Talk:Languages of China

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The languages of modern Chinese nationalities belong to six families: That looks suspicious to me. There are several Tai-Kadai languages, which are generally classed as an independent family, and what about the various hill-tribes? We could always hedge with "at least" something, but it'd be nice to be sure. Markalexander100 07:41, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

good idea, add "at least". I got the figure 6 from a semi-official PRC website. --Menchi 07:51, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Finally got round to it. Markalexander100 04:45, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It's cause the orthodox position among Chinese linguists is that Tai-Kadai is somehow a subgroup of Sino-Tibetan. Non-Chinese linguists tend to disagree. - Mustafaa 05:03, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 Editorial comment on article in article 2 Banknotes! 3 Official Languages 4 What is going on

[edit] Editorial comment on article in article

§ Someone has inserted the following words into the article:

Calling that a single language is politically sensitive; it contains many dialects, some mutually intelligible but others so distinct (at least in their spoken forms) that elsewhere in the world they might be treated as different languages.

§ That is an editorial comment, a book reviewer's comment. A critique of an article does not belong in an article. If something is wrong about an article it should be discussed here and then the article should be fixed.

§ Furthermore, the sentence is not clear. Did the author mean to say that calling "that" a single language is politically insensitive? Or does it mean that the question of whether two varieties of language get called two dialects of one language or get called two languages is a politically sensitive issue?

§ For the aforesaid reasons, I have moved the sentence out of the article so that it can be discussed properly. P0M 18:32, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Banknotes!

Hi! Does anyone know what the languages are, that appear on Chinese banknotes? I've been able to identify Tibetan, but none of the others... Reg, Muhamedmesic 02:36, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Uyghur language and Zhuang language both appear. - Mustafaa 16:48, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I am pretty sure that the Manchurian language appears as well, but I am not an expert.

The minority languages on Chinese banknotes are Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur and Zhuang. Uyghur is written in the Arabic-Persian script (K̡ona Yezik̡) that was re-introduced in the 1980s; Zhuang is written in the 1957 spelling system on older banknotes (e.g. Cuŋƅgoƨ Yinƨminƨ Yinƨhaŋƨ for "Bank of China"), on newer banknotes the orthography reformed in 1986 is used (e.g. Cunghgoz Yinzminz Yinzhangz). The Manchus are one of the largest officially recognised national minorities of China, but they don't speak Manchurian any more and use Chinese instead. Babelfisch 02:01, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Official Languages

Which of the languages have official status? -- Zntrip

[edit] What is going on

Is anybody watching what is happening to this article more closely than I? It appears that a couple of anonymous editors have deleted a large list that originally followed the words:

The following languages have traditionally had written forms that do not involve Chinese characters (han zi):

Hopefully these changes are not being made maliciously. P0M 04:28, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm fairly sure that was vandalism- I've reverted to the previous version. Well spotted! Mark¹ 10:54, 28 October 2005 (UTC)