Talk:Chinese language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of WikiProject China, a project to improve all China-related articles. If you would like to help improve this and other China-related articles, please join the project. All interested editors are welcome.

???

This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Chinese language article.
Please sign and date your posts using four tildes (`~~~~`). New discussion topics go at the bottom of the page; click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Frequently asked questions. This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject.	Talk page guidelines Be polite Assume good faith No personal attacks Don't bite the newcomers!

	To-do list for Chinese language:	edit - history - watch - refresh
Pronunciation files ~~Example of tones~~ Sample sentence in 3-5 dialects ~~Standard Mandarin~~ ~~Wu (Hangzhou dialect)~~ ~~Mandarin (Beijing dialect)~~ ~~Cantonese~~ Gan (Wannian dialect) ~~Hakka~~ ~~Shorten the lead section (?)~~ Try to find out status on image with shady copyright status

[edit] Coding of Chinese scripts

I'm missing an overview, or a Wikipedia reference to, the different coding standards used for Chinese script, like Big5, GB and so on, which of these relate to Unicode etc. -- Egil 28 June 2005 10:58 (UTC)

An encoding is a set of data points with character forms assigned to them. As such GB is distinct from Big5 in that the characters that correspond in the other set are placed at different data points. The characters in GB are mostly simplified characters, but they have traditinal character forms. The Big5 characters are traditional characters. If one compare the characters in GB and Big5, one also finds that there are GB characters which cannot be found in Big5, and the same can be said of Big5 characters that don't appear in GB, even taking into account the simplfied-traditional equivalent characters.

Unicode on the other hand tries to contain all the characters of GB and Big5 simultaneously, including those from non-Chinese encodings. Consequently, if one converts between GB and Unicode, there is no loss of information. Likewise Big5 <-> Unicode, but GB<-/->Big5 is always a lossy conversion.

Dylanwhs 28 June 2005 15:34 (UTC)

Thanks, this is all excellent. But if would be really nice if the article had an section that covered this, or alternatively a cross reference to a smaller article about coding of Chinese characters in general. -- Egil 28 June 2005 18:10 (UTC)

It's all here: Chinese character encoding. -- ran (talk) June 28, 2005 20:23 (UTC)

Excellent. I've added it to Related topics. -- Egil 22:25, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Use of Hanja in north korea

The article mentions that hanja's use has been discontinued in north korea. I am not sure that this is true. When I was studying chinese in shanghai, I had 3 north korean classmates (you know, the elite of the nation, sent abroad to learn that power full neighbour that china is). They did tell me that though hanja's usage was limited, it was not abandoned, and that they learned something like 1000 hanja in school. I don't know how accurate that information is, and it might be out of date, since they were all well into their 30's, this may have changed since their school days.

[edit] Huh? - Historical phonology

Old Chinese is said to end a *millenium* before Middle Chinese began. So what do you call the Chinese spoken during the Han dynasty?

Qin Dynasty Chinese, Han Dynasty Chinese, Three Kingdoms-era Chinese, etc. -- ran (talk) 14:04, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

The periodisation of Chinese historical phonology is somewhat fuzzy. An article Marjorie Chan's webpage does a good job of dividing Chinese history into periods, but from my own point of view, Old Chinese, Middle Chinese, Recent Chinese, and Modern Chinese, can all be further sub divided into early, mid and late.

Early OC would be the period between Shang and early Zhou. Mid Old Chinese would be from around 771 to the Warring States. Late OC is somewhere Qin to Han, and possinly until the end of the Three Kingdoms.

Early MC would be Jin to the Norther and Southern Dynasty, Mid MC would be somewhere from Sui and Mid Tang. Late MC is from Mid Tang until the end of the Song.

Early Recent Chinese, probably begins in the Yuan Dynasty, and lasts until mid Ming. Mid Recent Chinese, End of the Ming until the end of the QianLong reign of the Qing. Late recent Chinese is from that point until the end of the Qing. and Modern Chinese would be from the end of the Qing until the present.

Dylanwhs 19:00, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Huh? - Shanghainese

Who the heck wrote that Shanghainese has only a 2-tone pitch accent "like modern Japanese"?? Just because you are not a native speaker and can't distinguish the tones doesn't mean they don't exist. Shanghainese along with other Wu dialects are famous for their elaborate tone sandhi system. I will correct that statement. 24.168.131.218 14:27, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

They really don't exist, even Chinese professors in Shanghai say Shanghainese tones are similar to Japanese pitch accent (see the Chinese excerpt). Shanghainese has 5 citation tones on paper but only two contrastive pitches. "Citation tones" mean little because they are just a historic Chinese linguistic terminology that was developed when Mandarin dialects lost their voiced initials. For example Rusheng in Shanghainese is dependent on the syllable final and vowel length, not on actual tone; and there are Yin-Ru and Yang-Ru which is also generally irrelevant for Shanghainese because Shanghainese has voiced and voiceless consonants. So of the 5 citations tones, you only have distinction between Yin-Ping and "THE REST", hence the statement that there are only 2 REAL semantic tones in Shanghainese. Here is an excerpt from a book on Shanghainese 《上海语言发展史》 written by a Chinese language professor in Shanghai: “声调向重音化倾向进化。上海话的声调从8个合并成5个，实际上只余下一个降调（阴平）和一个平升调，变得十分简单。这使得上海人读声调时，自由变体可以相当宽泛，如降调读成“53”“51”“552”都不影响听感，平升调读成平降升调也不会影响理解。语音随着词汇语法词双音节连调成为主流以后，上海话在吴语中最快进化到“延伸式”连调，后字都失去了独立的声调而弱化粘着，重又向屈折语变化。前字有声调音位的作用，除此以外，只有一高一低或一低一高，上海话语流中的语音词读音已像日语的读法。目前，上海话语的语流中，相对稳定的音位有两类，一类是声母，一类是前字声调，这两类为首的音位对上海话语音正起着重要的稳定作用。值得注意的是，在青年中，有的常用词读成前字都是44，最后一字为低升调的读法”。 - 钱乃荣教授，上海大学，《上海语言发展史》 2001。 Hope that clarifies things. naus 03:20, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

No, this is true. The tone sandhi in Shanghainese is so extensive that polysyllabic compounds have just two tone patterns, one beginning with High-Low and another beginning with Low-High. It's not a matter of non-native speakers not being able to distinguish the tones of Shanghainese. See Shanghai dialect. -- ran (talk) 16:00, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Here, I'll paste the entire section from Shanghai dialect:

In polysyllabic words or set phrases, all syllables after the first lose their original tones and are pronounced based on the table below as "neutral" syllables. Even the first syllable that determines subsequent pitches is altered in a polysyllabic word. The patterns vary depending on the number of syllables in the word or set short phrase.

1st syllable original tone	2 syllables	3 syllables	4 syllables	5 syllables
53	55 - 21	55 - 33 - 31	55 - 33 - 33 - 31	55 - 33 - 33 - 33 - 31
53	H - L	H - L - L	H - L - L - L	H - L - L - L - L
34	33 - 44	33 - 55 - 31	33 - 55 - 33 - 31	33 - 55 - 33 - 33 - 31
34	L - H	L - H - L	L - H - L - L	L - H - L - L - L
13	22 - 44	22 - 55 - 31	22 - 55 - 33 - 31	22 - 55 - 33 - 33 - 31
13	L - H	L - H - L	L - H - L - L	L - H - L - L - L
5	33 - 44	33 - 55 - 31	33 - 55 - 33 - 31	33 - 55 - 33 - 33 - 31
5	L - H	L - H - L	L - H - L - L	L - H - L - L - L
2	11 - 23	11 - 22 - 23	11 - 22 - 22 - 23 or 22 - 55 - 33 - 31 depending on word	22 - 55 - 33 - 33 - 31
2	L - H	L - H - H	L - H - H - H or L - H - L - L	L - H - L - L - L

H = relative high pitch; L = relative low pitch

Notice that these patterns are quite similar to Japanese pitch accent patterns. Tone sandhi of polysyllabic compounds in the Shanghai dialect has attracted the interest of many scholars, who have previously given only careful consideration to the tone of the monosyllable while trying to describe the rules of tone sandhi for polysyllabic compounds. It has been argued that the number of tones of the Shanghai dialect, generally held to be five under previous analyses, can be reduced to only two underlying tone patterns, or tonemes, by recognizing the existence of the phoneme "voiced h" (Xiaowen Shen, University of Tokyo).

-- ran (talk) 16:01, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Strange assertion -- no citation, no evidence, no argument?

The current text has:

Not only do they greatly differ in pronunciation, but there is about a 25% to 50% difference in their grammar and vocabulary, a difference notable enough to raise a doubt as to whether all Chinese dialects come from the same language family.

I would dispute these assertions even if I did not know enough Min2 Nan2 yu3 to have some personally acquired data to go on. Where is there any linguist of anywhere near the status of Zhao Yuanren who holds these views? People have been working for generations to trace out the histories of the "family tree" of the languages spoken in China. Some of them, such as the languages native to the aboriginal peoples of Taiwan, have no known connection to the main language family in China (borrowed vocabulary being the only visible connection as far as I know). But for the so-called "dialects of Chinese," nobody in the Chinese field that I know of has ever suggested that they are unrelated. The developmental charts that I've seen show the Min2 languages as being the most remote from the others, and even in those cases there is a clear famiy resemblance. P0M 02:35, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I checked the history. The article was changed in mid-August by somebody who never many any other contributions. S/he changed a fair amount, but I deleted only the passage quoted above. P0M 04:58, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

DeFrancis, in The Chinese Language, Fact and Fantasy (1984), cites Xu Shirong 1982 in Wenzi Gaige 2, p.15: "the differences among the regionalects taken as a whole amount, very roughly, to 20 percent in grammar, 40 percent in vocabulary, and 80 percent in pronunciation." This in no way implies, however, that the 'dialects' (the term here being misapplied) are doubted to come from the same language family; the evidence to the contrary is voluminous. Your deletion was entirely appropriate. Dragonbones 04:37, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Can anyone archive this very long talk page into several smaller ones?

It is taking an age to load, and it would be nice if someone who know how to, to split it all up. Thanks 19:04, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

DoneP0M 05:21, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mandarin Romanization: Pinyin v. Wade-Giles

Is there a Wikipedia standard for the romanization of Mandarin words? I've noticed some Wade-Giles, some Pin-yin--IMHO there should be one standard, either/or rather than both/and. Both are somewhat idiosyncratic; but the Pin-yin system is used in mainland China and is generally the only romanization system taught to students of Mandarin. And confusion would result from mixing the two. For example, "chou" would be prounounced like "joe" in Wade-Giles and like "choe" (ch as in cheese) in Pin-yin; "pei" is pronounced "bay" in Wade-Giles and like "pay" in Pin-yin. I would vote for using Pin-yin exclusively, given its rising popularity. Tawainese & foreigners who learn Mandarin in Taiwan are the only ones who still use Wade-Giles. If a consensus can be reached, I would be willing to help with the effort to standardize all articles that use romanized Mandarin words. 71.69.96.85 03:57, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

We already have a standard, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (China-related articles). -- ran (talk) 00:02, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

"We usually use Hanyu Pinyin" isn't really a standard -- more of a light suggestion. :) Jiawen 10:19, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

All foreigners in Taiwan normally have a choice for learning Chinese: 1. Hanyu Pinyin, 2. Zhuyin Fuhao (which the Taiwanese recommend but don't enforce). I don't know of anybody who has used Wade-Giles to learn Chinese, unless they've lived in Taiwan for several decades. Regarding use of Romanization in Taiwan, I have just updated the Chinese Language page to be more accurate. Although the Taipei government (under mayor 馬英九 Ma Ying-jiu (actually I don't remember the English spelling of his name as it is in some other romanization)) has adopted Hanyu Pinyin as the official romanization of every location within Taipei, the city name itself will not change (would be Taibei in Hanyu Pinyin). It is interesting to note that some Taiwanese Romanization finds its way onto street signs. Any other official romanization in Taiwan including personal names primarily for the issuance of passports, will continue to use Tongyong Pinyin only slightly different from Hanyu Pinyin. Glossika 15:24, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

In correct Hanyu Pinyin, it's actually Ma Yingjiu -- no hyphen. Hanyu Pinyin doesn't use hyphens, and only rarely does it use apostrophes. I think Mayor Ma spells his name in the usual pseudo-Wade-Giles used in Taiwan: Ma Ying-jeou. I don't think that's any established romanization system, just "spelling by gut". Jiawen 20:48, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Minbei, Fuzhou, Mindong

Curious--does anyone know the relationship between Minbei, Fuzhou dialect, and Mindong? Fuzhou seems to be the prestige variant of Mindong; is Mindong/Fuzhou a variant of Minbei or a distinct group...are they mutually intelligible? Thanks! --Dpr 08:37, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

There are several ways to classify Min. One way is to have just Minbei and Minnan (northern Min and southern Min). In this case, the Fuzhou dialect is in Minbei. Another way, which seems to be more recent, is to have five to seven separate categories of Min. In this case Minbei is restricted to inland Fujian, and Fuzhou is instead found in Mindong (eastern Min).

As for mutual intelligibility -- I have no idea... -- ran (talk) 13:37, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

As I understand this (but I'm not an expert on this issue at all) all varieties of Min are somewhat mutually intelligible except Mindong, which is not mutually intelligible with the other varities of Min. --Nlu 16:38, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

My website (1st listing under Google Search "Chinese Dialects") covers the full classification (taxonomy) of Chinese dialects, sourced from publication by China's top linguistics researchers on Chinese dialectology. I have everything translated into English for easier access to western audiences. Fuzhou is classified as follows:

Min > Mindong > Houguan > Fuzhou. Min here can be considered a cover or grouping of closely related languages (similar to the term Scandinavian can be used for Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish). Mindong is the language. Houguan is the dialect. Fuzhou is a location within Houguan dialectal area. Fuzhou also happens to be the largest city speaking Houguan or Mindong for that matter, and is often cited as a representative variety.

The following locations are listed by the Chinese linguists as belonging to the Houguan dialect: Changle, Fuqing, Fuzhou, Gutian, Lianjiang, Luoyuan, Minhou, Minqing, Nanping, Ningde, Pingnan, Pingtan, Yongtai, Youxi. (I provide a Google Earth file at my website for download with these places marked). Jiangsu Educational Press has published a 545-page Fuzhou-Mandarin dictionary.

There is one other dialect within Mindong. It is Funing. The following locations speak this dialect: Fuan, Fuding, Shouning, Xiapu, Zherong, Zhouning.

Northern Min (Minbei), on the other hand, is located further inland, west of Mindong. There are no dialects listed for it and includes the following locations: ChongAn, JianOu, Jianyang, Nandan, Pucheng, Shunchang, Songxi, Taishun, Zhenghe. Jiangsu Educational Press has published a 316-page Jianou-Mandarin dictionary.

Glossika 15:40, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Small Legend

The map legend on this page's map is to small to read. Leon Trotsky 9:35 30 October 2005

[edit] "Chinese is considered by natives of China to be a single language"

Someone recently modified the preamble so that the above sentence was included. Making this assertion before clarifying that there is a sharp distinction in the Chinese language between yǔ 語 and wen 文 is misleading and unnecessarily provocative. Since most Chinese presumably don't understand the subtleties of the English word "language", it seems far-fetched to make a claim that (could be construed as implying that) natives of China universally have beliefs relating to a concept in the English language. In any case, the changes I'm about to make are intended to keep the preamble as simple as possible, while being professional and NPOV. Peak 08:02, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dubious flowchart

What is the source for the flow-chart showing the relation between dialects, I don't think it is canonical and at best only a theory. I believe it should be taken out.

I agree. -- ran (talk) 18:23, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

It definitely is very sketchy. See Image talk:Chinese language tree.png. It appears to be purely speculative, especially considering the fact that the dialects have influenced each other so profoundly since. For example, Wu and Xiang are shown to have branched away the earliest; but since then Wu and Xiang have been subject to much greater influence from the north while Min has been relatively isolated -- this is why Min is the only group whose phonology has features from before Middle Chinese. (This is why there is a completely different tree here, showing Min splitting off first and everyone else after: [1]) I'm not sure, in fact, where the conclusion that Wu broke off before Min came from (it doesn't seem to make geographical sense), or how Qi managed to become Min (it doesn't make geographical sense either).

So yes, I agree that it should be removed. -- ran (talk) 00:09, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The language/regional variant/dialect thing again

It seems to me that the description "The identification of the varieties of Chinese as "languages" or "dialects" is a controversial issue. If Chinese is classified as a language rather than a dialect, it is the most widely spoken language in the world" might be improved as follows. The addition of sentences two and three help explain concisely the nature of the controversy: "The identification of the varieties of Chinese as "languages" or "dialects" is a controversial issue. The lack of mutual intelligibility between many of them renders the term “dialects” unacceptable to many scholars, but the term currently persists in the vernacular. However, simply calling them separate languages would obscure the close relationship between them. Chinese may perhaps be thought of as a language family, with a number of mutually unintelligible subdivisions ("regional variants”, “regionalects" or "dialect groups" – for example, Mandarin), within which exist mutually intelligible forms (“dialects”, e.g., Beijing and Nanjing dialects within Mandarin)."

Note that I introduce here the term "regionalect", coined by DeFrancis I believe. I'm interested in feedback on this.

I would also suggest changing the wording "Regional variation between different variants/dialects" to "Regional variation between different variants/dialect groups" because the sentence is a reference to mutual incompatibility, which exists at the level of groups of dialects (Mandarin being one such group), rather than at the level of dialects (e.g., Beijing and Nanjing), which are by definition mutually comprehensible. I consider this a minor clarification.

I have entered the above suggestions on this talk page first, rather than directly in the article, due to the controversial nature of the discussion and the existence of an archived peer review, which I have read. I wish to invite discussion before making the above changes. Dragonbones 05:57, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Chinese languages are as differentiated as, for example, Dutch and German, Spanish and Italian, or Russian and Polish. If we call the Chinese languages "dialects", we ought to do the same for those European languages. As it stands, however, by using the term "dialect"- or even compromises such as "topolect" or "regionalect"- we are setting up an academic double standard and contributing to a general confusion on the subject.

Indeed, even the page title is misleading: it should be "Chinese Languages", just as we have "European Languages", or else "Chinese Language Sub-family". "Chinese Language" better characterizes Classical Chinese than any modern language.

My understanding is that political pressure from the PRC government and its adherents has sparked this "controversy". If I'm correct in this, then it ought to be dealt with on a separate page including all the viewpoints and variant terminology. This page, however, should be left to a serious discussion of the languages' history and relationships.

As you may have guessed, I'm a big fan of www.pinyin.info, so I don't claim to be wholly unbiased. I am, however, trying to be as objective as a person can be. Ben L. 04:33, 15 May 2006 (Ad-Dawhah)

I also favour the s to indicate the plural, but wiki naming conventions insist on the singular, as I found when a page I created was later changed and redirected to a title without the s. Dylanwhs 18:44, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

That's not true for the "European Languages" article. Since I don't see and "Asian Languages" article, I take it Wikipedia assumes "Chinese" only refers to a single language; but this isn't true. "Chinese" by itself is fine as an adjective, but at best misleading as a noun. In this sense, Wikipedia is misleading. I realize we are likely treading on the territory of the PRC government... I don't believe knowledge should be manipulated by any government, though. Can I get any support for a vote on changing the name? If this has been discussed before, please provide a link, thanks. Ben L. 09:42, 18 May 2006 (Ad-Dawhah)

[edit] on variety of edits -- kaishu, streamlining, radicals etc.

“All modern characters derive from Kaishu.” strikes me as an odd statement. Modern characters ‘’are’’ in their basic form modern 楷 kǎi standard script; they don’t somehow ‘’derive’’ from it; furthermore, the issue of styles is better handled in the next paragraph.

This next part also only mentions kaishu in the context of traditional characters, as if the PRC system weren’t primarily kaishu too. This is confusing. The description ‘streamlining of’ is also odd and has been cut. “There are currently two standards for Chinese characters. One is the traditional system, essentially a streamlined styling of Kaishu, still used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau. The other is the simplified system adopted during the 1950s Chinese Cultural Revolution in Mainland China. “

The easiest way to solve the above problems is to strip the references to kaishu out of those two parts, and leave kaishu in the subsequent section on styles. Much cleaner this way, especially since the section is a brief summary..

The misuse of the term ‘radicals’ once again rears its ugly head here: “The simplified system requires fewer strokes to write certain radicals and has fewer synonymous characters. Singapore, which has a large Chinese community, is the first and only foreign country to recognize and officially adopt the simplified characters.” What were simplified were many character components (which may or may not be the radicals, in the sense of dictionary index keys, of those particular characters; and which may or may not be the semantic components (for which the term radical is often misapplied) of those particular characters.

In the translations of calligraphic styles, “caoshu (草書, lit. "grass script" or "haste script")” is rather uncommon. I have generally seen it called cursive, and never haste! We should at least add cursive. Lishu is generally termed clerical script, so I’ve added this.

I’ll deal with the problem of the term 大篆 dàzhuàn shortly.Dragonbones 10:38, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] On dates of oracle bones

On the history, “only dates Chinese characters to the Shang dynasty in 1700 BC” is too specific in terms of centuries, and gives a misimpression that oracle bones were ca. 1700, when they date to perhaps ca. the 14th or 13th to 11th centuries BC. (Reference 1. gives ca. 14th to 11th centuries BC on p.29: 裘錫圭 Qiú Xīguī (2000). Chinese Writing. Early China Special Monograph Series No. 4. Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. ISBN 1-55729-071-7. Ref. 2 gives ca. 1500 – 1028 BC on p. 79: DeFrancis, John (1984). The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu. ISBN 0-8248-1068-6. Ref. 3, from an oracle bone specialist, gives ca. 1200-1050 BC -- although the exact chronology is disputed, the oracle bones only run from king Wu Ding to 帝辛 Dì Xīn. Thus, the period of extant OB is not the entire Shāng dynasty, but only its last 150 or so years. Since the exact period is disputed and several reputable scholars give dates as early as the 14th century, I’ve changed “1700” to “14th to 11th”. I’ve added “although this fully mature script implies an earlier period of development.” How long that period must have been is too controversial to specify a period.

I'll dig a bit more to verify these dates, check the dates of the few mid-Shang OB, and so on.

For Yinxu, I added ‘late’ to Shāng dynasty. Dragonbones 10:44, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] basic rules for Hanyu Pinyin Orthography

Just now, 24.27.49.75 changed the Chin. Lang. page as follows: - :Jīguāng, zhè liǎngge zì shì shénme yìsi? + :Jīguāng, zhè liǎng ge zì shì shén me yìsi? Why split shenme? This is in violation of the basic rules for pinyin orthography, which specifies that such ci2 should remain together as one word. See for example the rules as reprinted in Appendix 1 of the ABC Comprehensive Chinese-English Dictionary (ABCC) by DeFrancis, p.1341, and see "shen2me" therein for confirmation. Dragonbones 05:23, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Jīguāng, zhè liǎngge zì shì shénme yìsi? seems to be correct. LDHan 16:10, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

That is my preference as well, although ABCC splits the 個 ge off like .75 did, which is why I didn't correct it. But I think measure words/classifiers like ge and possessive/adverbial particles like 的地得 look and feel better glued onto the words in front of them. Dragonbones 01:52, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. An isolated "de", for instance, raises the question whether it is a stand-along word that has lost its tone mark. Students will also pause before the "de" in an inappropriate way unless it is "tied" to the previous syllable. The only possible exception is a fineal "le" when it applies to the entire sentence rather than to a verb that happens to be at the end of the sentence.P0M 01:09, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tone marks in names necessary?

I noticed that tone marks were added to names of cities, provinces, dynasties, etc. in the History section, and was wondering if they are necessary, given that many of them have essentially entered the English vocabulary? I thought that one of the style manuals might have mentioned something about this, but I can't seem to find it in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese) or Wikipedia:Manual of Style (China-related articles). --ian (talk) 16:33, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I searched the style manual before adding them. I added them on the principle that pinyin needs tones to accurately represent the tonal language, and the tone marks, although perhaps not necessary for recognition by English speakers of words like Beijing, do not IMO detract from the readability of the word either. If there is disagreement on whether it is desirable however, I would suggest establishing a consensus on tonemark style and inserting relevant guidelines to that effect in the above cited locations. If enough other editors object (and I do not yet know that to be the case) then I would recommend a standard parallel to that used for the insertion of Chinese characters: certainly at least those words which do not have a Wiki page (say, on a particular imperial consort named Geng) should have both the tone marks and the Chinese character added, since otherwise it is hard to figure out what the pinyin refers to. And for those which do have their own page, IF they are also common in the English vocabulary (say, Beijing) we would not add the tone marks on other pages unless there was a risk of confusion between two identically spelled words (like the two Jin dynasties); we would add the tones at the beginning of their own (e.g., Beijing's) page. If they do have their own page but are not common in the English vocabulary (say, Xu Shen), then I would advocate a standard slightly more liberal than that on insertion of Chinese characters -- namely, I would argue that we should add pinyin throughout, because it is less intrusive than characters. I think this is a good topic to discuss on the discussion pages of the two locations you cite above, and will copy this to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (China-related articles). Since it is relevant to overall policy on style and not just the Chin. Lang. pages, why don't we continue the discussion there, not here? I'll copy this over...Dragonbones 01:48, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree. People who don't understand them will sail right on by, but they may prevent confusion for users whose vocabulary is large enough to interpret a romanized syllable in more than one way that happens to be appropriate to the context. P0M 01:12, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please remember to explain your changes and provide authoritative references

I've noticed a general lack of adherence to this principle on Wiki. Please remember that it will help others respond to your edits in an informed way. Dragonbones 02:59, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Learning Classical Chinese

This is something that doesn't seem very clear to me, anywhere I read. Say I want to learn the so-called classical chinese to read in the original the works of Lao-Tzu, confucianism, the old poets, and so forth. What exactly will I have to study? Is it the same mandarin language as today? And is the script the same traditional script? posted by 201.50.90.68

Laozi, Menicus, Confusius are written in 文言 Wenyan Classical Chinese which is a diffenrent language than 普通话 Putonghua Mandarin Chinese. --Lie-Hap-Po--

At the time they were writing in older scripts but all the books printed now have converted them for you into the modern script which is called kai3shu1, aka regular or standard script. This is then available in two versions, the simplified graphs in mainland China, and the unaltered, traditional graphs as in Taiwan. When you learn Chinese, one of the first choice points is which of these to learn. Regardless of your choice, you'll be able to buy the classics in either one. As for the language, well, it's a bit like Shakespeare versus Harry Potter... it won't be quite the same, and extra learning is involved to read it. Best of luck! Dragonbones 09:50, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

You can always seek helps from some of the natives... like me, hehe. There's now a zh-wen template in WP:BBL that indicates those wikipedians who are able to utilize Classical Chinese. -- G.S.K.Lee 07:12, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I would say the templates are not so good in classical chinese. What is

斯亦而上如雅善 ??? How to read this???--Kfsung 08:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

From the top right, read down, and move left. -- Миборо в ский 01:19, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Audio introduction to article

I think it's excellent and very laudible that someone has gone to the trouble of creating an audio intro to this article, but it is read with a hard-to-follow accent (possibly part synthesised?) and thus probably adds little in its current form. I don't have the ability to redo this myself, but could someone else, and/or do you agree that this needs to be revised/removed? Thanks Hongshi 20:46, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

The reader is not a native speaker of English. But probably only the visually impaired would receive great benefit from having the passage read aloud, and for that purpose the quality of the recording is adequate. P0M 02:57, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Potential confusion--Cantonese Phonology.

From the Phonology section, in reference to Cantonese: [quote] There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where the nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. [/quote]

I'm no phonologist, but do have some versing in phonology as do I in Cantonese and Mandarin. It's true that /m/ and /ŋ/ are the only mouth movements in the syllables, but suggesting that a vowel is not used as a nucleus in these examples might lead readers to believe that they are toneless, which they are not. Am I just being oversensitive here?

The tone is not dependent on the vowel when a syllable is pronounced, so /m/ or /ŋ/ can be pronounced in different tones. This is seen in Hakka where /ŋ₃₁/ means 'five', /ŋ₁₁/ means 'fish', /m₃₃/ is the negating particle, /m₃₁/ an syllable to indicating agreement. Dylanwhs 21:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction of simplified characters

"The other is the simplified system adopted during the 1950s Chinese Cultural Revolution in Mainland China"

The Cultural Revolution began in 1966. Characters first started to be simplified some time before 1949 (see the Chinese character article) and the main changes were initiated pre-Cultural Revolution by the Mao government, hence my change to "The other is the simplified system introduced by the government of the People's Republic of China in the 1950s" Wsbhopkin 09:18, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chinese names of other countries

I am not familiar with the Chinese language, but it is my understanding that the Chinese names for many countries have literal meanings in the Chinese language (for example, "Zhongguo" = "middle kingdom", the Chinese word for Germany meaning "moral country", the Chinese word for the United States meaning something along the lines of "gold mountain", and so on. If this is true, then it might be interesting and helpful to have an article along the lines of Meanings of Chinese names of countries.Spikebrennan 20:48, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Most of the names are just phonetic, the format is usually: syllable similar to name of country+guo (Chinese for country). Eg the Chinese word for Germany is de + guo , (de from Deutchland). In written form a Chinese character with the sound of de is used, in this case it does mean virtue, moral, but it is only used for its sound. This is how foreign names are usually transliterated into Chinese, as coverd under "Loanwords" in the article. LDHan 21:41, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

While LDHan is absolutely correct in pointing out that the character dé is used only for its sounds, as is the case for almost all country names, it's also true that in general the characters used were picked to avoid negative meanings or connotationsm, so the meaning is not completely irrelevant. The name for the United States, btw, is měigúo, where měi usually means "beautiful", but is also just a phonetic. siafu 21:56, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

LOL... I do remember there were people complaining about such picking of characters beautified the Western countries to a more or less degree, somewhere among newspapers. -- G.S.K.Lee 14:28, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

LOL... 饿国... 没国... 阴国... 惰国... 乏国... -- Миборо в ский 01:17, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Number of 2nd language speakers??

roughly how many people speak standard chinese as a 2nd language? I want to exclude those for whom it's their native language.--Sonjaaa 05:19, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

most of the population of Guangdong, for a start.... m.e. 10:30, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chinese language grammer section too dry / Chinese language slated for extinction IMO

I had my example of "aspect rather than tense" for Chinese grammer removed by User talk:LDHan. I used the example of how "boiled water" is equivalent to "boiling water" since there is no tense in Chinese. But instead of this concrete example, the grammer section is as follows: "Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction, pronoun dropping (and the related subject dropping), and the use of aspect rather than tense." Too dry. On top of that, my observation that Chinese, when translated into English, seems verbose was also removed. I guess this is another example of the well-known tendency to save face when faced with embarrassing facts—a sure sign of weakness and an inferiority complex. A language without tense is like a civilization without the wheel. The Incas come to mind, and we see where that led them (extinction). In another 100 years, with globalization, Chinese may well enter the panoply of extinct languages IMO. Raylopez99 23:23, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Can you give an example in Chinese of what you mean when you say that "saying 'boiled water' is equivalent to saying 'boiling water' or 'water to be boiled'"?—Nat Krause^(Talk!) 01:51, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

The example was given in English in the book 'Mr. China : A Memoir by Tim Clissold' Raylopez99 21:48, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

here is an example: 煮沸的水 [boiled water]; 開水 [boiling water]; 水煮沸 [water to be boiled] --Raylopez99 07:41, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

It would be easier to credit the example if it included the relevant Chinese. I'm not a Chinese expert, but I can't think of how "boiled water", "boiling water", and "water to be boiled" could be construed as the same phrase.—Nat Krause^(Talk!) 03:17, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

If Chinese is to become extinct, it would have done so 2,000 years ago. Nice try, nevertheless. -- Миборо в ский 01:14, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. Many languages around a thousand years ago, such as the African Click language, are dying out. Chinese is no exception, and the fact there are over a billion Chinese means little if they all adopt English gradually. But this is off topic so let's not discuss further. Raylopez99 21:51, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

The click language would not be dying out if "Clickistan" is an economic powerhouse and everyone's trying to learn to click in order to make more money. :D -- Миборо в ский 23:47, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cellophane noodles question

Hello, there's some controversy about the origin of the name saifun to refer to cellophane noodles. It was earlier thought that this was a Japanese name (i.e. harusame saifun) but it now seems it might be from Chinese, maybe related to the Mandarin "fen si." Is it possible that "saifun" is a Min Nan pronunciation? It doesn't seem to be Cantonese. Thank you, Badagnani 22:46, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Distribution Map

I think that this article needs a world distribution map like many of the other language articles on WikiPedia.

[edit] Vocabulary

It seems like Chinese words for advanced subjects such as science, art, etc. have flooded neighboring languages similar to Græco-Latin words in Western European languages.Cameron Nedland 13:36, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Methods of Learning

Shouldn't there be a blurb on "bo po mo fo" here? I actually came to the page looking for a link or some other reference to that. It's the system native Chinese speakers use to learn Chinese in their schools. I think it's also used to look up Chinese words in Chinese dictionaries. 128.152.20.33 22:25, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Only in Taiwan, I think... On the mainland they use pinyin (which is much easier for those used to western scripts). m.e. 01:09, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Not so, because a woman from Chungdu in Sichuan province recommended that I look into a learning system that incorporated "bo po mo fo". Anyway, I guess the official name is Zhuyin. I'm going to add a link on the page because I do think it's relevant.128.152.20.33 15:45, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] North/South Korea

Given that North and South Korea are really two states within one country, and that this article isn't referring to the states, shouldn't they be listen as simple "Korea" in the "Spoken In:" section? I believe this is how those in Korea themselves would prefer it. Is there an official Wikipedia policy on this issue?

[edit] Most commonly spoken language (wording)

This phrase: "According to Guinness World Records 2006, Chinese, with 1.4 billion speakers in the Mandarin dialect alone, is the most commonly spoken language (after English) in the world." uses after incorrectly, I believe. It should be reworded, or the parentheses removed. Dfrauzel 00:28, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Mandarin has more native speakers, however English has more speakers overall.Cameron Nedland 13:19, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah. Well, while that makes more sense in context, the fact of the matter appears to be a matter of dispute or, at least, speculation: English language states that estimates vary widely from 150 million to 1.5 billion. That is a pretty wide gap of estimation. Dfrauzel 17:25, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay okay, don't shoot the messenger.Cameron Nedland 02:56, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Failed to access Chinese_language article

I can't access Chinese_language article and it is only displayed as �k��g�(��~ER�p�lWUw��-)Y�%�2�,��q �"�*�*�Y�E^�Uڳ��0��1��̀a Although I try multi-browsers and multi-networks, I don't know whether it's a common problem? Bigreat 03:29, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spoken Chinese

I have change the page because I want to let readers of the page know the error of calling Mandarin Chinese Guanhua the same as Mandarin Chinese Putonghua

You seem to have instead introduced additional confusion by adding, "普通话,国语,北方话/北方話 or 官話/官话" where the article is clearly talking about the entire Beifanghua group, which is not the same thing as 普通话/国语 at all.—Nat Krause^{(Talk!·What have I done?)} 06:16, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

汉语 Hanyu Chinese is divided into two groups: 文言 Wenyan Classical Chinese languages and 白话 Baihua Modern Chinese languages. Mandarin Chinese Guanhua 官话 was the main language used at the Imperial Court and Mandarin Chinese Putonghua 普通话 is the main language in China. Both Guanhua and Putonghua are called Mandarin Chinese in the West but they are indeed different languages. China has had only two official languages in its entire history. 满语 Manyu, the Manchu language, was the first official language of China, from 1644 till 1912. 普通话 Putonghua has been the official language of China since 1958. Before 1958, no form of Chinese was ever the official language of China. The linguist names 上古汉语 Shanggu Hanyu Old Chinese and 中古汉语 Zhonggu Hanyu Middle Chinese are used by linguists who are researching the field linguist Bernhard Karlgren had started. In China the Chinese did not make such a division, but divided Hanyu into Wenyan and Baihua. Wenyan is sometimes called 古代汉语 Gudai Hanyu Classical Chinese and Baihua is sometimes called 现代汉语 Xiandai Hanyu Modern Chinese.

The above was what I added under Beifanghua and which is still been deleted by other users.

If you want to refer to Mandarin as Northeren Dialect Group you can only use the word Beifanghua and not the word Guanhua which refers to Mandarin Chinese as a language used at the Imperial Court.

Also Guanhua is not a language belonging to Baihua/Modern Chinese group as most people think but a language belonging to the Wenyan/Classical Chinese group. Lie-Hap-Po

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../c/h/i/Talk%7EChinese_language_5953.html"