This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Link to Cantonese (Yue) article last vote was here. Benjwong ( talk) 02:00, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Thank you all for taking part in coming to an agreement about the page name for the top level language name. Now that we've achieved that, I propose that all interested parties move on to the Standard Cantonese page since, as we've agreed at some point in this debate, it's not an appropriate name for an unstandardised language. Akerbeltz ( talk) 10:21, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
Sorry I haven't been watching the discussion closely, but I don't see where the names were "narrowed down" to Cantonese (Yue) and Yue (Cantonese)? As I said a few times way up above (perhaps no one was reading that high by then, since most of the discussion had moved down lower), this seems like a strange naming choice since the term in parentheses is not a disambiguator, just an alternate name. I asked about this several days ago at WT:DAB#Using alternate names as disambiguators? and, while there was not much of a discussion, the answer seemed to be that over there they don't approve of these kinds of names. And why is Cantonese (Yue) better than Cantonese languages? rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 12:16, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
t of the current name. I stand behind my position that a "Cantonese" article to describe all Yue dialects + Guangzhou/HK dialect to be the best solution. If we rename the article "Cantonese" and merge the contents of "Standard Cantonese" into this article, I can forsee the intro like this:
Due to the complex linguistic situation of the Chinese language, Cantonese is generally not considered a "language" in its own right due to the lack of political legitimacy, but all of its dialects is essentially not mutually intelligible with Mandarin or any other branches of Chinese.
In addition, Yue dialects which have diverged significantly from the prestige form of Cantonese have also taken on separate identities, especially in the case of Toisanese and Danzhouhua. These spoken forms are generally not considered "Cantonese" in the English language but are classified as Yue dialects.
Virtually all of this talk page lays out why Cantonese in English to too vague. In English this term can loosely refer to the totality of Cantonese dialects or certain prestigae variants such as the HK or Gwongjau dialect. As this page deal with the totality of all those variants in a linguistic sense an unambiguous page name is needed. We eventually ended up homing in on using the linguistic term Yue in some way to distinguish the top level language branch Cantonese (Yue) (which contains some dialects not commonly associated with Cantonese colloquially such as Toisan) from the branches lower down. Please take the time to read the page.
With all due respect to people who have "come in late" - a lot of people come in late to Wiki debates and I really feel we need to draw a line under this page's naming debate. It has been debated ad nauseum and eventually a broadly acceptable name was found and voted upon in the traditional 5 day period. We cannot re-open the debate every time in the future someone "comes in late", the talk page of this article is longer than the article as it is.
So can we please please agree that Cantonese (Yue) is not 100% perfect but does the job to distinguish the top level totality of Cantonese lects and move on to improve the articles themselves? Akerbeltz ( talk) 14:47, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
@Kwami, if you respect the voting result. Please unlock the article to change the title to Cantonese (Yue). Please don't say there are people objects hence we should wait. There are many people have objected "Yue Chinese" and asked you to change back (you did nothing). After other admin changed it back - you reverted it to your preference. We can start from Cantonese (Yue). Should any change necessary, change again. -- WikiCantona ( talk) 23:31, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
What are you on about Cantona? Kwami did move the article to Cantonese (Yue) after the vote, with a redirect from Yue (Cantonese) as agreed. Can we all calm down please? We're really wasting an enormous amount if time and energy here. Akerbeltz ( talk) 23:46, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
ok.. I do agree Cantonese does not refer to all the Yue Chinese group.
Using your example above, in cantonese we don't call Germans as deutsch. But at least we are not using ENGLISH pronunciation to pronounce them! At least is somehow using the sound of "deutsch" to translate to Cantonese.
But if the title become Yue Chinese. Then it will become using Mandarin pronunciation to pronounce the Cantonese language...
Anyway, Cantonese(yue) is way better than Yue Chinese. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kwanyeung10 ( talk • contribs) 18:38, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
Colipon was "bold" and made edits that he asked not be reversed until discussed. Well, I was "bold" and reverted them, and ask that they not be restored until discussed.
This article is about Yue, not Cantonese. We can call it Cantonese to placate Cantonese nationalists who are offended by the term "Yue", but that name is still unacceptably confusing for the text of the article, since it covers both Yue and Cantonese, and also links to Cantonese. (This was my primary objection to the current title: I thought that people like Colipon would take it as license to reconflate the confusion that we've spent so much time untangling.) kwami ( talk) 00:23, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't know the current intro paragraph is savable?! After read Colipon's writing, I quite like it. With some inputs -
Although this is not necessarily a parallel situation, there has been disputes over at Spanish language with the name "Spanish" and "Castillian". The compromise there, as far as I can see, was to settle on the more common English name for the language ("Spanish"), but let the two names have almost equal prominence in the lede sentence, the infobox, and within the article body - not to mention a fairly descriptive "names" section (I feel almost like the Belgian parliament ;). We can perhaps think about doing so here as well? Colipon+( Talk) 11:32, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
I have also taken a look at the way the subject is covered in the French and Spanish wikipedias. In French:
“ | Le cantonais, écrit parfois cantonnais, ( simplified Chinese: 粤 语; traditional Chinese: 粵語; pinyin: Yuè yǔ), est une langue chinoise parlée particulièrement dans le sud de la Chine, dans les provinces du Guangdong et du Guangxi, à Hong-Kong et à Macao. On le nomme, en cantonais 粵 jyut6, 粵/粤 yuè en mandarin. | ” |
So here it is defined as a "Chinese language" spoken in "Southern China" and in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, as well as HK and Macau. It specifically points that the name of the language in Mandarin is "Yue".
In Spanish:
“ | El idioma o dialecto cantonés o yuè (
chino simplificado: 粤语,
chino tradicional: 粵語,
pinyin: yuèyǔ) es uno de los principales idiomas/dialectos
chinos.
El nombre yuè corresponde al nombre de un reino antiguo situado en la actual provincia de Guangdong. Por ello, el carácter 粵 se utiliza hoy en día como abreviatura del nombre de esta provincia (en las matrículas de los coches, por ejemplo). Aunque los chinos prefieren hablar de dialectos (方言, fāngyán) al referirse a las variedades del chino hablado, la inteligibilidad mutua entre éstos es prácticamente nula por lo que muchos lingüistas consideran el chino una familia de lenguas, y no una lengua única. |
” |
My Spanish is very elementary; so from what I can read the lede here gives "Cantonese" and "Yue" equal prominence in the first sentence. It then goes on to describe the way "Yue" is used, and says that Yue comprises a number of regional lects in Guangdong, ignoring Guangxi. It then goes on to explain the use of the Chinese character "Yue". The next paragraph talks about mutual intelligibility and its relation with Chinese.
Not that we should follow either models, I hope examining how it is treated in these other languages at least offers some insight into determining how we should write this article. Colipon+( Talk) 11:51, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
For those who have come late to the discussion -- and this has been going on for some time, it's not a matter of five or ten days -- and are pointing out that "Cantonese" is normal English usage, I suggest you are barking up the wrong tree. THIS IS NOT THE ARTICLE YOU WANT. Unfortunately, when user Kwami was renaming the articles, the article that should be named "Cantonese" was split into two: Canton dialect and Standard Cantonese. The "Cantonese" that most users are thinking of is at "Canton dialect".
Colipon, I think you are jumping the gun. Before making edits like that, we need to decide to amalgamate the two articles. No consensus has been reached on that, so your edit was premature. That is not to say you don't have a case, but your edits are not merely a renaming; they entail a complete reorganisation of 2-3 articles.
Also for late comers, I would suggest that you read the discussion above, painful as it is. I quoted an academic source which strongly supports the use of "Cantonese" for the prestige dialect and "Yue" for the Yue dialects as a whole. This was dismissed or ignored by several editors, some of whom seemed more motivated by an allergy to Mandarin than other considerations. Contrary to what user Colipon says above, the usage of "Cantonese" to refer to Guangzhouhua also has respectable sources (including Wong 1941, who I quoted at the talk page on Canton dialect).
Bathrobe ( talk) 01:40, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
It is used in English language publications as an unquoted term, hence it is English. Mayhap not common but English, same as Tabasaran or Kannada. We can't always brings things to the level of the most common denominator, few of Wikipedias pages on taxonomy would work if we insisted that all pages relating to felines used the word cat because in common usage everything from a tiger to a tabby is a "cat".
Secondly, it may not follow general conventions but can we take the Wiki guidelines as that, guidelines? They're not gospel or tax law and if there are good reasons the bending the guidelines surely is acceptable. Akerbeltz ( talk) 09:17, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
Maybe we need an article at the top of the talk page laying out how we got here :b Akerbeltz ( talk) 09:34, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
In our current system, when editing the intro it is important to know that Cantonese (Yue), Standard Cantonese, and Canton dialect all describe separate concepts. Kwami continues to assert that Standard Cantonese is the same thing as Canton dialect. It is not. Hong Kong Cantonese and Canton dialect are arguably two competing modern forms of the prestige dialect. Although the differences are minimal, they are generally treated as two different things. Therefore the levels look something like this:
Colipon+( Talk) 23:35, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
I also do not believe there has ever been consensus on the issue of article mergers, as Kwami claims, "There was consensus on those articles to merge.", but if he can show me where this 'consensus' was it would be helpful. Colipon+( Talk) 07:25, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
I also want to raise a relatively unrelated point. The current English name of the city of Canton is " Guangzhou". This is the romanization used in all legal documents, maps after 1978, international agreements, and encyclopedias (including our very on wikipedia). The usage of the word "Canton" has not been in common use to describe the city itself for several decades (although, of course, some other languages retain this romanization, and a small minority of english speakers continue to use it anyway). But it is basically parallel to Beijing. We have Beijing dialect, not "Peking dialect". It raises a real issue of whether or not we should call the Canton dialect 'Guangzhou dialect' in order to remain consistent with modern English use. Colipon+( Talk) 23:35, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
If "Cantonese" is the same thing as Guangzhou dialect, then the article on Hong Kong Cantonese is actually talking about "Hong Kong Guangzhou dialect". I don't know how this seems to make sense to anyone. Colipon+( Talk) 07:36, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
I hate to spoil the fun. I came across another academic article: Anne Yue: Meterials for diachronic study of the Yue dalects. The Joy of Research: A Festshrift in Honor of Professor William S-Y Wang on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. By Feng Shi and Zhongwei Shen, pp.246-271, 2004 Tianjin: The Nankai University Press which was unfortunately largely written in Chinese. But many reference materials are in English. The term "Canton dialect" appears many times in the old records and mentioning some other Cantonese dialects like "Taishanese". To my best of interpretation, the Canton dialects seem to mean Gwongdong Speech, i.e. Cantonese in the broad sense. You are welcoming to disagree. When you do, please read the article at least. -- WikiCantona ( talk) 06:54, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
I am still a bit confused about why User Kwami continues to insist that "Canton" should be used to represent the city of Guangzhou. I feel this is done because he feels assigning the name "Canton" lends legitimacy of saying "Cantonese" should be strictly defined as the "language of Canton" along the same lines as " Shanghainese" being the language of Shanghai. I mean, why would someone argue so adamantly to use "Canton" in place of "Guangzhou"? Colipon+( Talk) 01:45, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Canton is the mostly used corrupted form of Kwang Tung (Kwangtung, or Guangdong in pinyin). Your probably found some other forms like Kanton. Portuguese came and settled in China dated from Ming Dynastry, but their translated names of places was not quite systematics. In fact, the province of Kwangtung has wide variety of languages. While Chinese characters are the same, their pronunication varies a lot. Further distortion evolved upon the transcription by various Europeans of different language background. Some transcription is more popular and became final consensus. Although various Catholic missionaries have found its way to translate Cantonese languages, it was of very limited use. The place name such as Macao, Lantao, Kowloon, Hong Kong, Chung-Hue, person name such as Lam Qua, are illustration of corrupted transcription of Cantonese language.
Back to the name of Canton, it is largerly related to the government system of Chinese Empire. The concept to name a place is quite different from nowaday in republic China. In the Imperial day, where the seat of the head of government is an alternative name of place. For example, the seat of the government of the County of San On (or Sun On) is located in the Walled City of Nam Tau. The City can be alternative called San On County City, or simply San On.
The place where currently urban Kwangchow (Guangzhou in pinyin) was a Walled City in Ching Dynasty (Qing in pinyin). The City helds four seats of the governments, namely the Provincial of Kwang Tung, the Perfecture of Kwang Chow, the County of Nam Hoi and the County of Pan Yu. Both four names can refer to the Walled City. Canton is the established form of Kwang-tung. The name refers both the City and the Province. The lesser Canton(Kwangtung) is the city, the greater Canton (Kwangtung) is the province. Likewise, the lesser Kwangchow is the city, the greater Kwangchow is perfecture. The lesser Pan Yu is the city, the greater Pan Yu is the county.
There are various Cantonese languages. The best illustration of Cantonese is naturally from the provincial capital of Canton (Kwangtung). It is the most influential one among various Cantonese languages. This is similar to Japanese languages. The language spoken in Tokyo, the capital city of Japan, is the prestiged example of Japanese languages. Most academic studies of Cantonese is the one from in the captial city.
Cantonese is adjective to describe things related to Kwangtung, for example, Cantonese languages, Cantonese opera, Cantonese cuisine, Cantonese people and so on. It is definitely not limited to the captial of Kwangtung.
In conclusion, Canton is the corrupted transcription of Kwangtung (province). Canton means both the province and the capital city of the province. Cantonese languages are the language of Kwangtung, and finally, the prestiged example of Cantonese is the Cantonese of the captial. Cantonese of the capital is regarded as Standard Cantonese.
— HenryLi ( Talk) 09:19, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
I am asking everyone involved to seriously consider this proposal for an overall treatment of the Cantonese articles. I await your feedback. Colipon+( Talk) 19:19, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
I've just updated these: I noticed the ranking (16) was completely at odds with the ranking (23) at List of languages by number of native speakers, which is automatically linked to by the Infobox. The reference for 16 was this, which seems simply to be pulled from an old (13 years or three editions) reading of Ethnologue. The reference for the number of speakers was a dead link so definitely needed fixing. I've replaced them with the latest numbers from Ethnologue. JohnBlackburne ( talk) 12:34, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. That does seem the best approach: any newer data seems to be seriously flawed, so putting the data we have with a date will encourage anyone with access to more up-to-date, reliable information to provide it. I'm sure the data exists somewhere, as China seems keener than most countries to investigate the state and status of its languages.
On JWB's last point I would be very sceptical of any claim of natural growth, especially in Yue speakers, without data. It will be affected by China's One-Child policy, which depresses growth generally and should impact urbanised areas in the South more; its language policy, which means often young people today speak Puthonghua even if their family speaks Yue; and emigration which is disproportionately from the South due to existing family and home town/village connections - emigrants do not lose their native tongue but many of their children and grandchildren will speak other languages. JohnBlackburne ( talk) 13:16, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Link to Cantonese (Yue) article last vote was here. Benjwong ( talk) 02:00, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Thank you all for taking part in coming to an agreement about the page name for the top level language name. Now that we've achieved that, I propose that all interested parties move on to the Standard Cantonese page since, as we've agreed at some point in this debate, it's not an appropriate name for an unstandardised language. Akerbeltz ( talk) 10:21, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
Sorry I haven't been watching the discussion closely, but I don't see where the names were "narrowed down" to Cantonese (Yue) and Yue (Cantonese)? As I said a few times way up above (perhaps no one was reading that high by then, since most of the discussion had moved down lower), this seems like a strange naming choice since the term in parentheses is not a disambiguator, just an alternate name. I asked about this several days ago at WT:DAB#Using alternate names as disambiguators? and, while there was not much of a discussion, the answer seemed to be that over there they don't approve of these kinds of names. And why is Cantonese (Yue) better than Cantonese languages? rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 12:16, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
t of the current name. I stand behind my position that a "Cantonese" article to describe all Yue dialects + Guangzhou/HK dialect to be the best solution. If we rename the article "Cantonese" and merge the contents of "Standard Cantonese" into this article, I can forsee the intro like this:
Due to the complex linguistic situation of the Chinese language, Cantonese is generally not considered a "language" in its own right due to the lack of political legitimacy, but all of its dialects is essentially not mutually intelligible with Mandarin or any other branches of Chinese.
In addition, Yue dialects which have diverged significantly from the prestige form of Cantonese have also taken on separate identities, especially in the case of Toisanese and Danzhouhua. These spoken forms are generally not considered "Cantonese" in the English language but are classified as Yue dialects.
Virtually all of this talk page lays out why Cantonese in English to too vague. In English this term can loosely refer to the totality of Cantonese dialects or certain prestigae variants such as the HK or Gwongjau dialect. As this page deal with the totality of all those variants in a linguistic sense an unambiguous page name is needed. We eventually ended up homing in on using the linguistic term Yue in some way to distinguish the top level language branch Cantonese (Yue) (which contains some dialects not commonly associated with Cantonese colloquially such as Toisan) from the branches lower down. Please take the time to read the page.
With all due respect to people who have "come in late" - a lot of people come in late to Wiki debates and I really feel we need to draw a line under this page's naming debate. It has been debated ad nauseum and eventually a broadly acceptable name was found and voted upon in the traditional 5 day period. We cannot re-open the debate every time in the future someone "comes in late", the talk page of this article is longer than the article as it is.
So can we please please agree that Cantonese (Yue) is not 100% perfect but does the job to distinguish the top level totality of Cantonese lects and move on to improve the articles themselves? Akerbeltz ( talk) 14:47, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
@Kwami, if you respect the voting result. Please unlock the article to change the title to Cantonese (Yue). Please don't say there are people objects hence we should wait. There are many people have objected "Yue Chinese" and asked you to change back (you did nothing). After other admin changed it back - you reverted it to your preference. We can start from Cantonese (Yue). Should any change necessary, change again. -- WikiCantona ( talk) 23:31, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
What are you on about Cantona? Kwami did move the article to Cantonese (Yue) after the vote, with a redirect from Yue (Cantonese) as agreed. Can we all calm down please? We're really wasting an enormous amount if time and energy here. Akerbeltz ( talk) 23:46, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
ok.. I do agree Cantonese does not refer to all the Yue Chinese group.
Using your example above, in cantonese we don't call Germans as deutsch. But at least we are not using ENGLISH pronunciation to pronounce them! At least is somehow using the sound of "deutsch" to translate to Cantonese.
But if the title become Yue Chinese. Then it will become using Mandarin pronunciation to pronounce the Cantonese language...
Anyway, Cantonese(yue) is way better than Yue Chinese. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kwanyeung10 ( talk • contribs) 18:38, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
Colipon was "bold" and made edits that he asked not be reversed until discussed. Well, I was "bold" and reverted them, and ask that they not be restored until discussed.
This article is about Yue, not Cantonese. We can call it Cantonese to placate Cantonese nationalists who are offended by the term "Yue", but that name is still unacceptably confusing for the text of the article, since it covers both Yue and Cantonese, and also links to Cantonese. (This was my primary objection to the current title: I thought that people like Colipon would take it as license to reconflate the confusion that we've spent so much time untangling.) kwami ( talk) 00:23, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't know the current intro paragraph is savable?! After read Colipon's writing, I quite like it. With some inputs -
Although this is not necessarily a parallel situation, there has been disputes over at Spanish language with the name "Spanish" and "Castillian". The compromise there, as far as I can see, was to settle on the more common English name for the language ("Spanish"), but let the two names have almost equal prominence in the lede sentence, the infobox, and within the article body - not to mention a fairly descriptive "names" section (I feel almost like the Belgian parliament ;). We can perhaps think about doing so here as well? Colipon+( Talk) 11:32, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
I have also taken a look at the way the subject is covered in the French and Spanish wikipedias. In French:
“ | Le cantonais, écrit parfois cantonnais, ( simplified Chinese: 粤 语; traditional Chinese: 粵語; pinyin: Yuè yǔ), est une langue chinoise parlée particulièrement dans le sud de la Chine, dans les provinces du Guangdong et du Guangxi, à Hong-Kong et à Macao. On le nomme, en cantonais 粵 jyut6, 粵/粤 yuè en mandarin. | ” |
So here it is defined as a "Chinese language" spoken in "Southern China" and in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, as well as HK and Macau. It specifically points that the name of the language in Mandarin is "Yue".
In Spanish:
“ | El idioma o dialecto cantonés o yuè (
chino simplificado: 粤语,
chino tradicional: 粵語,
pinyin: yuèyǔ) es uno de los principales idiomas/dialectos
chinos.
El nombre yuè corresponde al nombre de un reino antiguo situado en la actual provincia de Guangdong. Por ello, el carácter 粵 se utiliza hoy en día como abreviatura del nombre de esta provincia (en las matrículas de los coches, por ejemplo). Aunque los chinos prefieren hablar de dialectos (方言, fāngyán) al referirse a las variedades del chino hablado, la inteligibilidad mutua entre éstos es prácticamente nula por lo que muchos lingüistas consideran el chino una familia de lenguas, y no una lengua única. |
” |
My Spanish is very elementary; so from what I can read the lede here gives "Cantonese" and "Yue" equal prominence in the first sentence. It then goes on to describe the way "Yue" is used, and says that Yue comprises a number of regional lects in Guangdong, ignoring Guangxi. It then goes on to explain the use of the Chinese character "Yue". The next paragraph talks about mutual intelligibility and its relation with Chinese.
Not that we should follow either models, I hope examining how it is treated in these other languages at least offers some insight into determining how we should write this article. Colipon+( Talk) 11:51, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
For those who have come late to the discussion -- and this has been going on for some time, it's not a matter of five or ten days -- and are pointing out that "Cantonese" is normal English usage, I suggest you are barking up the wrong tree. THIS IS NOT THE ARTICLE YOU WANT. Unfortunately, when user Kwami was renaming the articles, the article that should be named "Cantonese" was split into two: Canton dialect and Standard Cantonese. The "Cantonese" that most users are thinking of is at "Canton dialect".
Colipon, I think you are jumping the gun. Before making edits like that, we need to decide to amalgamate the two articles. No consensus has been reached on that, so your edit was premature. That is not to say you don't have a case, but your edits are not merely a renaming; they entail a complete reorganisation of 2-3 articles.
Also for late comers, I would suggest that you read the discussion above, painful as it is. I quoted an academic source which strongly supports the use of "Cantonese" for the prestige dialect and "Yue" for the Yue dialects as a whole. This was dismissed or ignored by several editors, some of whom seemed more motivated by an allergy to Mandarin than other considerations. Contrary to what user Colipon says above, the usage of "Cantonese" to refer to Guangzhouhua also has respectable sources (including Wong 1941, who I quoted at the talk page on Canton dialect).
Bathrobe ( talk) 01:40, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
It is used in English language publications as an unquoted term, hence it is English. Mayhap not common but English, same as Tabasaran or Kannada. We can't always brings things to the level of the most common denominator, few of Wikipedias pages on taxonomy would work if we insisted that all pages relating to felines used the word cat because in common usage everything from a tiger to a tabby is a "cat".
Secondly, it may not follow general conventions but can we take the Wiki guidelines as that, guidelines? They're not gospel or tax law and if there are good reasons the bending the guidelines surely is acceptable. Akerbeltz ( talk) 09:17, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
Maybe we need an article at the top of the talk page laying out how we got here :b Akerbeltz ( talk) 09:34, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
In our current system, when editing the intro it is important to know that Cantonese (Yue), Standard Cantonese, and Canton dialect all describe separate concepts. Kwami continues to assert that Standard Cantonese is the same thing as Canton dialect. It is not. Hong Kong Cantonese and Canton dialect are arguably two competing modern forms of the prestige dialect. Although the differences are minimal, they are generally treated as two different things. Therefore the levels look something like this:
Colipon+( Talk) 23:35, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
I also do not believe there has ever been consensus on the issue of article mergers, as Kwami claims, "There was consensus on those articles to merge.", but if he can show me where this 'consensus' was it would be helpful. Colipon+( Talk) 07:25, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
I also want to raise a relatively unrelated point. The current English name of the city of Canton is " Guangzhou". This is the romanization used in all legal documents, maps after 1978, international agreements, and encyclopedias (including our very on wikipedia). The usage of the word "Canton" has not been in common use to describe the city itself for several decades (although, of course, some other languages retain this romanization, and a small minority of english speakers continue to use it anyway). But it is basically parallel to Beijing. We have Beijing dialect, not "Peking dialect". It raises a real issue of whether or not we should call the Canton dialect 'Guangzhou dialect' in order to remain consistent with modern English use. Colipon+( Talk) 23:35, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
If "Cantonese" is the same thing as Guangzhou dialect, then the article on Hong Kong Cantonese is actually talking about "Hong Kong Guangzhou dialect". I don't know how this seems to make sense to anyone. Colipon+( Talk) 07:36, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
I hate to spoil the fun. I came across another academic article: Anne Yue: Meterials for diachronic study of the Yue dalects. The Joy of Research: A Festshrift in Honor of Professor William S-Y Wang on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. By Feng Shi and Zhongwei Shen, pp.246-271, 2004 Tianjin: The Nankai University Press which was unfortunately largely written in Chinese. But many reference materials are in English. The term "Canton dialect" appears many times in the old records and mentioning some other Cantonese dialects like "Taishanese". To my best of interpretation, the Canton dialects seem to mean Gwongdong Speech, i.e. Cantonese in the broad sense. You are welcoming to disagree. When you do, please read the article at least. -- WikiCantona ( talk) 06:54, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
I am still a bit confused about why User Kwami continues to insist that "Canton" should be used to represent the city of Guangzhou. I feel this is done because he feels assigning the name "Canton" lends legitimacy of saying "Cantonese" should be strictly defined as the "language of Canton" along the same lines as " Shanghainese" being the language of Shanghai. I mean, why would someone argue so adamantly to use "Canton" in place of "Guangzhou"? Colipon+( Talk) 01:45, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Canton is the mostly used corrupted form of Kwang Tung (Kwangtung, or Guangdong in pinyin). Your probably found some other forms like Kanton. Portuguese came and settled in China dated from Ming Dynastry, but their translated names of places was not quite systematics. In fact, the province of Kwangtung has wide variety of languages. While Chinese characters are the same, their pronunication varies a lot. Further distortion evolved upon the transcription by various Europeans of different language background. Some transcription is more popular and became final consensus. Although various Catholic missionaries have found its way to translate Cantonese languages, it was of very limited use. The place name such as Macao, Lantao, Kowloon, Hong Kong, Chung-Hue, person name such as Lam Qua, are illustration of corrupted transcription of Cantonese language.
Back to the name of Canton, it is largerly related to the government system of Chinese Empire. The concept to name a place is quite different from nowaday in republic China. In the Imperial day, where the seat of the head of government is an alternative name of place. For example, the seat of the government of the County of San On (or Sun On) is located in the Walled City of Nam Tau. The City can be alternative called San On County City, or simply San On.
The place where currently urban Kwangchow (Guangzhou in pinyin) was a Walled City in Ching Dynasty (Qing in pinyin). The City helds four seats of the governments, namely the Provincial of Kwang Tung, the Perfecture of Kwang Chow, the County of Nam Hoi and the County of Pan Yu. Both four names can refer to the Walled City. Canton is the established form of Kwang-tung. The name refers both the City and the Province. The lesser Canton(Kwangtung) is the city, the greater Canton (Kwangtung) is the province. Likewise, the lesser Kwangchow is the city, the greater Kwangchow is perfecture. The lesser Pan Yu is the city, the greater Pan Yu is the county.
There are various Cantonese languages. The best illustration of Cantonese is naturally from the provincial capital of Canton (Kwangtung). It is the most influential one among various Cantonese languages. This is similar to Japanese languages. The language spoken in Tokyo, the capital city of Japan, is the prestiged example of Japanese languages. Most academic studies of Cantonese is the one from in the captial city.
Cantonese is adjective to describe things related to Kwangtung, for example, Cantonese languages, Cantonese opera, Cantonese cuisine, Cantonese people and so on. It is definitely not limited to the captial of Kwangtung.
In conclusion, Canton is the corrupted transcription of Kwangtung (province). Canton means both the province and the capital city of the province. Cantonese languages are the language of Kwangtung, and finally, the prestiged example of Cantonese is the Cantonese of the captial. Cantonese of the capital is regarded as Standard Cantonese.
— HenryLi ( Talk) 09:19, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
I am asking everyone involved to seriously consider this proposal for an overall treatment of the Cantonese articles. I await your feedback. Colipon+( Talk) 19:19, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
I've just updated these: I noticed the ranking (16) was completely at odds with the ranking (23) at List of languages by number of native speakers, which is automatically linked to by the Infobox. The reference for 16 was this, which seems simply to be pulled from an old (13 years or three editions) reading of Ethnologue. The reference for the number of speakers was a dead link so definitely needed fixing. I've replaced them with the latest numbers from Ethnologue. JohnBlackburne ( talk) 12:34, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. That does seem the best approach: any newer data seems to be seriously flawed, so putting the data we have with a date will encourage anyone with access to more up-to-date, reliable information to provide it. I'm sure the data exists somewhere, as China seems keener than most countries to investigate the state and status of its languages.
On JWB's last point I would be very sceptical of any claim of natural growth, especially in Yue speakers, without data. It will be affected by China's One-Child policy, which depresses growth generally and should impact urbanised areas in the South more; its language policy, which means often young people today speak Puthonghua even if their family speaks Yue; and emigration which is disproportionately from the South due to existing family and home town/village connections - emigrants do not lose their native tongue but many of their children and grandchildren will speak other languages. JohnBlackburne ( talk) 13:16, 14 November 2009 (UTC)