Template talk:Zh-p

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[edit] Why add Hanyu

Pinyin is only capitalized as a specific pinyin, Hanyu Pinyin, Postal System Pinyin, Standard Cantonese Pinyin or Tongyong Pinyin. "Pinyin" is just a general term for romanization that is often but not exclusively used to refer to Hanyu. We need to be precise and accurate for a template applied to many articles.--Jiang 06:25, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I find it quite unnecessary and pedantic to add "Hanyu" in all of these templates. The system used is commonly called just "Pinyin" in English. Nobody is going to be confused if you call it that. Calling it "hanyu" makes people wonder what special kind wikipedia might be using. −Woodstone 08:27, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Then instead of talking about it, why not change it? --LakeHMM 08:34, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

One comment went missing here.

The "other" pinyins are hardly ever used anymore outside of very limited circles. In an English context, if the word pinyin is used, it is automatically assumed to be Hanyu Pinyin even if the great majority of people never even heard of Hanyu Pinyin. To my opinion adding Hanyu creates unnecessary doubts for the readers, making them wonder if the mentioned "Hanyu Pinyin" is the same pinyin they know about. −Woodstone 09:42, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

This would not work in the context of other romanization systems. For example, at Republic of China, "Pinyin" would be followed by "Tongyong Pinyin" and at Chongqing, "Pinyin" would be followed by "Postal System Pinyin".

The great majority of people haven't heard about pinyin, period. It is only those who make the effort to learn, or learn about, the Chinese language who will find the characters and romanizations provided in parenthesis useful at all. "Pinyin", while appropriately used colloquially in English to refer to Hanyu Pinyin, is ambiguous in the context of other romanization systems and will lead readers to question the apparent redundancy. --Jiang 10:58, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Changes by User:Eiorgiomugini were reverted without comment here. Just to get some impression about familiarity of these terms I did some Google counts:

• pinyin: 7 000 000
• hanyu pinyin: 208 000
• postal system pinyin: 28 000
• tongyong pinyin: 52 000

Therefore we can assume that the normal term is pinyin, which can be assumed to stand for Hanyu Pinyin. When any of the other types is meant, that can be made explicit. I will adapt the template accordingly. −Woodstone 21:11, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

It is fine to use pinyin as a stand alone term, but not comparatively. It makes no sense to say "The street signs in Taipei City use pinyin while the street signs in Taipei county use Tongyong Pinyin." Here, "pinyin" is in a long line of romanization systems and should be spelled out full. The google test doesn't work: just becuase "United" gets more hits than "United States" does not mean we should change all mentions of "United States" to "United". --Jiang 21:18, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

So let's use just pinyin when that is the only transcription and Hanyu Pinyin if it is combined with one of the others. The mixed templates can be adapted accordingly. Going that way in the vast majority of cases the reader is not bothered by the additon of "hanyu" and specialist artcoiles are still explicitly informative. It might be good, next to the existing Zh-p (pinyin), to create an addditonal simple template "Zh-hp" (Hanyu Pinyin) to be called from the mixed ones.−Woodstone 18:50, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Capitalisation

I've just recapitalised Pinyin, simply because it looks visually odd seeing it all lowercase in the mixed templates (eg Template:zh-cpw); for consistency, it makes more sense (in my opinion) to use the initial capital here. —OwenBlacker 16:51, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

see discussion above. for "pinyin" to be capitalized, it must be a proper name, which it is not. Rather than just meaning "romanization", we have to specify the romanization for it to be capitalized: Hanyu Pinyin. Either it is capitalized as Hanyu Pinyin, or left lowercase on its own. If it looks odd, I don't object to the alternative...or as Woodstone suggests, use a seperate template.--Jiang 17:02, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

No, I've read the discussion above and disagree. In a sentence, I think you're right, it should be lowercase; in the context of this template, where it's not a full sentence, I think it should be an initial capital, otherwise it looks really odd. — OwenBlacker 17:12, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I think lowercase "looks" better, but looks is not the main deciding factor here. I prefer "Hanyu Pinyin" over "pinyin", but I don't think "Pinyin" makes much sense.--Jiang 01:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)