Talk:Literary and colloquial readings

文白異讀 as phenomenon of doublets
Shouldn't 文白異讀 be categotized as the phenomenon of "doublets" according to Historical Linguistics? This is a crucial view which i found absent in this topic. Nandaojun — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nandaojun (talk • contribs) 18:19, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

About Wu and Guangyun
Chinese Wikipedia says Wu follows the sound system of Guangyun. It doesn't. I checked with Guangyun. Asoer (talk) 10:12, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Firstly, no modern dialect of Chinese has a perfect mapping to Guangyun. Secondly, why you bitching here instead on the Chinese Wikipedia? --88.67.116.234 (talk) 13:33, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

不, 要, 返, 轉 in the Min section
I think I know why Mugi wanted to remove 不, 要, 返 in the Min Nan table. It seems like these characters were borrowed to write 	m̄, ài, and tńg respectively and not really a pair of 文白異讀. For 要 and 返, the reading are too different. Also, 返 and 轉 have the same pronunciation and approximately the same meaning, which further suggests that tńg isn't 返. It might be 轉, as some Old Chinese reconstructions have /*tron/ for 轉. Maybe 不 is also m̄ just because the initials are homorganic, but I don't know much about Min Nan. However, ài for 要 and tńg for 返 definitely seem like they are not real readings for these characters. Asoer (talk) 01:13, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I received those romanizations from the given reading cited in the article. If there is an actual factual fault, then feel free to remove them as you see fit. --  李博杰   | —Talk contribs email 05:16, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Literary or colloquial readings does not necessarily implies more ancient or modern or conservative
“Generally speaking, colloquial readings preserve more ancient and conservative pronunciations, while literary readings represent newer pronunciations influenced by the dialects of historical capital areas such as Nanjing or Beijing. The case is reversed in Mandarin Chinese, however, where literary pronunciations are usually older.”

This statement is so wrong. Literary and colloquial reading only means which pronunciation to use when reading literary works or colloquial speech, as the name suggests. It does not imply which one is more conservative. If anything, it's just that colloquial readings are usually the result of the dialect's own phonogical development, while literary readings are introduced pronunciation from the capital dialect at that time. Can you say the Min Nan colloquial pronunciation of 白 pe̍h is more conservative than literary pe̍k? It even lost the final consonant. The former is called colloquial reading is because it's used in colloquial speech, and the latter is called colloquial reading is because it's used in literary speech. That's it.

Also, "The case is reversed in Mandarin Chinese, however, where literary pronunciations are usually older", WTF? Who said that? The Mandarin colloquial reading of 白 bai2 inherit from the northern Common Middle Chinese. In the 13th century's 中原音韻, 白 is pronounced [pai]. The literary reading bo2 is introduced in Ming dynasty, from the proto-southern Mandarin. So apparently the literary reading is older?

"In Cantonese, colloquial readings tend to resemble Middle Chinese, while literary readings tend to resemble Mandarin." Technically not wrong, but too misleading. It makes the result looks like the cause.

This article is so wrong in so many aspects, I don't even know how to rewrite this. Mteechan (talk) 09:04, 16 March 2018 (UTC)