Talk:Chinese languages

What to redirect to?
Note from the history that this page has bounced back and forth between being a redirect to Sinitic languages and Spoken Chinese (and Chinese language singular). It’s currently pointing to Spoken Chinese, which discusses detailed taxonomy, as the Sinitic page is only a high-level overview.

Perhaps “Chinese languages” is a better article name than “Spoken Chinese”, but it seems caution is advised is naming and redirecting these articles.
 * —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 15:51, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Revision. 15:54, 3 June 2009 (UTC)


 * People coming to this page are likely looking for information on both written and spoken Chinese languages. Readin (talk) 16:38, 27 August 2009 (UTC)


 * As the history shows where "Chinese Languages" should redirect to is contentious, this is because "Chinese Languages" has several different meanings, perhaps the best thing to do would be to make this a disambiguation page.Johnkn63 (talk) 14:03, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Perhaps not – that way lies a maze of disambiguation pages. Kanguole 14:12, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
 * A disambiguation page forces people to think about where they really want to link to. Of course merging Varieties of Chinese and Chinese Language would also work.Johnkn63 (talk) 15:51, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, I've "disambiguated" the links, so "what links here" is clean at the moment. I did this because of the history of bold primary topic changes, which took no account of their effect on existing links. So, you're free to make this a disambiguation, but I don't think that's a good idea. What I found is that Chinese language, singular form, is the primary topic for Chinese languages plural, given that the singular form is something of a misnomer editors will be inclined to link to the plural form which is "correct". This position for an R from plural redirect is strongly supported by the fact that a requested move was filed in 2015 to move to the plural form. This is also the top-level summary style article and it is generally best to link to the most comprehensive article, which will in turn have links to the more detail-level articles.
 * Among the others, the relationship of Sinitic languages to Varieties of Chinese is a little foggy to me. If those two topics aren't forks, then the relationship seems to put Sinitic languages at the top, making it out-of-scope to redirect there, as Chinese language(s) are a subset of Sinitic languages. Varieties of Chinese is a within-scope, detail-level article, a subtopic of Chinese language. Generally I don't think it's good to link into detail-level articles where the parent article is still fully within scope of the linked topic, and not beyond scope. – wbm1058 (talk) 04:11, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Not sure I'm understanding your use of the word 'scope' here. If we want to change 'Chinese language' into a language-family article, then that would indeed make both the Sinitic and Varieties articles redundant. I'd support such an approach, but I wouldn't expect it to be stable. Currently, Sinitic is the language family, a branch of ST, or at least an attempt at applying normal linguistic approaches to Chinese (though, granted, an inadequate one), whereas Varieties is the dialectological treatment of Chinese as a single language sociolinguistically, and Chinese itself is a "language" rather than a "languages" article. Splitting them up that way might allow the two approaches to coexist without repeatedly swinging from one to the other. But if we can move 'Chinese language' to 'Chinese languages' (or less ambiguously to 'Sinitic'), merging the Sinitic and Varieties articles, so that Chinese is treated like Romance, Slavic, Germanic or any other language family, then IMO that's the way to go. Presumably the material in the main article on Chinese as a language would then be merged into Standard Chinese.

For all other families, we have an article that details which languages belong to that family. For us, that's the Sinitic article. 'Varieties of Chinese' doesn't do it, because it's not a family article. The List doesn't do it either, as it's just a list. So if we're going to merge our articles, we need one of them to take over the family role. — kwami (talk) 04:33, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
 * The lead of Chinese language, taking out the lengthy parenthetical, says "Chinese is a group of languages". Is there a difference between a "group of languages" and a "language family"? Hmm, "A language family is a group of languages..." wbm1058 (talk) 04:40, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

A language can't be a group of languages. Yes, we mention that it's actually a family, but the article is still about the language. A family article would be about the family. We need an article about the Sinitic languages. Currently this isn't it. We could make it so, by moving it to an appropriate name and rewriting it, at which point the other articles would be redundant. — kwami (talk) 08:32, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

(Also, to be pedantic, a family is related, a group isn't necessarily.)

German language, Italian language, Arabic language, though not as diverse as Chinese, might perhaps be guidelines to our coverage in the main Chinese article. — kwami (talk) 20:35, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
 * German languages is a misspelling for Germanic languages
 * Italian languages redirects to Languages of Italy, which is analogous to Languages of China
 * Arabic languages just redirects back to Arabic, which has a hatnote pointing to Varieties of Arabic
 * You seem to be saying that "Chinese languages" is a "misspelling" for Sinitic languages.
 * I think the China case should be handled similarly to how Arabic is covered. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:56, 17 December 2019 (UTC)


 * No, they're not misspellings. German is a subcategory of Germanic. Chinese is a synonym for Sinitic.
 * 'Arabic languages' should rd to 'Varieties of Arabic'. That's an error, because our 'Arabic' article says that Arabic is "a language". Languages cannot be "a language". Obviously, if someone searches for "Arabic languages", they're not looking for a single language. The same for Chinese.
 * Another difference between Arabic and Chinese is that Chinese is specified as a language right in the title. Again, a language is not the same as languages. Singular and plural mean something in English. — kwami (talk) 01:10, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Proposed merger

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a

Merge Proposal and / or Redirect. Please do not modify it. The result of the request for the Proposed Merger of {requested article} into this talk page's article was: No Consensus to Merge. ''Issue additionally confused by introduction of additional moves and merging requests. There are some clarity enhancing ideas presented here, and they should be further discussed and possibly implemented through the normal editing process. I am closing this very stale discussion as "No Action Taken" for now. Good luck. GenQ''uest  "scribble" 21:21, 2 July 2022 (UTC) —     —     —     —     —

The articles Chinese language and Sinitic languages deal with the same topic, that is, the languages that constitute the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Having them as two different articles serve to no point.

As Chinese language article states, Chinese is a group of [multiple] languages that form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages. As such, the article title should be plural.

While my final assertment might be controversial or disputable for some, the first argument is definitely anything but. Sinitic languages and Chinese language(s) mean one and the same thing. – anlztrk (talk) 17:18, 19 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Oppose Merge - If you think about it, they’re not the same, the Sinitic Languages also include the Macro-Bai languages, which isn’t a Chinese language. Also there are a few unclassified groups aswell. - ShivanshPlays1 (talk) 18:09, 24 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Oppose As per Shivansh. 2001:8003:9008:1301:9029:E949:DF7B:3197 (talk) 07:48, 18 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Weak Support as the two articles and Varieties of Chinese basically cover the same ground, but Shivansh makes a good point. However, I fear that would make one of the articles a stub if we were to remove all the duplicated bits. Strong support for the move to Chinese languages if the merge fails. Vampyricon (talk) 04:20, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment: Separate move proposal which I Support. UserTwoSix (talk) 22:13, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Strong Support for this move proposal as per Vampyricon. The Chinese language article is titled "Chinese language", but then states that linguists classify it as a language family, so this would help make the article's info more consistent. However, note that the intro paragraph of the Sinitic languages article mentions that "Sinitic [languages]" is often synonymous with "Chinese [languages]". It then sort of clarifies the difference by explaining how some linguists only include the varieties of Chinese in the family while others also include the Greater Bai languages. However, we may still need to reword the intro paragraph or add a separate section in the article to further clarify the difference between the two terms. Manong Kimi (talk) 15:23, 1 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Conditional Support This article should be merged with Varieties of Chinese, but the Varieties page needs to be renamed to Sinitic Languages (in effect, Chinese Languages needs to be merged into this article). There is no one single Chinese language, there are many. Ergzay (talk) 22:43, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
 * NOTE: This is a different merge proposal. UserTwoSix (talk) 22:11, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Conditional Support There's also the issue of figuring out which of the three pages searches like "Chinese languages" should redirect to, as the section above discusses. A merger between two or all three of the articles would make the redirect problem a little easier to handle. Another thing: only some classifications group the Chinese languages and Greater Bai languages together; otherwise, the terms "Sinitic languages" and "Chinese languages" are one and the same. If we include the Sinitic languages article in the merge, we should keep the name "Sinitic languages". It covers searches about the Chinese languages alone and searches about the Chinese and Greater Bai languages as a group. We could also merge the Chinese language article with the Varieties of Chinese article and leave the Sinitic article alone since the former two articles both exclude the Greater Bai languages, while the other one doesn't. Manong Kimi (talk) 23:07, 15 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Conditional Support The articles Chinese language and Varieties of Chinese should be merged and named Chinese languages. A similar move recently occurred at Nivkh languages (which was formerly Nivkh language). Linguistically, the situation is very similar. However, since Nivkh has less than 200 speakers while Chinese has over a billion, this move will inherently be more controversial, though there's no real reason for it to be. Dylanvt (talk) 15:28, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Those two articles have different scopes. Varieties of Chinese is the subarticle for the Varieties section of this article. If we compare with say the treatment in Chinese, Jerry Norman's volume in the Cambridge Language Surveys series, this article corresponds to the whole book, while Varieties of Chinese corresponds to chapters 8 and 9. Kanguole 16:14, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I suppose I can see a case for that; at a bare minimum, then, I believe Chinese language ought to be moved to Chinese languages. Dylanvt (talk) 06:04, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose : First point is valid. Topics are not entirely the same. Issue was to clarify this in poorly named "Chinese language" article, which should become "Chinese languages" and hat notes explain. UserTwoSix (talk) 22:10, 16 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Oppose As per ShivanshPlays1. Two articles are not the same, can't be merged. Silikonz (alternate account)  ( 💬 │ 🖋 ) 08:27, 2 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Weak Oppose per ShivanshPlays1. ~Ceres of Arctic Circle System (talk) 13:02, 12 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Oppose Varieties of Chinese seems too nuanced and esoteric for the regular English reader's needs just be lumped into the much more general Chinese language(s) articles. FourPaws (talk) 23:02, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose: Chinese languages as a whole constitute one of the branches (or a handful of somehow related branches) of Sinitic languages. The fact that their speakers make up a very large proportion of all Sinitic speakers doesn't mean all Sinitic languages are Chinese languages. See the example ShivanshPlays1 mentioned above. 210.177.180.110 (talk) 12:37, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

— —  —  —  —  The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a WP:PM. 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. GenQuest "scribble" 21:21, 2 July 2022 (UTC) A copy of this template can be found here.

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Chinese language which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 20:47, 6 September 2022 (UTC)