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...
And now you should start another movement and let the public accept it
before coming to ask for a Cantonese Wikipedia.
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.
Yes, there was. But majority of the population know only how to read
some wenyanwen, but not write.
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.
If that is the case, that means the difference is to subtle to tell.
And if so, there would be no need to have a separate Wikipedia.
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.
His examples are just stubs. And in fact I can read it as well. But
how about longer articles? Articles concerning obscure terms? There
are only two possible solutions: 1) do not translate these terms into
Cantonese, which makes a Cantonese Wikipedia a repetition of Chinese
Wikipedia, or 2) translate, and no one understands.
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.
Whatever it is, it is written. Cantonese is not.
formulax