Template talk:Chinese language

message: I propose a move to Languages in the Chinese language family, & to change the instances of dialect to language.  This is because the dialects are not dialects but langauges,, its as simple as that.
100110100 08:22, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rename 

message: Shouldn't Taishanese be included (since, for example, we have several divisions of Min)? And do people know what "first-level" means? Wouldn't "major" or "primary" be more clear? Badagnani 01:38, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Taishanese 

message: I've just removed this again, for the same reasons as before, but clearly the edit summary didn't adequately summarise the reasons so here they are. First the link is a duplicate of the link in the Yue section, so is not needed, though on its own that's a poor reason.
More importantly the reason why there's two links to one article is two articles were merged: after a long discussion archived here the article Standard Cantonese was merged into Canton dialect, before that was renamed Cantonese. The consensus was Cantonese is not a standard language in the formal sense, so a separate article was not needed. By the same reasoning is is not an Ausbausprache, so it made sense to remove the link from that section.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 15:07, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for enumerating your reasons here; it indeed wasn't clear from the summary of your original change that removed the link.  While it's true that Cantonese isn't a standard language in the formal sense, it does occupy a status different from that of many other Chinese varieties.  The archived discussion you linked to revolved around where to draw the line in the content of the merged article on the prestige/semi-standardized Cantonese dialect.  However, nowhere in that discussion did anyone object to the description of this dialect as an Ausbausprache.  A language does not have to be a formal standardized language to be an Ausbausprache, which is a term that's used to describe a language based on its social usage.  In Hong Kong, Cantonese does serve as a de facto language of administration in government; it is the primary language of instruction; in addition, it enjoys a widely used and understood (despite the lack of formal standardization) written form — all elements that define an Ausbausprache.  While its true that it may be redundant to list Cantonese again under the Ausbausprache section, you admit yourself that this alone is a poor reason to omit it. —Umofomia (talk) 18:03, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: IMO it's a bit ambiguous whether Cantonese is a standard language or not. It's a borderline case. I don't have a problem with it being added to Mandarin, but I wonder about other lects. There's a movement to push Taiwanese as a standard/prestige lect, and then of course there's Dungan. If Cantonese, why not those as well? It's not like we'd be overwhelming the reader. kwami (talk) 19:28, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

text: well it's clear there's no consensus here, and as I'm not too concerned about it, and am not a linguist so am not qualified to say what's ausbau or not,  I'm happy for someone else to make the call on this.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 20:30, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a hard call to make, and it's not a matter of linguistics. It's politics and sociology. kwami (talk) 21:14, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Who should make the call then?  I'd prefer to list Cantonese (as it was before).  BTW, to address your comment above, the case for listing other dialects as Ausbausprachen is much less clear.  While Taiwanese may be a prestige dialect of Minnan, socially speaking it does not have the wide institutional recognition that Cantonese has; Dungan even less so.  —Umofomia (talk) 08:12, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Cantonese isn't official either. Even in HK, it's only a de facto co-standard. And there's a strong push for Taiwanese to be made official. So it seems rather unfair to include Cantonese but not Taiwanese, and I've added both. kwami (talk) 07:23, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not saying Cantonese is official; it doesn't have to be official to be an Ausbausprache.  I'm saying that it has the social and institutional recognition (and yes, I've already mentioned it's de facto) that make the case for it to be an Ausbausprache.  The case for Taiwanese is not as strong, but I have no strong opposition to listing it either.  —Umofomia (talk) 23:47, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Second [[Cantonese]] link 

message: Moved back to official.  The bopomofo article is incorrect, and zhuyin fuhao is still officially used to teach Mandarin in Taiwan.
See http://english.moe.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=11752&ctNode=424&mp=1
Roadrunner (talk) 06:04, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bopomofo