[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Chinese dialects

[Alex Kwan]

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