[Wikipedia-l] Individual Wikipedias for different Sinitic vernaculars (Cantonese debate) - update

[Mark Williamson]

Uhh... hello, did you read my e-mail? I listed native speakers
supporting a Wu Wikipedia.

Mark

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 14:36:57 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote:
> It is totally absurd to set up so many Wikipedias for various Chinese
> dialects. Being a native Shanghainess, my mother tongue is Wu. But I
> have never seen any books written in the Wu dialect in my entire life,
> and I have only heard of one book that was written in Wu in the 1930s,
> and apparently it received very limited attention. Speaking language
> is very different from the writing system, and in Chinese although
> there are hundreds of dialects there is however only one writing
> system. Wikipedia being a *written* encyclopedia would mean that we
> only need *one* Chinese Wikipedia, written in Chinese characters.
> Speakers of the different dialects can pronounce each characters in
> very different ways (A Wu speaker can hardly understand Cantonese or
> Min-nan, and vice versa), they all have the same grammar and similar
> ways of expression, after thousands years of cultural integration
> within the unified country. (And by the way Mandarin also has a long
> history of being the "offical" spoken language in China: since Qing
> dynasty in the 1600s it has been adopted as the language spoken in
> Emperor's palace, and during the Republic of China period it was
> selected by the parliament as the official spoken language of the
> government after a democratic voting.)
> 
> Different dialects of course have their own distinct cultures: in
> traditional Shanghainese Opera the actors speak only Wu (just like in
> Beijing Opera the actors speak in Mandarin); there are also other
> similar operas for Cantonese or other dialects and these operas still
> receive much attention today in China. However the writing system of
> China has been unified since Qing Shihuang's time in around 220BC, for
> the convenience of the communications among all Chinese. It will be a
> big joke if today someone want to return to the old days when no one
> can understand each other.
> 
> Interestingly also Mark seem to neglect the fact that really no native
> speakers of all these dialects support the proposal, knowing that it
> is a totally unworkable proposal.
> 
> [[User:Formulax]]
> 
> 
> On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 13:34:36 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > In this e-mail I don't want to personally introduce new arguments but
> > I want people to know that further debate on this topic is continuing
> > at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
> >
> > Some speakers of these languages have lent their support: Steve,
> > Instantnood, and Felix Wan for Yue/Cantonese, and Nishishei,
> > Pangguanzhe, and alaya for Wu/Shanghainese (Wu also includes the
> > varieties of the surrounding areas including for example Suzhou).
> >
> > Interestingly, on that page, no native speakers have directly
> > condemned the idea (only direct opposition is from Shizhao), although
> > Toytoy, a Cantonese speaker, has some concerns.
> >
> > Mark
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> >
>