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

[Mark Williamson]

What I find amusing is that he says things about how Cantonese isn't
written, and then in the same breath he says something about how
_when_ Cantonese is written, it can't be understood.

He started out saying that Mandarin and Cantonese are written
identically, but then he made some concessions. So now they aren't
identical, but Cantonese is inferior because - well, because he says
so.

Formulax, we are going in circles here.

Quit telling native speakers of Cantonese what they should have to do
with THEIR LANGUAGE. Such a movement as the May 4th movement is
extremely difficult to spark, and usually comes amid great political
or economic strife, which currently isn't exactly present in
Cantonese-speaking areas.

If you can understand Cantonese so well and it's so similar, then
we're back to the question "Why are my contributions to zh.wikipedia
in pure unadulterated Cantonese 'corrected' to Baihuawen?" which you
have already answered with your typical accusations of inferiority and
lack of standardisation.

As I said, we are going in circles.

And even more interesting is how you act for a moment conciliatory
buay conciliatory (I think you'd be more likely to hear "act yong hor
buay yong hor") about how you encourage this enthusiasm... but then
your true nature rears its ugly head (that's what the "buay yong hor"
part is for) and you're back to your snappy,
Cantonese-is-not-a-written-language-and-if-it-is-I-dont-like-it self.

Mark

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 13:18:24 +0800, Alex Y. Kwan <litalex at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Sheng Jiong wrote:
> > And now you should start another movement and let the public accept it
> > before coming to ask for a Cantonese Wikipedia.
> 
> You could have just stated that was your definition of "widely accepted"
> before letting all of us get into this long, long discussion.
> 
> > Yes, there was. But majority of the population know only how to read
> > some wenyanwen, but not write.
> 
> Odd that you'd say that. I hang out at this online writing forum and
> quite a number of the people there write almost perfect wenyanwen. But
> that's besides the point.
> 
> > His examples are just stubs. And in fact I can read it as well.
> 
> His examples from www.cantonese.org.cn?
> 
> > 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.
> 
> You just said that written Cantonese is so easy to understand and now
> you say once a term is translated, no one will understand it?
> 
> > Whatever it is, it is written. Cantonese is not.
> 
> I don't get why you're making statements like those when there is
> evidence to the contrary.
> 
> little Alex
> 
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