Talk:Fenghua, Ningbo

Wrong-voice 'sic'

@Geographyinitiative:: can you explain this edit? You have added "sic", which only makes sense when quoting, to point out an obvious error or confusion in the material quoted. Here we have Wikipedia voice saying that the former name was 松奧市, but you have included in the template "expected 松嶴市". Who expects? And if this is the correct form that was actually used, what is the erroneous one for? Imaginatorium (talk) 17:37, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

@Imaginatorium: Yeah, you have found something that I am not 100% sure how to handle. Here's what's going on. First of all, according to Xiandai Hanyu Cidian, the character 嶴 is a variant form for the character 岙, which is already a rarely used character (never seen it outside of this situation; this location is used in the Xiandai Hanyu Guifan Cidian as a example of the usage of the character 岙). When I see the name written as 'Sung-ao-shih 松奧市' in this map ([1], in the 3/7, 3/27 box near the number 12), I suspect that this is almost certainly a mistake for 松嶴市. However, I am not familiar enough with the history of the area to make a certain judgement about whether or not 松奧市 was an actual historical / alternate form for 松岙市. On the one hand, I don't want to rule out that 松奧市 could be a commonly-used alternate form for the name of this location- in the Matsu Islands, 沃 is a variant for 澳 that eventually became used in their official location names (see Beigan, Lienchiang for an example with Houwo village). But on the other hand, I want to give future editors and readers a clue that 松奧市 isn't what I expected as traditional/variant form for 松岙市 and provide them with my likely alternate form 松嶴市. If you think there's a better way to make this edit, feel free to make it. Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:04, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

What if 松奧 was a commonly used form at some point, or among foreigners? What if some of the records about the area use this form? I want the readers to be able to find this location by this name if they search for it. If I have specific non-theoretical based evidence that 松嶴 has been used for this location, then I would add this form to the page directly. If I find a preponderance of the evidence showing 松奧 is a fluke seen only on this map, then I would remove it from this page. Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:30, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

The vast majority of my work on Wikipedia is in doing foundational work for Chinese language related geography topics that are seriously neglected- usually stubs etc. If you have any tips or suggestions, let me know. I think one of the critical reasons that these articles are weak is that Wikipedia has approaching zero respect for historically-used transcriptions from Mandarin etc. This leads to the inability of people who read Chinese-related English language works from the 18th/19th/20th century to search for and successfully find locations they read about. I am slogging through this work to attempt to make it possible for Wikipedia to actually cover Chinese-related geography. Geographyinitiative (talk) 23:25, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

@Imaginatorium: I decided to put the material we are talking about into hidden form so that someone who understands the issue can solve the problem later but at the same time I'm not accidentally adding dubious material for the readers. Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:48, 2 October 2019 (UTC) (modified)

Well, I think this is exactly what the talk page is for. If you hide it in a comment, essentially no-one will see it. And do you see why "sic" is just strange? Anyway, I think you know more about Chinese than I do, and there is plenty to work on. "Song'ao/Song Ao[7] (Sung-ao-shih; 松岙镇[8])" is not encylopedic style. Slash more or less means "ongoing argument"; and if you are giving the Wade-giles in addition to Pinyin, then it should be labelled as such. That is what the Lang-zh template is for. Why are there two variant syllable separators? Neither is surely part of Pinyin? Imaginatorium (talk) 09:19, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I just now saw your reply. There are certain rules for how words are supposed to be written with pinyin in English, but sometimes people choose alternative methods. I'm trying to give the 'Song Ao' version a little breathing room; Song Ao may be non-standard or may conform to a local habit of writing while 'Song'ao' is more in conformity to the way people want us to understand pinyin names. If the people there write it as Song Ao, it would be a mistake to ignore their stylistic choice- they don't want any stinking apostrophes. It would also be a mistake to ignore the more formally "correct" form 'Song'ao'. Geographyinitiative (talk) 05:32, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Yincheng (鄞城)

Was it formerly called Yincheng (鄞城)? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 02:48, 21 June 2023 (UTC)