Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Regional differences in the Chinese language


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. Discussion of improving, merging, etc can be done on the article's talk page,(which I note has never been used) there is clearly not a consensus to delete. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:47, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Regional differences in the Chinese language

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Not sure what the point of this article is. We already have Chinese language, Varieties of Chinese which properly describes the different varieties, and articles on traditional and simplified characters for the written language. The table is confusing and misleading – there's not one was of using Chinese in China as it implies – with some very odd choices of entries, and should not be in all Chinese which really limits its readership. Without that there's almost nothing to the article. JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 23:17, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of China-related deletion discussions.  cab (call) 23:55, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of language-related deletion discussions.  cab (call) 23:55, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Move to wiktionary seems like local colloquialisms are documented, that would be wiktionary appendix material. 65.93.14.196 (talk) 06:37, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment: inaccurate comparisons given. "Varieties of Chinese" document the differences between the major dialect groups, including Yue (AKA Cantonese), Wu (incl. SH-ese), etc. Such a list would be too much to include at Chinese language. Though I do agree much of this is Wiktionary material. Yet at the same time we have articles on regional differences in English, French, Korean, and Portuguese. The problem with this is that it needs to be drastically expanded in order to be on par with those articles and be less susceptible to deletion. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 06:56, 14 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Translate to Chinese, then transwiki beta Wikiversity- good learning material for Cantonese speakers.  Kayau  Voting  IS   evil 07:13, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz Humbug! 20:33, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Rename whether moved or not. This isn't about different regions but different countries; actual separate states. The title should be edited to reflect this. Also, Chinese is generally treated as separate languages. So how about International differences in Chinese? Munci (talk) 14:31, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep and improve. There exists many similar articles in the English Wikipedia, which draw comparison between different varieties of the same language. Take a look at Category:Language comparison and the following articles:
 * Regional differences in the English language: American and British English differences, British and Malaysian English differences
 * Regional differences in the French language: Swiss French >> Differences between Swiss French and standard French
 * Regional differences in the Korean language: North-South differences in the Korean language
 * Regional differences in the Portuguese language: Portuguese dialects >> Differences
 * I don't see any justification for discriminating the Chinese language, which is the language with the largest number of native speakers in the world. If someone says that the article should not be "all in Chinese", we can find more Wikipedians to collaborate on adding romanisations (such as pinyin or jyutping) of the Chinese phrases to the article. I think this article is very helpful for people who are learning Chinese as a foreign language. (As an analogy, a person who is learning English as a foreign language might find it useful to know that "elevator" in American English is the same thing as "lift" in Commonwealth English.) - Alan (talk) 17:42, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The problem though is that Chinese is not one language in the same way that English or French is. So while it's possible to describe pretty comprehensively the differences between British and American English in an article it's impossible to do the same between Cantonese and Mandarin, for example. Such an article properly covering the subject would be a dictionary, something Wikipedia is not. And that is only two of a large number of varieties of Chinese. This article ignores all this, instead focussing on a small (and unusual) selection of words. The grouping is not by variety but by territory and says nothing about the pronunciation of the words (useful as it often gives a clue why different characters are used), even which variety is used where, or which territories use which of simplified or traditional characters. Nor is it indicated which entries are vernacular Chinese. As such this article is of little use to anyone learning Chinese. There is already an article on written Cantonese which covers most of the written differences between Mandarin and Cantonese, in a much more encyclopaedic way, including some of these words, which would perhaps be a better place for this.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 14:14, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I am a native Cantonese speaker from Hong Kong. Perhaps I can help make clear some of the confusions over the Chinese language.
 * The articles Varieties of Chinese and Spoken Chinese deal with the different branches of spoken Chinese, such as the Cantonese branch, the Mandarin branch, the Min branch, the Wu branch etc. Those articles focus on the how the same Chinese character is pronounced differently in the different branches.
 * However, the article Regional differences in the Chinese language is intended to focus on the differences in the vocabularies, i.e. what words/phrases each territory use to convey the same meaning. (If the title of the article is not descriptive enough, we could rename it.) Here we are not comparing the differences between Traditional Chinese characters and Simplified Chinese characters, nor are we comparing the pronunciation differences between Cantonese and Mandarin. Instead, we are comparing the use of "巴士" in Hong Kong to the use of "公車" in Taiwan (just like how we make the contrast between "lift" in Britain and "elevator" in America in the article American and British English differences). Note that the difference between "巴士" and "公車" is not the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin. It is just that the two territories adopt different words for the same object.
 * There are similar comparison tables in the articles Hong Kong Cantonese, Taiwanese Mandarin and Singaporean Mandarin. But the Taiwanese Mandarin article only compares Taiwanese Mandarin to Standard Mandarin, but not to Singaporean Mandarin. It would be nice to have one table that summarises the differences between all those different kinds of Chinese.
 * Perhaps we should all work together on expanding the introductory paragraph, to explain/address all those questions that John brought up. -Alan (talk) 15:08, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Anything but keep I see a good faith attempt to write an article here and I understand the potential utility of having this article, but I don't think it belongs on Wikipedia in it's current incarnation. There is a single reference but the article also appears to contain a lot of WP:OR. Since this is only about the written form and intends to encompass a wide perspective, a new subsection with some sourced examples may be appropriately merged to Chinese character, which already has a variants section. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
 * I don't see where the article intends to cover more than just the written form. and if I am wrong, I don't think it should do that; we already have articles on the various dialect groups. And a merge into a large article like Chinese character would make that article burst at its reams. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 17:39, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep and rename. E.g. to Regional differences in the use of characters in the Chinese language, something that makes clear the article is about different characters, like in English different words (elevator VS lift) and not about pronounciation. TopoChecker (talk) 17:27, 17 January 2011 (UTC) This user has been blocked as a sockpuppet of a banned user. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:45, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That still doesn't address the fact that Chinese is not a single language, but several. And that the difference between China and Singapore is not one of 'region' but of 'state'. Munci (talk) 10:18, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep and improve - better to explain the differences of Chinese language terms among different regions, rather than just describe. SoHome Jacaranda Lilau (talk) 18:42, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Rename prefereably to "unofficial regional differences etc". Because these are not official.  Taiwan and mainland attempted something like a renewal Zhonghua Da Zidian (last year I believe) to match words between regions. Those are more official than what's on this page. Benjwong (talk) 04:42, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Another awful discussion where anything but the sourcing is discussed. The issue is OR and N so please can those interested comment on the sources. Expand and improve is not a valid argument - not having sources if so if this is to survive the keep side need to demonstrate reliable sources that discuss regional differences in the Chinese language. Spartaz Humbug! 20:37, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * comment The suggestions for keep don't address any of it's flaws. First it's not about one "Chinese" language: there are two languages represented in the table, Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese. I know the WP policy is to be deliberately vague over whether they are languages or dialects but fact is they are mutually unintelligible varieties with mostly different words, far more than can be contained in an article. At the same time it is completely ignoring other Chinese languages. Second there is no single "China" vocabulary as the first column suggests; Cantonese, Mandarin and other Chinese languages are spoken and used in China. Third as per WP:MOS "Foreign words should be used sparingly". An article that consists largely of a table of Chinese characters clearly does not satisfy this: even with phonetic translations there would be far too much Chinese text. See also MOS:CHINA which says "do not use characters or romanized forms excessively, such as for common words, making this a kind of English–Chinese bilingual edition". And lastly WP:NOT.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 21:06, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep and improve. If a subject is potentially encyclopedic, flaws are never a reason to delete, but to fix. Our rule on avoiding Chinese characters when not needed for identification obviously does not apply when we are actually discussing the Chinese  language! (just as an article on the German language will be useless unless it contains a good deal of German!)    DGG ( talk ) 05:12, 27 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.