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(a)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