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

[Mark Williamson]

After not replying to most of the things you have said for obvious
reason that you ignore my truths, I have still some question for you.

It is: How do you know majority of Chinese cannot read Minnan
Wikipedia? I invite your evidences.

Mark

On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 18:48:13 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "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.
> 
> Is Baihuawen not the standard Chinese? It was created after the May
> Fourth Movement in 1919, and has already been widely accepted in
> Chinese society before 1949. Are not newspapers in Hong Kong write in
> Baihuawen too?
> 
> You are deliberately associating the concept of "standard Chinese"
> with classic Chinese (Wen Yan), which is actually not the standard
> Chinese today (for it is neither taugt in schools as a way of writing,
> and neither is it used in most publications).
> 
> > 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.
> 
> So? You have missed my point entirely. The reason of my asking if
> there is any school teaching Cantonese is to question if written
> Cantonese has been widely accepted. Teaching in writing "colloquial
> Cantonese" is irrelevent in this argument because only a handful have
> ever attended the course and learnt to write. And just for my own
> personal interest, please tell me which Hong Kong university has this
> course.
> 
> > There IS NEWSPAPERS writing in Cantonese
> 
> Which newspaper? Which magazine? Do specify.
> 
> 
> > (wait - you says that
> > "Standard Chinese" is can be read as Cantonese? What are we talking
> > here!!?).
> 
> Do you deny that most (if not all, as you insist) Hong Kong newspapers
> are written in standard Chinese(baihuawen)? Then what do you call the
> language they uses?
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Take a look at EasyFinder(http://easyfinder.atnext.com/template/ef/front.cfm),
> one of the most read Hong Kong tabloids. Among the six headlines in
> their main page, only one uses Cantonese characters; and if you read
> the articles, all of them are written in baihuawen (if you prefer
> using this term and purposely confusing it with classic Chinese).
> 
> > 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.
> 
> How many of them are there? Majority of the Taiwanese still cannot read.
> 
> And pray do reply my previous summary of my opinions as a whole. So
> far you still chooses to avoid directly answering my central thesis:
> 1)Not even Cantonese native speakers can understand an article
> entirely written in Cantonese written language, if it concerns
> encyclopediac topics; 2)Few people have written in Cantonese;
> 3)Wikipedia should not advocate the use of Cantonese written language.
> Instead we should only allow it when it has already been accepted by
> the society.
> 
> 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
>