Talk:Cantonese

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[edit] About the naming discuss

關於命名爭議

The discussions on "Yue Chinese":Archive 3 (Nov 2007 - Nov 2008)

對「Yue Chinese」的討論:Archive 3 (Nov 2007 - Nov 2008)

Suggestion and Poll:Talk:Standard_Cantonese/Archive1#Suggestion_and_Poll

建議與投票:Talk:Standard_Cantonese/Archive1#Suggestion_and_Poll

--Syaoranli☞李小狼 13:10, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I've corrected the links. It seems that somebody who "invent" the wording "Yue Chinese" wanna stop the discussion from other people, so he/she put everything, included the polling and discussion in progress, inside the so called "Archive"? The "maxim" of that guy, "粵 is "Yue" in normal English usage, so "Yue" is what we need to use", has alreadly shows that he/she's living in a world of illusion(or "Lie without a blink"). We should continue to point out the problem of "Yue Chinese", for preventing its reborn.

我已修正了上方的連結。似乎有些想像出「Yue Chinese」的偉人，企圖透過把正在進行中的討論及投票歸檔，來阻止人們繼續發言吧？那位人兄的『金句』：「在日常英語使用中，我們就是說『Yue』來表示粵，因此我們要用『Yue』」已經顯示出他/她只生活在其思覺世界中（或者是「講大話唔眨眼」）。我們應繼續指出「Yue Chinese」的荒謬之處，慎防它死灰復燃。--Syaoranli☞李小狼 13:27, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. I wish to see some kind of protection to this page. Or at least we should put a section in Cantonese to issue that "Yue" thing. When Cantonese holds no solid political power in this world and our education system has been mostly controlled by Mandarin, it is vital to setup some protection against such cultural ambush in order to keep the neutrality of Wikipedia. Wikipedia shouldn't be a place to aid such production of false "De facto" status. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chenglap (talk • contribs) 15:48, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Your political agenda does not belong here. "Yue" (and older "Yüeh") is the form used in the OED, Ethnologue, Ramsey's The languages of China, among other academic and semi-academic books, and is the ISO standard. Wikipedia is to follow reputable sources, not your personal opinion, so "Yue" it is. (This isn't an argument for "Yue" instead of "Cantonese", just that "Yue" is proper English.) kwami (talk) 20:19, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

At the risk of opening myself to a charge of making personal attacks, I think this is the pot calling the kettle black. These often-repeated arguments for Yue seem valid at first reading only because they simply ignore Wikipedia policy. The suspicion must be that the real agenda is to promote the politically charged view that Chinese is a single language, in support presumably of the view that the Chinese are a single people.

That's not to say that we should allow promotion of separatist views here either. It's a very narrow line to walk. And Wikipedia policy has developed as it has in order to best walk just such narrow lines, and should be discarded only after very careful consideration. Andrewa (talk) 02:20, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know how thick is the OED you've checked, kwami. As I've check through several common dictionaries in my library (Oxford Advanced Learners, MacMillan, Longman dictionary of contempopary English, Cobuilt), I cannot find "Yue" in anyone. I think that anyone with commonsense could tell "Cantonese" is a common English term but "Yue" is not. It is just a term used in specified and limited areas.--Fongyun (talk) 04:51, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you completely: "Cantonese" is much more common in English than "Yue". However, it is the case with a lot of languages that a rare word is used as an article title, because the concept is rare in English. I'm sure that if you looked up the names of all 6000 of the world's languages in your dictionaries, you'd find very few of them. That doesn't mean they're illegitimate. In this case, it's rare to distinguish between Yueyu and Yuehai in English. If we can make the name "Cantonese" work for Yueyu, great. But that doesn't make "Yue" wrong.

What I was trying to demonstrate above was that *when* we use the term Yueyu, even if just an alternate name in the lede, its proper English form is "Yue". ("Yuet" is also found, but is even rarer.) This was in response to the editors who insisted above that "Yue" should be verboten because it's a Mandarin rather than Cantonese spelling. One editor went on an edit-warring spree, repeatedly deleting all instances of "Yue", saying the word was a "violation" of the Cantonese people. Such nationalist passion is not what we should be basing our content on. I've demonstrated that "Yue" is an alternate name for "Cantonese" in the broad sense, used in academia and computer coding, and so it is entirely appropriate to at least mention that fact in the article. My argument is not with you, or whether we should use the colloquial or academic term, but with people who would censor an encyclopedia to fit their political agenda. kwami (talk) 08:51, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Please don't accuse other as nationalist if there is no evidence to prove other's political view, you should assume others' advices are based on good intention. The NPOV policy page clearly stated how we should name this article and please don't ignore it. It is quite obvious that it is not common English name nor autonym, "alternative name" simply not a valid argument to rename the article.

You changed name of a language without discussion, you should aware that it is very likely to inspire the emotion of people who speak that language. Especially when you're installing some "proper" uncommon name to overwrite the common name.

Frankly speaking, you're trying to "correct" everyone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chenglap (talk • contribs) 2008-11-26T14:59:44

Chenglap - there actually was discussion for the last name change. But apparently there wasn't enough discussion because disagreements and opposition sprung up after the page moves. And kwami - this is completely irrelevant, but I think the term you're looking for is "ethnocentrist", not "nationalist". :P Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 15:08, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

The Ethnologue is a Christian organization with the goal of making the Bible accessible in other languages. Although many people cite this source to the extent that it has become a pseudo academic work, it hardly meets the standards of a true academic work. People cite it because there's nothing else, not because the Ethnologue is actually academically rigorous, much less knowledgeable of how to be apolitical. 98.210.57.40 (talk) 07:08, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Discuss anew

Alright now that the article has been moved back to its long-standing name, let's discuss whether or not this really is the best name for the article. I am opened to either the current name or a form of "Cantonese (XXX)", or some variation of "Yue". First thing I want to bring up is, should the current article name serve as a disambiguation page? Right now we have a Cantonese (disambiguation), and from what I can tell, "Cantonese" served as the disambig page until a page move two months ago (I actually missed this when I started the poll). However, note that if we decide to use "Cantonese" as the disambig page, we have to simultaneously decide on a new name for this article. "Cantonese (linguistics)" comes to mind - it is neutral with respect to the language vs. dialect argument. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 15:11, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

The "(linguistics)" tag has been decided against in the context of all Chinese lects. As one editor put it, "Cantonese (linguistics)" should have something to do with Cantonese linguistics. This is a language article, which isn't the same thing. I don't care too much whether the name is based on colloquial Cantonese or academic Yue, but not "(linguistics)"! kwami (talk) 20:21, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Latest move

Just to say that while my first reaction to the move from Yue Chinese to Cantonese was that it was premature, on reflection I think it was a good idea. The new name has some issues but the old one had major issues, and we'd had plenty of discussion to solve them if they'd been solvable.

The new name is acceptable provided the focus of the article is broadened a little, see below, in fact it may even be optimum. Andrewa (talk) 02:05, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Article focus

As the article is now simply called Cantonese, its focus should reflect the title.

Basically, the current lead is about the major, high-level branch of Chinese. But it's been suggested that the term Cantonese can also refer to a smaller division, described by the article now at Standard Cantonese.

This is not a matter of article content, just of focus. I'd suggest that both meanings should be mentioned in the lead sentence.

The bulk of the article will still be about the major division, which doesn't need a separate article.

Just one section should give an outline of the smaller division that also goes by this name, probably just its various names and the fact that it's the prestige dialect. This section should have a {{main}} template pointing to Standard Cantonese as its very top line.

And this section should probably be the very first headed section in the article.

Comments? Andrewa (talk) 02:05, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rephrasing of the lead

OK, in that nobody speaks I've made a start. Please note that so far it is just a rephrasing and reordering by a native English speaker with some linguistic training but no great knowledge in this particular subject area.

So, if I've introduced any inaccuracies, they were there already. And I may well have done so. I found the existing lead highly confusing, and often I had little idea what was meant by the existing text.

It's just a start, much more needs to be done even if I've got this much right... which I doubt. Andrewa (talk) 03:21, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Speaking of article focus, I am also confused. Is the current article meant to be read by linguists or is it meant to be read by ordinary people? Suppose the latter. Then I'm afraid the problem with the lead is entangled with the article title itself. The article, in its current form, advocates a view that "Cantonese ... is a primary branch of Chinese", which is very misleading, for two reasons.

Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia, so none of our content should be misleading to non-specialists. Andrewa (talk) 23:51, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

(1) This implies that all Chinese languages have the same root, but Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghaiese etc. are actually different languages that have been co-evolving under a grand cultural and political roof. Owing to migrations of people across ancient China, these languages have imported features from the others. So they look more similar nowadays. For convenience of research and learning, I have no problem with the linguists' classification of them as branches of a macro language, but pretending that this hierachical model represents historical facts is another matter.

(2) This implies that the languages/dialects within the same "Cantonese" branch are similar. This may be true among Min Nan language and the so-called Standard Cantonese (my native tounge), but Chaozhou language, Standard Cantonese and the villagers' languages (圍頭話) that are spoken in the rural area of Hong Kong are vastly different and I doubt if they can be covered by a single umbrella.

However, the major problem with the article's title and the lead is that it attempts to deviate from the de facto usage of the term "Cantonese". That is why the "Yue Chinese" title had stirred so much discussion. And I will bet that many are still feeling unsatisfied at the current title "Cantonese". No one, except perhaps a few linguists, would use this word alone to refer to the Cantonese collection of languages.

There are some sweeping claims here... evidence?

I doubt everyone will ever be completely satisfied. Andrewa (talk) 23:51, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

"No one" of course doesn't mean literally no one but a statistical minority. I am unable to conduct an extensive survey to prove my claim, but it is easy to disprove it if one can find a significant number of textbooks which are entitled "Cantonese" but actually teach, for example, Taishanese. The suffocated (talk) 20:28, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I think we should change the title of "Cantonese" to "Cantonese dialect/language collection" (note: it is "collection", not "family" because not all Cantonese languages/dialects are related to each other) and change "Standard Cantonese" back to "Cantonese". As for the lead paragraph, we can simply rewrite it as something like this:

The term "Cantonese" (粵語; (jyutping) Jyut6 Jyu5, (Yale) Yuht Yúh) usually refers to the language/dialect that is primarily spoken by the people of Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macau, but the Cantonese people actually are not a single nation and they speak different languages or dialects. The suffocated (talk) 09:44, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

That lede belongs at Standard Cantonese, not here. Also, your claim that not all Cantonese lects are related required a source. kwami (talk) 09:59, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

I asked the others to clarify the target audience of the article, explained that the merely rewriting the lead is not enough because the problem is deeper than it appeared, and gave an example to rewrite the lead. All these are about the article in question, not the "Standard Cantonese" article. I was not precise. I mean my suggested lead first clarifies the usage of the term "Cantonese" and the article can go on to introduce the collection of Cantonese languages/dialect.

As to the lack of relations between several Cantonese languages/dialects, why should I quote a source? I haven't written this into a Wikipedia entry in the first place. Isn't it the one who claims that "Cantonese ... is a primary branch of Chinese" responsible to back up his/her claim? Is this view accepted only a few linguists or a generally accepted one? It is the current article's content that lacks supporting evidences.

Very good point. Hopefully, there won't be much trouble sourcing this claim... Maybe even the Ethnologue? If it turns out that even this claim is controversial, then that's a whole new ball park. I'm skeptical, but the request for sources is a good one. Andrewa (talk) 23:51, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

(The web edition of) Ethnologue only gives a classification but not the rationale behind such classification.

And one clarification: Surely the Chinese languages are related to each other in the sense that there have mutual influences. What I mean is I doubt that they have a common origin. The suffocated (talk) 20:28, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

By the way, if you want to support this claim, what source would you refer to? A linguist's work? This goes back to my original question. Is this article meant to be read by linguists? I have no problem if this is the case, but the article title should reflect this. In the previous discussion of the title "Yue Chinese", someone proposed the title "Cantonese (linguistics)". Regardless of whether this is the best title, it at least shows the proposer's intent very well.

~~I will not elaborate further as your comment is irrelevant to the current discussion on the article's focus and lead.~~The suffocated (talk) 10:51, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

We need to adjust our coverage for our intended audience, and you're of course correct that we need to make it accessible. However, when finding sources for our claims, they need to be reliable, so yes, linguistic sources regardless of the audience that we target by our choice of wording. The whole article is poorly written and under referenced, but refs are especially required when something is likely to be challenged. Cantonese as a primary branch of Chinese is common knowledge (perhaps Chinese > Cantonese-Pinghwa > Cantonese), but I would certainly challenge a claim that it is not a valid group. It may be true, but something that goes against standard refs would certainly need justification. kwami (talk) 00:33, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Whether the burden of proof should be rest on the writer or the challenger is an interesting question. My view is that the writer is at least obliged to produce some proof. For the claim that Cantonese is a "branch" of Chinese, the hierarchy you mentioned is simply a membership relationship. In this case the claim is certainly true, but calling Cantonese a member or a subcollection rather than a branch of Chinese languages is more precise. However, if by "branch" one means a branch of a root spoken language from which all present spoken Chinese languages originate, I have yet to see what this root language is. That ancient Chinese spoke sufficiently different languages is clearly documented. The most cited example is the story 越人歌 ("The Yue's Song"; the "Yue" here means 百越, not 粵; some argue that the story is the earliest Chinese literature that mentions homosexuality, but that's another topic), which is generally believed to be written no later than the Warring States Period. 越人歌 explicitly states that the Yue song needs to be translated into the Chu language in order for the king of Chu to understand. If one claims that a root language existed before the Spring and Autumn Period, such claim would be unfalsifiable and hence meaningless.

I agree that one should cite linguistic sources, but linguistic viewpoints should not be taken as guiding principles because they only present certain aspects of the whole picture. For instance, Cantonese is a Chinese language and Vietnamese is not (although the latter is spoken by some people in China), but the similarities between Vietnamese and Cantonese are perhaps much stronger than those between Cantonese and some other Chinese languages. Putting too much emphases on linguists' classification (not to say there may be no agreed classification) would only distort the true picture.The suffocated (talk) 20:28, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

It is true that both Cantonese and Vietnamese preserve readings/pronunciations of characters that are in most cases much closer to Late Middle Chinese (Tang Dynasty) pronunciations than modern Standard Mandarin is. But pronunciation is just one issue; grammar and syntax are other important ones, and the substratum in both languages of the autochthonous Tai ethnolinguistic groups that made up the majority populations prior to sinicization of these southern regions shouldn't be ignored either. Badagnani (talk) 20:37, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

The term 百越 (in English Wikipedia as Yue peoples) was a geographical and ethnological term, including area as north as Shanghai and as south as nowadays northern or central Vietnam. The classification of Vietnamese language is disputed (though many people considered it a Mon-Khmer language).In my opinion only loanwords from Vietnamese are of Chinese origin, not their grammar nor language structure. Cantonese is undoubtedly a Sinitic language, but Cantonese contains hundreds of words which are Tai origin, and Tai has little relations with Mon-Khmer. --✉ Hello World! 15:38, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

To address Andrewa's two concerns above -

(1) The issue of whether or not Cantonese and the other language groups have the same roots, to me, fits into the context of the larger problem that this article is barely sourced at all for the amount of content it contains. Having said that, I don't see where the article states that Cantonese and other Chinese language groups branched off from one singular language.

(2) Reliable sources are not difficult to find for which dialects are categorised under the Cantonese group, but I don't see where the article actually discusses the similarities and differences between the dialects within the Cantonese group. I'm not sure how this is actually a problem for the article. If it ever gets expanded and goes into details about the similarities and differences between the dialects, then we should be careful to use sourced information. And as a side-note, the Chaozhou dialect is actually not in the Cantonese group, it is a Minnan dialect. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 06:06, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

(1) The article does not explicitly say so, but it does imply this. In the paragraph preceding the section Relation to Classical Chinese: "This can be partly explained by their common descent from Middle Chinese (spoken), still with its different dialects." Following this logic, all human languages shall be somewhat similar, as our ancestors all came from Africa.

(2) This is where confusion arises and why the article needs a clearer focus. If you are talking about the major languages/dialects spoken by the people in the Guangdong area, then Chaozhou (and even Min Nan) certainly counts; if you are talking about linguistics, it's a different matter. The suffocated (talk) 20:28, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Agree 100% about sourcing.

It's an appallingly bad article on that and many other grounds. I doubt any native English speaker would consider it credible as it stands. It has internal inconsitencies, illogical structure and peculiar phrasing. My overall impression is that I can't trust anything it says, because at least some of those who wrote it had such a poor grasp of English that they may well have said the negative of what they intended on occasions. Anyone with experience in language learning has stories of such confusion, and that's exactly the way this reads to me. Sorry if that's a bit harsh!

And please, that's not to say that those with poor English can't contribute to English Wikipedia. Their contributions are valuable and valued. But obviously they must do so as part of a team. That's what collaboration is all about.

It's an important article IMO. Interesting that it's a featured article in another Wikipedia... do we know which one? Andrewa (talk) 04:54, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

None of them, AFAIK. kwami (talk) 08:09, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, reading the box at the top of this talk page a little more carefully, it's not stated but clearly implied that this was a featured article on Cantonese Wikipedia. Andrewa (talk) 11:17, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

And following the recent changes to the FAOL template it's now explicitly stated that this has been a featured article in Cantonese Wikipedia. Is this true? Andrewa (talk) 00:33, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Apparently an oversight at wiki-yue. Said to be FA on the talk page, and also listed as an FA at the main wiki-yue FA] page. The Chinese history article likewise was missing a star. I've "fixed" both; if they're reverted, that will tell us I misunderstood. (I don't read Cantonese.) kwami (talk) 00:59, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

The lead in this article is totally confusing. 'Cantonese' is an English word. The only language referred to as 'Cantonese' in English is the main local Chinese language of Hong Kong. This Cantonese language in Hong Kong is essentially identical to the Cantonese language of Guangzhou (called Canton in English) the provincial capital of Guangdong Province (also called Canton in English). None of the other so called 'Yue' languages (Toisan, Sey-Hup, etc) are called 'Cantonese' in English or in Guangdong Province (otherwise why would they be called Toisanwa, Seyhupwa, etc). 86.136.61.102 (talk) 22:33, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation Text

Looking at the start of the article, I noticed the disambiguation blurb at the top that says:

For the common meaning of Cantonese, see Standard Cantonese.

For other uses, see Cantonese (disambiguation).

IMO, for the common meaning seems rather strange. A reader is likely to wonder why the common meaning is not the subject of the article they are reading; therefore, this stands a good chance of creating confusion. I think this should be rephrased for clarity, maybe to something like, "For the dialect of Cantonese commonly referred to by that name, see Standard Cantonese."

Overall, I think this stems back to the old debate over Yue Chinese vs. Cantonese. Personally, I would support using Yue for this article's title (as it is the proper linguistic name in English) and making Cantonese a disambiguation page. But it may be that I'm beating a dead horse with this, so if most of you are satisfied with the current title, then there shouldn't be an argument. Still, it should be made clearer.The Fiddly Leprechaun (talk) 15:57, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

1) Done. 2) I agree. You might want to start a poll on moving the article. There will likely be a dispute between those of us who want 'Cantonese' to be a dab because it's ambiguous, and nationalist editors who won't accept the normal English convention of using a Mandarin spelling for their language, as well as those who think 'Yue' is too obscure to be used (though 'Wu', 'Min', 'Gan', 'Xiang', and 'Pinghua' are good enough for those articles). kwami (talk) 21:04, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

I just cleaned up the start of the article with template. It used to start with Yue 粵語 and say it is also known as Guangdong hua 廣東話. This sentence is now reversed. By far the more common term is 廣東話. Yue 粵語 should be the one that follows. It has far less direct usage. Benjwong (talk) 02:49, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Started a poll below on the move. Also, Benjwong's edit to the infoboxes was good, as we should have the native name of the language listed first.The Fiddly Leprechaun · Catch Me! 16:23, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Not moved.--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 05:48, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion & Poll about article name

This article has been at this name for two weeks now, since Kwamikagami moved it from Yue Chinese as the result of a vote over at Guangzhou dialect. The reason for this move was basically a way to fix a premature move of both this article and Standard Cantonese to Yue Chinese and Guangzhou dialect respectively. The lengthy discussions resulting from this original move made very little progress, so restoring both articles to their original names was considered the best way to make progress and approach the naming debate from a new angle. The discussion of the names was expected to continue after the move.

Accordingly, I am creating this new section to resume debate over the best name for this article. I propose that this page should be moved to Yue Chinese, because that is the proper linguistic name in English of the language/dialect group that is the subject of this article. In addition, the disambiguation page currently at Cantonese (disambiguation) would be moved to "Cantonese", as many people have requested.

Reasons for this move are: (Note: Andrewa added some objections after each point, so one can get a good idea of both sides of the debate. Please add further comments after this section.)

We currently have 2 articles with "Cantonese" in their title. This, IMO, has a good likelihood of creating misunderstanding, particularly for people who may know nothing about Cantonese and are looking it up for the first time. One article must be named "Cantonese" or have it in the title, as determined by the archived discussion, but two articles is too many.

If both topics are commonly known as Cantonese (as seems to be the consensus), then it will be far more confusing to rename one of them to some other name. If not, then no problem; The one not commonly known as Cantonese should be renamed. Either way, this is a red herring. Andrewa (talk) 02:54, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Also, this dual-usage makes it more difficult to read the article. The word Cantonese is mentioned frequently, and often must be followed by a clause clarifying which Cantonese. This adds to article length and slows the reading process.

There's no reason we shouldn't use the technical name in the article, if this is a problem The convention of using common names applies only to article names. Andrewa (talk) 02:54, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

In order to solve this problem, it is best to rename this article, instead of the one at Standard Cantonese. English uses "Cantonese" more frequently to refer to the dialect of Guangzhou, rather than the grouping of dialects properly referred to as "Yue Chinese".

This is mere restatement of other arguments, and personal opinion. Andrewa (talk) 02:54, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

This article should be renamed Yue Chinese as that is the term by which experts refer to this language/dialect group. Three examples:

The Ethnologue gives "Chinese, Yue" as the headword, with alternate names of "Yuet Yue, Gwong Dung Waa, Cantonese, Yue, Yueh, Yueyu, [and] Baihua". It also states that "The Guangzhou variety is considered the standard." See here
The Shorter OED (6th edition) gives the definition of Yüeh as "The form of Chinese spoken in parts of the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, Cantonese." Conversely, the definition of Cantonese is "the dialect of Chinese commonly used in Canton (City)." ("Yüeh" is just the Wade-Giles equivalent of Pinyin "Yue".)
S. Robert Ramsey's The Languages of China, in the chapter "Yue (Cantonese)", distinguishes the Yue dialects as a whole from Cantonese, the regional standard of Canton City. Though it notes that colloquially the word "Cantonese" can have either meaning, throughout the text "Cantonese" means Standard Cantonese, and "Yue" means Yueyu.

This would be relevant if Wikipedia preferred official names to common ones, but we quite explicitly don't, so it's irrelevant. Andrewa (talk) 02:54, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

The current name of "Cantonese" may violate WP:NC, because this article is NOT what the majority of English-speaking readers are likely to be searching for at "Cantonese"; they probably want Standard Cantonese.

If this argument can be sustained with evidence, then it's a good one. But I'm skeptical that it's true. Andrewa (talk) 02:54, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

A move allows Cantonese to be used as a disambiguation page, which seems to be most people's preference.

I think it's more complicated than that. It may be most people's second or third choice. Andrewa (talk) 02:54, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Objections to the use of "Yue Chinese" mainly focus on two factors: (1) the public's relative unfamiliarity with the term in comparison to "Cantonese" (the same could be said of Wu Chinese in comparison to "Shanghainese"); (2) a nationalist objection because Yue is a Mandarin term, and Yue/Cantonese speakers are strongly against Mandarin encroachment into their language. The first objection is answered above; for the second I can only say that, though the dissatisfaction with a Mandarin term is merited, there is no corresponding term in Yue/Cantonese that enjoys equal usage among English speakers. For instance, "Guangdong Hua" is virtually unknown to the vast majority of English speakers. --The Fiddly Leprechaun · Catch Me! 16:23, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

(1) Yes, and that's a very strong argument in terms of WP:NC.

(2) Irrelevant. There are also valid arguments. And we assume good faith. Andrewa (talk) 02:54, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

(Disagree that adding this heading helps to clarify layout; Instead we now have yet another messy poll with comments interspersed. Andrewa (talk) 16:21, 13 December 2008 (UTC))

I did it to prevent people adding comments in the proposition section above, which would make it harder to read both my arguments and your counterarguments. I should have made support/oppose/comments sections here—oversight on my part and too late now. The Fiddly Leprechaun · Catch Me! 02:41, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Just use of the standard template would have helped, see WP:RM#Requesting potentially controversial moves step 2. It's optional and there's a warning against it being potentially divisive, but this is just the sort of discussion in which it's most helpful. On the other hand, having it both ways by creating the discussion section after discussion had already started was in glorious hindsight the worst of both worlds. Hang in there. Andrewa (talk) 18:13, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I am neutral to the move, but I suggest you might want to contact directly some of the editors that were involved in the previous discussion when it was moved to Yue Chinese, so as to avoid the amount of disagreements that arose after the page move (like last time). Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 17:23, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely not "Yue Chinese" (although this can be a redirect). This is not the most common name and "Standard Cantonese" and a general "Cantonese" article about the dialect spectrum are fine (the way we have "Standard Mandarin" and "Mandarin dialects" articles. Badagnani (talk) 21:03, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment - I see that we have three separate articles for Mandarin: Mandarin Chinese, Mandarin dialects, and Standard Mandarin. Badagnani (talk) 03:07, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Would it be possible to do a similar thing for Cantonese? E.g., one article titled Cantonese/Yue Chinese/Cantonese (Yue), another titled Yue dialects/Cantonese dialects, and a third with Standard Cantonese? May be an idea to explore. --The Fiddly Leprechaun · Catch Me! 17:51, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

It seems like a good idea. What do other editors with expertise in this field think? Don't we already have most of these articles? Badagnani (talk) 05:28, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't claim any such expertise, but if we have an article on Mandarin dialects then it seems logical to have one on Cantonese dialects. Actually I'm surprised we don't have many more articles in Category:Cantonese. Surely there's scope for them. Maybe we're just all spending our time discussing rather than researching and writing. I also note that there's currently an open proposal to merge the Mandarin dialects article, but it seems to have died some months ago without anyone really noticing. (;-> We should probably close it. Andrewa (talk) 10:04, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Almost all the links I put in are redirects to this article. I think an article about the various dialects could be useful, as it would let this article, regardless of its name, focus more on the unity of the "Cantonese" concept; the "Cantonese dialects" article could focus on the various dialects and the differences between them (maybe further clarifying the difference between Yue and Standard Cantonese?). The question is whether this would be helpful or just introduce unnecessary complexity. Unless common usage would conceivably create a distinction between them, it may be pointless. However, my experience is limited so I can't be considered an expert either. But it's certainly a topic for discussion at least. The Fiddly Leprechaun · Catch Me! 21:38, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose the move to Yue Chinese. No justification in terms of Wikipedia:naming conventions, and in cases like this where the name has strong political implications we should be most reluctant to make an exception. See above for detailed replies to the proposal. Andrewa (talk) 02:54, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

--I'll answer your comments here.

If we must. Not a lot new in them, or in your replies that I can see. Andrewa (talk) 16:21, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

The difficulty is that Cantonese is used colloquially to refer to both Yue Chinese and Standard Cantonese, and it is exceedingly difficult to determine which is the more frequent reference. In my experience, Cantonese refers more often to the dialect spoken in Canton (Guangzhou) and Hong Kong, i.e. Standard Cantonese. (Keep in mind however that I don't speak a work of the language, and don't know any native speakers beyond chance meetings. I'm forming my opinions based on research from reputable secondary sources.) Because the city is (or used to be) known as Canton, an English speaker who doesn't know any better will likely connect "Cantonese" to that city--as I myself initially did. In a case like this, where common usage often does not distinguish between the two (thus creating ambiguity), a good solution is to use the official exonym prefered by linguists and make the common term a dab.
- Disagree that this is a good solution. The guideline is instead to determine whether there is a primary usage, and deal with minor usages by a hatnote and disambiguation page. The question of whether the primary usage is the (allegedly) standard dialect or the wider sense (which we allegedly can't call a language for political reasons) can be resolved by making this article a high-level one dealing with both senses, and clarifying in the lead that there are these two senses. This is possible because the two candidates for primary usage are so closely related.

"Can be resolved by making this article a high-level one dealing with both senses," —I agree this would be good if we can determine another name for a different article covering the broad sense of Cantonese (Yue) (this would make it so we had three articles like Mandarin, which I think may be ideal), OR if this article is heavily edited/rewritten to create enough clarity/coverage to merit such a use. The Fiddly Leprechaun · Catch Me! 02:41, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I began this rewrite some time ago, but didn't get further than the lead. But do we really need a separate article on what linguists tend to call Yue? Can't all that material go either into the high-level article, or into detailed articles such as Written Cantonese? Andrewa (talk) 09:52, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Maybe, maybe not. See my reply to you and Badagnani above. The Fiddly Leprechaun · Catch Me! 21:38, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

WP:NC can be used to support both sides of the argument, because it is not at all explicit about complex situations like this. I've been scrounging around looking for precedent, but haven't found anything analogous yet. The closest I can come is the debate that went on over at Talk:Pennsylvania German, where they had a similar debate between common and official terminology and eventually chose the official.
- The particular discussion to which you refer is one of two on the topic, and neither reached consensus. In the other discussion, in which I participated, other contributors explicitly referred to the naming discussions over Cantonese and raised several points of difference, the most important IMO being that we had consensus that the primary usage of Pennsylvania Dutch is the people, not the language (which is also referred to as a dialect in the article... we didn't seem to have a problem with that issue either).
(1) I actually agree that the familiarity issue is problematic (it continues to be a sticking point for me), but accuracy is more important as we are an encyclopedia--our purpose is to disseminate correct knowledge, not to reinforce existing misconceptions (the Pennsylvania German discussion went over that area in detail). A move to Yue Chinese could be done horribly or wonderfully: horribly if someone found it and wondered, "Why the heck did they name it 'Yue Chinese'?" but wonderful if it was well-described and they thought, "Oh! That's quite interesting," and walked away with a new piece of knowledge. (2) Yes, there are other valid arguments against the move--Badagnani and Caspian Blue touched on some of them in their comments here. I was listing the opposing positions that were voiced the most in the original debate. The Fiddly Leprechaun · Catch Me! 17:16, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
- (1) A bit of a stretch. Accuracy is of course not negotiable. And as our primary standard for article naming is common usage, every departure from this is potentially misleading and in this sense compromises accuracy. This new piece of knowledge should of course be obtained from reading the first sentence of the article, regardless of its name.
- (2) Not convinced that it's useful to summarise just one side of the previous debate. Andrewa (talk) 16:21, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose If the Yue Chinese is the most commonly used term in English, we would not waste a great deal of our time trying the article to go back to the original (current) title. Besides, your assertion already proves that the usage of Yue Chinese is only limited in some specific groups, not in the real life usage.--Caspian blue 03:00, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I would be happy to have Cantonese as a disambiguation if we can agree on a more suitable name for the current article. But there seems little hope of this. Yue Chinese is not a good candidate IMO. Andrewa (talk) 03:08, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I firmly believe Cantonese ought to be a disambiguation for the sake of clarity. As for another more suitable name for this article, I might suggest Yue (Cantonese) or Cantonese (Yue) as possible compromises, although these depart from the current pattern of "xxx Chinese", as in Mandarin Chinese, Wu Chinese, Min Chinese, Xiang Chinese, Hakka Chinese, Gan Chinese, and Pinghua Chinese (the last of which incidentally is a dialect of Yue). For other possible names, Badagnani above brought up the three articles we have for Mandarin. I suggested that we look into doing something similar such as Cantonese/Yue Chinese, Yue dialects/Cantonese dialects, and Standard Cantonese, particularly if we decide against Yue Chinese. --The Fiddly Leprechaun · Catch Me! 17:56, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Some of these suggestions have been discussed at length already, and I see problems with all of them. If you'd like discussion on any specific new suggestion, suggest create a heading for it. But frankly, objections to the simple name Cantonese seem trivial compared to the difficulties of finding an alternative. Andrewa (talk) 16:21, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Strongly Oppose. Cantonese is the most common English name, while Yue Chinese is just a wiki-made-up, not-familiar, terrible, Mandarin-pinyin-based term for Cantonese. I opposed this name before, till now nobody can persuade me to accept it. It is not acceptable to most native Cantonese people, I think. --Newzebras (talk) 11:10, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose "Yue Chinese" is not a term that really exist. It was practically invented here in wikipedia to fit the language naming standards. It was acceptable for about a week while we figured out what to do. Also, Yue is hardly used at all. Whereas Cantonese is quite popular. Yue Chinese should have been crossed out after many discussions. Benjwong (talk) 06:31, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment On a side note there seems to be some obsession where everything needs to move to a consistent convention like Yue Chinese or Mandarin Chinese. Is like trying to have German-latin, Spanish-latin, French-latin. Benjwong (talk) 06:35, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

More like Swiss German, Bavarian German, etc. The reason for this, of course, is that we can't use the words 'language' or 'dialect' for Yue any more than we can for Swiss. kwami (talk) 07:55, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Good point. One problem here of course is the desire of some to reclassify the Chinese family of languages as a single language. And this does have some academic support. And there's also academic support for the notion that the members of this (alleged) family are sufficiently disparate that they're not even a language family, let alone a single language. Academia is like that on such issues... for every opinion there is an equal and opposite opinion. Andrewa (talk) 16:21, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment - Maybe it's irrelevant, but "Canton" did not only refer to Guangzhou, it referred to the entire Guangdong province as well. Second thing I want to point out is that we should not be trying to adhere to some naming standard that only exists on WP. Common usage should trump an artificial standard. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 17:41, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Not irrelevant at all. Originally, "Canton" was the province, and "Canton City" the city, and "Cantonese" could refer to either. However, in modern English "Canton" nearly always refers to the city, to the extent that many dictionaries don't bother with both meanings. kwami (talk) 22:44, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Right. And again I'm neutral to "Yue Chinese" as the article name, but I feel that talking about how "Cantonese" refers to "Canton" is kind of moot, especially considering how often a word loses connection with its etymology when its meaning is driven by usage. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 09:01, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Comment Re the argument of common name usage as the title of this article. Please note that "Cantonese" in common usage means the Guangzhou/HK/Macau dialect, therefore using the "common name" argument, an article titled "Cantonese" or "Cantonese Chinese" etc, should be about the Guangzhou/HK/Macau dialect. For an article about the Yue group (this article), there can't be a title based on common usage because non-specailist non-linguist readers are generally not aware of the concept and do not have a particular name for it.

An article about the Yue group should have "Yue" somewhere in its title, because it is the term used by scholars and academics. "Cantonese" or "Cantonese Chinese" etc, as a title is ambiguous because it is imprecise, as shown by the comments here. One writer appears to use it to mean all the local languages spoken in Guangdong by including a Minnan dialect as Cantonese. This article and its name should be based on lingustics (works published by linguists, ie scholars who study language scientifically), not on political and chauvinistic points of views. LDHan (talk) 23:18, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Without commenting on which is the most common name, I want to point out that actually, an article name should be based on common usage (if a common name exists). If the common name may be confusing, it should be explained in the article content. This is why spotted dick is not named "steamed suet pudding", and why hot dog is not named "cooked sausage". An article name should not be based on what is the most "accurate" or "meaningful" as determined by the editors when a common name exists. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 17:57, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I fully agree. The problem, however, is the conflict between notability and precision. Yue Chinese happens to be precise and unambiguous, but it is not that widely known. Conversely, Cantonese is used quite commonly, but what it refers to can be ambiguous or deceiving. A main point of the debate is whether Cantonese refers more often to the narrow sense (the Guangzhou dialect) than to the broad sense of Yue. I believe it does based on my personal experience and research; you believe it does; others do as well. A lot of people believe the opposite, or don't think the distinction is so important, or feel that the current article names show the distinction well enough. Wikipedia names its articles based on what is determined to be common usage, with that determination often occurring in discussion like this (occasionally at the expense of scholarly accuracy). The Fiddly Leprechaun · Catch Me! 21:38, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Notability doesn't come into it, it's common usage. The claimed ambiguity here is between the language (which we're not allowed to call a language for political reasons) and its prestige dialect. I accepted this claim at face value but the more I ponder it the stranger it seems; It's a very common linguistic phenomenon. If you ask say a cockney who speaks English best, they'll probably say something like 'er Majesty and the like. So there's a sense in which they understand the term English to mean Standard English. This is exactly the same phenomenon that's being claimed for Cantonese, but it doesn't mean that the term English is in any way ambiguous. Similar results would be encountered in most, perhaps all, languages where a prestige dialect exists. Andrewa (talk) 09:54, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

NOTE: IP address 203.196.98.24 made the following comment over at Talk:Standard Cantonese/Archive1#Suggestion and Poll. I cut and pasted it here as it applies much more to this discussion than that one, and anyways that article is archived and thus closed to further editing. Not that I like or agree with what he or she is saying at all, but it's a decent contribution to this discussion. --The Fiddly Leprechaun · Catch Me! 22:22, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose

I oppose the name of "Yue Chinese", every body know "cantonese", but no one know what "Yue chinese" means. I am oversea chinese, I am cantonese. In chinese wording 粵, pronounced as "yue", is just a abbreviation of "cantonese, guandong province" mostly in writing. But there is another chinese wording 越, bearing the same pronounciation as "yue" which is the term refered to ancient ChiangSu-ShangHai-ZheChiang area. In more ancient time, the greater area starting from the south of the YangTze river, called 江南, until Pearl river area(GuanZhou, guadong province) were refered as 百越(hundreds of yue). Now, in a narrow sence, 越Yue is still refered by people in ChiangSu-shanghai-ZheChiang area as a representative when they talk about their history. The new term of "Yue chinese" gives confusion to cantonese yue and shanghai yue. I am so doubt about the actual intention of the person who raises this new ambiguous term of "yue chinese" to overwrite a common, familiar, well-known wording of "cantonese". "yue chinese" does neither give clearer sense to "cantonese" nor easier writing and pronounciation. The suggestion is a foolish action. The english name of "GuangZhou" is "Canton" which the capital of GuanDong province, cantonese is the dialet language used in canton, it is clear. If you want to mention the other dialets used in other area of GuangDong province, it is easily to term as GuangDong dialet languages. ---- Chung

Oppose a move to Yue Chinese but would support the original name of Cantonese (linguistics). Yes, "Cantonese" is ambiguous but this merely reflects actual usage which is also ambiguous. This ambiguity can be dealt with in the intro of this article and of Standard Cantonese. (Some have pointed out elsewhere that "Yue Chinese" is also ambiguous.) I would argue that the more likely source of ambiguity would be between the language(s) and the cuisine, &c. — AjaxSmack 01:35, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

[edit] new population fig.

IP 98.210.57.40 changed the population figure to 105M. It did the same at Standard Cantonese, but with a different ref. They can't both be right. The latter is accessible at Google books, and, unless I missed it, it does not support the 105M figure. That makes me suspicious that the ref for this article may also be invalid. kwami (talk) 09:37, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Need Cantonese hanzi

Need Cantonese hanzi at Kaffir lime. Badagnani (talk) 04:14, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Yue Chinese

I have redirected it to category:Cantonese. 218.103.199.51 (talk) 00:13, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] ISO 639

As I understand it zh, zho zhi do not apply to Cantonese? Rich Farmbrough, 10:18, 28 May 2009 (UTC).

They should. zh and zho are both "Chinese".[1] There is no zhi, unless you meant chi? kwami (talk) 12:23, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Rules for classification

The main page reads "...Cantonese is considered to be a dialect of a single Chinese language for ethnic and cultural reasons, but is also considered a language in its own right because it is mutually unintelligible with other varieties of Chinese..." Every single word of this, literally every single word, deserves a comment or two, "in its own right", of course.

a.) Notice the careful phrasing of the words "...Cantonese is considered..."; Well, Red can be "considered" to be Blue (same as "Define: One equals Zero"). Such is the logic of reasoning.

b.) Also take special note of the term "...mutually unintelligible...". Imagine grouping all mutually unintelligible languages currently spoken in the USA into one single "linguistic family" of Americanese, how would one feel? The classification for "a single Chinese language" confers precisely such a weird feeling, hair-raising eye-popping.

c.) Face it (like the main page on the Vietnamese language) this one on the Cantonese language sounds like a joke. It does sound like a joke because it is exactly that, a joke, and a bad one at it with nothing to laugh about. Since when are languages classified, "...for ethnic and cultural reasons...", and not based on linguistic attributes? Since the invention of Wikipedia, perhaps? (Besides, the classification for the Vietnamese language is based on "...geographical reasoning...", apparently. God help Wikipedia.)

Uwe 123.243.142.170 (talk) 01:03, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Talk:Cantonese

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