[Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request, and Chinese Wikipedia again

Mark Williamson node.ue at gmail.com
Sat Feb 19 05:09:15 UTC 2005


Hi Formulax,

I enjoy your tactic of "act conciliatory buay conciliatory" as they
say in s'pore.

In one e-mail you act so nice, like "I don't want to discourage", then
after a response you say a different sort of tone, more like "You are
wrong, I fight you this to the death".

It has testimony from native speakers such as Felix Wan and Alex Kwan,
and quotes from experts by myself, that there is more differences than
these "non-standard characters", it has the difference of grammar too.

You confuse "Chinese" and "Baihuawen". "Baihuawen", based on Mandarin
grammar, vocabulary, and suches. Is not like Wen Yan, which is more
similar to Cantonese or Hakka's grammar and vocabulary, it takes many
new characters and discards the widely accepted ones for example your
Mandarin loving character 的 which replaces perfectly good already used
character with even less strokes by far, still used often in writing
Minnan in Hanzi.

There IS SCHOOL TEACHING in WRITTEN CANTONESE. It is not primary
school, no, but there is course at a Hong Kongs university about how
to write in "colloquial cantonese", and expectation that when it
finishes the courses series it can write long articles even books in
colloquial cantonese and have some small experts knowledge about it.

There IS NEWSPAPERS writing in Cantonese (wait - you says that
"Standard Chinese" is can be read as Cantonese? What are we talking
here!!?). I do'nt know about these dailys, but it is for sure tabloid
newspaper and some teenager and womens magazine which writes
completely or largely in the Cantonese colloquial writing.

The Minnan Wikipedia has support on Livejournal from Taiwanese user
who says they don't read Peh-oe-ji from school instead from readiong
Wikipedia just, if ask you get a link to its post.

Mark

On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 10:22:00 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If I recall correctly there was never a consensus in zh.wikipedia that
> > a Minnan Wikipedia should be created.
> 
> That is why it has made Minnan Wikipedia a big joke. Extremely few
> Minnan speakers (even in Taiwan) can understand what the hack these
> guys are writing about in their Minnan Wikipedia. Because Minnan
> simply do not yet have a standardised writing system (despite
> Taiwanese government's effort to establish one, most grown-ups in
> Taiwan sitll cannot comprehend written Minnan, and there is no Minnan
> newspaper, only one TV channel)
> 
> > Its original creation was as an entirely separate project "Holopedia"
> > due to extreme community opposition from zh.wikipedia and the
> > probability that people like Jimbo would at the time have been
> > unwilling to consider it if his anonymous Chinese advisors said
> > "閩南話與白話文是統一語言".
> 
> And Holopedia does not grow too.
> 
> > As it was eventually turned into a small Wikipedia with a small number
> > of articles (rather than 0), the general Wikipedia community accepted
> > it somewhat hesitatingly although on zh.wikipedia it was widely
> > disputed as to whether it should exist.
> 
> Because people choose to igonore it, and because it is just so small
> and it is almost non-existent. But I am not prepared to accept another
> Cantonese Wikipedia, and then Shanghainese, and then whatsoever trash.
> 
> > Especially different in this case is use of Cantonese characters
> > instead of Whites' languages' characters.
> 
> There are not standard. No one has formalised these "characters", not
> the Hong Kong government (both before and after 1997), not the
> Guangdong government, not any governments in the world. There is also
> not a standard developed by any influential non-government
> organizations.
> 
> > Some people will ask "What
> > is the difference?" but many of these people are the same people who
> > would "correct" vernacular content posted to zh.wikipedia itself,
> > showing that there really is a difference (I tried it once - it kept
> > being reverted to the "correct" grammar ie baihuawen).
> 
> Your edit is reverted because you used these non-standard characters.
> But put characters aside, the grammar is the same for Cantonese and
> Chinese.
> 
> > This is the issue of self-determination of this community of people
> > writing colloquial Cantonese, it is not fair to let others decide to
> > make them choose between writing Baihuawen or not write at all.
> 
> We are now seeing a small portion of Cantonese speakers who believe
> that there should be something as a Cantonese Wikipedia. But for most
> Cantonese speakers (even if you just limit that to Hong Kongers), most
> people object such proposals because most people know that Cantonese
> is NOT a written language. Again I want you to show me evidence that
> Cantonese IS a written language (do not tell me X books are written in
> Cantonese, because these are just 1 or 2 exceptions. What I want to
> see is 1) has any school began teaching WRITTEN CANTONESE; 2) has any
> newspapers/magazines started writing in Cantonese)
> 
> [[User:Formualx]]
> 
> > As for the bible in Cantonese, yes there are, and they are still used.
> >
> > There are also versions in Hakka (kejiahua), Wu, Minnan, and all other
> > Chinese vernaculars. Most of them use hanzi, but some use Whites'
> > languages' characters, and some use a mixture (representing only some
> > functions words with the roman letters).
> >
> > I daresay that most of these aren't widely used but this is for the
> > alternative reason that Christianity is, for various reasons, not well
> > tolerated in China (except in ethnic minorities), and outside the
> > mainland most Chinese speak Cantonese, Minnan, and Hakka besides
> > Mandarin. Thusly Minnan and Hakka bibles are used by some peoples in
> > Taiwan, and Cantonese and Hakka bibles is used by some people in
> > Hongkong and maybe Macao.
> >
> > This delves into the debate on whether the Bible should be written in
> > an extra formal literary language that is difficult to imagine
> > happening (in most of the widely-used English translations, it's
> > difficult to imagine real people in real situations speaking that
> > way), or to use a colloquial style that is easier for people to
> > understand and relate to.
> >
> > I, not being religious (and what religion I do have is an amalgamy of
> > Judaism and Christianity but with more Atheism than either), don't
> > have a preference, but in Bible translation it is always a
> > consideration.
> >
> > Some Arabic churches prefer to read the Bible with God's speech in a
> > formal manner, while others use local colloquial forms because it is
> > easy to imagine people saying the words, in real life, although I
> > think most Arab churches use vernacular versions (the exception would
> > be churches where there is populations from many different dialects -
> > it would be difficult to read vernacular Bibles in a church which is
> > 25% Algerian, 25% Yemeni, 25% Lebanese, and 25% Bahraini, you would
> > need 4 different bibles)
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 18:18:47 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Guys, I do admire your passion and your enthusiasm (although I have no
> > > idea how long will that last). I am not against you having a try on
> > > writing serious things in Cantonese (which you have not yet quite
> > > started, as far as I know, since till now all you have written are
> > > just stubs less than even 200 characters). I still hold my opinion
> > > that there is not a necissity for a Cantonese Wikipedia(or any other
> > > Chinese dialect Wikipedias) to exist, but I encourage helpful
> > > discussions and even a vote if necessary should you decide to formally
> > > propose setting up one. What I do not want to see is the set up of a
> > > Cantonese Wikipedia without the consent of the entire Wikipedia
> > > community, especially the Chinese Wikipedia community (as in the case
> > > of Ming-nan Wikipedia).
> > >
> > > (Someone mentioned about Bible translated into Algerian Arabic. I just
> > > wonder: is there any Cantonese translations of Bible, and if there is,
> > > is anybody still uses this version?)
> > >
> > > [[User:Formulax]]
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>



More information about the Wikipedia-l mailing list