Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/China- and Chinese-related articles/Archive 1

message: Unsure if there is any consensus here so thought I'd add a section for it.
*yes, but only on relevant (ie: taiwan-related) articles. --prat
**Tongyong is controversial in Taiwan, and accepted by mainly people loyal to the current administration. I would say include at will. --Jiang
::: Whether to include Tongyong or not will always be a controversial topic.  However, Tongyong should almost never be used for non-Taiwan related articles unless there's a very compelling reason to include it.  Hanyu Pinyin has been the accepted ISO standard for romanizing Chinese characters since 1979.  Even for articles related to Taiwan I'd suggest avoiding Tongyong where possible as it has very dubious real value to people outside of (and arguably even within) Taiwan. --BenjaminTsai Talk 13:48, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Inclusion of Tongyong

message: Unfortunately some people have employed the Microsoftian embrance and extend (or in this case embrace and introduce subtle incompatibilities without expanding functionality) on Hanyu Pinyin.  The result is that saying "pinyin" now is no longer enough to accurately convey what romanization scheme you are using.  I suggest that "pinyin" be converted to "Hanyu Pinyin" to be more precise.  Once Tongyong Pinyin dies and ceases to be in use, we can easily convert "Hanyu Pinyin" back to the more concise "pinyin". --BenjaminTsai Talk 08:11, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, tough call. I feel Hanyu Pinyin is dominant enough that "pinyin" will still mean Hanyu Pinyin to savvy users; Tongyong Pinyin appears to be a momentary thing here in Taiwan -- I doubt it will survive the next administration, and no one I know is even bothering to learn it. But your point is still a good one.Dragonbones 01:52, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spelling out Hanyu Pinyin instead of just pinyin 

message: I've created and listed here Template:zh-tcy.  It displays (Traditional Chinese;Cantonese Yale) for those topics about Hong Kong where Cantonese romanisation might be useful.  Usage:  .  If you don't think it belongs here, feel free to remove the listing - but please do not delete the template itself.  Hong Qi Gong 04:33, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inclusion of Cantonese Yale Romanisation 

message: Kt2, re: "wg": Pratyeka doesn't want WG to be capitalized because he thinks those are "classifying words" (How about "French:" in Quebec), "unreadable" (probably POV), and he quotes -- to be blunt, unparalleled -- examples of "watts", IPA, and other uncommon nouns. What's your justification? --Menchi 01:03, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure, I quoted that example however it wasn't mine.  A better example in my opinion is the ISO languages one I actually cited (en, de, etc.), which I feel is very relevant as romanization systems are semantially similar.  As your reason for resisting decapitalisation seems to be that peoples names are 'proper nouns', I don't think you can get any more proper than language names and the ISO system is in widespread use.  In my opinion, calling the above example 'unparalleled' is simply incorrect. --Pratyeka 01:14, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

text: dictionaries and encyclopedias that I come across use lowercase wg. An example: http://www.acmuller.net/dealt/index/c5ee3.html, click on "廣" and type "guest" (without quotation) as username. But after reading Patrick's comments, I now think a capitalized WG is more justified than the lowercase, quoting "With "Wade-Giles" we are talking about a system of romanization and naming it by its creators, Mssrs. Wade and Giles." kt² 01:56, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  WG & wg 

message: Here is an idea for a new formatting style for the introduction of China-related articles.  It looks like this:
Mao Zedong (毛澤東/毛泽东/Máo Zédōng/Mao Tse-tung)
Michael Chang (張德培/张德培/Zhāng Dépéi/Chang Te-p'ei)
If the Simplified and Traditional versions were the same, you could do something like this:
Qin Shi Huangdi (秦始皇帝/Qín Shĭ Húangdì/Ch'in Shih Huang-ti)
or 
Qin Shi Huangdi (秦始皇帝/Qín Shĭ Húangdì/Ch'in Shih Huang-ti)
I think this method of formatting might help clean up the appearance of some pages, such as the Michael Chang page.
It would also be easier to use this format for names in the middle of a page, like in the Chiang Ching-kuo article, when the names of his children are listed.  Let me know what you think.  --Spencer195 05:51, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: List without Romanization Names (was “Proposal for Introduction Format”)

message: This discussion went far beyond the original proposal. I took out the part about boxes, because I like it. Please feel free to sort the rest of this discussion if you feel it is important. Sebastian 22:00, 2005 Mar 19 (UTC)
Articles on Chinese subjects are always going to have to make room for the Chinese and romanized versions of their names, and the basic question is how to include this info while keeping the intro easily readable. Currently, including the various different versions in parentheses in the first line of the intro can make the reader's job difficult, especially when there are many alternatives listed. There is, however, a straightforward way to separate these out for the sake of clarity which I don't think has yet been raised: put the Chinese/romanizations on the first line so that they will come directly under the article title, and then after leaving a space begin the intro to the article. For an example of how this would look, see the Qing Dynasty or Sun Yat-sen pages. This style provides all the necessary info in a highly logical and readable format.
A second issue concerns alternative names for people. Often these too clog up the intro making it difficult to follow, but they need to be included as they may be the names that the reader is searching for (maybe they came to the article via a redirect). Where there are more than two commonly-used names for people, then I would suggest that they are listed in an easy to read format following the introductory paragraph, with suitable explanations as necessary. Again, see the Sun Yat-sen article for an example. I will leave aside for now the issue of rulers' names.
A separate discussion is whether or not to abbreviate Chinese, pinyin, etc, and I would suggest keeping it a separate discussion for now. Which names should or should not be included for an article could be discussed on the relevant page for the article concerned. For now let me suggest that any responses to this idea address the general concepts described. I believe these two suggestions will significantly improve the reader experience, removing the often hard to follow and annoying interpolations currently found in the introductions of China-related articles. - Madw 01:46, Jun 28, 2004 (UTC)
:I agree that the present system has problems.  However, the examples (with abbreviations) have the drawback that it's not at all obvious that these are versions of the article name.  If I were a reader, I wouldn't know why they were there.  It might be less of a problem without the abbreviations. Markalexander100 03:14, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree. Abbreviations are exactly what "Wikipedia is not paper" mean to me. Abbreviation wouldn't help in this case. --Menchi 03:17, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

text: The problem with the Sun Yat-sen page is that it's not clear whether (Ch: 孫逸仙; py: Sūn Yìxiān; WG: Sun I-hsien; CY: Syùn Yaht-sìn) corresponds to the name "Sun Yat-sen" or to any of his other names.  ☞spencer195 04:19, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

text: I don't think it works well with Sun Yat-sen but I think it could easily work well with Mao Zedong since he has fewer pseudonyms. ☞spencer195 05:03, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Variants on first line and other ideas (was “A new proposal for article intros”)

message: *yes. it's an english 'pedia.  once multiple chinese forms enter the equation, it seems critical to me to seperate them.  furthermore, proposed 'romanized form, chinese-simp, chinese-trad, rest of sentence' actually breaks english grammatical norms. --prat
**The argument against is so that we don't have parenthesis closing and opening after each other for people (for yrs of birth and death) and organizations (for acronyms). The "chinese simp" etc. can be linked in the way Menchi proposed on the naming conventions page, and as is done for all Korea-related articles.--Jiang
*Why are people so obsessed with "English grammatical norms"??? This is an encyclopedia not a novel! As long as the language is precise and concise, and conveys accurate knowledge to the readers, it should suffice. --Plastictv 02:40, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Should Chinese be included in brackets?

message: Whichever way we try to insert variants in parentheses, they always disrupt the text – and most often the most important sentence of the whole article! A box elegantly solves this and most other issues discussed here. I therefore think we gradually should change the inline lists into boxes. 
Possible disadvantages:
* Conflict with another box already in that place.
* Possibly distracts from main content.
What do others think? — Sebastian 04:04, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)
:I would rather not use the box for people with only one name. The box should only be used when we have so many romanizations and forms of name that we really take a lot of space. I find it much more useful to be able to see the Chinese as I am reading the first line, rather than to read the english and have to switch over to the right side of the screen to look at the screen, thereby losing my spot in the reading and having to start all over again. The way the parenthesis are positions make it ideal for someone interested in learning the chinese. The box also becomes a problem in trying to fit an image in the upper right hand corner. There's also the problem of corresponding the Chinese name with the english (this is lost by pushing the chinese off to the side) and being able to explain the variations within the text itself (e.g., calling one of the names a courtesy name or common name). I believe we should reserve the box only for extreme cases just at Sun Yat-sen and leave articles such as Vernacular Chinese without the box--Jiang 09:52, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree.  Most people reading these articles on Wikipedia are not here to learn Chinese.  They're here to learn about Chinese, and the characters and romanizations are not completely relevant in this goal.  This is an encyclopedia, remember.  For instance, knowing that Vernacular Chinese is referred to as 白話 in Chinese is not particularly relevant to learning what Vernacular Chinese is.  However, since we still would like to display characters and romanizations, I feel the box is the ideal way to do that.  It's much cleaner and doesn't get in the way of the text flow. --Umofomia 10:19, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Given how many romanizations exist, the alternative forms given in the box would also be of interest. If people can't read the Chinese, I think it's a whole lot easier to skip over it than to for people interested in the Chinese to keep switching from side to side. Other than trying to make things "clean" I really don't see how have Chinese in text will prevent readers from reading the text.--Jiang 10:30, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: i see the box as unnecessary most of the time. How many variations could one's name possibly have? The most extreme case is probably that of Li Bai. Variations of the names of most Chinese people could be told within parentheses within the article. Anyway, isn't an encyclopedia supposed to be confusing? :p Ok jokes aside, i'm against the use of boxes. --Plastictv 02:35, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't agree. As most Chinese people before 1950 and most Chinese author until now had more than one name, sometimes even more than three, and all of those names belongs to article, + all these names should be written in at least three forms (traditional, simplified and pinyin) a namebox is very very suitable -- if we don't want the first lines of each bios to be a mess. The "Zh-xxx" templates are useful anyway, but I'd like them to be easily integrated in boxes (i.e. by changing them to "ZhT--xxx). With time, I hope boxes will also have their own templates. Encyclopedies are confusing, Wikipedia is even more, but one part of our work is to make it a little less confusing every day ! gbog 02:49, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the point, gbog. Over the past 3 months of working on wikipedia i've also converted to Boxism. :) It's really much neater, except in the case where the person or institution etc. in question really has only one name (so that a  template would suffice). --Plastictv 13:10, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deprecate In-Line in favour of Box? 

message: Issue resolved
Some questions:
When creating new articles, please try to use the second method. If you use the first method, whether or not you include the numbers for tone, please italicise the pinyin to differentiate it from the English text. 
does that mean we shoule creat articles using names like Zh?ng-guó rather than just plain name Zhong-guo? Or Zhong1-guo2 is adviced? And about the 
italicize, should be italicize all the Chinese pinyin as that of foreign languages? or just in the definition line? --FallingInLoveWithPitoc 09:07, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, this suggestion should have been clearer.  My intended meaning was pinyin that is incorporated in the article itself as a romanization (not used in a sentence as a proper name (which should be wikified), etc.).  I did not mean article titles.   I reckon toneless articles are here to stay, and do not present a problem. --Pratyeka 10:45, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some obscure, obsolete discussion 

message: Shouldn't the first letter of people's name be capitalized? I am so upset to see the name written like 'zu3 chong1 zhi1'. In pinyin, people's name should be separated between surname and given name, and the first letter of each part of the name should be capitalized. therefore, 'zu3 chong1 zhi1' should be written as 'Zu3 Chong1zhi1'. --Yacht 05:31, Nov 25, 2003 (UTC)
:This looks like an unnatural carryover from English to me, so I always type it lower case and have been resetting it to lower case when I find it. If you can find an official pinyin specification with an upper case name then I will be eternally apologetic and and type uppercase pinyin names forever. (Yes, I am serious).  I am aware that there is a library of congress specification however I suppose that this specification was mainly built for adapting pinyin to work within an existing English-language centered library information system, rather than using it in the standard reference context for which it was designed. --Pratyeka 07:27, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Will this do: ? I'm pretty sure names in pinyin are first-letter-uppercase -- pinyin seems to have been designed to emulate European languages. For instance, it recommends spacing by word, not by syllable (e.g. rénmín jĭefàng jūn, not rén mín jĭe fàng jūn), as some orthographies do (e.g. Quoc Ngu). [Edit on 24th: IIRC, the books and such written in pinyin produced by the PRC gov't capitalize names.] --Xiaopo's Talk 10:04, Dec 23, 2003 (UTC)
?
This sounds resonable: " Pinyin titles are not capitalized, except for the first letter of the first word and proper names. English translations of Chinese titles are also not capitalized, except for the first letter of the first word and proper names, when they are first given next to Pinyin titles."  --Jiang 08:05, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

text: i'm sorry. i retract my last statement. i realized that it was conventional for foreign students learning pinyin to capitalize proper names and such as stated above. --Plastictv 14:41, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

text: Italicise the pinyin to differentiate it from the English text.
However, most pinyin on Wikipedia is not italicised, and the new templates ( etc.) don't italicise the pinyin that they display.  Shall we make the templates do so? Chamaeleon 00:11, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text: We should change this page to comply with convention. I dont think they should be italicized--Jiang 04:48, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text: i don't think they should be italicized since it is ususally specified that they are hanyu pinyin. --Plastictv 02:21, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Pinyin and Names

message: The manual currently says:
:Italicise the pinyin to differentiate it from the English text.
However, most pinyin on Wikipedia is not italicised, and the new templates ( etc.) don't italicise the pinyin that they display.  Shall we make the templates do so? Chamaeleon 00:11, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: We should change this page to comply with convention. I dont think they should be italicized--Jiang 04:48, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text: i don't think they should be italicized since it is ususally specified that they are hanyu pinyin. --Plastictv 02:21, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Italics for Pinyin? 

message: I would like to propose that Roman-letter transcriptions for non-English writing systems should be rendered in a different colour from the rest of the text.
For instance, where pinyin or Wade Giles is given for Chinese characters, or Hepburn is given for Japanese, or romanization is given for Korean, Mongolian, Russian, Arabic, etc., then the romanisation should be given in a different colour to the main text.
The understanding should be that these romanisations are not used in the main text of the article, only in parenthetical notes as a way of indicating the correct pronunciation of unfamiliar scripts.
I realise that this proposal may sound distracting and unnecessary, but I have used it successfully for a long time on my site  (e.g., see , although I use graphics rather than Unicode for Chinese characters). The colour scheme helps draw a clear distinction between words that are suitable to appear in normal English texts and those that should only occur as "footnotes" etc. I normally use a light brown colour (#666600) for transcriptions which is different enough from black to be noticeable but not harsh or garish in a way that distracts the reader from reading the article.  Chameleon's suggestion of rt, rp {color: gray;} (see above) is another alternative.
I can see that this proposal will not necessarily meet with universal approval. However, while it may sound distracting to use different colours on a page, in my experience it is even more distracting to have non-English scripts and their transcriptions indiscriminately cluttering up the page. I feel that the use of a non-distracting brown  actually helps readers navigate the material better.
At any rate, I offer this suggestion for the consideration and comment of users.
(Looking again, this might be regarded as an argument for using the Ruby template for all transcriptions...)
Bathrobe 04:40, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've taken a look at the link you provided; I think I favor not marking up non-English text in a special color.  It seems to make the text more distracting for users who are only looking to read the English text. --BenjaminTsai Talk 13:15, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Tentative proposal for using different colour for transcriptions

message: All characters with inverted circumflex are showing up on my computer as an empty box.  Does anyone know how I can fix this?  Is this problem addressed somewhere on this page?  Many thanks,  Badagnani 23:01, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question regarding inverted circumflex 

message: The detail of which extremely uninteresting and quite frankly unencyclopedic trivia in the form of a wide variety of transcriptions is starting to get out of hand. Not only are leads getting cluttered with the simplified/traditional Chinese-Pinyin-Wade Giles-templates, but now people are including special tables just to cover facts that seem to be there purely to satisfy a very small minority POV (which don't even concern the articles topics for the most part).
Please note that variying transcriptions and romanizations are barely interesting only to the people who already know them, and most of these already know there are more than one standard. To anyone who isn't down with Chinese langauge politics or the differences between pinyin and Wade-Giles most of this is incomprehensible clutter, a lot of which can't even be shown properly in a lot of browsers and operatins systems.
Peter Isotalo 13:48, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I sort of agree with you. The purpose of including Pinyin and Wade-Giles is not primarily to satisfy the curiosity of people who want to know both. The main purpose is that a given person might already know the name, but they might only know one or the other, and we have to make sure they know it is the same name. For instance, I, being Chinese romanisation nerd, already know that "Tz'u-hsi" is the same person as "Cixi", but someone who doesn't know about romanisation issues could easily be confused. Therefore, many articles need to have both pinyin and Wade-Giles listed (or Pinyin and the old Postal System Name, etc.) I do agree that we should not include additional romanisations just to include them; rather, we should always think about what will be most useful to our readers. I'm not sure if that ever includes alternate systems such as Tongyong Pinyin. One would expect that most of the Chinese people who prefer Tongyong are already using it, hence it would be the title of the article to begin with and we wouldn't need to include it specially. - Nat Krause 12:36, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Transcriptioncruft 

message: Does anyone think it's a good idea to use Wade-Giles for articles about the history of Republican China, such as history of the ROC and the second sino-japanese war? It is rare to find any books about these subjects that are in pinyin. I mean, it would be weird to pick up a book and see Song Ziwen rather than T.V. Soong. I think it would be conducive to anyone who wants to go to a library and pick up books about these subjects to know the wade-giles romanization of these figures. BlueShirts 20:21, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As with any similar subject, I think the article title should be the most commonly used spelling (romanization), and alternative romanizations (incl. Wade-Giles, Pinyin, and Cantonese pronunciation, if relevant) should also be included in the article, as discussed earlier.  Badagnani 20:28, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Naming style 

message: Can a native Chinese speaker please check the etymology listed at Moo shu pork?  I'm not sure "wood shavings meat" is an accurate translation.  Thanks!  Not sure where to post this request but I know this is where the experts are.  Badagnani 07:20, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you had been born before the middle of the twentieth century you probably would have seen a kind of packing material (for shipping things like fine China, etc.) that was made of wood but looked sort of like the large-bun size of shredded wheat. (What? They don't make that either?) That takes care of the "mu xu" part, or "moo shu" in whatever romanization that is.  The rou4 should be translated as pork.  Odd though it may seem to us, if you just use the work rou4 you are talking about pork. But beef is "cow rou4," and mutton is "sheep rou4."  The wood product looks like nothing else I can think of, so it's hard to think of an alternative translation.  Probably the Chinese restaurants will keep the old way, anyway.  P0M 08:56, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need Chinese assistance 

message: Hello, I've just added the Chinese characters and pinyin for Paeonia lactiflora (Chinese peony) which wasn't there before, but I'm not sure I have everything right.  Could someone with expertise in this flower/herb go check it out for me?  Thanks!  Badagnani 04:35, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need help with Chinese at [[Paeonia lactiflora]] 

message: The instruction how to use a template is too difficult. I think many Wikipedians, who are not too familiar with all the wiki-html, are scared to use these templates. So in the end, we must edit their articles again to apply this system for such complex issue (which needed A LOT of discussion it seems to me when I read this discussion page).
Even I dont understand the example table in the end.
So I'd suggest to make it look like this, i hope someone helps:
- Template Name
- Looks like
- Code
Template  	zh-stp (Simplified, Traditional, Hanyu Pinyin)
Looks like	
Code      	
LiangHH 08:52, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I did it. If you find any mistakes or if you want improve the style, feel free. But it took me 3 hours of work! ^^ LiangHH 08:09, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

text: So to apply a template, do we copy what's listed to the right of 'code' above and customize the contents? So I copy and paste , for example, then edit it to . Is that how a template is used, or am I missing something? Sorry for being a stupid newbee! :) Dragonbones 04:42, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You see yourself, it works! But I also needed time to figure out. And I hope we can make it easier somehow.亮HH 19:34, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Templates 

message: Should alternate spellings be noted in an article at the end?
A guy who edits Wang Chang Yuan thinks so. See how all of these alternate names are at the end of the article. WhisperToMe 00:42, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: only the correct version should be mentioned. the others are wrong - they belong as redirects, but should not be presented as alternate versions of a name. Hanyu Pinyin should not contain dashes, and the given names should not be separated by a space. --Jiang 08:45, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

text: It is well established Wikipedia convention to redirect misspellings and mistaken names to the article, but not list these misspellings and mistaken names in the article itself. Most of these are not "alternate spellings". These are incorrect spellings. Correct spellings are 1) the spelling used overwhelming in the media or in published material and 2) the spelling used by the individual in question. Wang Chang Yuan cannot alone be using so many different names. --Jiang 03:20, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Alternate spellings

message: wikipedia seems to be shifting towards using direct entry of unicode characters for foreign text in wikipedia rather than entities making the articles much easier to edit (long strings of mostly meaningless numbers are very hard to edit).
also the comments about big5 and gb make no sense to me, html entities have been unicode for as long as wikipedia has been arround afaict and the raw text of wikipedia went straight from windows-1252 to UTF-8. Plugwash 14:48, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  direct unicode 

message: I don't have very strong feelings about using tone marks in article text, but I've started this discussion at Naming Conventions about whether or not we should have pinyin-with-tone-marks in the actual titles of articles. - Nat Krause(Talk!) 01:29, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Tone marks in article titles

message: IMHO, adding Chinese characters more often would be a benefit. This is particularly helpful for web cut & paste searches, and it helps English/Chinese readers. For example: Shu Jing (??), is to me, is much better than Shu Jing. Personnally, especially due to the difficulty of the language and the many ranges of experience for those reading it, I feel it is extremely helpful. I agree this is an English wiki, but for Chinese articles, assuming or insisting English/Chinese readers should only see English is an unnecessary demand. The addition does not harm English only readers. 
Insisting on a consistant pattern of English first, characters in parenthesis next, seems fair.
: Good feedback. I thought I was alone in thinking that way. There is a huge advantage with Chinese characters, and that is that it reduces ambiguity. I'd like to see Chinese characters in every article where a Chinese name is mentioned, so one doesn't confuse Shanxi (??) with Shanxi (??). Wikipedia writes ?? as "Shaanxi", but that is not the correct pinyin, even though it is the standard Western way of making a difference between the provinces. Mlewan 18:02, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Adding Chinese Characters

message: See Talk:Municipality of China. - Nat Krause(Talk!) 20:31, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Use of "Municipality" for ???

message: See Template_talk:CEG for discussions on how to list the names of the 56 ethnic groups that officially live in China. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Tibetan) and Wikipedia_talk:Naming conventions (Tibetan) for newly proposed Tibetan naming conventions, mostly related to romanisation. - Nat Krause(Talk!) 22:18, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A couple more heads-ups 

message: Hi, we need Chinese language help at Chinese wine.  There's a wine which isn't yet discussed that is sold as "hung-lu" wine.  It is reddish in color, with a sharp smell and is sold by the Oriental Mascot brand (which also makes mijiu and formerly also made Shaoxing jiu).  The largest photo of this wine is here, but the characters aren't easily readable.  I think "hung-lu" isn't Hanyu pinyin.  Can someone provide information about this wine, the characters, etc.?  Thank you!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B0000DJZ0F/ref=dp_primary-product-display_0/102-4042702-9901704?%5Fencoding=UTF8&n=3370831&s=gourmet-food  Badagnani 22:31, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The picture is too small to read the text, but I guess by the sound of the name to be ??? (lit. red dew) which yeilds a few thousand pages on google.  Kowloonese 01:52, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: FYI, that would be hung-lu in Wade-Giles romanisation, and hónglù in Hanyu pinyin. - Nat Krause(Talk!) 02:14, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need Chinese language help 

message: Could anyone please tell me what is the best way to go about adding pinyin to english articles on chinese subjects? For right now, i can just copy and paste the unicode characters where needed, but that takes alot of time. Keith
: It depends on which keyboard you use. With a French keyboard there is no problem to create à for example. However, I don't know of any clean method to do all vowels on Windows. You could use "insert symbol" in for example Word and then paste it here, I guess. With MacOS X you can activate the "US Extended" keyboard and then do
: alt+a and then <vowel> to create the first tones: a-, i-, e-, o-, u-
: alt+e and then <vowel> to create the second tones: á, é, í, ó, ú
: alt+v and then <vowel> to create the third tone: a(, i(, e(, o(, u(
: alt+` and then <vowel> to create the fourth tone: à, ì, è, ò, ù
: u and then shift+alt+u and then shift+alt+<a, e, v or `> gives u"-, u"', u"( or u"`.
: (Copied from text I had already written on Chinesepod.)
: Mlewan 06:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Easiest way to add Pinyin to articles? 

message: OK, I know this is not the current pattern, but using numeric tone indicators is, I propose, a better way to handle pinyin (i.e., Shan1hai3 Jing4). Because:
* Using the special characters puts a burden on wiki writer to use special key constructs or "special" cut & pastes. The article above implies the writer has to make hardware or software changes, in addition to whatever changes they have made for their current English/Chinese strategy. There has got to be a better way. Lookups, special software, or special charts should not be necessary.
* Special characters interfere with cut & paste to external text schemes. Even that handy chart below can not solve this. It assumes the user always has a fixed way to transfer info; and this is unrealistic. For example, the pinyin characters work in cut and paste for MS Arial Unicode, but not in older fonts.
: Of course, any system we try will have drawbacks; I believe this would be the simplest strategy - for the writer - going forward.
:mamgeorge 13:31, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point; a lot of casual readers whose computers are not configured properly are going to see empty boxes, BUT, usually just on the third tone mark.  If you're having trouble we'll help you get your computer set up properly to see it.  I don't think Wikipedia will want to go back to all numeric tone marks.  Badagnani 19:17, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Using numbers is non-standard.  We do it the standard way here.  If you personally are having trouble inputting the correct tone marks, no problemo.  Just enter the numbers and we shall clean up after you.  — Gulliver ? 13:22, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Isn't it quite difficult to find entries where people have used tone marks? They risk staying in the system for long. I would suggest people who have problems typing proper pinyin to write without any tones at all, and that better equipped people who stumble upon the entries then correct them. Adding numbers like in Shang4hai3 will make the entries look like typos to people who aren't familiar with the system. Mlewan 05:27, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Problems with Tonemarks

message: It occurs to me that the array of different  templates can now be combined into one master template using the #if functionality. This is what has been done on :Template:Cite book, where there are many, many possible values but only "title" is mandatory. For a much simpler example, I have implemented this already for the "t" and "o" values on :Template:bo-ctw. As far as I know, the only factor which prevents us from merging all of the zh- templates into one would be controlling whether traditional or simplified characters appear first; there probably is a way to do this, but I don't know what it is. - Nat Krause(Talk!) 05:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Update: see Template:Bo, which is now useable for almost all combinations of Tibetan names. We could use a similar format for the Chinese templates. - Nat Krause(Talk!) 19:06, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Consolidating templates 

message: Shouldn't all these template examples with zho-ng guó be Zho-ngguó? Keahapana 19:58, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template typo? 

message: Is it encouraged to link to the characters' entries in Wiktionary (as in the lead here), optional, or frowned upon? To my eyes the blue Wikilinks are slightly less legible on a white background, and very few articles seem to do it. elvenscout742 18:36, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wiktionary links? 

message: Can someone make a new template "needhanzi," for articles about Chinese people or things that have no Chinese characters, such as Cheng Yu?  Badagnani 09:42, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Need new template

message: In articles, the name "Chinese Taipei" should only be used when the organisation itself refers to Taiwan as such. Depending on the context, it may be preferrable to add a footnote explaining that Chinese Taipei is more commonly known as Taiwan but not add (Taiwan) as parenthentical.
I want to add this to the manual of style, it has been discussed in Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) #Chinese Taipei and Taiwan. Can it be? --Aleenf1 05:26, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chinese Taipei 

message: A new editor has just added a number of categories for Chinese surnames, which I believe to be very useful.  As is usually the case at the Categories for Deletion area, the people who frequent that place generally try to delete every new category, regardless of whether they understand its use.  In this case, they seem not to understand the utility of being able to have a category for everyone with the name "Liu," for example.  Please voice your opinion here.  Badagnani 03:40, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please vote (Chinese surname categories up for deletion) 

message: In the Jay Chou article, User:125.142.209.67 added the Hokkien version of Jay Chou's name to the list at the beginning of the article.  There is no template that includes a Min Nan parameter though, so it's currently just stuffed inside the zh-tsp template's pinyin parameter.  Should versions of the zh-* templates with a Min Nan parameter be created? — heycam 22:08, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Hokkien argument could be added to existing templates without disruption. However, a Hokkien name should be added only when there is some particular reason to do so.—Nat Krause(Talk!) 23:32, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hokkien in zh-* templates 

message: I've noticed since creating the Min Nan templates and slowly applying them to Taiwan-related articles that there is a wide range of naming conventions for Taiwan geography articles.  
# the division name, e.g. township or city, is sometimes included in the article name, e.g. Rueifang Township, sometimes not, e.g. Puli, Nantou
# the division name is sometimes included in the Chinese (see Beidou, Changhua) and sometimes not (see Yuanlin, Changhua)
# there is no consensus about whether or not to say that the place is a political division of the Republic of China (see Talk:Guantian, Tainan)
My opinions are:
# the division name should not be included in the article name;  when disambiguation is needed, it could be {place name}, Taiwan (depending on the consensus for #3)
# the division name should not be included in the Chinese but should be spelled out in the introductory sentence, e.g. Beidou is an urban township in Changhua County ... 
# Taiwan is the common English name for the area governed by the Republic of China so Republic of China need not be specified in every Taiwan geography article; also, non-Taiwan places governed by the Republic of China are few and unambiguous (Kinmen, Matsu, etc.)
Is the best way to obtain a consensus to edit the style manual with the above,enforce it and follow the Wikipedia:Consensus flow chart?  WilliamDParker 21:49, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've just found old discussions about Taiwan vs. Republic of China but I'm still not clear what the consensus is for Taiwan geography articles about political divisions. WilliamDParker 15:57, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Standardization of naming format for Taiwan geography articles 

message: I think the Min Nan and Hakka names for Taiwan place names are indispensible for many places in Taiwan.  Should they both be applied across the board to Taiwan places or only to places judged relavant to the languages (e.g., Hakka only in Hsinchu, Miaoli, etc.)?  WilliamDParker 21:56, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Since Hakka is used even in the MRT system in Taipei together with English, Mandarin, and Min Nanese, I would think it is alright to use the same set of languages across the board.--Huaiwei 22:55, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  How are you going to spell them, especially Hakka? In IPA? —Babelfisch 07:55, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  For Min Nan, at least Pe?h-o-e-ji-; for Hakka, I'm less sure, but perhaps pha?k-fa-su" makes sense. WilliamDParker 14:00, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of Hakka and Min Nan in Taiwan geography articles 

message: I wrote an article about Super Donkey Kong - Xiang Jiao Chuan, an unlicensed video game from China. People on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games questioned its notability. I am asking someone well-versed with Chinese to search Google with the game's Chinese name and see if you can find websites that discuss this game. WhisperToMe 13:44, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Question about notability of an unlicensed Chinese video game for the NES

message: I found at least three article, Wang Hao De, Sun Suzhen and Zhang Tianran that give birthdays as born on the 19th day of the 7th Lunar month in 1889. This conventions seems odd, and I saw nothing about it in the MoS. I was thinking this may be something specific to their religion, but I'm not sure. Could someone give this content a glance over, and perhaps convert it into standard months? Thanks for your consideration.-Andrew c 21:51, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Birthdays in... lunar months?