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

Alex Y. Kwan litalex at gmail.com
Sun Feb 20 08:48:49 UTC 2005


Hello,

Sheng Jiong wrote:
> Is Baihuawen not the standard Chinese?

Currently, yes.

> It was created after the May Fourth Movement in 1919,

Was it? I seem to recall many novels and anthologies, etc. written in 
something similar before the May Fourth movement. I actually think we 
have a similar situation here. In the old days, the standard Chinese was 
wenyanwen and baihua was seen as below par and people shouldn't write in 
baihua because it's "only a spoken language".

The May Fourth movement changed that. And now...

> You are deliberately associating the concept of "standard Chinese"
> with classic Chinese (Wen Yan), which is actually not the standard
> Chinese today

I was trying to compare the two situations, which to me there are 
similarities.

> (for it is neither taugt in schools as a way of writing,
> and neither is it used in most publications).

I can't speak for the situation in mainland China today, but it's 
definitely taught, not as a way of writing, no, but I've seen many 
people's attempt at writing it and some attempts are good enough to 
pass. I think many people, especially the older generations in Hong 
Kong, still write with a smattering of wenyanwen.

And I seem to recall something on the news a couple of years ago about a 
young man who managed to write an essay completely in wenyanwen in his 
university entrance exam or some such.

> there is any school teaching Cantonese is to question if written
> Cantonese has been widely accepted.

And yet as we keep pointing out examples of whether it's widely accepted 
or not, you keep dismissing it, even when the evidence is valid.

> one of the most read Hong Kong tabloids. Among the six headlines in
> their main page, only one uses Cantonese characters;

It's a weekly magazine, I don't know if the headlines I read are the 
same as those you've read, but I'd say that more than one uses Cantonese 
characters and the sentence structure/grammar for all of them are in 
fact Cantonese.

> 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).

I don't think anyone is confusing baihuawen with Classical Chinese...

> 1)Not even Cantonese native speakers can understand an article
> entirely written in Cantonese written language, if it concerns
> encyclopediac topics;

I think I understood the examples Felix provided just fine, thank you 
very much. Mind you, my Chinese education ended at Primary 5. So if I 
can understand it, it's pretty understandable. And as the article is 
written by a mainland Chinese, I assume there are at least some mainland 
Chinese people who can understand an article written completely in 
Cantonese.

> 2)Few people have written in Cantonese;

And both Cathy and I have said that we and many Hong Kong people do 
write often in Cantonese. For short messages, granted, but for the 
purpose of this experiment, I think it counts. Then again, who knows 
what's your definition of "few people".

> 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.

So says the person who keeps insisting that Cantonese can't even be written.

> 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.

And baihuawen is based on Mandarin grammar, syntax, etc. So essentially 
baihuawen *is* Mandarin.

little Alex




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