Talk:Varieties of Chinese/Archive 2

message: The above map is arbitrary.  In China, there are only 10 accepted dialect groups (topolects), Mandarin dialects (Jianghuai, Southwest, Northeast, etc) are considered as part of a SINGLE dialect group (Mandarin) by Chinese linguists, the above map does not make that clear.
The below map is more widely accepted by academia and also has more intuitive shading representing how some dialect groups are more similar to others (for example Ping is similar to Cantonese, Jin is closely related to Mandarin, Wu and Xiang have same Chu 楚 origins, and Hakka and Gan are closely reated):
naus 02:56, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current Dialect Map not widely accepted 

message: hi,
I would like to translate this page and its associated ones, to Catalan and Spanish. I am new as a registered wikipedia user and I could not figure out how to do this. I also realize that these pages are changing quite a lot lately and that therefore it may be better to wait until they achieve a stable status.
BTW, the Chinese language page translation to Catalan appears to be very incomplete. I may also review and complete it.
I will not do anything of the aboveif no one tells me to, I don't want to interfere in your excellent work.
:Since Wikipedia is free for anyone to copy as long as they give it credit, you are basically free to translated whatever you want. It would be appropriate to indicate that you have taken material from this article, at least until your own page begins so different by reason of corrections, your own work, etc., that it stands as a "complete rewrite." P0M 01:23, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  translation 

message: Re the recent change from 
Goá kā-kī lâng ū tām-po̍h-á bô sóng-khoài. (我家己lâng有淡薄á無爽快)
I checked my Taiwanese-Mandarin dictionary where I found that 家 is glossed as ge
and 自 is glossed as ju, 自己 is glossed as ju gi.
(I'm transliterating from Bopomofo to pin-yin. The "u" above is the "open" u found in words like "wu". not the umlaut u (ü) found in Mandarin, e.g.,  "jü-zi zhi" (orange juice). 
That dictionary accepts 人 as the right way to write "lang" = "person," but the old Giles dictionary (which gives pronunciations for Chinese regional languages, Japanese, etc.) does not.
Giles dictionary gives "F. ing, nöng"  for 人 and it gives "F. chöü, chü, chei, chi" for 自.
Giles pronunciations (which are what we now call Wade-Giles pronunciations) are separated both in time and in space from current usage in Taiwan. However, 人 seems to be s "simplified" version of whatever was originally written for "lang" (my guess would be 郎"F. loung", "gentleman").  
The version of the Chinese text that is currently in use seems to be better than what it replaces. P0M 09:51, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Feeling a little ill in Min-nan yu 

message: Another editor has created the article Changsha dialect. The article may need to be edited or moved. Could you please take a look at Changsha dialect and make any changes that seem to be appropriate? --TruthbringerToronto (Talk | contribs) 03:29, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Changsha dialect]] 

message: I first ran across this notion that the term cí (词/詞) is unfamiliar to Chinese speakers in Ramsey 1987, and it never rang true for me.  I've mentioned it to other folks, and no one has ever found it an unfamiliar term.  Granted, I tend to know college-educated folks, but no one ever suggested it was something esoteric that you would have to go to college to learn about.  Any thoughts? BrianTung 23:41, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ramsey and this article both note that cí was historically unfamiliar.  In modern times, it is much more widely known, though people still think much more readily in zì (字) anyway.  —Umofomia (talk) 15:10, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Currency of the term cí (词/詞) 

message: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language#cite_note-2 for what I think is a good summary, although it omits the more extreme view that the varieties of Chinese don't even constitute a language family let alone a single language. But as it says well, the situation appears to be unique.
So I've done a little rephrasing of the lead, to avoid taking a stand either way. This seems best when it's possible, as here.
I wonder where this important principle should be (hopefully) documented? It goes beyond the relevant naming convention. Andrewa (talk) 18:36, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: We shouldn't over-politicise the question. When speaking about the Chinese language, we most likely mean Standard Chinese or Mandarin. Cantonese is referred to as Cantonese. If someone speaks a Chinese dialect, we can refer to them as speaking a particular Chinese dialect (using the name of a dialect). It by no means, downplays dialects. Even in China, they use -hua (话) for a specific dialect (e.g. 上海话) but Hanyu 汉语, Zhongwen 中文, Zhongguohua 中国话 are used as synonyms of Putonghua 普通话 or Guanhua 官话 (also applies to Guoyu 国语 or Huayu 华语). There is enough feeling of identity and belongingness to Chinese among Chinese people, so that despite some superiority complex, in 99% of cases one can refer to Standard Chinese language as simply "Chinese". Anatoli (talk) 23:53, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Languages and dialects again

message: The non-Mandarin zones have a lot of Mandarin speakers and local people are, at least bilingual, especially in the large cities. Should the map reflect this, show mixed colours, perhaps? Mandarin is also widely spread in Taiwan as a spoken language. The map doesn't show this either. --Anatoli (talk) 23:48, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It would be hard to do, unless you have several maps. There are language majority and minority areas that overlap with other languages, but on a single map, they get distorted out, as big blobs of colours conveying the sense that only a particular lect resides there. Clearly this is not the case. Once, Shenzhen was mostly a mixed Cantonese-Hakka speaking area, but now, you could class it as mostly a Mandarin speaking area, due to the vast influx of migrants into the area. However, that would be mapping only the lingua franca. People of all parts of China have come to this area, making it even more difficult to show on a single map of where other language speakers are. IMO, it makes the language maps misleading. Dylanwhs (talk) 01:23, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-Mandarin dialects on the maps and Mandarin 

message: As an English language article on Spoken Chinese, the English gloss would have sufficed. All the French, Spanish, Portugeuse etc additions are irrelevant, IMHO, since they serve no purpose in the comparison of Chinese vocabulary items. They should be removed, which will free up table width space for additional regionolects. Hanyu Fangyan Zihui and Hanyu Fangyan Cihui each give several Mandarin dialects, and multiple dialects of Min, two of Yue, Xiang and Wu, but one of Gan and Hakka. Maybe something like this could be helpful to show say differences in different Mandarin dialects, etc. Dylanwhs (talk) 01:15, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed the non-Chinese items from the table as it serves no purpose in a discussion on the differences in Chinese languages. If it was originally intended to show the dialect versus language issue, a new article should be created instead of cluttering this article. Dylanwhs (talk) 10:49, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Are the other non-Chinese language vocabulary items necessary? 

message: Please can you source this diagram? What basis is used to define the various language groupings, and how do you resolve common wordstocks, for example, Yue Min and Hakka words and phrases using such a simplistic diagram? Dylanwhs (talk) 10:39, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Min was separated out because it cannot be derived from Middle Chinese. But that seems to be an effect of reconstructions of Middle Chinese, which was not the ancestor of modern Chinese dialects but a series of literary standards, and so is irrelevant for phylogenetic classification. — kwami (talk) 21:12, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need a citation source for the clade tree 

message: I did my best to add tones to the Mandarin column of this chart, and clear up some of the IPA.  As I know none of the other varieties, someone else will have to pick up where I've left off.  Also, I notice that there is a smattering of non-IPA symbols in there, presumably from sinological tradition.  Those should be converted to IPA by someone...  Also, since the large majority of these words are related and share hanzi, should we add a column for them? (and if so, what should we do when an unrelated word is used?)  — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 23:43, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comparison of vocabularies 

message: User:72.82.80.129 recently removed a significant chunk of this article (12,625 of 39,091 bytes), much or most of which seems to be useful, relevant information.  I'm going to go ahead and revert the edits, but it's quite possible some of the removal was warranted.  It should probably be discussed first, or at least explained a bit in the edit summary.  — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 22:15, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:72.82.80.129]]'s edits 

message: I'm not quite sure I understand why this article is located at the current title rather than, say, "Chinese languages", "Varieties of Chinese" or some such (leaving aside for the moment the already-messy overlap we have between this and two more poorly-defined articles, Chinese language and Sinitic languages). The differences between Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Gan, Min, Hakka, and Xiang are not just in "spoken language" (or, as I assume is meant by that, pronunciation); there are also differences in vocabulary and grammar. It seems inaccurate to have an article title like this that suggests the only differences among them are the way they are spoken; even in writing, Mandarin and Cantonese may not always be mutually intelligible. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 20:51, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Spoken" 

message: Since it's comparing vocabulary, shouldn't they be in or at least include Chinese characters? Especially as the vocab varies quite a bit.Micro01 (talk) 03:23, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Comparison of vocabularies" section