User talk:BYF

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Mandarin and Malaysian Chinese
While I understand your feelings, Mandarin is necessary for the following reasons: Both the PRC and ROC governments as well as Singapore have made Mandarin the official dialect, and so it has become the standard. WhisperToMe (talk) 02:07, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
 * 1. Even though Chinese in Malaysia come from many regions and speak many dialects, Mandarin is used in Chinese schools in much of the country. Chinese national-type schools in Malaysia use Mandarin as the medium of instruction. This source says: "She also found 93% of Malaysian families of Chinese origin speak Mandarin with many different combinations of dialects and currently 53% of the respondents speak Chinese dialects with their parents compared with 42% in 1970." so Mandarin is dominant in Malaysia.
 * 2. I am not aware of where Choo's "home province" is, so it defaults to Mandarin. As long as there is no evidence of any connection to any particular region in China, there's no other dialect of Chinese that may apply to him
 * 3. Readers are going to ask "how do I pronounce those characters?"

There is no problem with using Mandarin, but say it is Mandarin. To say Mandarin is "Chinese" tout court is false and supremacist - ask someone like Victor Mair. And no, your point 3 fails on its face. Mandarin is NOT a "dialect", and nor is Cantonese etc etc. Even the Mandarin "fangyan" is itself suspect. You are simply wrong on that point.


 * 1. Going back to this edit I should have used the Template:zh. It would still be labeled "Chinese" as that is referring to the hanzi themselves. The part that would refer to the Mandarin is "pinyin", as in Hanyu Pinyin. If the person has Cantonese origins or is from Guangdong/Hong Kong/Macau the Cantonese is indicated by the "jyutping" parameter.
 * 2. I've looked through a lot of sources about historical Chinese communities. it's true that in the past Mandarin wasn't always dominant. For example: In the 1960s or 1970s it had almost no presence in Hong Kong and Macau, nor in overseas Chinese communities where Cantonese has been dominant (US/UK/Canada). At the time the Mainland was closed off and wasn't a part of the United Nations. Even in regards to Mandarin, Wade-Giles, not pinyin, was the preferred romanization in the Western academic literature. Things were different in those days. If I talked to Mair I would get a good conversation about this.
 * Today, Mandarin is supplanting Cantonese in American/Canadian/British Chinatowns thanks to the large numbers of Mainlanders moving in. The Mainland now has both Hong Kong and Macau (Cantonese de facto is still preferred in those two places but the Mainland presence is causing Mandarin to become more common). While Taiwan has used Mandarin post-1945 (the Japanese were kicked out then, and in 1949 the CKS government relocated to Taiwan), it has used the Mainland's Hanyu Pinyin since 2008. Mandarin and Hanyu Pinyin have clearly become dominant even if they hadn't been so in previous eras. Things change.
 * 3. Lastly, I am aware of the vast differences between "dialects" (spoken Cantonese is unintelligible with spoken Mandarin and the grammar is different). When I say "dialect" in a Chinese context I understand it's not so much a "dialect" as a separate language, but I still call them "dialect"s anyway. Now, I didn't know that Mair himself had criticized the use of "dialect" in place of fangyan, but now I know he did.
 * One thing I am doing is making sure Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macau-related topics have Cantonese displayed. I agree that the other dialects shouldn't be neglected.
 * WhisperToMe (talk) 10:49, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:17, 23 November 2015 (UTC)