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Tones

Issue resolved

Some questions:

When creating new articles, please try to use the second method. If you use the first method, whether or not you include the numbers for tone, please italicise the pinyin to differentiate it from the English text.

does that mean we shoule creat articles using names like Zh?ng-guó rather than just plain name Zhong-guo? Or Zhong1-guo2 is adviced? And about the italicize, should be italicize all the Chinese pinyin as that of foreign languages? or just in the definition line? --FallingInLoveWithPitoc 09:07, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Sorry, this suggestion should have been clearer. My intended meaning was pinyin that is incorporated in the article itself as a romanization (not used in a sentence as a proper name (which should be wikified), etc.). I did not mean article titles. I reckon toneless articles are here to stay, and do not present a problem. --Pratyeka 10:45, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Dictionary style

Unfortunately I haven't a single English dictionary at the moment, but it's my view (supported by a quick glance at an English/Japanese dictionary) that all dictionaries and encylopedias I've ever seen have used lower case forms for classifying words or articles. For example, lower case pinyin, lower case IPA, lower case 'n' 'v' 'adj', etc. It's my opinion that upper case labels detract from the readability of the article and are not particularly justified in most cases (I say most, because 'Wade-Giles' has capitals - at least when used in its expanded form). Thus I would propose a lowercase 'trad' 'simpl' 'pinyin' 'wg' etc... maybe we can add a vote here seeing as its a subjective matter.

-- Pratyeka 10:45, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Lowercase all:

Uppercase proper nouns:

  • Menchi 06:11, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
    1. Wade-Giles is a proper noun. And proper nouns are always, and I mean always, capitalized. In any situations. Maybe some Internet graphic arts or e.e. cummings do it differently, but English capitalization rules dictates other wise. Wade-Giles is therefore WG, not wg. I did not make up the rules. Therefore, this is not a subjective matter, not in a formal-writing world.
    2. IPA are not proper nouns, they are phonetic alphabet, and there are capitalized IPA letters, for example, r in French is [R].
    3. Of course 'n', 'v', and 'adj' are uncapitalized, they're common nouns. I need to say that abbreviation to such a conciseness is not advised in an Internet encyclopedia where space is not a problem. It merely imposes readability problem.
    4. Dictionaries may have "classifying words", but encyclopedia does not. Chinese text is different from saying "so the Roman senate (kenatorium) proposed...". It is not a "classifying words" like pronunciation guide or part of speech identifier. There's little parallelism.
    5. "Pinyin" may or may not be capitalized, both are acceptable. But Taiwan has recently created Tongyong Pinyin. lowercase-p pinyin now can prefer to both Hanyu Pinyin and Tongyong Pinyin strictly. Although in practise, Hanyu Pinyin is currently still better-known.
    6. In conclusion, capitalized words, distracting/asthetically pleasing or not, if the linguistic rules dictates so, must be followed. We didn't invent those rules, and in Wikipedia, we describe knowledge, not prescribe.

I guess since we use terms like "watts" and "henries" we could use "wade-giles", but it seems a bit awkward to me to decapitalize family names. -- Patrick0Moran 03:08, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

To clarify, I was suggesting an abbreviated form, such as 'wg'. Sorry Menchi, but I must disagree on your "linguistic rules" statement. Patrick0Moran's 'watts' example is a good one. Where commonly used classifications (or measures) have derived from proper names, readability seems to over-rule 'always use capitals for proper names'. A second point - with an abbreviation such as 'wg', if the user doesn't know what it means, they can click the link and find out - that's the joy of wikipedia. I don't see this as imposing a readability problem at all - quite the opposite, allowing people to find the information that they want more quickly (though this is my personal opinion (subjective) hence the suggestion of a poll!) Furthermore, in my opinion anyone that's the slightest bit interested in alternate romanizations of Chinese place names probably already knows what Wade-Giles is, or will be happy to click a 'wg' link and find out. Making them laboriously skip over it with their eyes on every second article they read just strikes me as sadism! --Pratyeka 06:37, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree that abbreviation for Wade-Giles is good for readability. I get tired typing just two of it in a paragraph! But I believe WG is more authentic an English usage than wg. The "watts" are actually scientific unit, of work or power or something. It is a rule that all international scientific units (SI) are to be written in lowercase, like metre, gram, etc. Units aren't proper nouns, at least the SI ones. Note that Celsius is not SI, it is used in science sometimes, but the true equivalent SI temperature unit is kelvin, which is lowercase.
"readability seems to over-rule 'always use capitals for proper names'". I don't think WG looks that bad. Does "One of the nations was USA, which was believed to..." look bad? Maybe (I personally think it's ok), but it's a must. --Menchi 06:47, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Example

  1. Bĕijīng (北京, Pei-Ching in Wade-Giles;, also Pekin or Peking) is the capital city of the People's Republic of China. It is one of the 4 municipalities of the People's Republic of China, which have a provincial-level status. The municipality governs 10 districts and 8 counties. Present article.
  2. Beijing (北京; pinyin Bĕijīng, wg Pei-Ching, also Pekin or Peking) is the capital city of the People's Republic of China. It is one of the 4 municipalities of the People's Republic of China, which have a provincial-level status. The municipality governs 10 districts and 8 counties. My (pratyeka) preferred style. (note use of semicolon instead of comma).
  3. Beijing (北京; pinyin Bĕijīng, WG Pei-Ching, also Pekin or Peking) is the capital city of the People's Republic of China. It is one of the 4 municipalities of the People's Republic of China, which have a provincial-level status. The municipality governs 10 districts and 8 counties. Another style.

I think 'WG' is passable but I feel 'wg' looks a lot cleaner.

Another good example of lowercase abbreviations of proper nouns which I just thought of is languages. The most widespread abbreviation system for languages is an ISO standard, and all abbreviations are lowercase. en, zh, etc.

Modified forms of this system in use on internet (for national extentions, eg: en-us, zh-cn, zh-tw, etc.) are also all lowercase. --Pratyeka 07:28, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

zh-tw doesn't feel really like to be the same as kinda authentic abbreviation as USA. It's seems more in the .com category. By the way, all but the first syllable in a WG word isn't capitalized, except in overseas Chinese's given name (if they choose to capitalize it). There are, again, many counterexamples on the net, but take a look at official ROC publications (or really official ROC websites) for good romanizations. --Menchi 07:38, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
I think the crux of our differing perspectives is that I am viewing the information in the brackets as standard reference material to be presented in a clear and concise form. I believe the requirements for presentation of oft-repeated reference material differ significantly from that of a paragraph of regular English text. --Pratyeka 07:52, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Traditional Spelling Question

Note that a few people are known in the West by spellings that are not regular Wade-Giles. Confucius (kong fu zi) and Mencius (meng zi) would be one kind of example, Latinized forms of Mandarin pronunciations, and they have become so well known that they amount to the "English word" for these people. But Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jie-shi) and Sun Yat-sen (Sun Yi-xian) are spellings for non-Mandarin pronunciations by which these two 20th Century figures became generally known. To make things clear for everyone concerned, their other names (names by which they are more commonly known in Chinese texts, Jiang Zhong-zheng and Sun Zhong-shan) should be provided. Similarly, it would be appropriate to clue people in to the fact that Su Dong-po is also known (and more properly known) by the name Su Shi. Fortunately there are only a few cases where people who only knew one form would be thrown off the track.

Patrick0Moran 03:08, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Of course Chiang Kai-shek has precedence over Jiang Jieshi, Confucius over Kongfuzi. But it's already noted at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(Chinese)#Names. Should we repeat it here? If we repeat everything there, what's the point of having two articles. Some moving and removing may be needed. --Menchi 06:11, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I had a look at that text. Thanks. As long as people looking at the "Manual of Style for China-related articles" can find that information easily enough then there would be no reason to repeat it I guess. However, it may be unclear to people whether one is only to mention Chiang Kai-shek (which would be fine for most English speakers) or to also give hanzi and/or romanization for that name and other names by which native speakers are likely to identify him. I can't think of a good Chinese example of where English speakers know somebody by a name that Chinese speakers would likely not recognize, but U.S. students of Japanese frequently call the Daikanwajiten the "Morohashi," which leaves even well-educated Japanese speakers clueless sometimes. That is to say, I favor giving information to help non-English speakers locate and understand the stuff they want to read in English. Characters are probably more important for them. I also favor giving information that would help U.S. students bridge between what they will find in older history books, current mass media publications, and the words of Chinese speakers. (For instance, the preferred romanization for the last Chinese emperor's name in Manchurian form, the romanization in Mandarin form, the Chinese characters, the usual terms of reference in English, etc., etc. It would be easy for us to do it, but difficult for someone who was just starting out.)

Patrick0Moran 18:21, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Patrick brought up a good point: this Manual of Style intends to bridge different lingual representations of a piece of information. The most recognized English nomenclature is used but any known variants should be included. IMO listing of representations should be exhaustive, which is exactly what a reader intends to look for in an encyclopedic article. All, for instance simplified and traditional Chinese charaters, different romanization and transliteration of Chinese charaters, should be included. Just as Pratyeka has stated, reference in other articles can be kept in accordance primarily with readable clarity, then with grammatical customs.

To achieve exhaustion, we may actually need a table to list all representations and it will be extremely tedious and redundant in some readers' view. For instance, Sun Yat-Sen had 6 names: 孫文, 孫逸仙, 孫德明, 孫日新, 中山樵 and 孫中山. An exhaustion of representation would be providing simplified and tradtional Chinese charaters, pinyin, zhuyin, wade-giles and other known romanizations for each name, i.e. at least 6*5=30 representations. Some readers would then argue that quite a few of them are not even used. A reconcilation would be a balance between exhaustion and usage; this has to be done from article-by-article consensus.

My edition to the above Beijing example would be the following:

Guangzhou (trad ch 廣州, sim ch 广州, py guang3 zhou1, wg kuang chou, Tongyong pinyin guang jhou, zhuyin ㄍㄨㄤˇ　ㄓㄡ, also Canton) is the capital of the Guangdong Province in southern China.

kt² 00:09, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Why not write "Wade Giles", "Traditional Chinese" etc. out in their complete forms in the first instance and abbreviate thereafter. Alternately, we could use Menchi's proposal (esp for second, third... instances) to save room: Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Chinese)/archive2#Native_terms_and_Romanizations.

In the above sample for Guangzhou, trad ch should at least be [[Traditional Chinese|trad ch]], but I prefer [[Traditional Chinese]]. People will have no idea what "trad ch" stands for if theyre not familiar with Chinese. The PY and WG forms need to be appropriately toned and capitalized: Gŭangzhōu, Kuangchou.

Why do we put the alternate forms in italics? It makes it hard to read. --Jiang 00:33, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Well, trad ch can be redirected to Traditional Chinese. kt² 00:36, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)
People will have no idea that "trad ch" stands for unless they click on the link. Why not write it out? An extra few letters doesnt hurt. --Jiang
I am not sticking to my version because this has to be a consensus. My point of keeping the abbreviation is just what Pratyeka stated, "A second point - with an abbreviation such as 'wg', if the user doesn't know what it means, they can click the link and find out - that's the joy of wikipedia". BTW the pinyin of Guangzhou is Guǎngzhōu. :) kt² 00:53, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Menchi's version saves more space and allows people to learn why there are multiple versions just by putting their cursor over that link. If our aim is to save space, Menchi's version does a better job. I prefer writing it out on the first instance and abbreviating thereafter. --Jiang 01:01, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Menchi's versions sure does a better job in saving space but it actually required more typing from the writer. Maybe convenience does factor in here. Anyway I am not sticking to any version until a consensus is reached. kt² 01:56, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't think zhuyin should be included. It's used as an educational tool, not for communication. --Jiang 02:11, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If Zhuyin was all ROC needed, it wouldn't have created its evil/wondrous twin Tongyong Pinyin. There's no need present both twins. Very redundant. Most of all, nobody, not even Taiwanese would search/google using Zhuyin. --Menchi 07:05, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

WG & wg

Kt2, re: "wg": Pratyeka doesn't want WG to be capitalized because he thinks those are "classifying words" (How about "French:" in Quebec), "unreadable" (probably POV), and he quotes -- to be blunt, unparalleled -- examples of "watts", IPA, and other uncommon nouns. What's your justification? --Menchi 01:03, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Sure, I quoted that example however it wasn't mine. A better example in my opinion is the ISO languages one I actually cited (en, de, etc.), which I feel is very relevant as romanization systems are semantially similar. As your reason for resisting decapitalisation seems to be that peoples names are 'proper nouns', I don't think you can get any more proper than language names and the ISO system is in widespread use. In my opinion, calling the above example 'unparalleled' is simply incorrect. --Pratyeka 01:14, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

It used to bother me that Watt changed to watt, and Kelvin changed to kelvin, but those changes reflected the fact that when stating the number of watts of electricity an appliance uses one is talking about, essentially, the velocity and number of electrons in motion past some point in an electrical cord at a certain time, and not the man named Watt. Similarly, in talking about "1 degree kelvin" one is talking about a temperature that is very near to being as cold as anything can be, and not about Lord Kelvin. With "Wade-Giles" we are talking about a system of romanization and naming it by its creators, Mssrs. Wade and Giles. So I think WG would be more appropriate in view of what the words being abbreviated actually mean.

The other things that strikes me is that if I saw "wg" in the midst of a line of text my first impulse would be to wonder whether it was a typo for "wag," "wig," or what. If one doesn't want to mention "bo, po, mo, fo" one can just use "NPA" (for National Phonetic Alphabet), and that could just as easily be written "npa", but there does not seem to be an alternative name for the Wade-Giles system.

Doesn't IPA always stay capitalized? And isn't that because "International Phonetic Alphabet" is a proper noun relating to a definite body of text, essentially a short publication? That would argue for both NPA and W-G being capitalized.

Patrick0Moran 01:43, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

dictionaries and encyclopedias that I come across use lowercase wg. An example: http://www.acmuller.net/dealt/index/c5ee3.html, click on "廣" and type "guest" (without quotation) as username. But after reading Patrick's comments, I now think a capitalized WG is more justified than the lowercase, quoting "With "Wade-Giles" we are talking about a system of romanization and naming it by its creators, Mssrs. Wade and Giles." kt² 01:56, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Parenthesis

Having parenthesis open and close right next to each other doesn't look so good. I prefer

Jiāng Zémín (Traditional Chinese: 江澤民, Simplified Chinese: 江泽民; born August 17, 1926)

or

Jiāng Zémín, 江澤民; 江泽民, (born August 17, 1926)

instead of the current:

Jiāng Zémín (Traditional Chinese: 江澤民, Simplified Chinese: 江泽民) (born August 17, 1926)

--Jiang 05:13, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Is not having parenthesis around the Chinese names at all a good idea? --Menchi 05:22, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

They are certainly not necessary, as the characters are easily distinugishable from the English. --Jiang

However, they are necessary to distinguish the words "Traditional Chinese" and "Simplified Chinese" from the rest of the text. --Jiang
I think the parenthesis is necessary since they are not at all English. I would prefer:
Jiāng Zémín (TrC: 江澤民; SimC: 江泽民, born August 17, 1926) --Yacht 06:32, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Heirarchy of Issues

OK, this seems to have become a fairly broad discussion. Here are the main points/suggestions raised so far and some comments. Perhaps we could continue dialogue in this heirarchical listing of issues so that it maintains readability and clarity? --Pratyeka 01:03, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Abbreviation

Abbreviation of romanization names. There is no consensus on this yet, with seemingly a few in the 'dont abbreviate' camp, and a few opting in but differing on precise abbreviation.

  • short, lowercase (py or pinyin, wg). If not, some capitalisation is OK by me, but I am definitely for abbreviation. --prat
    • I don't see how abbraviating accomplishes anything. --Jiang
      • As per the above discussion, it's good for readability. Basically I am viewing the information in the brackets as standard reference material to be presented in a clear and concise form. I believe the requirements for presentation of oft-repeated reference material differ significantly from that of a paragraph of regular English text. --prat
    • First time readers of Chinese-related subjects unfamiliar with the language will not think so. It takes less time for us to type [[pinyin]] than [[pinyin|py]]. --Jiang
      • Well we could debate 'till the cows come home on this one, so I'm not going to comment further - it's subjective. I would support a full use of pinyin as an exception to the abbreviation rule because it's short and lowercase anyway, and it's the most common romanisation system. --prat
    • Actually, we use "pinyin" as short form for "Hanyu Pinyin". There are other types of pinyin... --Jiang

Brackets

Should Chinese be included in brackets?

  • yes. it's an english 'pedia. once multiple chinese forms enter the equation, it seems critical to me to seperate them. furthermore, proposed 'romanized form, chinese-simp, chinese-trad, rest of sentence' actually breaks english grammatical norms. --prat
    • The argument against is so that we don't have parenthesis closing and opening after each other for people (for yrs of birth and death) and organizations (for acronyms). The "chinese simp" etc. can be linked in the way Menchi proposed on the naming conventions page, and as is done for all Korea-related articles.--Jiang

Bracket markers

Colons

Some people have been using ':' after romanization or character inidicators (eg: Pinyin: Guǎngzhōu). This is definitely a stylistic issue.

  • no colons. they add nothing semantically. --prat
    • It separate the categorization from the actual romanized text or chinese characters themselves. They do add something. --Jiang
      • Valid argument, however I feel that the visual distinction already effected by the combination of the link: (eg: wg W'ade Gi'les), potential abbreviation (as per example), and reference context obviously implied by the brackets in the opening sentence are together more than enough to remove any ambiguity. --prat

Semicolons vs. Commas

The use of semicolons and commas to distinguish various elements within the after-title bracket is not currently standardised. A wide variety of systems (or simply 'what people felt like at the time') is the current norm.

  • ';' between character, romanization and other information blocks. comma used elsewhere. eg: (trad 江澤民, simp 江泽民; pinyin Jiāng Zémín, also Jianggus Zee Minnius, Big J; born August 17, 1926) --prat

Inclusion of Tongyong

Unsure if there is any consensus here so thought I'd add a section for it.

  • yes, but only on relevant (ie: taiwan-related) articles. --prat
    • Tongyong is controversial in Taiwan, and accepted by mainly people loyal to the current administration. I would say include at will. --Jiang

Inclusion of Zhuyin

  • yes, if you happen to know zhuyin can be bothered typing it out i don't see why the entire population of taiwan's preferred phonetic system should not be included. --prat
    • It's preferred only for teaching elementary school kids how to pronounce certain characters. No one uses it. We are only concerned about the preferred romanization system. Besides, WP is the only place I've seen it writted horizontally. It looks like Japanese to me! --Jiang
      • Actually I feel you are incorrect here. A large proportion of the adult Taiwanese population uses zhuyin regularly for inputting Chinese characters in to computers or mobile phones (horizontal), as well as when they look up characters in dictionaries, etc. It's regularly used. However I agree with you that it's a bit wacky to include, as any adult Taiwanese are unlikely to need to read the Zhuyin equivalent of a given character. Still, for historical articles, sometimes uncommon characters may be used and so I do not see a problem with supporting the inclusion of zhuyin at wikipedians' individual discretion. --prat
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