FYI, ZH folks...
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: abc_root abcd_root@yahoo.co.jp Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 19:12:00 +0900 (JST) Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for classical Chinese To: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org
Dear all:
I would like to request a new Wikipedia for classical Chinese or kanbun( 漢文/文言文) which is the standard form of Chinese for about two thousand years and was used throughout East Asia as the formal form of writing. Its importance in East Asia is like that of Latin in Europe. Now that Wikipedias are running or being started for many of the languages in East Asia, it seems that the language which is the backbone of these languages should also have a place.
One problem that might be encountered in writing articles for kanbun wikipedia is how the foreign loanwords (e.g. from English) should be phonetically transcribed when there is no corresponding word in kanbun itself. If they are transcribed using kanji (Chinese characters), there is the question of which language should be used to read the kanji. Here I suggest using an alphabet system of East Asia (e.g. Japanese kana or Korean hangul, or Taiwanese chu-yin) for the transcription and also note the original word in English (or any other language of origin or the roman transcription if the language is not written in roman alphabet). This allows kanbun users speaking different languages to know the original foreign word.
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