Talk:Gwoyeu Romatzyh

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NigelG (or Ndsg) Talk
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Contents

[edit] older entries

'GB' should read 'GR' -- Kaihsu 14:45, 2004 May 10 (UTC)

I thought so too. So I'll change it in the article. ☞spencer195 16:51, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Érhuà?

Can someone verify that it is indeed 兒化 (儿化) and not 兒話 (儿话)？ —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dharbigt (talk • contribs) 19:34, 10 December 2006 (UTC).

Yes, it's definitely 化 (-ization), not 話 (speech). It's given in this form in both the DeFrancis ABC Dictionary and Hann-Ing Tsyrdean / Hàn-Yīng Cídiǎn. Ndsg 16:31, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More examples needed

Hello. I'm the author of the Short Course to which there's an external link at the end of this useful article. A couple of suggestions:

  • More examples of GR syllables, with Pinyin versions for comparison, would be useful throughout the article.
  • The section entitled Cosmetic changes is pretty baffling as it stands. The feature it describes is actually fairly simple, & would be brought out clearly with a few examples, such as yee, yeu and wuh.

If you like, I'll go through the article making a few changes along the these lines. Ndsg 12:28, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

No response yet, so I'm going ahead with a fairly thorough edit of this page, mainly in the Segmental Features and Tonal Rules sections. I'll also be adding some bibliographic references.
My intention is to generally make the presentation crisper. It's a useful article as it stands, but I think it's unclear in places.Ndsg 11:15, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Progress report

The changes I propose to make consist of:

  1. Additions
  2. Revisions

So far, apart from a couple of minor edits and rewordings, I've added a section on Abbreviations commonly used in GR and a Bibliography.

Future additions will include Texts in GR and GR in Language Learning.

I'm also planning to rewrite some of the Segmental Features and Tonal Rules sections to make them simpler and clearer. I'm sure you'll let me know if you think I've been too drastic! Ndsg 12:10, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I've now added the material on Texts and Language Learning (which also involved moving the existing part of the latter further down the page, after the description of spelling etc).
First draft of Segmental Features is now complete, so the only important change to come is the Tonal Rules.
I also intend to improve the internal linking, both to Sections and to footnotes. Ndsg 21:31, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Most of the editing & additions I intend to make are now completed. I've replaced the Bibliography with footnotes & References. There is no longer a Cosmetic Changes section, but some elements of it are incorporated in the Tonal rules.

A few internal links still need to be added, & I'll be completing them fairly soon. Ndsg 19:21, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

More or less completed now. All links now created. I may add a section on GR in the Age of the Internet.

All comments welcome. Ndsg 21:45, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proponents & critics of GR -- links needed?

This page would benefit from a section entitled "Objections to GR" or something similar.

In general, more links are needed to both supporting & opposing views on GR. Any suggestions? Ndsg 18:58, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Initial assessment of GR article

I was getting a bit tired of seeing those question-marks at the top of this page, so I've now given the GR article an initial quality & importance assessment for WikiProject Writing systems. I've also flagged the article "as needing an independent reassessment or validation of its current rating". Ndsg 15:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re-ordering of sections

My initial reaction to Ikiroid's moving various sections to a super-section Description is quite positive. I think it does make the article clearer. I'll have a closer look tomorrow & give a more detailed response then. Ndsg 23:39, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I've dropped some notes on your page regarding the article's overhaul. It's on its way. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 01:30, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks: I've responded there. Please let me know if that is the preferred way of doing things. Ndsg 11:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tables of initials & finals added

I've now added these tables to Segmental features & highlighted:

  1. differences between GR & Pinyin
  2. the confusing retroflex & alveolo-palatal consonants

I hope the tables help in providing the background for the sub-section entitled Notes on GR spelling. NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 18:21, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the IPA to the Initials. I'll do the same for the Finals table. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:16, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A negative finding

The "GR in language learning" section now includes a reference to a study apparently showing that GR was no better than Pinyin in teaching tones to students. I hope this reinforces the NPOV of the article. NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 18:26, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recent additions

  1. Sortable tables comparing GR & Pinyin spelling, including some examples of Chinese province names in the two systems.
  2. An example of actual GR text from Chao's Sayable Chinese.
  3. A speculative final section on GR in the age of the internet.

Any comments? --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 23:34, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reassessment

The article reads quite well, and has improved exponentially. However, I can't give it a rating higher then B, because the next quality level would be "Good article," in which case a formal assessment must be filed at WP:GAC. For a general idea over what kind of article is B, GA, A, or FA, view Template:Grading scheme. If I may offer some advice, you should add more inline citations and maybe some diagrams in an image format. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 19:41, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind words & suggestions. At present, having spent some time on this article, I would probably benefit from more specific advice & editing. It's difficult for me to see it with fresh eyes! I hope to get some feedback from the other editors you suggested, one of whom (User:Ravedave) has said he'll look it over.
Hope your computer woes have been cured. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 11:33, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your edits, which are a great improvement. I've modified the lead a bit since then. Not sure about Pinyin—shouldn't it be capitalized?

Gratified to see that User:Clyde_Miller has been beavering away! --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 12:00, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Colour-coding

Some of the colours have now been replaced with bolding: that's fine. However, I'd like to keep the colours in the tables & text where tones 2, 3 and 4 are being highlighted & need to be distinguished. Is there any objection to this? --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Age of the internet??

I'm thinking of removing this final section. Does it really add anything useful? --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 12:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Now revised & abridged.--NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 17:25, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Good call. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 21:10, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pictures of Lin Yutang & Chao?

Would it be an improvement if these two photos were included? They could be copied from the WP articles on these men (LY first had the idea of tonal spelling & Chao implemented it). --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 11:15, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Sure, if a picture of them exists on wikipedia (or you can find a non-copyrighted image). The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 23:19, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] National (Language) Romanization

A recent edit added "Language", which is of course quite correct. But GR has traditionally been translated simply as "National Romanization". I have no objection to giving the literal translation with "Language" as well, but I'd prefer not to have it in the opening sentence of the article, on the grounds that it provides too much detail. I don't really think we need Trad & Simplified Chinese & Pinyin either—at least not all crammed into that opening sentence.

There's already a GR infobox, currently in the GR/Pinyin comparison section. Perhaps I'll move that back to the lead section. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 12:00, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I added "Language" because Gwoyeu (or Pinyin Guoyu) means "national language". If the common usage is simply "National Romanization", feel free to remove the "Language" I added. --Joshua Chiew 12:33, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I have the following problem: I did a Wikipedia search for "National Romanization" and failed to find this article. I really think the article should be modified so that a search for "National Romanization" finds this article. Tomtab 06:36, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

On second thought, it seems best to me to create a new page titled "National Romanization" which redirects to this article. If there is no objection (and if no one does it first) I will go ahead and do that in a week or so. I suppose the term "national romanization" may legitimately be used in relation to languages other than Chinese, but none of those seem to be as strongly established as the use of the term "National Romanization" referring to GR. Eventually a disambiguation page may be called for. Tomtab 01:18, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I believe it is now redirecting here.--Clyde (talk) 17:35, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
It was me that redirected "National Romanization" here. I would like to encourage you to be bold; if something is wrong, just go ahead and fix it. If the fixing is not quite right, it can be fixed by somebody else with a better way. --Joshua Say "hi" to me!What have I done? 13:01, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Next step?

I think the time may have come to get this up to GA/A/FA if possible, so I've posted requests for peer review, both on WP:PR & the WP:China PR page. No response yet ...

On the to-do list:

  • use the Cite web template to wikify external links
  • more on history, probably derived from the online chapter of DeFrancis' 1950 book: GR implementation, reactions to it, etc
  • a section on Opposition to GR? Should include the splendid quote from Karlgren ("based on lies ...") given in DeFrancis. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:56, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyedit

I have completed a thorough copyedit. Feel free to ask me to clarify any of my changes. I think this article will easily pass GA. FA reviewers generally look for lots of references, I'm not sure this has enough. --Ideogram 01:34, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm extremely grateful to you for doing such a thorough job, which has made the whole article much crisper & easier to read. It's a pleasure to have such an experienced editor improve my work. My only disappointment is that you've got rid of Chao's humorous remark about spoken Chinese being "sayable, even if sometimes unspeakable"! Ah well, I suppose it wasn't very encyclopaedic ...
I would still like to find a photo of Yuen Ren Chao to add to the article (top right of lead). Unfortunately even the article on Chao doesn't seem to have one. Any suggestions?
I'll see what I can do about the references. I presume you mean both external & Wiki references. Thanks again for your time & trouble. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 09:31, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
It was my pleasure. I found the article very informative and I love to learn about an interesting subject while I work. Unfortunately I wouldn't know anything about how to find a photo of Yuen Ren Chao. When I speak of references I mean citations to sources both in print and on the Web. I'm not sure what you mean by Wiki references but I don't think they qualify.
This seems to be your primary area of expertise but I would encourage you to contribute to Wikipedia in any other area that interests you. I think your greatest strength is your willingness, even eagerness, to work with others. This quality is sadly lacking in many contributors. --Ideogram 09:41, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! By "Wiki references" I meant wikilinks to other articles. OK, I'll try to beef up the references. All the best. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:56, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't consider internal references to other Wikipedia articles to be reliable sources. --Ideogram 20:23, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chao photo copyright

During Copyright examination of content possibly useful for the article, copyright status seemed to allow Wikipedia inclusion. Discussion can be read below. Note that this is not a final decision. The case could have been misinterpreted.

Wikipedia:Copyright problems takes care of possible copyright violations.

Photo of Chao at pinyin.info

This was found via a search for Yuen Ren Chao on google images. When I contacted the webmaster about this photo, he replied:

" I scanned the photo from Chao's wife's book Autobiography of a Chinese Woman (1947). And since my copy of this is signed by both Yang Buwei and Chao himself in both Hanzi and romanization, I scanned in one of his signatures and superimposed it on the photo."

So the book was published 60 years ago, & the photo's a composite! Where does that leave us from the point of view of copyright? If, as seems likely, the book is still in copyright, I wonder how we can get a picture of Chao both for this article (Gwoyeu Romatzyh‎) and, just as importantly, for Yuen Ren Chao itself. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 11:12, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Update: According to the good folks over at the Copyright dept., this photo should be in the public domain under {{PD-China}}. So I've uploaded it and now given it pride of place at the top of the article. -- NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 23:22, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is this correct?

In the example, "一种请看的态度" makes no sense. The GRR seems to suggest the first tone for "qing". Given the context, I suggest that it should be 轻, although 轻看 also sounds awkward and should really be 轻视 (belittling). --Sumple (Talk) 11:03, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Well spotted! My fault entirely (well, I could blame the poor quality of the hanntzyh rendering on my screen). Of course it's chingkann / qīngkàn [sic]. You're probably right about chingshyh / qīngshì—but that's not what it has in the text.
Now that your eagle eyes have spotted this typo, I'll increase the text size & check the rest of the Chinese text. Many thanks indeed for your help. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 12:22, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I didn't realise how old the text/guy is. It's quite reasonable that the original text uses "轻看", then, given that this guy would have been active in the formative years of vernacular Chinese, many of whose expressions are different to those used today. --Sumple (Talk) 22:58, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rules of thumb for tones

I've added a one-line rule of thumb for each tone in the tonal rules section. I think this helps—but please let me know what you think. Maybe an infobox with all 4 rules of thumb would be better? (I'm not sure how to do this.) --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 16:30, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. It's a hard topic to explain in many ways, but you've been pulling it off splendidly. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 23:11, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the encouragement! I'll leave the rules of thumb in, then. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:43, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scaling image

The image (Gwoyu.png) in Gwoyeu Romatzyh#Pinyin comparison: basic forms looks much too big. How does one scale these things?

Perhaps it ought to be moved into the lead section, too. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 16:54, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

In the editing window, the picture has a variety of variables divided by "|" symbols. The one with a number and "px" (i.e. 125px, 250px, 40px) is the resolution of the image. Sometimes it isn't there, in which case you'd add it after one of the variables. For example:

[[Image:Gwoyu.png|thumb|150px|The chinese word for "National Language" written in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Pinyin, and at the bottom in Gwoyeu Romatzyh.]]

Simply change the numbers. I'll do it this time. Also, I agree with you that the picture should be in a more prominent location, so I've taken the liberty of moving it. Feel free to change the image's size if you don't like what I've formatted. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 22:07, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually what you really should do is leave the image size unspecified. Users can specify their preferred thumbnail image size in their preferences; when you specify a size explicitly it breaks this. I'll make the change; if you don't like it, you can revert. --Ideogram 22:41, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, 'gram, for explaining all this. I still think it's too big (twice the size of the Lin photo!). The noise/signal (or ink/data) ratio just seems too large: it's not really telling us that much, is it? I'll experiment a bit. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 22:55, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't appear that way in my browser. Go to [1], click on the "Files" tab, and make sure you have the right settings. --Ideogram 23:27, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Do what you want. I'm not particularly married to anything about the picture, although it does help describe the topic, especially for Internet Explorer readers who can't see chinese symbols or roman diacritics in the article. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 23:10, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I think it's possible that the height of the image is to blame. The specification in preferences specifies the width. You might try editing the picture by moving the romanized text to the right of the Chinese characters so that it is wider than it is tall. --Ideogram 23:34, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Or just widen the image by putting whitespace on the sides. Kind of a hack, but what can you do? --Ideogram 23:36, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

No hack necessary: I think you identified the source of the problem when you suggested my Prefs. The main problem is probably the ludicrously outdated resolution of my screen ...
The image looks fine now; & as you say it makes the article that little bit more accessible. Thanks for the input. NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:51, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA

I think this article qualifies as a Good Article. Feel free to nominate it at any time. --Ideogram 07:40, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks: done. I think that with a little more work on History it would at least be worth while trying for FA. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 11:46, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Generally all you need for FA is lots of references. --Ideogram 11:48, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Change of structure & expanded History section

Following comments from User:Ravedave, I've rearranged the article to bring sections of more general interest towards the top. I think this makes sense, since not everyone will want to get involved in the minutiae of the tonal spelling—whereas a general description of texts in GR may be of wider interest.

I've made a start on further wikification by using the Cite Web template on Web links.

I've also redone & expanded the History of GR, & incorporated in it the final Modern times section: farewell, Charlie Chaplin! --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 18:37, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I've redone the intro based on Ravedave's comments. I tried to make it a bit more like an introduction/summary. I've also put his comments below for reference. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 21:40, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ravedave's advice

My thoughts on GT:

  • The intro should be a summary, currently it is completly info not found elsewhere
  • There needs to be a better discussion of when the system entered usage, when it fell out of use and where it is used today twards the top of the article, perhaps in the history section.
  • "GR was the official romanization system in the Republic of China (ROC) until 1949." - When did it become official?
  • language learning should probably go twards the top of the article

I have only a passing interest in linguistics so I cannot really tell you how good the whole middle section of the article is. I can however say that the article is lacking for non-linguists. All of the non linguistic stuff should be concentrated at the top of the article and worked together.

Overall it's a pretty good article though - Ravedave (Adopt a State) 05:16, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

No problem, thanks for your dedication to the article. WP always needs more ppl willing to take an article and make it great.-Ravedave (Adopt a State) 17:08, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
The Notes & References have now been rationalized. The References contain an alphabetical bibliography, while the previous references (footnotes) are now in a Notes section.
All that remains to be done now is to tighten up the lead section & link it more closely to the rest of the article, ensuring that it is a good summary. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 15:14, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Revised Lead & new Tone sandhi:

  • I've extensively rewritten the lead, which I hope now summarizes the article.
  • Also added a short section on Tone Sandhi, as per Ravedave's suggestion.
  • I'm not entirely happy with the section title "The word as a unit". Any better suggestions? The section itself must stay, though.

All comments welcome. No reaction yet to the GA nomination ... --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 12:12, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I toyed with "Word formation", but then realized that that describes a different process. For the time being I'm calling the section "Compounds as words". --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 18:27, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I did some cleanup of one section, but overall it looks pretty good. We'll just have to wait and see with the GA assessment. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 21:40, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Intro work

I've done some work cleaning up the intro. It really needs to be an intro, and not a corpus of really interesting facts ;-) The paragraph about the four tones in the intro still needs some work, its beginning does not flow well from the preceeding paragraph. I'll try to do some more work on it tomorrow (or, according to UTC, later today). I've migrated a good deal of the prose into other sections, feel free to move it around as you like, but let's try to keep the intro at a bit of a smaller size. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 04:36, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your efforts, which have greatly improved the readability. It's always a help when someone looks at an article with fresh eyes.
See what you think of the intro now: I've compressed it further & changed the order a bit. Does it matter that the history section of the intro comes at the end (whereas it's the first section of the main article)? It just seems to flow better that way. -- NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:57, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
You made it a lot better—the prose is great now. The article flows well, I don't doubt we'll make GA and A with this; we may even get FA. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 19:29, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Changes in layout

Now that the photo of Chao is—apparently—OK because it comes under Chinese public domain, I've included it at the top of the lead section. I've taken this opportunity to move various various other images & infoboxes, in an attempt to preserve an appealing visual balance. But I'm by no means an experienced graphic designer, so please improve it if you think it needs it! -- NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 23:29, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm excited that you've managed to find a picture of Yuan Ren Chao too (I went ahead and added it to his bio). However, there should be a picture that pertains more to the romanization on top. I don't believe the first image is perfect either, as it exhibits pinyin along with GR. I think I'll make an image showing the four tones along with their hanzi. Is that a good idea? The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 02:31, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that would be great. If you use colours for the hanzi & GR, it might be a good idea to keep to the colour-coding I use in the article—I leave that to you.
By "on top", do you mean at the top right of the whole article? I just thought that a photo of a human being would be more appealing—but I can see your point, since the article is supposed to be about GR rather than Chao. -- NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:34, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, we need a picture that pertains to more than just the history and development section. I'll make the pic with traditional and simplified hanzi on the left and then the GR romanization on the right. What is the order of tones for ma? The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 18:51, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Your proposed pic sounds fine. The 4 tones for ma are: mha, ma, maa, mah. While this choice of syllable has a long tradition, it's not really such a good one because the use of that -h- in the 1st tone (and the use of the basic form in the 2nd) is restricted to sonorant initials (l-/m-/n-/r-). In fact, good old guo might be better: guo, gwo, guoo, guoh ("wok, country, fruit, pass"). All of these except the first occur in the text of the article.-- NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 19:37, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, I took your advice about using guo and used the first character that came up for each tone on my computer as examples. Should I change anything about the pic, or does it suffice as is? The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 23:06, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Looks very professional. Just a couple of points:
  1. The 3rd tone should highlight both os: ie guoo
  2. The first tone example is rather rare (I think). I suggest you use 鍋 锅 guo ("wok, pan") instead.
I've scaled the image down by changing it to 150px. Is this the best way to do it? It could just be my old screen resolution that's the problem. -- NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 23:47, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
I should have it changed by around 22 hours from now—for now I'm finishing my work [outside of wikipedia] and going to bed. Until again, The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 03:04, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for all your hard work: you mean there's life outside Wikipedia?! The modification to the box caption in Compounds as words is an excellent idea.

Are you sure you don't want to use my tonal colour codes (rather than just red highlighting) in the new Guo image? I presume you thought it would just be too confusing to the reader: is that it? The first-tone guo you chose is apparently a common surname; but I think the wok has greater reader appeal (or is that just because I'm feeling hungry right now?).

I've had a bit of a good old-fashioned rant about internal article links on your Talk—nothing too serious ... --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:53, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and changed the characters to what you suggested (I hope). I also fixed the double-o issue. However, I kept it all as one color, because I wanted to show the concept of changing spelling—it is evident here based on the varying hanzi that each word is different. We can save the colours for the parts where you describe the system in detail. By the way, I'm also compromising the image size at 200px; I'm not sure what your screen resolution is, but mine is 1024x768, and it displays 150px quite small, too small for an intro image. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 03:54, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
That looks splendid: the character font is pleasing, too, BTW. As for the size of the image, I leave that to you, as your screen res is probably nearer the norm than mine. I'd rather not say exactly what mine is, if you don't mind ...
I've been doing a bit of tinkering here and there, but basically I regard my contribution as over now. We need to wait for Khmer language to be reviewed for GA: I've set the ball rolling there with a few comments on Talk:Khmer language. Maybe you could chip in too! --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 11:38, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA passing commentary

I've passed this as a good article with a few comments. It passes all of the criteria being well written, referenced, broad

  • there are numerous uses of "some" as a qualifyer that are unnecessary. Chao himself later published some influential works in linguistics using GR and Chao later published influential works in linguistics using GR have the same meaning so the "some" and "himself" are redundant.
  • the article is fairly long - 44kb. So before extending it please consider either reducing some of the detail or splitting off sections that can sustain a separate article and leaving an appropriate summary

Other than that a good article and very enjoyable read.

- Peripitus (Talk) 06:48, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations! --Ideogram 06:56, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Many thanks for your time & kind words. I shall act on your comments—in particular by shortening the article. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 11:43, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Seperate article for description?

I'm beginning to wonder whether or not we should split off the section that explains the spelling rules of GR in detail. We could put it into a new page labeled "Spelling of Gwoyeu Romatzyh" and make the description here summary-style. After all, the article is becoming pretty large. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 02:05, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[First off: since this is a language page, I feel I should correct your typo—it's separate!]
Now to the nub of the question. Yes, I think your suggestion is excellent, & will make the whole article more easily digestible & appealing.
As you're more familiar with restructuring etc, could I ask you to create the new article & copy the whole Description section to it as a first step? Please leave the original text where it is, though, so I can work on summarizing it. Many thanks.
Shouldn't the new page be called Gwoyeu Romatzyh:spelling? Somehow that seems more in line with WP grammar. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:30, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
In the article namespace, the use of colons and slashes to create subpages is discouraged. But, on userpages and wikipedia pages, slashes are put in for subpages. So, you are partially correct. Take a look at articles that use summary style sections with main articles, like IPA or PIE. I'll go ahead and begin the page. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 18:21, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
P.S. It will also be necessary to migrate the appropriate references into the new article. And if you want to find one of the founding opinions against article subpages, read m:Case against subpages. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 20:46, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

No, I wasn't really suggesting a subpage. What you've done looks excellent (I haven't had time to check all the links & references yet!).

I've tried to give the gist of what is now a new article in the Description section. Getting the right balance isn't easy: you don't want to swamp the reader with details (which they can get from the main article in any case); yet the GR article should be reasonably self-contained—sufficiently so for the reader to be able to follow the Example. I hope I've got it about right. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 00:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Both pages now look reasonably consistent & self-contained. Please check them over! --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 11:38, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
You've done a good job balancing size and information. It gives the reader enough information that they can understand the system, but not so much that they are swamped by details that they may not want to know. I made a very minor edit with a very long edit summary (diff) but you've done well. I'm glad you migrated the references to the spelling article; I was about to ask you to do so. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 20:30, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
I actually do have one request: in the sample words which depict colored letters for tone change, could you use the same set of syllables for each group? I'll also add a T1 example as a base reference. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 20:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Summary description section

(continuation of the above )

Good idea! It certainly would make the whole thing clearer. I'll see if I can think of some syllables which

  • exist in all tones
  • illustrate the whole range of tonal modificaitions.

The point is that it looks a bit silly to Chinese-speakers if some of the syllables don't exist!

Your minor edit with the bullet point is a great improvement. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 20:52, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I would use the tones (in T1 form) chi, shiue, jeng, and lhan. I hope I spelt the last two correctly, that's qi, xue, zheng, and lan in pinyin. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 21:06, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, I chose shiue, chuan, chang and hai! I purposely omitted any sonorants such as lan, because they're treated separately at the end of the section. Their inclusion earlier on would only serve to further confuse the reader, whose head is probably already spinning ... I'm not sure *jerng (zhéng) exists in T2, BTW. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 21:53, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
You're right. Funny...I'm always seeing 正 so often, I figured there would be a T2 variation. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 14:33, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Transliterating

Is there a reason why the term “Transliterating” does not appear in this article? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 17.202.45.135 (talk) 01:16, August 22, 2007 (UTC)

No particular reason, except that I prefer to restrict "transliteration" to transcription from one alphabet to another (eg Greek or Russian to Latin). But romanizations such as Pinyin & GR can, of course, also loosely be called transliterations. Do you have any specific part of this article in mind? --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 11:25, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Example order

I wonder if the GR and pinyin might be better next to each other, for most english readers it is likely comparing those two systems would be the most informative part of that section, and it would be easier if they were next to each other I think. --86.129.7.144 02:57, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Please see the main article on Spelling in Gwoyeu Romatzyh (there's a link at the top of the Description section of the GR article): this includes several Pinyin comparison tables. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 11:15, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] this system is a mess

A system like this would never pass muster these days because of the ridiculous way it represents tone. AFAIK there is *NO* system of transcription currently used that works the way this system does. Benwing 05:22, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, there's something to be said for spelling holding meaning. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 16:26, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Not unique!

A quote from the article: 'GR is unique among romanization systems in indicating the four tones of Mandarin by varying the spelling of syllables ("tonal spelling").' This is not true. I know of one other system that does the same, the Simplified Wade invented by the Swedish linguist Olov Bertil Anderson. It never was used much, but still it's not completely unknown of, and he has written books on it. When I get the time to, I'll add an article about it. Til then, I'll change that sentence unless someone disapproves. I'm thinking: 'GR is one of the few romanization systems that indicates the four tones of Mandarin by varying the spelling of syllables ("tonal spelling"), it is also the most widespread of these.' I'll wait for approval from a few first, since this is a Featured article. Yenx 08:06, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for this useful information: I must admit I wasn't aware of the Anders[s?]on system. Your edit sounds OK, though it might be sufficient to say simply " ... is almost unique among ..." & add a footnote to the Andersson method (& a link when you've written your article). --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 11:08, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
I guess better wording would be "one of two romanization systems...," which sounds a bit more positive than "almost unique." The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 14:32, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
On another note, I've gone ahead and created an article on Simplified Wade. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 15:03, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Glad to see the old Ikiroid diligence & speed remain undiminished. I changed your wording slightly (we can't claim that it's unique if it's now 1 of 2!), & moved the ref to the end of the sentence per MoS.--NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 15:29, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. We've really taken care of everything, haven't we? I mean, so far no major copyedits have been needed, and no blue cleanup tags have been thrown in the article (knock on wood...) The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 16:25, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Officially replaced" in Taiwan?

This sentence says GR survives in Taiwan in certain dictionaries, but that it has been twice-over "officially replaced." What is the result of it being officially replaced? That it was pushed out of school textbooks, and now it lingers in dictionaries that aren't part of the public curriculum? Here's the whole sentence:

"In Taiwan GR survives as a pronunciation aid in monolingual dictionaries,[23] but was officially replaced in 1986 by a modified form known as MPS II, which was in turn replaced by Tongyong Pinyin in 2002.[24]"

I welcome some clarification, because the way this graph reads currently, it sounds like a possible contradiction. Preston McConkie 20:01, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I've posted a request for details on a Chinese listserv, & will report back when I've had a response. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:13, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suspicious Picture Change...

Plantiff Welfare changed the original picture of the article to another image with entirely different spellings (original picture shown here). Anyone care to examine this to see whether that picture is correct or not? The image was originally reverted by WarthogDemon as vandalism.¤~Persian Poet Gal (talk) 23:11, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

The second image is wrong. The uploader just duplicated and removed random parts of the original. Some idiot has a very sophomoric sense of humor. I've deleted it. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 23:21, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Ikiroid. I reverted to the original version.¤~Persian Poet Gal (talk) 23:22, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] can I edit this article?

I've made some edits on the article, but all have been reverted without giving reasons. Some of my edits were made to correct some obvious errors. For one thing, Gwoyeu Romatzyh literally is not "National [Language] Romanization", literally it should be "Roman character(s) for the National Language". To translate back "National [Language] Romanization" into Chinese, we'll have "國[語]羅馬化", never 國語羅馬字. I don't know whether I can edit this article again, or all edits will be reverted automatically. I don't know that a featured article is something that you can't edit.--K.C. Tang 01:30, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I've checked the "Article History", and found that it's User:Hermant patel who'd reverted my edits. These reverts were the user's first contributions to the article; the user is not any of the original authors of the article. So it's not a kind of "Featured Article Protectionism", which I thought it was. I'm sorry for my rashness, and apologize to the original authors of the article, who've done a great job.--K.C. Tang 04:21, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
First of all, of course you can edit the article (featured or not!). But I don't personally think "romanization" is an obvious error: naturally we know that Romatzyh means "Latin characters", but "romanization" is a pretty well-established term. But different people may have other opinions. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 14:17, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply, Ndsg. Yes, different people may get a different impression. Of course the translation is not wrong, but it seems to me it can't lay claim to be a "literal" one. Forgive my fussiness. Cheers.--K.C. Tang 00:10, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

[why the huge indent?] Well, if you're going to be really fussy, the words "for the" don't appear in the Chinese—but I'm not going to be that fussy! What about "Latin [Roman if you prefer] script [letters?] for the National Language"? I think "Roman characters" sounds odd. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 11:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

[the indent is due to typo] That's fine, but it suddenly occurs to me that the easiest solution is simply to delete the word "literally" :-) Cheers.--K.C. Tang 02:38, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestions

Just some nitpickings for your consideration:

  • These tones are a fundamental part of the Chinese language: they are considered to be a component of the word just as different vowel sounds are recognized as different in English, and determine the meanings of otherwise identical syllables. The phrase different vowel sounds are recognized as different in English sounds tautological. The sentence can be reworded into something like: 'they are perceived to be a component of a Chinese word by a Chinese speaker no less than the vowels in an English word by an English speaker, and determine the meanings of otherwise identical syllables. In other words, tones in Chinese are phonemic.'
  • The basic unit of speech is popularly thought to be the character (字 tzyh, zì), which represents a (meaningful) syllable or morpheme, a smaller unit than the "linguistic word". This statement is a bit vague. Strictly speaking, a "character" is a unit of written Chinese, not a unit of spoken Chinese. And there is a number of characters which are not morphemic. To be more precise, we might write 'The basic unit of speech is popularly thought to be the monosyllable represented by a character (字 tzyh, zì), which in most cases represents a meaningful syllable or morpheme, a smaller unit than the "linguistic word".'

--K.C. Tang 01:44, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Both these suggestions are succinct and admirable improvements: please feel free to go ahead & change the text (not that you need my permission to do so!). I'm glad you suggest retaining the unusual phrase "linguistic word", which I used to distinguish it from Chao's "sociological word", mentioned in the footnote.
Actually, I'm still not quite happy with the phrase determine the meanings of otherwise identical syllables. This isn't true, is it? If syllables are considered in isolation, we can distinguish between the 4 tones of yi, for example, but not between all the possible meanings of the 4th-tone yì. Perhaps you can come up with a further improvement that makes this clear: something along the lines of and allow speakers to discriminate between otherwise identical syllables. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 11:20, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I thought of this before. But homophones occur in every language, not just in Chinese, so I thought perhaps it's not necessary to be so meticulous. But your suggestion is wonderful, with the word "allow" clearing all possible ambiguity. Cheers.--K.C. Tang 02:46, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Y Done I've made the necessary changes (rewording where I felt it appropriate for stylistic reasons). --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:11, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Replacing image with plain text

User:Remember the dot says:

"replaced image with plain text - this will load faster and work better for screen readers and text-only browsers"

It's true that this may well load faster; but this change has the unfortunate consequence that readers without Chinese-enabled browsers (ie most general, non-specialist readers) will be unable to see the characters. Instead, they'll see a series of annoying empty boxes. I recommend changing back to the image. Are there many text-only browsers out there? For their sake we could include the GR versions (guo, gwo, guoo, guoh) in the caption. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:24, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Text-only browsers aren't too great of a concern. All the latest widely used operating systems have support for Chinese characters right out of the box, so any issues with Chinese character support will slowly resolve themselves over time. The advantage to text is that it's scalable (users can zoom in on it, copy & paste, etc.), loads faster (just a few hundred bytes as opposed to 20,000 bytes), has a transparent background, and will be visible to screen readers without extra code. Besides which, the article clearly states that "This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters."
I did add class="Unicode" to the code just now, which should improve the proportion of Internet Explorer users that can view the characters. —Remember the dot (talk) 15:44, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
For the people who can't see the characters, I have provided a link to the image below the table. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 20:33, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
[written before Ikiroid's addition (edit-conflict)]:
I'm still not convinced by your argument. Is it really true that "all the latest widely used operating systems have support for Chinese characters right out of the box"? I recently upgraded to Windows XP, & had to select East Asian scripts during the installation process—an option that few users without a specific interest in such languages will select. And anyway, if you're assuming that most users have the latest hardware & software, what's the problem with loading a few K bytes?
The fact remains that if we use text for the characters a (possibly sizeable) proportion of anglophone readers are going to feel excluded from the very outset when they see empty boxes right at the top of the article. In fact, the only Chinese characters they see may be "Zhōngwén" in the ChineseText infobox! This article isn't supposed to be the exclusive preserve of Chinese-speakers. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 20:43, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
PS re Ikiroid's link. This is certainly a step in the right direction. I've made the caption of the link rather more explicit. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 21:05, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comment on example

I've removed the comment added to the Example by User:NewSinology:

汉学是清朝早期的一个针对宋明理学的称谓，其大意是宋明理学不是原汁原味的儒学，需要追溯到汉朝去品位寻找真正的儒学。这是中国人自己搞的名词，跟欧美学者无关。

This may or may not be a valid point; but it is out of place in a section intended merely to illustrate the use of GR. In any case, the short excerpt appearing in the article is only part of a full-length essay, included in its entirety in Chao's Sayable Chinese, which discusses the concept of Sinology in considerable detail.

In fact the Example text is a deliberately exaggerated statement of one argument (not the author's) against the very concept of Sinology, as is made clear in the preceding introduction:

所谓汉学，有许多人反对这个名称。站在这种立场的，有下列的一些理由：
(1）。。。[followed by the Example quoted in the article]
(Many people object to the term "Sinology". Those who take this position adduce the following arguments: (1) ...)

Perhaps we should include this introduction—or even replace the Example with a less controversial passage! (This would involve more work, though.) What do others think? --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:42, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GR in Personal Names

Another "vestigial use" that might be worth noting is that one does from time to time run into Chinese people who use GR to spell their personal names. (I happen to like this, because as soon as I see their name I know exactly how to pronounce it.) It might be interesting to give a few examples of well-known people who use GR for their names (the late Berkeley mathematician Shiing-shen Chern comes to mind). -- Tomtab (talk) 04:01, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Excellent idea: why don't you start the ball rolling? --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 12:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
PS I've just rearranged some of the sections in the article on Chern. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 13:03, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
PPS I've now added a reference & link to Chern in the History section. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 21:29, 2 December 2007 (UTC)