Talk:Sichuan dialect

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[edit] Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus to move the page, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 13:59, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Sichuan dialect → Sichuanese — parallels the article Shanghainese rather than Shanghai dialect —70.131.212.228 21:23, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.
  • Oppose for now. See discussion below. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:54, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Unlike the non-Mandarin varieties of Chinese (e.g. Minnan, Wu, Cantonese), the Sichuan dialect can be more resolutely termed dialect. — AjaxSmack 02:07, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak support but if moved, it should probably be "Sichuanese (linguistics)" and Sichuanese made into a dab page since, for example, Google's very first hit for "sichuanese" is about Sichuan cuisinese.[1] and a lot of the GBooks hits are about people from Sichuan. [2] Per AjaxSmack, this is certainly a dialect of Mandarin; on the other hand, everything is a dialect of something. Shanghainese, for example, is itself a dialect of Wu. "-ese" or "-ese (linguistics)" appeals to me personally as being in the spirit of Mair's solution of calling them all "topolects" (or DeFrancis' much uglier solution of "regionalects") regardless of their position in the linguistic hierarchy. cab 12:24, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Any additional comments:

While the status of the various forms of Chinese is peculiar, I would a priori prefer to move Shanghainese to agree with this article than the other way around, if consistency is necessary.

Two arguments, with evidence, would move me:

  • That "Sichuanese" self-identifies as a language
  • That English so refers to it.

Neither has been made. I await evidence. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:54, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

I was told from a Sichuanese that they use words like Hai = Shoes and Gai = Street, that is also found in Cantonese and Hakka. It seems that perhaps Sichuanese got slightly influenced by Cantonese and Hakka OR Sichuanese retain more of Middle Chinese(chinese language spoken during Tang, Sui and Song period) than Standard Mandarin. Cantonese and Hakka dialects are also descendants of Middle Chinese and preserves more of Middle Chinese than Mandarin where mandarin lost the initial (Ng-, H-)and final constants(-t,-p,-m,-k). Examples of initial constants in my Chinese dialect of Taishanese Cantonese: Ngin = Person, Ha = down, Hai = Shoes. Examples of final constants in my Chinese dialect of Taishanese Cantonese: Yit = One, Si Yip = Si Yi region in Guangdong province, Nam = South, Guok(in mandarin it is Guo = country.

[edit] Revamping this article

I'm going to be making a little push to see if this article can be brought up to the level of some of the other Chinese dialect pages. Right now it seems to be a mishmash of hearsay and fact. I'm going to be mainly cribbing from the Hanyu Fangyan Gaiyao. Let me know if you'd like to help out. Alexwoods (talk) 01:09, 25 March 2008 (UTC)