Talk:Standard Chinese and Londonderry, New Hampshire: Difference between pages

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Would it be correct to call ''putonghua'' a dialect? Or what's the proper way to refer to it? See [[Shantou]] for an example. - [[User:Fuzheado|Fuzheado]] 03:04, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

'''Londonderry, New Hampshire''' is a town located in western [[Rockingham County, New Hampshire]]. Originally called Nutfield, along with the communities of Derry, Windham, and parts of New Hampshire's largest city [[Manchester]] for the prevalance of nut trees in the area. As of the [[2000]] census, the town had a total population of 23,236. Londonderry is known especially for its apple orchards, including Moose Hill Orchards (Mack's Apples), located along [[Mammoth Road]] (Route 128) one of the major roads through Londonderry along with Route 102 (Nashua Road), I-93, Pillsbury Road, Litchfield Road, and Route 28.

==The thirdEducation tone==

Londonderry has five schools, with Superintendant Nathan Greenberg.

Here the contour is marked 214. Nevertheless it's the whole third tone (quan2san1sheng1) which is less popular than half thid tone (ban4san1sheng1). Should the contour of the half thid tone be included? Is it 21 by the way? -- 10:21, January 27, 2005, UTC

* Londonderry High School (9-12) - The largest school in the town, home to "The Lancers," and principled by James E. Elefante.

* Londonderry Middle School (6-8) - Principled by Andrew Corey. Formerly called Londonderry Junior High School.

* North School (K-5) - Currently under construction

* Matthew Thornton (K-5) - Named for a [[Revolutionary War]] hero.

* South School (K-5) - Recently renovated due to a mold issue.

* Moose Hill School (pre-K, K) - Largest free standing public kindergarten in the state of [[New Hampshire]]. Also houses preschool and LEEP program.

== Geography ==

:The bansansheng is a result of [[tone sandhi]], not the original tone itself. -- [[User:Ran|ran]] ([[User talk:Ran|talk]]) 13:35, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

According to the [[United States Census Bureau]], the town has a total area of 108.6 [[square kilometer|km²]] (41.9 [[square mile|mi²]]). 108.3 km² (41.8 mi²) of it is land and 0.3 km² (0.1 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 0.31% water.

== Demographics ==

::Should the bansansheng be mentioned in the article? By the way I don't agree the ban4san1sheng1 is a [[tone sandhi]], but an alternative pronunciation to third tone, together with the quan2san1sheng1. -- 17:57, January 28, 2005, UTC

As of the [[census]][[Geographic references#2|²]] of [[2000]], there are 23,236 people, 7,623 households, and 6,319 families residing in the town. The [[population density]] is 214.6/km² (555.8/mi²). There are 7,718 housing units at an average density of 71.3/km² (184.6/mi²). The racial makeup of the town is 96.92% [[White (U.S. Census)|White]], 0.56% [[African American (U.S. Census)|Black]] or [[Race (U.S. Census)|African American]], 0.17% [[Native American (U.S. Census)|Native American]], 1.16% [[Asian (U.S. Census)|Asian]], 0.03% [[Pacific Islander (U.S. Census)|Pacific Islander]], 0.32% from [[Race (U.S. Census)|other races]], and 0.84% from two or more races. 1.53% of the population are [[Hispanic (U.S. Census)|Hispanic]] or [[Latino (U.S. Census)|Latino]] of any race.

There are 7,623 households out of which 50.3% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 70.9% are [[Marriage|married couples]] living together, 8.6% have a female householder with no husband present, and 17.1% are non-families. 12.9% of all households are made up of individuals and 3.3% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 3.05 and the average family size is 3.36.

:Yeah, we can put that interpretation in too. -- [[User:Ran|ran]] ([[User talk:Ran|talk]]) 02:08, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)

In the town the population is spread out with 32.9% under the age of 18, 5.8% from 18 to 24, 32.7% from 25 to 44, 23.2% from 45 to 64, and 5.3% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 35 years. For every 100 females there are 97.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 95.1 males.

== Romanization ==

The median income for a household in the town is $70,501, and the median income for a family is $73,513. Males have a median income of $50,566 versus $33,821 for females. The [[per capita income]] for the town is $26,491. 2.1% of the population and 1.6% of families are below the [[poverty line]]. Out of the total population, 1.2% of those under the age of 18 and 6.3% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line.

''During the 1950s, there were plans for Pinyin to supersede the Chinese characters. These plans, however, proved to be impractical due to the large number of homonyms in the Chinese language.''

== Town Policy ==

This is doubtful. It didn't occur to them to use diacritics, the way the Vietnamese had been doing since the 19th century? Wasn't it more the attachment to the traditional writing system? --[[User:Erauch|Erauch]] 18:34, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Londonderry has been known for town policy that aims to limit development and growth in town. The town has recently been in the news for a legal fight involving the eviction of Robert Saulnier.

:While I can't judge the accuracy of the claim that there were plans to replace Chinese characters, using tone marks wouldn't come close to disambiguating all the homophones of Chinese. There are probably 20+ common characters with the pronunciation shi4, for example, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are (say) ~5 common characters on average for each syllable. (You can calculate this, I think -- about 1600 possible syllables, tones counted; and about 4000-5000 common characters. Also, not all possible syllables occur; for example we have ding1, ding3, and ding4, but not ding2.)

== External links ==

:Besides, pinyin already uses tone marks, they're an intrinsic part of pinyin. Not using them (as is done in English) is an absolute nightmare... and results in clunky workarounds like [[Shanxi]]/[[Shaanxi]]. -- [[User:Ran|ran]] ([[User talk:Ran|talk]]) 18:52, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

*[http://www.londonderrynh.org Official Town Website]

*[http://www.londonderry.org Londonderry School District]

[[Category:Rockingham County, New Hampshire]]

::The claim is true. I came across a 1960s' textbook on Chinese language when I was back in China this February, in which I read a quote by [[Mao Zedong]]: ''The written language must be revolutionized, it must follow the common trend of pinyinization of all world's languages.'' ("文字必须改革，要走世界文字共同的拼音方向") along others. There were no doubt attempts during that period, although not necessarily serious in today's sense. -- [[User:Alaz|Alaz]] [[User_talk:Alaz|(talk)]] 22:41, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[[Category:Towns in New Hampshire]]

:Yes, but speakers have no problem dealing with the same ambiguity in the spoken language that's found in Pinyin. It seems more likely that they didn't want to get rid of something culturally so important as the writing system. --[[User:Erauch|Erauch]] 23:03, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

::The written language, especially formal written language, is a lot more tolerant of homophones than the spoken language. In general, written language is much closer to Classical Chinese, adopting abbreviations and structures that would be odd (if not incomprehensible) in spoken Chinese.

::And there's Classical Chinese itself too, which would be completely indecipherable without a logographic writing system.

::It is absolutely true that people didn't want to ditch the logographic system because it is too culturally important — and practically important, as well. This is because ditching it would render incomprehensible anything that was written before the 1900's (i.e. anything in Classical Chinese or early Vernacular), plus a good deal of what was written after, too. -- [[User:Ran|ran]] ([[User talk:Ran|talk]]) 23:19, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

:::In addition, I think what was more influential was that most of southern China could not speak Mandarin (this has changed only in the past few decades, though there are still many places in the south where less than a majority know Mandarin). Completely pinyinifying spoken Chinese would essentially make southern Chinese people illiterate. It was already controversial enough when Mandarin was adopted as the national language... many southern Chinese were afraid they would end up being second-class citizens because of that, but they were eventually overruled. With a logographic writing system at least, those who didn't know how to speak Mandarin could at least read and write. --[[User:Umofomia|Umofomia]] 23:47, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

::I can assure you that Chinese people find pinyin texts difficult to understand, especially when tones are not used in which case it would be almost incomprehensible. This applies even to people speaking only Mandarin such as myself. I don't think I'll need to cite the importance of culture to reject total pinyinization :). -- [[User:Alaz|Alaz]] [[User_talk:Alaz|(talk)]] 23:02, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

:Yes.... and considering that there is no tradition of separatism among southern Han Chinese (with the notable exception of Taiwan), it's not particularly wise to foment its creation ... -- [[User:Ran|ran]] ([[User talk:Ran|talk]]) 23:59, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

::I do agree that the statement currently in the article needs to be changed though. The homonym argument is a bit of a red herring. There is no confusion in normal spoken Mandarin since formal written constructions are not normally used, and there's no reason why a pinyin writing system couldn't be the same way. However, such a system would still be impractical because of the reasons stated above: (1) texts written prior to the early twentieth century would all be unreadable, and (2) many southern Chinese do not know how to speak Mandarin. --[[User:Umofomia|Umofomia]] 00:27, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

:Not just pre-twentieth century writing... formal and semiformal constructions pop up everywhere in writing, even today (e.g. all over the Chinese Wikipedia). Sure, a pinyin writing system would dictate a purely vernacular writing style, but the resulting loss of comprehension wouldn't just be in existing Classical Chinese texts, it would happen to some extent in written "Vernacular" Chinese as well. -- [[User:Ran|ran]] ([[User talk:Ran|talk]]) 00:34, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

::Right... there's no doubt formal constructions are used everywhere today, though I was talking about the reasons for not doing it back in the 1910s-50s when they were considering it. These reasons still have not changed much though. --[[User:Umofomia|Umofomia]] 00:43, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

''Completely pinyinifying spoken Chinese would essentially make southern Chinese people illiterate... With a logographic writing system at least, those who didn't know how to speak Mandarin could at least read and write.''

I don't see how you can say this. Vernacular Chinese is a second language to a native speaker of a language of the south. It's a different language with different grammar and vocabulary. If Romanization was adopted, they would have to learn this second langauge, just as they now learn Vernacular Chinese in addition to their home language. The writing system doesn't change this fact.

One could argue that Pinyin would make literacy easier for a Cantonese speaker, because then he would only have to learn the sounds of the Mandarin-based standard language, rather than its sounds plus ideographs.

The only reason for preserving the ancient writing system that really holds up is that it was too dear to be thrown away. --[[User:Erauch|Erauch]] 01:49, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

:The Chinese languages aren't completely different. The grammar and vocabulary are similar enough (roughly 80% spoken vocabulary are cognates) that southerners have no trouble substituting the written form when writing. A pinyin system would require learning the sounds of Mandarin, which is much easier said than done... that essentially amounts to learning a whole new language, which is happening in schools today, but as you can see, it is still not an easy task since so many southerners still don't know Mandarin after roughly 50 years of Mandarin education. With a logographic writing system, people can continue to learn to read and write with their own local pronunciations since so much of the vocabulary and grammar are shared. Any differences between Mandarin and their own dialect are just learned as special rules or vocabulary to remember (for instance in Cantonese, one would always write 的 instead of the colloquially spoken 嘅). People have a much easier time learning new rules and conventions than learning a whole new language. --[[User:Umofomia|Umofomia]] 02:04, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

::BTW, in case you need a source, here's a link to a paper with a table showing the percentage of shared vocabulary between the Chinese dialects/languages: [http://sunzi1.lib.hku.hk/hkjo/view/9/900007.pdf]. As you can see, with the exception of the speech from Xiamen (part of the [[Min (linguistics)|Min]] group), the vocabulary shared among them is between 70-90%. Min falls below 70% because it is considered to be the only group that did not directly decend from [[Middle Chinese]]. --[[User:Umofomia|Umofomia]] 02:24, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

''The only reason for preserving the ancient writing system that really holds up is that it was too dear to be thrown away.'' You make it sound like it's purely a matter of sentimentality. But it's a matter of practicality too. Pinyinifying would render incomprehensible all writing done in Classical Chinese, and create a lot of ambiguity even in writing done in "Vernacular" Chinese. -- [[User:Ran|ran]] ([[User talk:Ran|talk]]) 03:07, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

''As you can see, with the exception of the speech from Xiamen (part of the Min group), the vocabulary shared among them is between 70-90%.''

That's about the level of the Romance or Germanic languages.

'' People have a much easier time learning new rules and conventions than learning a whole new language.''

But this comes at the cost of learning several thousand ideographs.

''You make it sound like it's purely a matter of sentimentality. ''

I am not criticizing it, just trying to get at the real reason. That the writing system has been associated with a great literature for so long is a good reason. --[[User:Erauch|Erauch]] 04:48, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

:That was my point... it's not just a "great literature" that needs to be thrown out and replaced — it's the entire written language that I'm talking about. To make an analogy (perhaps not the most apt but it illustrates my point): it's not just Shakespeare at stake, it's also the U.S. Constitution. My point is that practicality and sentimentality are both important reasons for keeping the system. -- [[User:Ran|ran]] ([[User talk:Ran|talk]]) 05:17, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

:''That's about the level of the Romance or Germanic languages.''

:Exactly my point... you wouldn't expect, for instance, a modern-day Spanish speaker to be forced to read and write only in Latin, right? This is why Latin fell into disuse in favor of the vernacular Romance Languages. The speakers would basically have to learn how to speak Latin in order to be able to write as well since Latin spelling relies mostly on sounds. This is not necessarily so with a logographically written language. Because southern Chinese speakers can rely on the large proportion of cognates in a logographically written system, they don't need to learn a whole other language in order to be able to read and write. They can continue to learn to read and write in their own language while remembering that special rules need to be applied in certain cases to correct for the differences between their dialect and Standard Written Chinese.

:''But this comes at the cost of learning several thousand ideographs.''

:You make it sound like it's an impossible feat to accomplish. The ~95% literacy rates in Hong Kong show this not to be the case. Basically the entire population there speaks Cantonese, and many of them don't know or even care to learn Mandarin. Yet they all read and write Standard Written Chinese and can communicate with Mandarin speakers. It is true that the Chinese writing system is not entirely systematic, but it gives enough semantic and phonetic cues such that learners don't find it to be a big problem. I doubt Hong Kong's handover back to China would have been as easy if the logographic writing system were no longer in place (imagine Spain being returned to Italy... the difference in writing systems had basically severed many cultural ties to the point that Spanish speakers don't feel any connection with Rome). --[[User:Umofomia|Umofomia]] 08:24, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You haven't demonstrated the practical advantage of the ideographic system. My point is that for the purposes of literacy of non-Mandarin speakers, it's no easier to learn a written language with thousands of symbols than to learn a written language with a phonetic alphabet that has sounds different from your own. Sure, under the ideographic system you could pronounce the words in Cantonese, but you could do this with Pinyin too.

I never said anything about "sentimentality". I think it was wise to preserve the traditional writing system. --[[User:Erauch|Erauch]] 01:59, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

:I'm not really using "sentimentality" in a disparaging sense. What I'm saying is that it's not purely a matter of trying to "preserve culture and tradition". -- [[User:Ran|ran]] ([[User talk:Ran|talk]]) 02:12, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

:''Sure, under the ideographic system you could pronounce the words in Cantonese, but you could do this with Pinyin too.''

:How would it be possible to do this? Even though a large percentage of the vocabulary are cognates, the phonological differences between Mandarin and Cantonese are radically different. Many of the tones and sounds that still exist in Cantonese have merged in Mandarin. In addition, Mandarin also has retroflex sounds that Cantonese doesn't. Learning how to spell in a pinyin system for someone who knows only Cantonese would be nigh impossible. With a logographic system at least, there are more cues as to what pronunciation is the correct one because there are more variations in phonetic components. Take the following characters, which are all pronounced ''xī'' in Mandarin but pronounced differently in Cantonese:

:*稀 ''hei1'' - the phonetic shows that it's pronounced the same as or similar to 希 ''hei1''

:*吸 ''kap1'' - the phonetic shows that it's pronounced the same as or similar to 及 ''kap6''

:*惜 ''sik1'' - the phonetic shows that it's pronounced the same as or similar to 昔 ''sik1''

:Forcing a Cantonese speaker to figure out which pronunciation he/she is supposed to use when they encounter ''xī'' would be terribly confusing. Having them learn how to write it as well would be even harder. This is only one example... there are many more.

:I guess you could argue that they can learn which context under which they would use alternate pronunciations, just like there are numerous exceptions in English spelling rules; however when you have to make exceptions for almost every single instance (since Cantonese pronunciation is so different), it no longer becomes practical. --[[User:Umofomia|Umofomia]] 02:48, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

:''it's no easier to learn a written language with thousands of symbols than to learn a written language with a phonetic alphabet that has sounds different from your own''

:I would argue that because the Chinese writing system incorporates phonetics like I illustrated above, learning the symbols is actually easier than learning a phonetic alphabet. With the phonetics in the Chinese characters, in conjunction with the semantic information from the radicals, you can make a pretty good guess as to how characters are pronounced. With a phonetic alphabet that has little correlation with your own language, it is extremely difficult to do that because the semantic information and distinguishing phonetics are lost. --[[User:Umofomia|Umofomia]] 02:56, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I took a look at the current update of the passage:

:''These plans, however, were abandoned, due to the prevalence of homonymic morphemes in Chinese (as well as the reliance of written Chinese forms, especially Classical Chinese, on disambiguation of homonyms via different logographs)...''

As I said before, I think homonyms are a non-issue. No one said anything about pinyinifying all old works verbatim. Of course all old works will have too many homonyms, but they can be translated with modern-day spoken words that aren't homonyms (just like Chaucer was translated from Middle English to Modern English). Any new writing would also avoid homonyms. In any case, I've stated above why pinyin is still impractical. --[[User:Umofomia|Umofomia]] 03:20, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

:That's retarded. why would one want to read literature in translation when one can read it in the original? A deeper issue is, why MUST writing be the encoding of spoken sounds? We have tape recorders for that. Besides, writing has never worked that way save for a short period of history -- at first writing was pictographic, then it was phonetic. Logographic is what all written languages become -- unless you can somehow arrest speech changes OR keep updating the writing system. Those are both social engineering projects requiring government intervention in the educational system. Writing can stand perfectly well as its own (and universal) language in the extreme case. But I find the existing compromise for Chinese just fine.

The homonym issue is not a non-issue, but it's not a reasonable argument for keeping the characters; it would be possible to design a Romanization system that allowed for distinction of homonyms if/when this was necessary, e.g. by attaching a suffix of some sort (superscripted, subscripted, hyphenated, whatever). One way, for example, would be to attach either the numeric ID or pronunciation of the "meaning" radical of the associated character. In practice, it's not clear how much of an issue this really is; but there should be formal studies done into what extent Pinyinization of written works would cause understanding problems and how much written homonym disambiguity is necessary.

It is a fact, however, that a complex logographic writing system slows down reading speeds; studies in Japan have shown about 15% slowdown compared to an alphabetic system. [[User:Benwing|Benwing]] 02:49, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

==Terminology==

The Chinese official language should be called as " Standard Chinese ", but not " mandarin ", because mandarin is a insult at peoples of Han .- Xuanyan.She, Tianjin, China, Mar 28, 2004.

:I am a 汉族人 (Han Chinese) and I don't feel insulted at all. The Qing Dynasty is over and I have Manchu friends (I'm sure you do too). The etymology of the word is past, what matters is that when we use it today we don't mean anything demeaning. So get over it! -- [[User:Ran|ran]] ([[User talk:Ran|talk]]) 00:56, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the word "Mandarin" doesn't have anything to do with the Manchu people, at least according to most people who have researched the origin of the word. (I know there is one explanation that says it is a distortion of "man da ren", but that seems to have been a fanciful invention or a wild guess.) My dictionary traces it back to Sanskrit and then to an Indo-European root. The only problem I would have with it is that it's a little like calling Yu4 Shan1 in Taiwan "Mt. McKinley," or how about calling Taiwanese "Formosan." I always feel a little weird about the English names for some countries that are totally different from what those countries put on their own maps. To me it smacks of a certain kind of ethnocentrism -- but I suspect that in many cases there are good historical reasons for what is said in English and it's just that we're a few centuries out of date. [[User:Patrick0Moran|P0M]] 01:52, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

::Even "Chinese" or "China" is what English people called us, and we, Chinese (or should be Central Nation Men), called our nation Central and Flower (or splendid) Nation. Just as we converted in Chinese Seoul from 汉城 (Han City) to 首尔 (a pronuciation approximation), English should do the same thing, I guess. Let ourselves decide our names in other languages. [[User:Xiaojeng|Xiaojeng]] 01:48, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

== Interwiki ==

Some of the interwiki links are linked to articles that are actually about Mandarin as a Chinese dialect. If you go to the German article and click the English link over there, you wind up at [[Mandarin (linguistics)]]. I'm guessing a lot of the other articles are the same.

Is this proper or should articles only link to proper counterparts? [[User:Karmosin|Peter Isotalo]] 22:19, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

:No, this is not proper at all. But we have to wait for the other Wikipedias to figure out that Mandarin (big group) and Mnadarin (standard) are different things and separate them, before we can do anything. (The Chinese Wikipedia did this from the outset, not surprisingly, so the interwikis with zh: are fine.) -- [[User:Ran|ran]] ([[User talk:Ran|talk]]) 00:55, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

==Terminology II==

It is strongly suggested for purposes of disambiguation to change all references of "Standard Mandarin" to "standard Chinese," "standardized Chinese," "standard spoken Chinese," "standard Chinese speech" or variations such as these. This is a descriptive term, since the original terms putonghua/guoyu are Chinese terms. Mandarin is what it is called in English, but it has many meanings. The best way is to say "Mandarin refers to X, Y, Z, and a form of standardized Chinese speech known as putonghua/guoyu." There is no such thing as "Standard Mandarin" and it is highly misleading. - anon June 6, 2005

:You have a good point, and in fact I think [[Standard Chinese]] was one of the terms suggested when we decided to separate the concept of putonghua/guoyu out of [[Mandarin (linguistics)|Mandarin]]. There are pros and cons to both names (Cantonese speakers might not like to call Mandarin "Standard Chinese", for example; and we might want to keep the "Mandarin" in the name to make it clear to readers that this is what is usually referred to as "Mandarin".) Certainly more discussion with other participants would be helpful. -- [[User:Ran|ran]] ([[User talk:Ran|talk]]) 00:58, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

::[Cantonese speakers might not like to call Mandarin "Standard Chinese", for example]

::Well, you see, that's exactly the problem created by calling "standard Chinese" "Mandarin." The "standard" happens to be chosen with aspects from Mandarin (the dialect group), but it is meant to be a form of Chinese, not a form of Mandarin (the dialect group). Standard Chinese is standard Chinese. People should be able to say, "I speak Cantonese and standard Chinese" as well as "I speak Mandarin and standard Chinese" without drawing strange looks.

:The trouble with this suggestion, as Ran suggests, is that "Chinese" has a much broader meaning than does putonghua or guoyu. Both putonghua and guoyu are artificial constructs, i.e., they are standards for pronunciation and grammar that have been imposed by two different ministries of education. So there are political sensitivities involved. Technically, a native speaker of Chinese from Siquan probably does not speak "guoyu" any more than I speak "the Queen's English." In dealing with these departures from the artificial standard, speakers of Chinese in Taiwan refer to some of their compatriots as speaking "Siquan guoyu," "Taiwan guoyu," etc.

:"Standard Chinese" is too broad and "putonghua" or "guoyu" is too narrow to use as a term for a tongue that is spoken from Yunnan in the SW to Manchuria in the NE, but "Mandarin" is fortunately sufficiently flexible and fuzzy to cover the whole ground. One way or another, it probably was chosen as a translation for the term "guan1 hua4" which is still used to cover the whole area mentioned above but which most people regard as rather archaic.

:There is another term, "biaozhun guoyu" (standard guoyu), which might be translated as "standard Chinese national language." Maybe "standardized spoken Chinese" would work. [[User:Patrick0Moran|P0M]] 03:21, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

:: No, you see, Mandarin IS the term for a tongue that is spoken from Yunnan to Manchuria and "standard Chinese" IS "putonghua" and "guoyu." "Standardized spoken Chinese" is good. If it weren't for the whole other can of worms of the "putonghua"/"guoyu" politics, I would say even just use "Putonghua Chinese" in the fine English loanword tradition. In fact, Putonghua really hits it right on the spot to call itself literally the "common interchange speech." "Putonghua" isn't "simple speech" you see -- this is the beauty of multi-level parsing in Chinese.

:::I think you may want to re-read the paragraph before the paragraph you have criticized.

:::Even though I think "Mandarin" is "sufficiently flexible and fuzzy to cover the whole [guan hua qu]," I would prefer not to be dogmatic about what "Mandarin" means. My ''Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language''has a definition: "the dialect of Chinese spoken by officials and the educated classes," which is certainly different from your definition. I think that the dictionary definition has serious problems with it. On the other hand it probably reflects the general level of (mis)understanding of the average well-informed reader on what "the Chinese language" is. "Mandarin" is problematical for two reasons: (1) It may be regarded as offensive, a Western kluge stretched to fit Chinese things. (2) Being flexible and fuzzy suggests that "Mandarin" may have so many different meanings for the general public that we risk confusing folks by using it. I think that was perhaps the motivation for suggesting that the article be re-titled.[[User:Patrick0Moran|P0M]] 01:38, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

By the way, please sign your postings. Otherwise you risk arguing with yourself at some later date. ;-) (Besides, the rest of us get confused and don't know how many people are saying inconsistent things.) You sign by adding four tilde symbols (upper left corner of your keyboard, usually) [[User:Patrick0Moran|P0M]] 01:56, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

== Phonology ==

The section that currently claims to be a phonology could use some standardizing. Like with any other language, the section should be separated into Consonants/Vowels rather than Initials/Medials/Finals. Also, the tables should be restricted to actual phonemes with the various allophones described in separate comments.

[[User:Karmosin|Peter]] ^{[[User talk:Karmosin|Isotalo]]} 21:06, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

:Initials / medials / finals is how Chinese phonology is traditionally analyzed. Linguists can't even agree on what the phonemes of Mandarin are or what sounds should be considered allophones of each other, so a consonant / vowel analysis would simply be a mess. -- [[User:Ran|ran]] ([[User talk:Ran|talk]]) 01:53, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

== comments about phonology ==

(I made the same comment in [[Pinyin]]:) The pronunciation listed for the 'ing' final seems wrong. The listed pronunciation is {{IPA|[iɤŋ]}} but it seems to me that it should be {{IPA|[iŋ]}}. The former would sound like English "young", but when I've heard words like "Yingwen" pronounced, the first part sounds like English "ing". Can a native speaker verify this?

Also, this doesn't seem right:

:{{IPA|[j]}} and {{IPA|[w]}} appear when a [[Final (linguistics)|final]] starting with a [[close vowel]], like {{IPA|/i/}} or {{IPA|/u/}}, begins a [[syllable]] without an initial.

The syllables 'yi', 'yin', 'ying' sound to me like [i], [in], {{IPA|[iŋ]}}, not [ji], [jin], {{IPA|[jiŋ]}}. This is consistent with the pronunciations given in Comrie, "The World's Major Languages". Can a native speaker verify this? If so, it should be written

:{{IPA|[j]}} and {{IPA|[w]}} replace {{IPA|/i/}} and {{IPA|/u/}} when they appear at the beginning of a syllable, followed by another vowel.

[[User:Benwing|Benwing]] 02:38, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

:Firstly, "ing" can sound like {{IPA|[iɤŋ]}} or {{IPA|[iŋ]}}. The former is more of a northern accent and the latter is more neutral.

:Second, I'm a native speaker and I've always pronounced 'yi', 'yin', 'ying' as [ji], [jin], {{IPA|[jiŋ]}}. The other way (without /j/) sounds slightly accented. -- [[User:Ran|ran]] ([[User talk:Ran|talk]]) 01:56, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

== Title change ==

Having read some of the postings above, I wonder if we shouldn't change the title of this article for a Chinese name instead, in order to avoid ambiguities. This article would be renamed Putonghua, while the [[Mandarin (linguistics)]] article would be renamed Beifanghua, and we could created an extra article called Guanhua for the historical variety of Mandarin. This would clearly remove all ambiguities, and it would also conform to the practice of academic circles, who use putonghua, beifanghua, but never Mandarin. Check this academic book for instance: [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521645727/ref=sib_rdr_dp/002-6948937-8454408?%5Fencoding=UTF8&no=283155&me=ATVPDKIKX0DER&st=books]. [[User:Hardouin|Hardouin]] 11:32, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

:Yes. That's a good compromise, if Standard Chinese is not practical. [[User:Xiaojeng|Xiaojeng]] 02:35, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

:What would we call Standard Mandarin though? Putonghua or Guoyu? -- [[User:Ran|ran]] ([[User talk:Ran|talk]]) 02:40, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

::I was kinda wondering then...what about usage in Malaysia/Singapore etc? It would be kinda strange if we say Potonghua or Guoyu is Singapore's official language, for example.--[[User:Huaiwei|Huaiwei]] 14:54, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

:What about the [[Standard Cantonese]] article? Should it be moved too? The naming/ambiguities parallels this one. --[[User:Jiang|Ji]][[User talk:Jiang|ang]] 08:06, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Don't think the articles have to be renamed. This is an English-language Wikipedia. The official names ''Putonghua'' (in mainland China), ''Kuo-yü'' (in the ROC)<s>, ''Mandarin'' (as according to Singapore's constitution)</s> has been sufficiently mentioned in the article; and the fact that ''Mandarin'' refers to the broader group of dialects has been clearly illustrated. &mdash; [[User:Instantnood|Insta]][[User_talk:Instantnood|ntnood]] 15:54, 29 September 2005 (UTC) (modified 15:56, 29 September 2005 (UTC))

:If we are to then say Putonghua is an English loan-word, the above statement would be invalidated. Mannwhile, Putonghua is an official term in the whole of the PRC, and not just the mainland. The Singapore constitution states that ''"Malay, '''Mandarin''', Tamil and English shall be the 4 official languages in Singapore. The national language shall be the Malay language and shall be in the Roman script"'' But this needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, because Mandarin translates as Huayu in Chinese, with the presumption that Mandarin superceeds all Chinese dialects, representing the official position of the Singapore govrnment.--[[User:Huaiwei|Huaiwei]] 16:42, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

::Right.. ''Putonghua'' is already a loanword in English vocabularies.. But ''Mandarin'' has not yet been displaced by ''Putonghua''. It is still in active use, either to refer to the language/group of dialects, or the specified dialect standardised for official use and use as a lingua franca. By using ''Standard Mandarin'' as the title we are i) using one of the popular names in English, ii) using the name which sounds more English, and iii) avoiding the politics behind ''Putonghua'' vs. ''Kuo-yü''. <br>Meanwhile, Putonghua does not have any official status in Hong Kong and Macao, although it is de facto official together with Cantonese (according to the basic laws ''Chinese'' is official, without mentioning any spoken variants). The name Putonghua itself, similarly, is not official, although it is the name used in official purposes by the governments. The situation in Hong Kong and Macao is actually quite different from the mainland. &mdash; [[User:Instantnood|Insta]][[User_talk:Instantnood|ntnood]] 17:07, 29 September 2005 (UTC) (modified 17:25, 29 September 2005 (UTC))

:::If one may appreciate the discussions above better, the issue was over the fact that the English loanword "Mandarin" has its technical problems which are difficult to resolve without causing confusion to readers. It is not just an issue over whether "Putonghua" has replaced "Mandarin" in everyday speech. As we know from the way wikipedia works, not all conventions are to be applied accross the board in all instances. While the need to use the most common English word is prefered, other considerations may prevent this. I would think instantnood is fully aware of the debate surrounding [[Taiwan]] and [[Republic of China]]. Yes, I agree that Putonghua/Guoyu has political underpinnings, but should they be thrown out irrespective of current inaccuracies? Can we find a way to accomodate these concerns?

:::Next, I find the text over the usage of the term "putonghua" in HK and Macau confusing. Instantnood claims that they are not official terms despite being used in official purposes by the governments. Which then leads me to wonder what happened to his endless campaign in saying "Mainland China" is an official term for precisely the same reason? Can we please have verified data for these statements?--[[User:Huaiwei|Huaiwei]] 18:07, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

::::I won't question if the word ''Putonghua'' is official in Hong Kong and Macao, but the differences between the way it's official in Hong Kong and Macao and that in mainland China have to be acknowledged. Saying "mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao" would be better than lumping them up and saying "People's Republic of China". &mdash; [[User:Instantnood|Insta]][[User_talk:Instantnood|ntnood]] 18:56, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

:::::If there are differences, they apparantly already get some detailed mention in the ''History'' section. How would a statement like "Standard Mandarin is officially known in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau as Putonghua" be any better in highlighting the above mentioned differences, when the statement itself refers to the "official term" used to refer to "Mandarin"? I find it difficult to quantify the high degree of opposition expressed by one user besides the same old reasons.--[[User:Huaiwei|Huaiwei]] 19:14, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

::::::Precisely, unlike the laws applied in mainland China, the term Putonghua (or 普通話/普通话) does not appear in any law of Hong Kong or Macao. The term is official in the sense that it is used by the governments of Hong Kong and Macao in official purposes, since the governments has taken the term as something conventional (and, well, because this is the name official in mainland China, and preferred by Beijing). &mdash; [[User:Instantnood|Insta]][[User_talk:Instantnood|ntnood]] 19:31, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

:::::::Just for verification sake, could you show us the relevant laws which differentiate the two? And if I may interprete correctly, you are now claiming there are two "kinds" of official terminology: one which appears in the law books, and one which is used in official purposes? Could you tell us from where did this convention come about, because I do wonder how this would apply to the status of the term "mainland china"? You further claim that the HK govt is seemingly lax about its choice of words, deciding to use the term as something "conventional" and is used in Mainland China. Why dont they change HK to Xianggang then, since that will surely go into the good books of the Chinese officials as well? So, instead of constantly writting personal assumptions of facts, could we please have some verified and trusted sources to refer to?--[[User:Huaiwei|Huaiwei]] 17:01, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

::I guess speakers of other Chinese spoken languages/variants may oppose calling Standard Mandarin as ''Huayu'', for ''Hua'' means China or Chinese. Other Chinese spoken languages/variants are equally ''Chinese'', except that they are not the official lingua franca recognised by the central government of any sovereign state. I agree with Huaiwei that this may represents government position, which is unavoidably politics. <br>Another interesting thing to note is that only ''Mandarin'', but not ''Chinese'', is recognised in Singapore constitution as an official language. But since ''Mandarin'' always means the standardised spoken variant, or the broader group of (spoken) dialects, and never the written language, one may ask if ''Chinese'' the written language is recognised as an official language. This is associated with a debate at [[talk:list of official languages by country#Vernacular_Chinese.3F|talk:list of official languages by country]] on whether ''Chinese'' the written language should be listed, together with ''Putonghua''/''Kuo-yü'' the spoken variant, under the entries of the PRC and the ROC. &mdash; [[User:Instantnood|Insta]][[User_talk:Instantnood|ntnood]] 17:19, 29 September 2005 (UTC) (modified 19:35, 29 September 2005 (UTC))

:::I have no idea what you are trying to imply by that comment on Singapore's official languages. The Singapore constitution, like that of any other country on Earth, recognises spoken languages as official, and not writtern scripts. Even if other sources indicate that "Chinese" is an official language in Singapore, they are actually simply refering to Mandarin if we want to be technially correct, and not the writtern language.--[[User:Huaiwei|Huaiwei]] 18:07, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

::::Nobody is talking about script (i.e. traditional vs. simplified, or roman vs. cyrillic). &mdash; [[User:Instantnood|Insta]][[User_talk:Instantnood|ntnood]] 18:56, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

:::::And your point being? Would you mind going beyond this kind of scripted talk and directly address the issues at hand?--[[User:Huaiwei|Huaiwei]] 19:14, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

::::::May I ask how the conversation can be carried on if you still think that people are talking about script? &mdash; [[User:Instantnood|Insta]][[User_talk:Instantnood|ntnood]] 19:31, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

:::::::Notice I said "writtern scripts" as well as "writtern language" in the statement? And even while we are at it, are you able to show us if this dictinction is relevant to what is being discussed here?--[[User:Huaiwei|Huaiwei]] 17:01, 30 September 2005 (UTC)