there we can develop conversion technology if nessecary.
What I think is most important here however is this:
The board needs to make an ultimate decision on whether groups of native speakers should be allowed their own Wikipedia when they request it amid objections from a group of speakers of a different language.
IE, should a Cantonese and Wu Wikipedia be created with the full support of people like Felix Wan and Nishishei and Pangguanzhe, and the tentative support of people like Alex, all of whom actually speak these languages, as well as the support of some non-speakers (Pektiong, MilchFlasche, Kaihsu, and encouraging words from a few other zh.wikipedians who don't actually know any of these languages), against the strong wills of non-speakers such as Andrew Lih, Sheng Jiong (who, it should be noted, does speak Minnan), Shizhao, and such?
What I think is particularly compelling about this particular case is that no Cantonese or Wu speakers have come out yet to say outright "No", even skeptical native speakers like Toytoy have not given such a strong opinion.
I also think a decision should be made in the near future so this issue can stop being argued over in slow motion.
Mark
Please notice that Shizhao said he will not oppose ZH-YUE or ZH-WUU if they are written in Latin scripts, as ZH-MIN-NAN currently is. His concern was that the difference between written Mandarin and written Cantonese may not be different enough to need a new encyclopdia. That concern was also shared by Toytoy. It was their concern that motivated me to suggest writing experimental pages for each proposed new Wikipedia project. I believe that can address their concern.
People support or oppose the same thing for very different reasons. We can still use some discussion to understand each other better.
Felix Wan
Hello Felix,
Thank you for writing such an articulate and descriptive email about this. Many other discussions of the subject have been emotional and incomplete.
Let me second Lars's recommendation of this list of universal articles (and again, feel free to edit this list) :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_articles_all_languages_should_have
I don't know much about arguments for or against getting speakers of all of these languages to use a single Wikipedia. But let me point out, for those new to these language names [and to our list of language WPs], that Wu is the most widely-spoken language/dialect in the world which does not yet have its own Wikipedia version. The other three most populous languages which don't have their own WP are also languages related to Chinese.
From this list of languages, let's look at the top 20 by # of native
speakers, leaving out those familiar to most on this list. In order of popularity, do we have wikipedias for them?
Bengali? Check. (11+ articles) Wu? No. Javanese? Check. (223+ arts) Telugu? Check. (101 arts) Cantonese? No. Marathi? Check. (39+ arts) Tamil? Check. (485+ arts) Min nan? Check. (550+ arts) ... but controversial, & was initially hosted on a third-party server. Gujarati? Check. (30+ arts) Egyptian? Check? (Arabic, 1500+ arts) Hunnanese? No. Kannada? Check. (192+ arts) Malayalam? Check. (117+ arts) Hakka? No. Oriya? Check. (1? arts) Western Panjabi? Check. (0.5 arts) Eastern Panjabi? No. [not distinguished from Western Panjabi, above] Western Farsi? Check. (Persian, 1200+ arts) Bojhpuri? Check. (1? arts)
[these are all langs with over 25M native speakers ca. 1997, according to: http://www.nicemice.net/amc/tmp/lang-pop.var]
On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 18:55:15 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan felixwiki@earthsphere.org wrote:
Proposal
I propose that we agree on some policies on setting up a Wikipedia in a new language. Since a new Wikipedia will need some good articles to start with anyway, we may ask people who propose new Wikipedia to pick some topics from the 1000 essential articles and write say at least 3 good articles of moderate length and 20 good stubs in the proposed script. A possible location without new setup for those experimental articles will be on meta by using pages with prefixes like "Wikipedia:New/zh-yue-han/", "Wikipedia:New/zh-wuu-han/", "Wikipedia:New/zh-guoyu-pinyin/". (By the way, I support Pinyin Wikipedia. If there is a "Simple English" version, why not a pinyin version for people to learn Chinese?)
I like this idea. 3 good articles and 20 good stubs, with a translated main page, should be sufficient interest to start a new language/dialect, or at least to provide content on which to base arguments about why the new project should not start.
I would put such new content on Meta, with pages like meta.wikimedia.org/New-lang/yue/Main Page meta.wikimedia.org/New-lang/pinyin/Zhongguo
I don't have anything personal against nomenclature like zh-min-nan, zh-yue-han, etc; particularly if that allows us to use some third-party group's decisions on nomenclature; but the above short names should at least identify the proposed new wikipedia unambiguously.
On Thu, February 3, 2005 5:55 am, Sj said:
I like this idea. 3 good articles and 20 good stubs, with a translated main page, should be sufficient interest to start a new language/dialect, or at least to provide content on which to base arguments about why the new project should not start.
I would put such new content on Meta, with pages like meta.wikimedia.org/New-lang/yue/Main Page meta.wikimedia.org/New-lang/pinyin/Zhongguo
I don't have anything personal against nomenclature like zh-min-nan, zh-yue-han, etc; particularly if that allows us to use some third-party group's decisions on nomenclature; but the above short names should at least identify the proposed new wikipedia unambiguously.
Thank you, and some other people for supporting this idea. Considering suggestions of page location, I have just set up the testing ground at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/Test-WP/zh-yue
These are my reasons: 1. I prefer to call it "Test" since that should invoke the least objection. 2. I prefer to make it systematic so that other controversal proposals may use the same method, so I should include "WP" for Wikipedia proposals. 3. "zh-yue" should most likely be the domain of the Wikipedia if it gets approval. It is unlikely to have more than one versions of Cantonese in near future. 4. Somehow ":" had unexpected redirection effect, so I used "Test-WP".
I hope that supporters of Cantonese can start adding some test articles under this structure: http://meta.wikimedia.org/Test-WP/zh-yue/Article
Let's see what happens.
Felix Wan
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org