Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)/languages and dialects

Chinese "(linguistics)"
I would like to contest the convention of adding the tag "(linguistics)" after high-level divisions of Chinese. I'm not advocating a return to the language/dialect debate, but "(linguistics)" is inappropriate for several reasons, and there are other perfectly good workarounds.

Problems with the current situation:
 * The tag "(linguistics)" is inaccurate. The articles aren't restricted to linguistics, nor are the terms "Mandarin" etc. specifically linguistic topics, nor are they technical terms, the way, say, register (linguistics) is. "Taiwanese (linguistics)" is even worse: linguistically, Taiwanese is not even a coherent concept the way Mandarin is. Rather, AFAIK it is several Hokkien dialects which happen to be spoken in Taiwan; there is nothing linguistically to unite them again the rest of Hokkien. In addition, Taiwanese Mandarin would have equal claim to being to topic of "Taiwanese (linguistics)".
 * The tag treats Chinese as abnormal. It's not used for any other language family (we don't have an article named "Galician (linguistics)", or "Swabian (linguistics)", for example), and therefore singles out Chinese in a way that is not justified by the situation. There are many dialect continua which speakers consider to be a single language despite a lack of mutual intelligibility, but we don't treat any of them this way.
 * It is awkward and aesthetically displeasing. Okay, that's a minor offense, but the page title is the first thing our readers see.

Proposed workarounds: Altogether, this would involve the following changes:
 * The very first guideline of the naming conventions is to "Use the most easily recognized name". The customary English expressions for these lects are "Mandarin" or "Mandarin Chinese", "Wu Chinese", "Hakka" or "Hakka Chinese", etc. This is parallel to the situations in other dialect continua, as can be seen in Swabian German, Bernese German (which are not mutually intelligible), etc. In the case of Cantonese, IMO the single word is best; for Mandarin, either the single word (moving the disambig page) or the phrase (personally, I prefer the latter), and with all other primary branches, "X Chinese". There are objections to doing this with Hakka, because of the Hakka people. However, this is no different than the case of German, and a 'see also' tag at the top of the page is sufficient to take care of this.
 * Another possibility for lects like Wu would be "dialects": Wu dialects and Min dialects make no claim as to whether Wu and Min are themselves separate languages or dialects of Chinese, nor do they specify whether their various dialects are all mutually intelligible. This would not work for Mandarin, which has a separate dialects article, but would for the others.
 * Taiwanese requires a different approach. Since there is also Taiwanese Mandarin, I think Taiwanese Hokkien would be appropriate, but perhaps best would be to "Use the most easily recognized name" and simply call it Taiwanese, moving what we now have there to Taiwanese (disambiguation).

!Current location!! !!Proposal A (common expressions)!!Proposal B We could mix & match, of course. kwami (talk) 23:34, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Mandarin (linguistics)|| ||Mandarin Chinese||Mandarin
 * Wu (linguistics)|| ||Wu Chinese||Wu dialects
 * Hakka (linguistics)|| ||Hakka Chinese||Hakka dialects
 * Cantonese (linguistics)|| ||Cantonese||Cantonese dialects
 * Taiwanese (linguistics)|| ||Taiwanese||Taiwanese Hokkien
 * }
 * Cantonese (linguistics)|| ||Cantonese||Cantonese dialects
 * Taiwanese (linguistics)|| ||Taiwanese||Taiwanese Hokkien
 * }
 * Taiwanese (linguistics)|| ||Taiwanese||Taiwanese Hokkien
 * }


 * Eminently sensible suggestions. The use of the term "linguistics" is actually quite amateurish, and represents a rather unsophisticated view of the field. No real place for this usage on a decent encyclopaedia.
 * Bathrobe (talk) 01:12, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Good. I thought I might have a fight on my hands. Although I thought when I wrote this section that the "(linguistics)" tag isn't used for any other languages, it turns out I was wrong: I've now found a few other cases as well, originally justified by these Chinese articles, and then more justified by those secondary articles. One of these is Flemish (linguistics); Flemish isn't even a single dialect of Dutch, but two, and so has no purely linguistic justification (sociolinguistics, maybe). Then there's Swiss German (linguistics), Swiss French (linguistics), and Swiss Italian (linguistics)—again, not coherent units from a traditional linguistic point of view. And then I found that someone's been going through Ethnologue and creating an "X (linguistics)" stub for every lect in Australia that Ethnologue lists as a separate language but which Dixon et al. classify as a dialect of another language. What a mess. kwami (talk) 02:20, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

In general, I can accept either ‘current location’ or ‘proposal A’. ‘Proposal B’ is somewhat problematic (as it involves the word ‘dialect(s)’ albeit in the plural, which gets us back to the ‘language’/‘dialect’ debates, alas). – Kaihsu (talk) 08:26, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I prefer A over B as well, but didn't want to make it an all-or-nothing proposal. We could also take some from A and some from B if you like. kwami (talk) 09:33, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I prefer A. I think we should give an article the most commonly searched term. No one would seriously search for "something (linguistics)". Also calling the language "Taiwanese Hokkien" will anger some Taiwanese independence supporters who would not tolerate having any connection with mainland China or having the language being described as a subset of another language. So I think we should avoid that argument at first place.--pyl (talk) 12:25, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, it's been a couple days and it's 4 to nothing in favor of A. I'll change the conventions, and then if we still agree on it, we can start on the articles.
 * People have objected to everything in B except the first, "Mandarin". Anyone in favor of "Mandarin" rather than "Mandarin Chinese"? kwami (talk) 01:52, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think proposal A and B can work. Both proposal does not fit into Sino-Tibetan languages, Spoken Chinese or any academicly known forms. It is half and half with some hua (話) put in the same category as yue (語). Vice versa. There is nothing wrong with (linguistics) for the time being. By sound, every one of them is different. Therefore it is technically correct to just call them individually a linguistics. Benjwong (talk) 02:16, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * But calling them "a linguistics" is not English. Besides, many are called either 話 or 語 according to the author, and in any case it is arguable whether these terms have exact English equivalents.


 * What do you mean by "do not fit into any academically known forms"? kwami (talk) 02:36, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It's important that commenting editors read the archives. We have both Mandarin (linguistics) and Standard Mandarin. One is a spectrum of dialects (both modern and historical) and the other is a fixed modern language. That's why we used the terminology we did. The same is true with Cantonese (linguistics) and Standard Cantonese. Badagnani (talk) 02:48, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * But this solution has nothing to do with the contents of the articles. Standard Mandarin and Cantonese are just as much a part of linguistics as the Mandarin and Cantonese languages, so "Mandarin (linguistics)" could just as easily be used for Standard Mandarin as it can for Mandarin as a whole. Since there is no clear way to say "all the lects called Mandarin" and "all the lects called Cantonese" in English, anything we choose will need disambiguation. Meanwhile, the (linguistics) tag is factually incorrect. kwami (talk) 03:12, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

When I suggested academically known forms earlier. I was referring to some form that is already widely accepted. Proposal A uses common expressions, but that is hardly considered common. I am not aware of people saying "Wu Chinese" or "Hakka Chinese". Proposal B is based on the fact that some are dialects, some are not. But this varies. Because Cantonese itself could be considered an entire language if Written Cantonese can be considered official. But it really isn't etc etc. It gets complex. Badagnani has a point about archived discussion too. Benjwong (talk) 02:52, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have heard/seen people say & write "Wu Chinese", "Hakka Chinese", etc. Not particularly common, but then "Wu" & "Hakka" themselves are not common in English. (Most Hakka in the US are astounded that I even recognize the term.) I have never in my life heard anyone describe Wu or Hakka as "linguistics".


 * ("Hakka Chinese" gets 23k hits on Google. "Wu Chinese" gets 66k.)


 * You misunderstand proposal B. "Wu dialects" only means that Wu is composed of several dialects, which is clearly true. It has nothing to do with whether Wu itself is considered a dialect of Chinese or a language in its own right.


 * Whether a language has an official written form has little to do with it being a language, though of course that does play into popular conceptions. The whole point of saying "Wu dialects" instead of "Wu language" or "Wu dialect" is to avoid precisely this issue. But it's irrelevant, as no-one wanted proposal B. kwami (talk) 03:06, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It's important that editors read the archives before commenting. The distinction between the articles Mandarin (linguistics) and Standard Mandarin, and Cantonese (linguistics) and Standard Cantonese, were not addressed in the above comments. Badagnani (talk) 03:10, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * They were addressed, if indirectly. Primary branches of Chinese go by their name alone or by "xxx Chinese". Lower branches go by "xxx dialect" or "xxx (name of primary branch)". It's clear by the examples that standardized registers are to be treated as dialects for naming purposes, as would Beijing Mandarin & Hong Kong Cantonese. The only difference from the original format is that the tag "(linguistics)" is either removed or replaced with "Chinese". The differences between Mandarin-in-the-broad-sense and Standard Mandarin have nothing that I can see to do with this issue: (linguistics) has nothing to do with "primary branch of Chinese", and its removal has nothing to do with language standardization. The difference between "Mandarin Chinese" and "Standard Mandarin" is just as clear—or unclear—as the difference between "Mandarin (linguistics)" and "Standard Mandarin", or "English language" and "Received Pronunciation", for that matter, or "Spanish language" and "Castillian Spanish". It has the additional benefit of not being an amateurish misuse or the term "linguistics". kwami (talk) 03:27, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

To user Kwami please stay away from the google counter comparison. That method only makes sense assuming every book and source is scanned, and it isn't. Linguistic basically assumes everything has a unique sound. Which is why it is "enough" for now. I'll admit it has flaws too. Proposal A also wouldn't work. As clearly Cantonese Chinese characters is based on the same set as Mandarin Chinese characters. Again, this is a circular debate. Benjwong (talk) 03:20, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree that Google counting isn't very reliable. However, it does show that the phrases "Hakka Chinese" are used in English precisely as I have indicated. This is not a circular debate: The current system is incorrect. Because it is wrong, we need to correct it. You haven't given any intelligible reason that proposal A won't work as its replacement. kwami (talk) 03:27, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Linguistic basically assumes everything has a unique sound. I'm sorry, I'm totally unable to make sense of this statement, which appears to be the heart of Benjewong's argument.
 * Bathrobe (talk) 06:29, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Proposal A would also make the naming convention of these articles parallel to Arabic: Maghrebi Arabic, Najdi Arabic, Hassaniya, etc. (Arabic and Chinese are the two exceptions mentioned in the naming conventions, due to the conflict between the conceptions of language and dialect.) kwami (talk) 08:12, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I think Kwamikagami misunderstood the "(linguistics)" tag. It is not to be taken as a countable noun in the sense of "a linguistics", but to indicate that the article "Taiwanese (linguistics)" is an article within the discipline of Linguistics, rather than, say, an article about the people from Taiwan. By the way, for Proposal A to be adopted, it needs to trump not just Proposal B but also the status quo ("current location"). – Kaihsu (talk) 20:08, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * '"Taiwanese (linguistics)" is even worse: linguistically, Taiwanese is not even a coherent concept the way Mandarin is. Rather, AFAIK it is several Hokkien dialects which happen to be spoken in Taiwan; there is nothing linguistically to unite them again the rest of Hokkien. In addition, Taiwanese Mandarin would have equal claim to being to topic of "Taiwanese (linguistics)".' I find little factual content in these statements. – Kaihsu (talk) 20:11, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The "a linguistics" wording comes from Benjwong. That's not how I interpreted it. My problem is that
 * (a) Mandarin, Taiwanese, etc. are not particularly linguistic concepts; they're simply language lects. Titling an article "Mandarin (linguistics)" is like having an article "Saturday (astronomy)". It's gobbledygook. Taiwanese (linguistics) is not "an article within the discipline of Linguistics". Language articles are treated with linguistics, but there's more to a language than just the study of it. What "Taiwanese (linguistics)" is saying is that the Taiwanese language (using "language" in its generic sense) is a concept of linguistics, and does not exist outside the field of linguistics. This is obviously ridiculous: You don't need to know anything about linguistics to know what Taiwanese is.
 * (b) the (linguistics) tag does not differentiate these articles except through arbitrary convention. Why shouldn't Standard Mandarin be the lect that is tagged "linguistics"? It's just as linguistic as Mandarin as a whole is. Why not have Chinese (linguistics)? This is like saying that the W. African four-day week will be titled four-day week, and to keep things clear, the European seven-day week will be renamed week (astronomy). How does that make anything clear? Neither has any more to do with astronomy than the other, and neither is a particularly astronomical subject. Or maybe we could redirect the yuan to "Chinese dollar", and the US dollar to "dollar (economics)", as if the Chinese currency had nothing to do with economics. The title "Mandarin (linguistics)" is just as ridiculous. kwami (talk) 20:50, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I see your point; and with your line of thinking, I can see that Proposal A may have certain advantages over the status quo. Since I am ambivalent between Proposal A and the status quo, this shall be my final comment on the matter. For the avoidance of doubt, I cannot accept Proposal B. – Kaihsu (talk) 21:02, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. I thought that maybe giving some alternatives would spark a debate on the exact wording we should have, but the wording in A doesn't seem to be an issue. kwami (talk) 21:11, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * "Ethnologue" uses "Chinese, Wu", "Chinese, Mandarin", etc..


 * How common something is in actual use is a difficult point. The original rationale for "Wu (linguistics)" (for example) is that the concept of Wu Chinese, Wu dialects, or whatever else you might want to call it was a concept embraced only by linguists, with no recognised social reality. In other words, neither Chinese speakers nor English speakers have the foggiest notion that these dialects actually form some kind of coherent whole. Thus the use of the tag "linguistics".


 * This has a certain logic, but unfortunately leads to the very messy and, from the point of view of the linguist, illogical situation we now have. After all, linguistics is not just about identifying dialect continuums that are below the general consciousness; it also includes the fields of sociolinguistics, language planning, etc., which are very much concerned with entities like "Standard Mandarin" or "Standard Written Cantonese", etc. That's the problem that Kwami has picked up on. It's fine to add the tag "linguistics" to identify entities that linguists, but not the general public, have discerned, but it really is a distortion of the term "linguistics".
 * Bathrobe (talk) 02:26, 25 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I may be wrong here, but I believe most Chinese are aware of at least Mandarin, Cantonese, and Hakka as discrete units that are mutually unintelligible. kwami (talk) 05:38, 25 September 2008 (UTC)


 * You are right. And indeed, Cantonese (linguistics) redirects to Cantonese. But the reason that Mandarin (linguistics) exists is because of a discrepancy between the concept of Standard Mandarin (or putonghua), a well-known concept, and the concept of a family of Mandarin dialects, a construct known purely to linguists. What Chinese speakers refer to is 北方话 (beifanghua, northern speech), which doesn't include Southwest Mandarin (eg Sichuanese). Southwest Mandarin is not considered by Chinese speakers as Beifanghua. Beifanghua and Sichuanhua are different and separate animals in the normal way of referring to things, and it is only linguists who put them together. That's why we have an article on "Mandarin (linguistics)" separate from the article on Standard Mandarin.
 * Bathrobe (talk) 09:03, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Disagree, keep status quo The discussion above is rather complex, so forgive me if I've missed some points, but I'd suggest some flaws in the original proposals: kwami, I agree that that (linguistics) is an ugly fudge and an arbitrary convention, but it avoids those flaws and treats all the relevant topics (major subdivisions of the Sino-Tibetan language family that primarily use Chinese characters??) in the same way. Can you come up with a scheme that avoids the two pitfalls I've mentioned? Matt's talk 09:29, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Proposal B uses dialect. I'd suggest that no title should use the words 'language' or 'dialect' where the lect's status is disputed, in accordance with NPOV (see Varieties of Chinese). Wu dialects strongly implies that Wu is a dialect or group of dialects.
 * The problem with 'Use the most easily recognized name' is that some of these names are used for several other things too. Proposal A means messing with the Mandarin and Taiwanese articles, which are rightly dabs. We'd have to edit a vast number of articles that link ambiguously to them.


 * Proposal A suggests "Mandarin Chinese"; Mandarin would stay as a disamb. If we borrow B's suggestion of "Taiwanese Hokkien" and use A for everything else, then everything is peachy keen.  To wit:



!Current location!! !!Proposal C
 * Mandarin (linguistics)|| ||Mandarin Chinese
 * Wu (linguistics)|| ||Wu Chinese
 * Hakka (linguistics)|| ||Hakka Chinese
 * Cantonese|| || Cantonese
 * Taiwanese (linguistics)|| ||Taiwanese Hokkien
 * }
 * Cantonese|| || Cantonese
 * Taiwanese (linguistics)|| ||Taiwanese Hokkien
 * }
 * Taiwanese (linguistics)|| ||Taiwanese Hokkien
 * }


 * Note that Cantonese (linguistics) was already moved a few days back to Cantonese, and a violent uproar failed to result, so I'd be happy to keep it there. Jpatokal (talk) 11:01, 25 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, I think we agree on everything except maybe the last. Pyl thought that "Taiwanese Hokkien" would spark protest, but didn't personally object. Is there anyone who personally objects to "Taiwanese Hokkien", keeping the parallel to "Taiwanese Mandarin"? (There are, after all, a lot of Taiwanese who don't speak Hokkien.) kwami (talk) 15:01, 25 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Matt, moving to "Taiwanese" would only require redirecting 50 articles, which could be done with AWB in about 15 minutes. Most of those articles need to be cleaned up anyway, as they should point to Taiwanese, not to a dab. [Done] So the question is whether we want to encourage people to link to a dab, or make it obvious that they need to do better by making the Taiwanese page more specific. kwami (talk) 15:20, 25 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The above proposals are highly problematic in that they ignore (despite repeated posts pointing this out) the distinctions between the Cantonese dialects and Standard Cantonese, and between the Mandarin dialects and Standard Mandarin. Badagnani (talk) 15:51, 25 September 2008 (UTC)


 * But the current convention also ignores this distinction, so I fail to see how this is a valid objection. Besides, that's what "see also" tags are used for with every other language.


 * Do you have a better suggestion? kwami (talk) 15:54, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I personally prefer Proposal B. Mutual intelligibility is not the only criterion for defining separate languages. The term "dialect" is used in English because most of these lects don't have an official standard language, or even necessarily a native-speaker consciousness that they belong together. How many Chinese speakers say they speak Wu dialect? Most people say they speak Shanghai-hua or Ningbo-hua or Suzhou-hua or whatever. People recognise that they are "similar" to each other, but don't necessarily use terms like "Wu Chinese" or "Wu language" to express that similarity. That is why I don't find "dialect" problematic. While linguistically it may be possible to recognise them as a single "language", they don't have the full set of features of a fully-fledged "language" in a political or social sense. That is, they don't have a fully operating native script, the higher reaches of the social continuum are occupied by putonghua, and there is no consciousness among native speakers that the Wu dialects actually constitute a coherent group. So "dialects", as a group of lects without a unifying consciousness as a single language, is an acceptable term as far as I'm concerned.

Bathrobe (talk) 01:07, 26 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's acceptable to me too. However, I think that many people will object on the misunderstanding that we mean "dialect". The whole reason for this silly (linguistics) tag was to get away from the language-dialect debate, and a lot of people won't notice the s at the end—this has already happened in this discussion. There's also the problem that "dialect" has negative connotations in English, that it's somehow not a legitimate language. And finally, there's a Mandarin dialects article that's distinct from Mandarin (linguistics). Given the strong opposition already expressed to B, I think it's better we drop it. kwami (talk) 02:06, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * So far not one of these proposals really fit. You guys are making moves without final consent. Can someone explain why Cantonese (linguistics) was moved to Cantonese?  I don't understand why 1 dialect was singled out. If anything Cantonese (linguistics) should have been Yue.  And Standard Cantonese become Cantonese (dialect). But even that would be a very controversial move as "Yue" is hardly ever used anymore. Similar decisions should be made for the mandarin etc. Or otherwise treat them all generically like before as (linguistics) or (dialects). Also it is messy to move while leaving the talk pages in the redirects. Benjwong (talk) 02:24, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I undid the moves and restored the headings. Please don't make any more moves until we have more of an agreement. The talkpages are also restored to where they were before. I am going to archive the linguistics page some more. Benjwong (talk) 02:59, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I haven't moved them since the start of this discussion. kwami (talk) 06:57, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Have no idea why Cantonese was moved. 粤语 is still used as far as I know. Do you have any proof when you say that it's hardly used any more?


 * (I think Cantonese was merely left over from when I moved all of the articles, before I found this forum to discuss it on. Other langs were moved back, pending discussion, but Cantonese was ignored. kwami (talk) 20:08, 26 September 2008 (UTC))


 * As for "not one of these proposals really fit", the current situation has an even worse fit. The article about Standard Cantonese says: "Historically, Cantonese was the most common form of Chinese spoken by overseas Chinese communities in the Western world". And yet, the article on Cantonese (linguistics) says that it was Taishan dialect, NOT Standard Cantonese, that was ubiquitous in overseas China towns. Guangzhou Cantonese was, however, the lingua franca among Overseas Chinese communities. The page on Cantonese (linguistics) says "Cantonese is the de facto official language of Hong Kong". That is true but also kind of misleading, because it is the standard variety that is standard in Hong Kong, and not just any old Cantonese dialect. These could all be rewritten to make things a bit clearer, but the problem is, these are just a couple of points that show how fuzzy the distinction is, and how messy the distinction between the two articles is. The article on "Cantonese (linguistics)" touches on "Written Cantonese", while actually discussing mostly the written standard of Hong Kong.


 * "Cantonese (linguistics)" is, in the end, a completely misleading title for the article. What the article is really about is the wider area of Yue or Cantonese dialects, including Standard Cantonese. It's not about the linguistics of Cantonese dialects at all; it's about both the Standard dialect of Guangzhou AND other dialects that are recognised as non-standard. So why is it called "Cantonese (linguistics)"?
 * Bathrobe (talk) 08:43, 26 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Wading in at a late point - but I'd just like to express my support for option A too, the (linguistics) DA has long confused and irritated me, as various people have pointed out, it has many flaws. As far as option A goes, these ARE used in English, most commonly Mandarin Chinese, the others are usually used withouth the word Chinese behind them and believe me, I get asked often enough if I speak Mandarin/Cantonese/Hakka since I'm half Cantonese.
 * As far as the Standard Cantonese goes, inofficial languages rarely have standardised forms and even some official languages don't have a standardised form (Scots Gaelic for starters). It is true that HK Cantonese is the most commonly heard variant spoken on TV/Films/etc and has long been viewed as the high status register amongst Cantonese speakers but that doesn't really make it standard. Reversing the naming might work better, by simply having Cantonese (the same way French is just French) and then referring to individual varieties as Cantonese (Taishan), Cantonese (HK) etc.
 * Benj, what exactly do you base your statement on that Yue isn't used anymore?
 * Umm what else LOL, oh yes, Bathrobe, the level of awareness of speaking the "same variety" varies between chinese languages, a lot of that has to do with status and social factors. For example, Cantonese speakers abroad will almost invariable resort to Cantonese when meeting speakers of other Cantonese dialects, recognising them as part of "us" - which in no small way is helped by the fact that Cantonese has historically been seen as a high status variety of Chinese (the HK thing) and through having a vibrant oral media scene which has helped cross dialect communication. Hakka speakers will also be very aware of the fact they're Hakka but due to the larger dialectal differences (it never had the kicks Cantonese had) they will often resort to Mandarin or another language to communicate. Wu is a different kettle of fish yet again (I have many Wu friends, just thought I'd mention it). While they often recognise the fact that such a thing as Wu exists (even though only educated people call it that) they will usually resort to Mandarin unless both speakers are from the Shanghai area, another high status variety (with a limited amount of SH oral media, there even used to be news in SH on state tele, dunno if they still do) within that group. The father of one of my friends even used to write political speeches in Wu during the revolution (using special Wu characters, rather fascinating). What I'm trying to say is that many people do realised these groupings at some level but that the outcome in terms of the language chosen to communciate mostly depends on other factors. Akerbeltz (talk) 10:11, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
 * 粤 "the word" is where I was saying it is hardly used, not the language. There are honestly not too many words that use yue 粤 in daily life.  Most of it is for old art forms and the likes. However if you moved Cantonese to Yue, it would be more encyclopedic. Except nobody really says Yue in English. Benjwong (talk) 04:19, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

I suggest Proposal D and Proposal E: Pages like Cantonese, Hakka and Mandarin should be disambiguation pages. Articles concening defacto languages should be moved to xx language page, just like English. Hakka Chinese and Wu Chinese are not suitable in this circumstance because these names may give people strong impression or hint that Chinese is a single language, while Hakka and Wu are dialects (see Identification_of_the_varieties_of_Chinese). On the other hand, "language" is a neutral word, and dialect is a kind of language variant; the term "Hakka language" tells people that the article is describing language, not people. It gives people impression of pure language-about description; it is much more suitable than "xx Chinese". --Anativecantonesespeaker (talk) 13:22, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Chinese "(linguistics)" continued
Okay, it's been five days, and A clearly has it. Most editors support A or could at least live with it. As for "Yue Chinese" and "Taiwanese Hokkien", that's something to debate on the individual pages, as both fall within the wording of the current naming conventions. (Since those are used as examples on the naming conventions page, however, if people do decide to change them, the examples should be changed to match.) kwami (talk) 00:08, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Moved. I'm now cleaning up the redirects. kwami (talk) 00:38, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Kwami, proposal A did not have full agreement. Five days is really nothing considering these topic has been running for a year+ already.  What is this rush to move the pages?  It does not make sense that every language on wiki go to a disembiguation page, English, French, Japanese, Egyptian, but Cantonese automatically go to the language. It should be Cantonese language, dialect, linguistics or something to distinguish it from the people etc. Mandarin, Mandarin Chinese, Mandarin dialect, Standard mandarin should have been dealt with first. Now I am tempted to move it back. But I am even more undecided than before. Benjwong (talk) 04:19, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * If we make piecemeal moves, then people object that it's inconsistent with other articles. Five days is pretty standard for a discussion. kwami (talk) 06:15, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, articles concerning Cantonese are quit pell-mell. Take a look at English: it is a disambiguation page, not an article describing English language nor an article describing English people. To make it clear, Cantonese should also be a disembiguation page. The article describing Cantonese language should be moved to Cantonese language.(But now Cantonese language redirects to Cantonese!) --Anativecantonesespeaker (talk) 08:47, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Wait? It seems like according to a previous discussion the hakka folks were also complaining about the different loaded interpretations of the word hakka used in the writing system, a spoken family of languages etc. Benjwong (talk) 04:50, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I tend to agree that "Cantonese" should point to a disambiguation page.
 * Bathrobe (talk) 04:57, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have put up an an admit request to move the page back. Kwami, the moves you are making are somehow not carrying the talkpages over. The history are getting lost, and is taken me some time to move them back.  Some are stuck and require admin help. Please avoid anymore moves until we have a figure out the right names. Benjwong (talk) 05:07, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I already moved them all, and I checked that the talk pages moved too. (I don't know why that's a problem with these articles. I've never seen it before.) Please show me where they didn't move properly. Maybe I can figure out what's going wrong.


 * The specific points on Hakka and Cantonese should probably be taken up on their individual talk pages, since it doesn't affect the Chinese language articles as a whole. There are several independent choices that can be made for each. kwami (talk) 06:15, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The admin just moved the pages. Which explain why there are no more errors.  Anyhow the focus should really be with Mandarin first.  That is the bigger dialect with way more complexities than Cantonese. All the others should follow suit.  The #1 request is that the first page "must" go to a disambig page. To be consistent with all other languages, that should be the way. French, Mandarin, Cantonese etc, these are all currently disambig pages.  Which is good.  All we should be doing is moving the linguistics/language/dialect pages. Benjwong (talk) 06:22, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay. I don't have much preference either way. kwami (talk) 08:14, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * No, Benj, don't move pages back to the (linguistics) tag. If you want 'Cantonese' to be a dab, find an acceptable title for the language article. I don't care much what it is, as long as it isn't what most of us agree it shouldn't be. kwami (talk) 08:20, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Noooo.... you moved the page a third time without the talkpage. How can this be?!  I informed you earlier to avoid making any more moves until we figure out a name.  Now we have to ask the admins again.  See how Talk:Cantonese is actually the talk page that belongs to Cantonese (disambiguation).  And the Talk:Cantonese_(disambiguation) is just a move-comment that is stuck in the middle of nowhere. This is creating extra work for everyone.  We are going to find an acceptable title.  For now we have to move the page back to Cantonese (linguistics) to recapture the talkpage history again. Benjwong (talk) 09:06, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, Benj, it is creating extra work. I'm glad you see that. kwami (talk) 09:54, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I think the above remark is unhelpful, to say the least.


 * Figuring out what something is and then figuring out what to call it usually is a far less friction and heat producing process than trying to do things the other way around.


 * What is really needed is (1) a description of all languages that shows what current languages can be traced back with some certainty to Indo-European or some other prehistoric source beyond which it appears to have no connection with other languages. (2) for each language "trunk" a history of development that shows the points where one language, e.g. Latin, splits into two or more languages that have different courses of development (and vocabulary and/or syntactic differences) from then one, and so forth.


 * In linguistics books written in Chinese the current way of handling the Chinese language uses the term 語系yǔ xì and works in the way I describe above. These studies identify a limited number of divisions coming out of a somewhat murky common source, one is the similar languages spoken in roughly the area of Canton, another is the group of similar languages spoken roughly in the area of Fujian, etc. For the sake of clarity, whatever we call such a branch should be the same for each one. The reason is that if Wikipedia speaks of, e.g., "the Cantonese tongue", and the "Fujianese tongue" and distinguishes them from "the Cantonese people", and "the Fujianese people," it may be needed for simple clarity. (English can be disturbingly imprecise, as when even some of my Chinese friends announce, "We are going to eat Chinese." ;-)  The problem with not having a parallel term for "Mandarin" is that it suggests that Mandarin is somehow on a different level of specificity. Tie that in with the tendency in English to speak of "the Cantonese dialect," "The Fujianese dialect," and "dialects of Mandarin," and the potential for confusion in the minds of readers trying to get a quick fix on the entire field is immense. We need to consider what is right for the average well-informed reader, rather than concentrating on some formulation for which there is a 轉到牛角尖 arguably "correct" solution.


 * If memory serves, Norwegian and Swedish are called different languages in the Wikipedia and elsewhere even though they are perhaps no farther apart than Sichuan hua and Beijing hua. So what is accepted in "common language" terms is not good enough for science, and actually it creates a false picture. It would be bad enough if it just created a false picture in words, but there is also a danger that it may create a false picture in the reader's mental mapping of his/her world -- a picture that will later need to be erased so that a corrected version can be drawn in its place.


 * The image of a single river coming out of the Himalayas, splitting around some huge granite protrusion, the two resultant sub-rivers splitting again into sub-sub-rivers, and the resulting flows getting close enough to sometimes contaminate each other by intercourse via interposed swamps or even occasionally flowing back together occurs in some discussions even though the common experience humans have is with situations in which springs produce rivulets in one place, rivulets of spring water are joined by run offs from minor watersheds, the resulting brooks flow together to make creeks, the creeks flow together to make major rivers like the Platte, and the major rivers flow together to make huge rivers like the Missouri which may then join to form even larger units like the Mississippi (which gets called by the name of its other northward-reaching fork). As you can see, we do not even have very precise terms for relatively major and relatively minor flows of water. In biology the situation with entities like "Cantonese" and "Fujianese" might be paralleled to species, and the internal regional variations of these groups have about as much mushiness (or swamp linkage) as what are called subspecies. It would probably make a nasty problem worse to speak of the Cantonese species of the Chinese genus, the Fujianese species of the Chinese genus, and the Mandarin species of that genus. What is needed, it seems to me, is a "tag" that identifies Mandarin as being on the same level of specificity as "Cantonese," "Fujianese," etc.  P0M (talk) 16:54, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * If you are looking for a tag, I was suggesting just changing (linguistics) to "Chinese dialect". And put all of the mandarin, hakka etc on the same level. See below. When someone say Hakka Chinese, the first thing that comes to mind may be Hakka people.  Not so much the language.  Which is why the first page still should be a disambig. Benjwong (talk) 23:12, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Mandarin (Chinese dialect)
 * Cantonese (Chinese dialect)
 * Wu (Chinese dialect)
 * Min (Chinese dialect)
 * Xiang (Chinese dialect)
 * Hakka (Chinese dialect)
 * Gan (Chinese dialect)

I am also open to more specific like the following but that may be inconsistent and too specific. Benjwong (talk) 23:15, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Mandarin (Beifang dialect)
 * Cantonese (Yue dialect)
 * Wu (Chinese dialect)
 * Min (Chinese dialect)
 * Xiang (Chinese dialect)
 * Hakka (Chinese dialect)
 * Gan (Chinese dialect)


 * The problem with this is that you've returned us to ground zero, the dialect/language debate. We can't use either 'language' or 'dialect' in the titles for the primary branches of Chinese. That's the whole reason for the (linguistics) tag in the first place. kwami (talk) 23:19, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * But how will you separate Mandarin (the people) from Mandarin (the language)? You need to call it by something. Benjwong (talk) 01:11, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Why? We don't have an article on "Mandarin people", so the point is moot. Is there even a sense of people being ethnically Mandarin, the way there is for Hakka? I've never heard of this. The main reason Mandarin etc. are considered dialects of Chinese is that people feel their ethnicity is Chinese, not Mandarin etc. If people said, 'I'm not Chinese, I'm Mandarin', then they'd say their language was not Chinese but Mandarin too, and we wouldn't have had this problem in the first place. kwami (talk) 05:53, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I am just saying in general you need something to distinguish between the people and language. You could say XYZ (dialect) or XYZ (people). I don't mind. Benjwong (talk) 17:09, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Dialect is a lesser evil than "(linguistics)". As long as these languages don't have official status as languages, and are regarded by their speakers as varieties of "Chinese", what is the problem with calling them dialects? The dialect/language opposition is not only controversial in China. It is a problem everywhere, although often papered over by official and popular attitudes. For example, the page on Low German, which discusses whether Low German is a language or a dialect.
 * Bathrobe (talk) 01:52, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Dialect is NOT a lesser evil. It might be worthwhile remembering that until the 1913 Conference on the Unification of Pronunciation set up by the new Ministry for Education was contemplating more than one official (Chinese) language and remained deadlocked on the issue until Wang Zhao (the head of the Mandarin faction) called for changes to voting. A new system was introduced - 1 pronvince 1 vote and the southern delegates were suddenly outvoted and Mandarin became the only variant which was to be the national language. The fact that everything else has been branded dialect in China ever since has a lot to do with that conference and the subsequent massive push to promote Putonghua. So common "usage" in Chinese publications is not necessarily a rational/scientific standard.
 * And as for Yue, it's quite common in Cantonese linguistics (cf 粵音 (Yuet Yam), the Cantonese counterpart to Pinyin) and colloquially; even my mother is quite au fait with the term and she's by no means a linguist or even highly educated. Akerbeltz (talk) 11:05, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I will un-indent here before things get squeezed too far to the right.

Judging by the Chinese language counterpart articles, there need to be four different levels, which that article calls: 語, 片, 小片, and 話 (with some accomodations to commonly accepted names for the speech of one group or another). In Europe, the equivalent terms might be something like "language families" (e.g., the Germanic language families), Languages (e.g., English, German, etc.), and then something that we might still be willing to call dialects (e.g., High German, Low German (platt Deutsch). English does not break down into dialects that are as clearly distinguished as the high/low versions of German. But I don't know any Plattdeutsch so I can't really make a good comparison myself.

Is there a term, or are there terms, that distinguish between languages that have many idiosyncratic differences (e.g., ren in putonghua and lang in Taiwanese) vs. languages that sound very different on first exposure but resolve into a set of fairly easily "guessable" transformations with a little study?

A few years ago there was a fair amount of controversy among some groups of speakers whose individual modes of speech were called dialects. Part of the trouble was that there was an implicit "correct English" and an implicit "(incorrect =) dialectal English" judgment. Anyway, the entries for the 十大方言：官話 | 晉語 | 湘語 | 吳語 | 徽語 | 贛語 | 客家話 | 粵語 | 平話 | 閩語 ought to all be named in English for the article titles according to the same naming convention. P0M (talk) 13:05, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Well when you say it ought to be named in English, it pretty much already is. We call 粵語 as Cantonese, not Yue, not Guangdonghua. Also the roman-based languages like English and Spanish are alittle different as they have their own alphabets.  In Chinese everybody use characters of the same set. Maybe everyone should propose something like Kwami did. I think Kwami has some good points earlier, but I still don't believe "Hakka Chinese" is the language necessarily.  It can be used to describe the people and add confusion. Benjwong (talk) 17:09, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Benj, not that old hat again. I cannot speak for all chinese languages but you can write Cantonese and Wu with special characters that Mandarin speakers can't read. The reason the characters "appear" to be common is because written Putonhua is taught in schools as the written standard but that does not mean you cannot write Cantonese. Anyway, they way a language is written has little bearings on the linguistic factors that determine whether something is a language or not. Farsi is written with a slightly modified Arabic system but it's definitely not an Arab language...
 * I agree, colloquially Cantonese is called Cantonese but English linguistic publications often use the term Yue(t).
 * I'm still in favour of proposal A, failing that, let's follow the general wiki system of using (language) in brackets. We're not here to tow the party line of the chinese government, this is a free encyclopedia ;) Akerbeltz (talk) 17:42, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This depends on your definition of "special". If you refer to something like 咩, 唔 that are used widely in Cantonese, it isn't that special. It still belongs in the same character set, except no mandarin users would touch it. Now if you were hitting deeper like Suzhou characters in ancient guangdong publications, that would be entirely something else. So going by what you are saying, everything should be called a "language" to be fair without towing the party line. Benjwong (talk) 18:18, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * P0M, is there any general agreement to the use of 語, 片, 小片, 話? If so, we could try translating them directly. But AFAIK, the same lect that is a 語 in one source is a 話 in another. kwami (talk) 18:10, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * In what I wrote above I simply report on what is done in the Chinese Wiki 漢語方言列表. Occasionally in that list they use 語/話 in inconsistent ways, but only (I guess) when something has a commonplace name like 官話 and making it 官語 would just seem too precious.  My suggestion is still to look at the phenomena, i.e., the degrees of relatedness and of mutual intelligibility, and determine meaningful names for each level. The Chinese article manages to make do with 4 levels. The use of the word 片 reminds me of the use of the word "clade" in modern genetic studies. Anyway, Indo-European is called a "language family," and there are said to be 12 main "branches" (meaning Baltic, Celtic, Germanic...), and then within each of those "branches" there are the units we ordinarily call "languages" such as English, Flemish, Dutch, German, and so forth. The sub-groups of English we ordinarily call "dialects." It has a pejorative connotation to some people, but it means, basically, "differentiated speech" (within a certain language). If we compare those four levels to Chinese we might speak of the ten "branches" (十大方言 usually = xx 語), numerous "languages" (片) such as 京師片, beneath them "dialects" such as 北京話. The way Wikipedia is using "Mandarin" vs. "Standard Mandarin" would make "Mandarin" a language family. The language of instruction is sort of an artificial unit, or at least it is a planned regularization of the language. It seems to me that it would fall in at roughly the "dialect level." It's somewhat different from 北京話, but it probably has roughly the same level of differentiation from, e.g., 成都話，as does 北京話. Calling Mandarin a "language family" is roughly like calling the Germanic languages a "language family," so then 京師片 would be a language (the capital area language?), and 北京話 and 普通話 would be dialects of the Jingshipian language.  Jingshipian would stand on the same level as do English and German, and Beijinghua and putonghua would stand on the same level as do High German and Low German. It doesn't matter to me whether High German and Low German are called, dialects or languages. If they are called languages then we would have to have "super language" or some such term for German, and the term "branch" would be used for the group consisting of German, English, Flemish, etc.


 * For the average well-informed reader, being able to identify one language as I.A.3.a, a very similar language as I.A.3.b, and the distingush those from a third "dialect" that might have a "scientific name" of II.B.4.a. It would be instantly clear that the first two should be very similar and that the third should be very different from either of the first two. P0M (talk) 06:29, 30 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The "language family" / "branches" / "languages" / "dialect" thing (especially the language / dialect part) is tailored for European languages. It's based on the idea that each nation-state has its "standard language", and the genetically-related vernacular languages are "dialects" of that standard language that vary from it in various ways. For instance, there is a standard French, and the local patois of French are simply dialects or non/sub-standard variants of the standard language. Even in Europe it's well known that this model doesn't really work (e.g., Scandinavian languages each have their own country, their own standard form, and thus what would normally be considered dialects elsewhere are treated as separate languages.)


 * People try to bring in "mutually intelligibility" and other tests as an objective yardstick for defining separate "languages", but these don't work well at all. If you look at German, you'll find plenty of mutually unintelligible dialects, which must by this test be considered languages. Then the "dialect continuum" is invoked, whereby two dialects may not be mutually intelligible, but there is a string of dialects between the two mutually unintelligible varieties that are mutually intelligible with each other, therefore they all belong to a single continuum and thus a single language. How far can you go with this kind of thing?


 * Trying to apply the Western European concept of languages and dialects works even worse in China. Unlike many of the vernaculars of Europe, the vernacular dialects of China have not developed standard "languages". Their standard was traditionally the written variety of 文言, which unfortunately didn't provide for unity of pronunciation. In the modern era this has been switched to 白话 'baihua', which forms the basis for putonghua. Trying to provide neat parallels to the European situation is simply unrealistic. It's no use saying that "Cantonese and Hokkienese are as far apart as Spanish and Italian", because Spanish and Italian are fully-fledged languages in fully-developed nation states. Cantonese and Hokkienese are not.


 * The word "dialect" is, admittedly, somewhat pejorative for the layman because the belief has been inculcated into their minds that "dialect" = "non-standard variety of the correct language". It is also a poor translation of the Chinese word 方言 'fangyan', which has convincingly translated as "topolect" by some linguists. A "topolect" is the language of a particular place. Thus 四川话 or Sichuanese is the topolect of Sichuan province. No claim is made as to whether Sichuanese is a dialect of Mandarin, Cantonese, or any other language variety. It simply means "the speech of Sichuan province". In that sense, Sichuanese, Cantonese, Shanghainese, and Xi'anese are all equals in the eyes of Chinese, because they are all 方言. The only concession that is made is that "we can't even understand some of those southern 方言". This is actually an admission that "those southern 方言" may even be equivalent to separate languages, but this is not implied in the word 方言 at all.


 * So in that sense I think it's somewhat fruitless and perhaps even slightly "imperialistic" trying to impose the language hierarchy mentioned above on the Chinese situation.


 * Bathrobe (talk) 01:05, 16 October 2008 (UTC)


 * It goes way beyond 咩 and 唔, there's over 500 Cantonese specific characters in Unicode alone and that's a fraction. I agree that some are used by other Chinese languages too but not always in the same way. To put it differently, non-Cantonese speakers generally can't read the joke section of HK papers without a large amount of guesswork because they're routinely written in "real" Cantonese. So yes, I'm in favour of having Hakka/Hokkien/Wu/Xiang/Gan/Cantonese (language). It's the only approach which can be defended from a purely linguistic angle. This does not prevent us in any shape or form to have Cantonese (Hog Kong dialect) for example or Wu (Shanghai dialect).
 * Kwami, yes, there's little agreement. If a publication uses 粵, it normally goes with 語; if they use 廣東, it usually goes with 話, as does 廣州 and the rarely encountered 香港話. Within Cantonese publications it feels to me as if 粵語 is seen as the abstract/overregional concept of Cantonese as a language whereas 廣東話 is any subdialect of that. For example, Yale Pinyin (粤音) is not entirely the same thing as HK Cantonese - the most obvious example for that is the use of the high falling tone which in HK has merged with the high level tone but Yale Pinyin has it because many mainland varieties have it.
 * The other dimension is that of where a book was printed. Mainland publishers most commonly use 廣州話 (for example the 广州音字典简明 [Guangdong People's Publishing House]; but note there's also 粤英词典 [Guandong Higher Education Publishing House]), HK publishers are happy with any but primarily 廣東話 and 粵語 (such as the CUHK Cantonese dictionary 英粵字典). Akerbeltz (talk) 21:39, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * So you're saying there is consistency: 粵語, but 廣東話. We could represent these as Yue language and Cantonese dialect. However, does this consistency obtain with other primary branches of Chinese? Is it true for 吳語 and 上海話? What about the term 方言? Do people argue over whether Yue is 粵語 or 粵方言, or whether Wu is 吳語 or 吳方言? If so, then choosing the title "Yue language" would be favoring the 粵語 POV over the 粵方言 POV, and we could be accused of bias.


 * I take issue with the idea that Yue, Wu, Hakka etc. as separate languages is the only linguistically justified stance. There's also sociolinguistics: Languages do not exist without their speakers, and speaker attitudes of their languages are of primary importance. It's just as wrong to call 粵 and 吳 languages if their speakers feel they're dialects, as it is to call Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, and Hindi dialects when their speakers feel they're distinct languages.


 * Meanwhile, we might want to consider the intermediate step of Yue Chinese (currect Cantonese) vs. Cantonese dialect (current Standard Cantonese), analogous to Wu Chinese and Shanghai dialect (both subsumed under "Shanghainese" in common English), and to Min Chinese and Fuzhou dialect (both subsumed under "Fujianese" in common English). kwami (talk) 22:04, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Intermediate steps is only good if you need a quick solution. This topic comes up every month. I am against any language that ends in "XYZ Chinese" for the reason that it does not distinguish the people. Hakka Chinese can mean the language + the people.  It leads to confusion.  People might be offended if Dutch or German point directly to the people's page. Benjwong (talk) 22:53, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Also check a thesaurus, there are really NO good replacement for the word "dialect" or "linguistics". Benjwong (talk) 22:58, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Again, we're in a pickle because these terms are not used for the people. Therefore there is no need to distinguish the language from the people. Hakka is one of the very few exceptions, since there is a Hakka ethnic identity. But there is no "Wu people", "Xiang people", or "Mandarin people". The analogy with Dutch & German is spurious, because the Dutch in Germans do consider themselves to be distinct peoples. kwami (talk) 01:37, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
 * If you are limited to only thinking about "Xiang people" and "Mandarin people", because they don't exist then that is not the right approach. I can tell you it doesn't stop there.  Try Toishanese (my first thought) and everything else listed on the List of  Chinese dialects page. Notice how Danjia dialect points to the Tanka (ethnic group)?!  So Cantonese points to the language, but Danjia points to the people??  What a mess.  Now if every language ends with "dialect" and every group ends with "people", that is consistent. Benjwong (talk) 04:02, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Ben, that happens in a lot of stubs where there isn't enough info for two articles. Both the people and language are found in one, so the other is a redirect. That has nothing to do with the specific problems of Chinese. As for Toishanese, are they a distinct ethnic group? If so, there's no problem with having two articles, Taishanese people and Taishanese dialect, because the language-dialect debate is pretty much restricted to the main divisions of Chinese. kwami (talk) 05:54, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Of course languages don't exist without their speakers but there are certain distinctions that lay people are not good judges of. The language/dialect issue is one of them. To begin with, even within English the word can refer to any number of things - in US English anything not English is often called a dialect. Or take an example closer to home - many French will call Breton, Basque and Occitan dialects or argots. Anyone care to argue Basque is a dialect of French? ;)
 * There is consistence but only in the way that 粵 goes with 語 and 廣東 with 話, but there is little consensus of whether Cantonese is 語 or 話. 吳語 and 上海話 - yes, the others I'm not sure about, I've only ever heard 客家話 but a quick Google search throws up a number of results for 客語 too.
 * That aside, I'm happy enough with the Yue Chinese etc option, it may not be the most common English expression but certainly not unheard of. Akerbeltz (talk) 23:48, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Well saying that two people speak a different language does not necessarily mean they regard themselves as two different ethnicities... ethnicity is a notoriously hard to pin down and flexible concept. I agree that most speakers of all those Chinese languages will usually define themselves as 漢 (Han) - but note the much more common 中國人 (person from China) which really sidesteps the issue of ethnicity by relating to shared geography.
 * Taishanese is generally seen (by the Cantonese and Taishanese that I've met anyway) as a subdialect of Cantonese, albeit a rather weird one but people are quite adamant about Taishan being Cantonese. So the dialect label there is appropriate. The people page - personally I don't have a problem with it, to me, even Hakka People and Cantonese/Yue People would work. We may just be bristling a bit about Xiang People because we're so unusued to the term Xiang fullstop - let's face it, who outside linguistics/ethnography has heard of the Xiang? Akerbeltz (talk) 10:21, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Notice this userbox is a good example of why people think the term "Cantonese" deals with the people and not necessarily the language. If the focus is only on the 8 languages and nothing else (yes it seems rather biased), then the discussion just got much shorter. And maybe we should move "Cantonese" the language to Cantonese (Yue), which is just enough to separate it from the "Cantonese people" article.  Benjwong (talk) 00:18, 1 October 2008 (UTC)


 * That's not bad. It might work. However, we currently have a user (Strawberry somebody) angrily deleting the word "Yue" from the Cantonese article, and angrily accusing me of some sort of cultural propaganda for putting it back in. But there will be someone opposing us no matter what we do, so we shouldn't let that stop us. kwami (talk) 01:10, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Ohhh beaut, gonna add that box :) and yes, Cantonese (Yue) is a good solution. Akerbeltz (talk) 12:33, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks like nobody else responded or disagreed in some time. Why don't we move Cantonese the language to "Cantonese (Yue)" and move Cantonese to the disambiguation page. I don't see this strawberry person complain here. If Kwami and Akerbeltz agree, then we might be done with the 8 big dialects. Benjwong (talk) 05:51, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Go for it. Akerbeltz (talk) 10:13, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Does Kwami user want to make the move? Benjwong (talk) 02:26, 16 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Someone did disagree recently, but just above the section heading 'Chinese linguistics (continued)' Matt's talk 03:59, 16 October 2008 (UTC)