User:SilverStar54/sandbox

Please give me feedback. I know this is a major rewrite but most of the actual meaning is unchanged. My main goal was to add some clarifying detail where it seemed necessary. For example, I added a sentence at the beginning to explain that there are a number of systems used to romanise Chinese. This might be obvious to us, but not necessarily to an editor who isn't familiar with Chinese.

The two major content changes I am proposing are:
 * Move Romanised titles of works to WP:NCZH (because its about titles)
 * Added a suggestion to use the most common romanisation for each non-MSC variety of Chinese (see previous discussion)

===Romanisation===

There are a number of systems used to romanise Chinese characters. English Wikipedia uses Hanyu Pinyin, with some minor exceptions outlined below. When using pinyin:
 * Follow the established conventions for hyphens, spacing, apostrophes, and other parts of pinyin orthography (see WP:NCZH)
 * Follow MOS:FOREIGNITALIC for when to use italics. In general, use italics for terms that have not been assimilated into English, but do not use italics for the names of people, places, or groups.
 * See below for where and how to use tone marks

If a source uses a non-pinyin or non-standard spelling, it should be converted into pinyin. Consider also providing the source's spelling to ease verification by other users. If a source does not provide the original Chinese characters, it might not be clear which romanisation system is being used. Spelling differences can sometimes distinguish between pinyin and Wade-Giles (for example, see this list of differences published by the Library of Congress). Also note that pinyin was developed in the 1950s, so older sources necessarily used a different system.

Even where the title of an article uses a non-pinyin romanisation, romanisations of Chinese words within the article should still be in pinyin. For example, Tsingtao Brewery is a trademark which uses a non-pinyin romanisation, but an article talking about Tsingtao Brewery should still use the pinyin spelling when talking about Qingdao city:

Correct: Tsingtao Brewery Co., Ltd. is located in Qingdao city, Shandong.

Incorrect: Tsingtao Brewery Co., Ltd. is located in Tsingtao city, Shan-tung. or Tsingtao Brewery Co., Ltd. is located in Tsingtao city, Shandong.

====When to use romanisations other than pinyin==== Articles should use a non-pinyin spelling of a term if that spelling is used by the majority of modern, reliable, secondary sources (see WP:NC-ZH for examples). If the term does not have its own article, the pinyin romanisation should be given in a parenthetical. For example, The Hung Ga style Ng Ying Hung Kuen traces its ancestry to Ng Mui.

When a topic is related to an area of China that uses a variety of Chinese other than Modern Standard Chinese, Wikipedia does not have a

Provide other romanisations alongside pinyin if the topic is related to varieties of Chinese other than Modern Standard Chinese (MSC). Several competing systems of romanisation may exist for a given variety of Chinese. Wikipedia does not recommend any of these specifically, although editors should avoid systems that are uncommon or outdated when a more common or current system is available. If a specific topic has a WP:COMMONNAME, use it. Otherwise, try to maintain consistency throughout the same article. For example, a reference to a Shanghainese dish should include the Wugniu romanisation of its name, since Wugniu is widely used for Shanghainese: Shanghainese chilled noodles (Wugniu: lan⁶ mi⁶)

Relatedly, note that systems of Chinese language romanization in Taiwan (the Republic of China) are far less standardized than in mainland China. Hanyu Pinyin has been the official standard since 2009, but systems such Wade–Giles, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, Tongyong Pinyin, and Chinese postal romanization remain in use for both personal and place names. In Taiwan, place names derived from Hanyu Pinyin rarely use the syllable-dividing apostrophe. For example, write Daan District, Taipei City, not Da'an District, Taipei City.

====Tones==== The Chinese language has tones that are transcribed in different ways depending on the romanisation system. Words written with tone marks should be italicized and should be placed inside English text. A romanised word that part of English text should omit tone marks: write "...a bronze ding excavated from a Zhou dynasty tomb..." rather than "...a bronze dǐng excavated from a Zhou dynasty tomb...". Text with tone marks should only be used in templates, parentheticals, or infoboxes. For example, the introductory sentence for Gu Yanwu could read: Gu Yanwu was a Chinese philologist...

In pinyin, a syllable's tone is indicated with a diacritic above the vowel. If a syllable contains more than one vowel, the diacritic is added to the vowel that comes first in this sequence: a o e i u ü. The only exception is the vowel pair iu which takes the tone mark on u. Some examples:
 * Bái, not Baí
 * Xià, not Xìa
 * Suí, not Súi
 * Jiǔ, not Jǐu

To help you type pinyin, Wikipedia has clickable characters with diacritics under the edit box; you can also use which takes pinyin with tone numbers as input (e.g. Lv3shun4kou3) and converts it to the preferred form with diacritics ( Lǚshùnkǒu ). Other options include Pinyinput or online converters such as Google Translate's phonetic reading function.

(I left the table unchanged)