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

[MilchFlasche瑋平]

Bonjour,


On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 18:48:13 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote:
> You have argued that Cantonese is a written language, using the
> differences between Cantonese and Mandarin as evidence. But as I have
> suggested both Mandarin and Cantonese are just spoken languages, but
> when it comes to writing everyboy today in China, Hong Kong or Macau
> uses the same written language: Baihuawen.
> 
> formulax
However, the fact is that you can't never make a clear cut between
spoken and written language
so simply --- although this could be fulfilled in the case of Classic
Chinese (Wenyan). Which tongue do you use to read Baihuawen out loud?
Do you use your Wu pronunciation to read them and communicate with
others? What would such utterance become? Nothing, I guess. We just
don't use vernacular way to read Baihuawen. So what's behind it? We
all use the same written language Baihuawen, because it came with the
same common spoken language: Mandarin. But this has nothing to do with
other spoken languages, and neither with the fact that there is
Cantonese in written forms on the web everywhere. In Taiwan forums,
opinions written in Cantonese are not so unfamiliar, and people are
often asked politely to translate them in Mandarin, or even such texts
are banned. Now, if there are only FEW people writing Cantonese, then
where do these people come from? Links of two major Taiwanese forums
are given below:
http://forum.moztw.org/viewtopic.php?t=4286
(the official Mozilla forum of Taiwan) discussing whether written
Cantonese should be banned.
http://forum.palmislife.com/viewthread.php?tid=9277&fpage=1
(the largest Palm PDA site in Taiwan) especially this
sentence:"香港朋友也盡可能使用普通話參予討論", asking HongKongers discussing in
Mandarin.

Examples are plenty and not hard to find.

-- 
2005, make signs happen!