Talk:Daxia

message: Why is this page called Ta-Hia? The correct romanisations are Ta-Hsia or Daxia. I don't think Ta-Hia is current anywhere but at this article.
Unfortunately the articles on Ta-Hsia and Daxia both redirect to Bactria. This makes it difficult to move "Ta-Hia" to "Ta-Hsia" (or Daxia) where it should belong.
Bathrobe 08:17, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Ta-Hia - Ta-Hsia or Daxia

message: * Oppose it should be renamed Ta-Hsia instead. 132.205.44.5 (talk) 22:51, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *I highly suspect you are someone's sock puppet. Please understand that Discussion is not a vote. Please don't just declare your position and provide no reason!--Neo-Jay (talk) 02:13, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * I highly suspect you have no idea what you're talking about. 132.205.44.5 (talk) 22:58, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *If you are not a sock puppet, I welcome you to participate in the discussion, not just declare your position. I am interested in seeing what new argument you can bring on. I highly suspect that you cannot. --Neo-Jay (talk) 03:59, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *Since your argument is "x is a sockpuppet". I highly suspect you don't care. Since you are being insulting, I want to see what proof you have of my being a sockpuppet. You've made the accusation, so put up, or shut up. 132.205.44.5 (talk) 22:41, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *Sorry, I apologize that I used that word. At that time I was irritated that you just voted and did not participate in discussion. I acknowledge that my accusation is uncivil and unfair. Hope that you can forgive me. I am eager to hear your substantive comments on the naming issue. Thank you.--Neo-Jay (talk) 23:58, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

message: I think most of the following points should be uncontroversial.
* At least part of the effort that went into this discussion would have been better spent on improving the article.
* The name of the article is the Chinese word which is transcribed as "Daxia" in Pinyin, "Ta-Hsia" in Wade Giles, and "Ta-Hia" in EFEO. All three transcriptions of this word are or have been in use. The question is only which transcription should be used in this case.
** Pinyin is the leading standard for transcription of Chinese and should generally be used in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese). However, there are many exceptions. There are specific rules for place names, but they are perhaps not very helpful here: "Mainland China place names should be in Hanyu Pinyin. Place names in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and overseas (such as Singapore) should be romanized in whatever way is commonly used for those places. Same goes for non-Han Chinese place names. So use Hohhot, Kashgar, and Shigatse, not Huhehaote, Kashi and Rikaze."
** Wade Giles used to be the standard for transcription of Chinese in English speaking countries and is still the standard in Taiwan. 
** EFEO used to be the standard for transcription of Chinese in French speaking countries and is now obsolete.
* In any case the article should be reachable (via redirects) from all three transcriptions, and it should mention them all.
* Currently the name of the article is Ta-Hia, while Daxia and Ta-Hsia are disambiguation pages that also offer Daxia River and Xia Dynasty. The first of these can be replaced by a link ("This article is about the historical region. For the river see Daxia River"). If the "Xia Dynasty" actually makes sense here (I have no opinion on this) we can treat it similarly.
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese) says that if another spelling (i.e. other than Pinyin) is more popular it should be preferred. It seems clear that this rule is not intended to prefer another spelling just because it is marginally more popular, and the example given ("taoism") is one where the non-Pinyin spelling is vastly more popular. But the rules for place names are less clear, and they may or may not take precedence here (both views are reasonable). We cannot agree which of the three spellings is most popular or whether or not any differences are significant. The rule does not say whether uses before the introduction of Pinyin are counted or not. It is reasonable to believe that they should be counted; it is reasonable to believe that they should not be counted.
Here is a suggestion, in the hope that everybody can agree to something like this.
# For now, leave the article name as it is. (By now we even have someone who actually thinks that's the best choice.)
# In the article text, say it is spelled "Daxia", "Ta-Hsia" or "Ta-Hia" (in this order).
# Make Daxia and Ta-Hsia redirects, as described above.
# And then, after somebody has shown a deeper interest in the article by extending and improving it, the matter can be discussed again.
--Hans Adler (talk) 18:40, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting point. We do not appear to specify tone in most pinyin titles. One consideration may be that this makes the title less likely to display legibly. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:58, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I see. That I didn't know this shows how clueless I am. I thought the tones were needed since the titles don't provide a context. But I suppose the context is really "a Chinese word likely to appear in a Wikipedia title", which is actually quite restrictive. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:10, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another proposal 

message: Tones are often not indicated at all for Chinese words - especially for ancient words (as no one can be sure what the tones were in ancient times) - and often, to fluent Chinese-speakers, tone indicators are not needed as the context will indicate what the tone should be. However, they are often of help in narrowing down the characters to check if one is looking for words in an alphabetically arranged dictionary and are of great help to people who are not fluent in Chinese. Tones are generally indicated in either of two ways: either by placing the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 after the romanised form of the character or, preferably, by using accents. Thus, Daxia may be written either as Dàxià, or as Da4 xia4 (the numbers are employed because some computer fonts do not have all the necessary accents available). Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin#Numbers_in_place_of_tone_marks (and the discussion below) for a detailed account.
By the way, I just discovered (while reading that article) something I didn't know before: Taiwan has officially adopted a new, and somewhat different, form of Pinyin called Tongyong Pinyin in October, 2002. However, its use is voluntary, and many people are instead using the general form of Pinyin (as employed in the PRC and most other countries) which is technically known as Hanyu Pinyin. I certainly don't want to go into the pros and cons of the various systems here (they all have serious problems - discussed in detail in the various articles I have given links to), but the net effect of all this will certainly lead to a steady decrease in the use of Wade-Giles in Taiwan, which, I believe, is another good reason not to be using it as the heading for articles in the Wikipedia. Of course, redirects can and should be made for those who may be searching for the Wade-Giles form of a word, and the Wade-Giles form of the title word can be included near the beginning of each article, if one wishes. Whatever the outcome of all these discussions, I would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to comment on the subject - and I hope it is resolved very soon ("Ta-hia" simply cannot be allowed to remain the heading - it is from a defunct French system). As I have said before, I strongly support the use of the standard Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin which is also suggested as best practice for the Wikipedia. Best wishes to you all for 2008! Cheers, John Hill (talk) 01:12, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Tone indicators in Chinese romanisations