Talk:Chinese language

message: :::re: your recent edits: for shorthand/leading terminology like this, our choices really need to be backed up verbatim by plenty of sources, as well as being accurate. English language sources would not introduce Chinese as a "coevolutionary linguistic entity with highly mutually unintelligible varieties". It is not our domain to invent our own phraseology, even if we think it's better—we have to pick the most accurate, but adequately well-attested and representative, descriptors that we can from existing sources. Remsense留 04:00, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that such phraseology should be avoided whenever avoidable. But the alternative should meet NPOV. Putting language family as the main topic of the article, espcially on the top sentence, doesn't meet the NPOV criteria, just like calling a Portuguese man-o-war a colony in the first sentence wouldn't be a NPOV introduction. One option would be following the article in Chinese Wikipedia "Chinese is a language and a synonymous language family". 209.2.228.41 (talk) 01:37, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV

message: I have reverted the addition of Ba-Shu to the infobox, because it seems to have no coverage in any overviews of Chinese dialects or Chinese language history.  There is a Wikipedia article Ba–Shu Chinese, but it appears to be a synthesis of one of the dialect areas mentioned in Fangyan and studies of poetry from Song-era Sichuan. Kanguole 23:52, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Would you please tell me why you thought this BaShu issue couldn't be solved in the two infoboxes way above, Given that Ba-Shu seems to be well-accepted as an extinct linguistic area but not so clear as an extinct comparative family? Or you just reverted the re-addition of Ba–Shu because it is improper to put it into a single infobox and that the two infoboxes way was "prose"? 209.2.231.4 (talk) 03:06, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: As I mentioned, it seems to have no coverage in any overviews of Chinese dialects or Chinese language history. Kanguole 10:06, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not covered primarily because its relative importance is not as high as those living topolects, but there is strong evidence of its existance as a historical topolect. IMHO it can be here with an asterisk. 209.2.228.41 (talk) 02:16, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia articles need to be based on coverage in reliable secondary sources, to avoid original research and undue weight. If those sources don't find it worth mentioning, nor should we. Kanguole 10:49, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ba–Shu 

message: In Hong Kong, Written Cantonese has basically no official status, and has never appeared on any official document historically. The Standard Written language is largely based on Modern Standard Chinese, with a few influences from Cantonese. The spoken variety has always been Cantonese (de facto official), together with a system reading Mandarin into Cantonese. When the local use the term "中文", one usually means this complex system. This is why I made an edit, later reverted by 123.195.224.196, then redid and undid by Remsense. The efn statement
*"De facto—while no specific variety of Chinese is official in Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese is the predominant spoken form and the de facto regional standard, written in Traditional characters. Standard Chinese and Simplified characters are only occasionally used in some official and educational settings. The Hong Kong government promotes biliteracy in Chinese and English, and trilingualism between Cantonese, Mandarin, and English; while the Macau government promotes triliteracy between Chinese, Portuguese, and English, and quadrilingualism between Cantonese, Mandarin, Portuguese, and English, especially in public education."
doesn't explain it well because the Hong Kong government never actively promotes literacy in Cantonese (it does promote Written Cantonese in the similar extent how mainland China promote dialects, though). 209.2.227.244 (talk) 04:06, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry if I was rash on this: feel free to put it back for now, I don't want to appear possessive on things where I am not remotely an expert. Remsense留 23:51, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: See Special:Diff/1190834510. 209.2.231.4 (talk) 03:25, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

text: Hongkongers usually emphasize that their Written Standard Chinese contains Classical Chinese, but that's true to all Written Standard Chinese around the world to various degrees, though the one in Hkng Kong contains slightly more. 209.2.231.4 (talk) 03:28, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

text: What about Special:Diff/1202574855 then? 209.2.228.41 (talk) 02:10, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ambiguous "Standard Cantonese" 

message: Creating a new heading for 209.2.228.41's NPOV concerns raised here, where they would like the article lead to initially define Chinese as something like
—which I feel is too novel a phraseology for an article with such a large scope. But I appreciate their concerns, and am not quite sure what to do about it. Remsense诉 20:44, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I would really like to get this banner off the top of this article. IP 209..41, is there any formulation where we use the term "group of languages" in the first sentence that would be acceptable? It's simply an issue of prose. Remsense诉 07:44, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead NPOV 

message: Both hokkien and hakka are official in taiwan. Both are sinitic languages. Should it be added into the "Official status" section of the template? Guotaian (talk) 15:59, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hokkien and Hakka