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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

Section on exceptions

How can we give a full and understandable account of the use of classifiers if we don't give at least a bit of detail (which the one sentence to which the section is claimed to have been "condensed" certainly fails to do) about the situations in which they are NOT used (but in which, based on the account given, anyone who didn't know the topic would expect them to be used)? It would be like having an article on English articles that stated that every noun is preceded by an article (with a vague indication that some exceptions exist), without addressing any of those exceptions. I know all this is obvious to some of you, but to others it is not, and it needs explaining. You can do a much fuller job of the explanation than I can, but if you don't have time at the moment, then at least allow what information I can provide to remain available (or correct any errors if you think there are any). It doesn't need to be a separate section (though I think ultimately it should be), but the basic information about the "ten yuan" type of phrase, and about the "one country two systems" type (what's going on there?), with examples, needs to follow on fairly soon after the initial exposition of usage (which is excellent). W. P. Uzer (talk) 06:47, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a usage guide or an aggregator of personal anecdotes about usage. As I have already stated here, off the top of my head I don't know of sources that discuss classifier-dropping in colloquial speech (the kind like “这人很X”), so there's not much that I can say about it other than that it happens.
Regarding the 十元 example, I have already explained that this is incorrect (at least under the analyses that I am aware of). 元 in this context is not a noun, it is a classifier, so this is simply not an example of a noun phrase lacking a classifier. For comparison, think of an example like “你买苹果了吗？” “嗯，我买了五个”. "五个" in that example is certainly not an example of a noun phrase missing a classifier; it's a full DP where the noun (not the classifier!) has been elided. The same goes for the 十元 example. Maybe there are other approaches which don't agree here, and which treat 元 in 十元 as a noun rather than a classifier, but I have never seen them. So this example is not really relevant.
Beyond that, what is there left to say? I have already added a sentence to the article saying that classifiers are sometimes not used in solidified idioms and in colloquial speech. These things are pretty straightforward and are nearly self-evident anyway. (English idioms don't always follow modern grammar either; this is just basic knowledge about how idioms work. An article about English grammar doesn't need a lengthy exposition about the idiom "long time no see"; the fact that it's an idiom and doesn't follow the usual rules is pretty much all that needs to be said, if anything.) So I really don't know what more you want added. rʨanaɢ (talk) 10:28, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
Well, to start with, an explanation of what's going on with 十元. In the version that you removed, it was clearly stated that 元 can be analyzed as a classifier rather than as a noun. But someone reading the article as you've written it WON'T KNOW THAT. They would think that "ten yuan" and other such phrases consist of a numeral plus a noun, and therefore that a classifier ought to be inserted between them. How the sources analyze them is not especially relevant; the relevant thing is that what you've just written is going to imply to any non-Chinese-speaking reader that a whole class of phrases ought to be formed grammatically in a way that they are not. One way or another, this needs explanation. As far as I can tell, the explanation that you removed (claiming it to be "incorrect") is exactly the same as the explanation you've now given above! Perhaps (almost certainly) you can write the explanation better and more fully than I can. But by yet again removing it completely, you restore the article to its previous misleading state. It's incomprehensible to me why you should want to deprive learners of this bit of information, which concerns a very basic type of phrase. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:15, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
The way you had it written, it seems you were suggesting this as an example of a Number+Noun phrase that doesn't have a classifier, and this is just not true if 元 is not a noun. So 十元 is not "with no classifier", as your addition to the article claimed.
I daresay if a reader doesn't speak Chinese (like the readers you are concerned about), she is not going to magically think up this apparent counterexample in the first place, so this addition seems more like an article-space equivalent of WP:BEANS territory.
Anyway, a discussion of every Number+Classifier phrase ever used is beyond the scope of this article. I don't really see what sets 十元 apart from the example I gave above, or indeed any other example of a DP with an elided noun. I just don't see what's encyclopedic about these. (They're not even unique to Chinese. We do the same thing in English: ["Did you buy apples?" "I bought five."]; "ten dollars" instead of "ten dollars' worth of money".) rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:41, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
Yes, and in English, when we say "ten dollars", we think "dollars" is a NOUN! So someone learning Chinese will think that "yuan" is a noun, similarly! And such a learner will of course not think up the counterexample - they will either be given such a counterexample by their teacher or textbook and wonder why there's no classifier, or they will deduce from the general explanation that they should translate "ten yuan" by saying shi ge yuan or something like that. What we need to explain and illustrate is, to put it another way, that there is a group of words that you would almost certainly think are nouns, but are in fact classifiers. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:54, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
Why would you think "dollar" in "ten dollars" is a noun? Someone saying "I have ten dollars" is not saying they have ten separate things (like they would be if they said they had ten cats), they are saying an amount of one thing (money) that they have. Just like if someone, asked how much water they had, said "ten gallons". "Gallon" is not a noun, either. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:01, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
No, I don't think people think in that way about nouns in English. I'm going to go to the language help desk to find out for sure, but I reckon at least 90% of linguists and 90% of educated people would say that "dollar" and "gallon" are nouns in such phrases. W. P. Uzer (talk) 15:07, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Also, this is something I found quite quickly on Google Books. This author certainly refers to "quasi-measures" as being "nouns", and considers the topic deserving of exposition even in a fairly elementary textbook. W. P. Uzer (talk) 15:39, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

But Wikipedia is not a textbook. And as a general rule, I usually don't consider introductory textbooks to be good sources except for as examples of what's in introductory textbooks. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:34, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
Yes, and it's in that spirit that I mention it here - the point is (and I really think this was obvious enough from the start) is that people (I mean likely readers of English Wikipedia, and of this article in particular) are going to expect the class "nouns" to include the words for such concepts as dollars and hours and gallons and meters and so on. That's because everybody knows those words to be nouns in English (even if in your personal opinion they shouldn't be so categorized). The fact that textbook authors are happy to refer to even the equivalent Chinese words as nouns is just more evidence of the same fact. We don't have to follow the textbook by saying that they "are" nouns in Chinese, but we should mention specifically that words of this type (you will know better than I exactly what words are of "this type") behave in Chinese like measure words rather than like ordinary nouns (in particular, they don't require an additional classifier when being counted). If we don't say that, then readers, however linguistically sophisticated or not, will have no possible way of knowing that this is the case, based on the account given at present. This might also be cross-referenced in some way with the "measurement units" section of List of Chinese classifiers, which currently lacks any explanation. W. P. Uzer (talk) 07:36, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
Well, no classifier ever requires an additional classifier, so I don't see the point of singling out these ones. rʨanaɢ (talk) 08:55, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
As I'm constantly explaining, "these ones" need singling out because they appear (to the uninitiated, i.e. the people we are writing for) to be nouns; people won't know that they behave as classifiers rather than nouns unless we tell them. W. P. Uzer (talk) 13:15, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

For what it's worth, Li & Thompson's Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar, p.105ff., after presenting prototypical classifyer NPs (such as 三个人 or 几件衣服) go on to discuss a class of "measure words" that act both as nouns and as classifiers, in these words:

"If the noun itself denotes a measure, it does not take a classifier [...]"
[citing examples such as "三天", "八块"]
"In fact, not only does a measure word generally not take a classifier, but any measure word can be a classifier [...]"
[citing examples such as "十磅" vs. "十磅肉"]
"[...] Measure words can also indicate aggregates or containers [...]"

Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:10, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

On a second look, I notice that these issues are already treated in the section on "count-classifiers and mass-classifiers" ("Like other classifiers, these can also stand without a noun [...]"), so I'm not sure why we would also add a treatment in the "usage" section the way W. P. Uzer proposed. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:12, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
Because it's most relevant to usage - people wondering how to form basic noun/classifier phrases are unlikely to scan down to the middle of a long section on linguistic terminology to find out about what for them would look to be exceptions (and pretty basic ones) from the rules that have been stated. Also the part about "measurement units" makes no mention of currency units and certain other words that you wouldn't really expect to be in that category but are. In fact I think there ought to be a section giving a basic overview of types of classfier before (or at the start of) the usage section, so that when people reach the syntactic description they already basically know what kind of words are counted as "nouns" and what kind are counted as "classifiers" for the purposes of that description. W. P. Uzer (talk) 06:43, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
I'm no linguist, just chiming in from the ref desk. Anyway, I would side with W.P. Uzer here. My belief is that, to anyone who hasn't had at least a few upper-level undergrad linguistics courses, "dollar" is definitely and simply a noun in Enlgish. I take the point that WP is not a textbook, but we should still strive to make our information clear, and take a general audience into account. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:23, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I think the section that Future Perfect mentioned solves this issue. Thanks for catching that! rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:07, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

As I pointed out, though, it doesn't really. Firstly it doesn't give a full description of the category or its consequences, and secondly it won't be noticed by people reading the bit about usage - as is evidenced by the fact that it wasn't noticed by us all this time. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:50, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Another thing I've seen stated in a couple of books is that while classifiers may be "compulsory" after numerals, they are merely optional after demonstratives. Does this accord with your practical experience? W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:57, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

That's the example I've been giving about colloquial usage (这人很过分). If you've found it mentioned in a source that would be useful, as right now it's "citation needed" in the article. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:45, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
In Chaofen Sun's "Chinese: A Linguistic Introduction" (which I've also been citing lately in the Chinese grammar article, incidentally), p. 159-160, it states that one can say na pi ma or simply na ma for "that horse" (but not na yi ma, since the numeral, unlike the demonstrative, requires the classifier). It is also noted that the noun phrase can begin with the classifier, as in mai pi ma for "buy a horse". Doesn't say anything about any of these being exclusively colloquial - do you feel some of them are? Or do you think even yi ma without the classifier might be found colloquially? W. P. Uzer (talk) 17:36, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
Verb + Classifier + Noun (e.g. 买匹马，洗个脸) is pretty common, it conveys some indefiniteness (as opposed to e.g. 买一匹马, which sounds more like it's describing a specific event of buying a specific horse) while still talking about an event rather than a general activity (i.e., it's different from 买马, which in many contexts would sound more like horse-buying in general). But this is all getting into rather specific usage trivia that I think is beyond the scope of encyclopedia article, and I don't know what can be said in the article that wouldn't be undue weight. (see also WP:NOT#DICT).
This is starting to get to the point where my intuitions (as a non-native speaker) are not very meaningful anymore, but most examples of these phrases without a classifier that I have heard are with 人. "那马" sounds more marked to me than "这人...". 一马 is totally unacceptable to me, even colloquially; the only place where I've seen something like that is 一人, which is not actually a noun phrase, it's an adverb meaning "alone" (short for 一个人). rʨanaɢ (talk) 20:39, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
I don't think this is trivial at all - this is exactly the sort of thing that people want to know (whether language learners or interested linguistic theoreticians), and is unlikely to be found in a normal dictionary. We should certainly mention these various possible constructions in the article, particularly the one where the classifier is the sole modifier of the noun, since the article at the moment gives no indication that such a thing is possible. In fact, it's starting to look less and less reasonable to claim that they are "bound morphemes" - I intend to remove that sentence from the introduction, since it's misleading both as it is now and as it was originally. W. P. Uzer (talk) 07:18, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
Every language has thousands of different constructions which might have some connotations or other. It is far beyond the scope of an encyclopedia to cover the connotations and preconditions of usage for every possible permutation of words that we can think of. A mere list of every classifier construction you can think of would not be an encyclopedic treatment of the topic; it would be a usage guide or list. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:00, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
I'm not talking about thousands, just a few. If you include some usages and not others, you mislead people into thinking that these are the only typical usages. Also, I now see you've once again (this is starting to look like an obsession) removed the information about units from the usage section. Why??? Who are you trying to help or deceive by preventing readers from finding out that they don't need a classifier when they say 10 yuan and such like - which are very basic phrases? W. P. Uzer (talk) 13:10, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
As I have explained several times, they do need a classifier, 元 is a classifier. I still do not see what point this example is supposed to illustrate.
Talking about "deceiving" people and "denying" information is really not constructive. Unless you really think I'm part of some evil conspiracy to take over the world by depriving poor students of the information they need, language like "who are you trying to help or deceive by preventing readers..." smacks of conspiracy theory and is not helpful. There is no cabal. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:21, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
But we've been through this over and over, you must SURELY understand the point by now. Once again: Anyone reading the section on usage (who doesn't know Chinese) is going to conclude from it that phrases like "ten yuan" (which are basic everyday phrases, far more so than phrases like "these five head of cattle" which are listed in that section already) are to be formed with an (additional - I wrote additional in the text that you removed) classifier before the "yuan". They are not. I simply want to let people know this extra important fact, and tell them where to find further information about it. What is your possible objection? We've found sources that say that these classifiers are also nouns, which was your previous demand, and shown that your claim that people wouldn't think of these things as nouns to be nonsense, I've answered the objections of you and FuturePerfect that the material is covered already - what further objection do you have?? W. P. Uzer (talk) 13:32, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

sources

  • Tang, C.-C. J. (2007). Modifier licensing and Chinese DP: A feature analysis. Language and Linguistics, 8(4), 967-1024.

This article might have some discussion of demonstrative + noun phrases without classifiers (e.g. 这人). I haven't gotten access to it yet.

This book mentions idiomatic expressions where classifiers aren't used, so could be a source for that statement. I've forgotten the page number but can try to find it again.

I haven't had time yet to look at the other discussion issues above. rʨanaɢ (talk) 09:38, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Underlining

As has already been noted by me and at least one other person, underlining Chinese characters in the way that is done in this article is potentially confusing to people who don't know the characters well (the underlining may appear to be part of the character, possibly depending on browser). It was rather untruthfully stated above that this question has been "discussed at length" before (the links given don't lead to any substantial discussion of the matter). Why is it so important to you (Rjanag) to retain this underlining in spite of the issues it causes? Why not move the underlining (if we have to have it at all) to the pinyin? W. P. Uzer (talk) 19:30, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Any response to this suggestion? W. P. Uzer (talk) 12:44, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
Quote: "underlining Chinese characters in the way that is done in this article is potentially confusing to people who don't know the characters well" - no it doesn't. Not once have people expressed such a problem. Anticipating that there might be a problem doesn't mean that one exists. The article makes it quite clear that the underlining has a purpose; if the reader is capable of reading, they would know that; if the reader is incapable of reading (e.g. diagnosed to be medically illiterate), they wouldn't be on Wikipedia. --benlisquareT•C•E 12:05, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
Not once, but twice have people expressed such a problem (in the previous discussion, and now me here). Not everyone who isn't "medically illiterate" (at least, on the English Wikipedia) can read Chinese fluently. If you recognize the characters, you probably don't need them underlined anyway, because you know which ones are the classifiers. But if you don't know about classifiers, and hence are reading this article to find out about them, it's quite likely that your knowledge of Chinese script will not be good enough to realize that 个 is 个 underlined and not a character that looks like 个. (That may not be so obvious on your browser as it is on mine.) W. P. Uzer (talk) 12:16, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
Like I said, if a reader is mentally incapable of putting two and two together, and realise that there is a specific purpose behind the underlining, they wouldn't be looking up classifiers on Wikipedia. A reader would quite literally have to be of simple mind to not notice obvious patterns. This is a non-issue; nobody is going to mistaken the underlining as a part of the Chinese character. It isn't difficult for a five year old child to notice that there are matching colours, shapes and squiggles used throughout parts of the page, why does it make it any more different for an intellectually-capable adult who is interested in the topic, and hence willing to go out of their way to do a bit of research on it? This article uses colours for Chinese characters as well; are you going to argue that some readers would be confused and think that the green colour is a part of 这, and the purple colour is a part of 猫 as well? Because this is essentially what I'm gathering from your reasoning; that you'd expect readers to be incapable of putting two and two together like intellectual adults should. The article even uses a huge picture of File:Unicode4E2A.svg, just in case readers do get lost. Surely these readers don't need to be spoon-fed any more apple puree from the aeroplane spoon?
I get the feeling that you're going through a "row row fight da power" mood right now, since you're in disagreement with someone, and feel as if you don't need to step back. Think, for one second - if the problem really is as bad as you claim, then why wasn't it made a significant, pressing issue during the numerous promotion discussions on this article? Why have the large number of editors involved come up with a consensus to promote this article to whatever status hoops it has jumped through? If the underlining really was an issue like you claim it to be, this article would have never made it past those hoops and hurdles; there is strict criteria when it comes to things such as FA, including accessibility and all that, and this article would have immediately failed first hand. This article has had the support of those who find it a quality article; you're essentially jumping in out of nowhere a few years down the track, and saying "NOPE, can't have none of this!" despite all of that. In other words, you're all of a sudden telling everyone how to run the joint, and calling all the shots, like a new cowboy entering the saloon of a new town. --benlisquareT•C•E 13:18, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
It's a relatively minor issue, it was raised before, it wasn't really settled, it obviously wasn't big enough to stop the article being promoted (as we've seen, there were a number of quite serious errors and omissions in the article that didn't stop it getting promoted either). Two people have experienced this problem (at least momentarily), we are not five-year-olds or mentally deficient as you seem to think, we just noticed something that you fluent Chinese readers didn't and wouldn't. And we are more like the people that the article is supposed to serve. Of course we worked out what was going on, as most people probably would, but what's the point of deliberately adopting a method that we know can cause problems, when there are other perfectly good methods that don't? What, to go back to my original suggestion, is the disadvantage of putting the underlining under the pinyin instead of the hanzi? And why the belligerence and insults towards someone who is only trying to make the article better? W. P. Uzer (talk) 13:39, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
What's a better method, that doesn't decrease the quality of information? Removing some form of marker is out of the question, since these markers (in our current case, the underlines) identify the classifier, and this is something important when explaining them. Something has to identify which character (not pinyin, character) is the classifier. Marking the reading only is a reduction of information quality, as it puts emphasis on the reading linked to the classifier, and not the classifier. All other alternatives (bold, italic, background colours, etc) are essentially a worse choice. I am personally happy with the underlining because I think it does the job very well, and not because I have a preconceived bias towards anything. --benlisquareT•C•E 13:45, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
But you don't see it through the typical reader's eyes. The information quality is not good at present, because (well I've explained why). It doesn't affect you, because you read Chinese very well, but the article isn't for people like you (at least, that particular underlining isn't). You see the problem I hope - you're trying to say "hey, 个 is the classifier", but the message you're actually likely to convey is "there's some character in this that looks like 个". (The fact that there's a big picture of the 个 character is surely an argument against the need to additionally mark that character, but of course the issue applies to other classifiers besides 个.) Bolding or coloring would be better, I think (I don't think an English reader would misinterpret the intention of that so easily, and coloring is already used successfully in the Usage section). But the purpose would really be served by putting the marking (underlining say) on the pinyin. That way the reader will see more clearly where the classifier goes in relation to the other elements of the phrase, which is the important point. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:00, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
That would require the assumption that the reader is able to make the link between the Chinese text and the pinyin reading associated with it. By relying on such an assumption, we're decreasing the information density provided. --benlisquareT•C•E 14:09, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
I think anyone who can't make that link is more likely to be scanning the pinyin than the hanzi. Perhaps you think the underlining should be on both the hanzi and the pinyin (that would be a slight improvement in my opinion, though the problem remains). At the moment the underlining seems to be missing from the pinyin in most cases. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:19, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

To clarify on alternatives (because outright removal of markers is a bad compromise that I'd strongly recommend against), what other choices do we have? What choices give a better outcome than underlining? Take colour usage for example:

這是一個例子，用來表達一些東西。

Sure, now the "underline might look like part of the character" problem has been alleviated, but now it opens a new can of worms: being too darn flashy and annoying. We are discouraged from having text being too much of an eyesore in general on Wikipedia. Italic text for 中文汉字 should never be used just out of aesthetic horribleness (I think the MOS even discourages/prevents using italics for Chinese characters), and bold text like in 中文汉字 likewise has its problems. --benlisquareT•C•E 14:05, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

To me the coloring is better. It's a technique that is already used in a prominent section of the article, to good effect. Perhaps with foreground rather than background coloring. OK, it doesn't "look better", but it doesn't look much worse, and it avoids the original issue raised, which is more than simply an esthetic one. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:12, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
I'll leave that up to Rjanag, and any other editors who wish to say something. I think that it's too flashy for an article (borderline Template:Overcolored material). --benlisquareT•C•E 14:19, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
I've been wondering if it's technically possible to have colored underlining, without coloring the characters themselves. Anyone know? (I also asked at WP:Village pump (technical).) W. P. Uzer (talk) 06:48, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
Specific link to Village Pump thread: WP:VPT#Colored_underlining.    DKqwerty    07:42, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, I got a very rapid response there, and it turns out it is possible. The examples provided were foo and bar. In our examples it would look something like:

  • 一个人 (yí ge rén, one-CL person), or
  • 一个人 (yíge rén, one-CL person).

(Of course, different colors would be possible.) What do we think about those? To me the second version (with single underlining) is still not clear (the color isn't visible enough), but the version with solid underlining is ideal. It may also be possible to do it with double underlining. (I assume from the template name "du" that double underlining is currently the intended behavior, though what you actually get seems to depend on your browser configuration.) W. P. Uzer (talk) 07:43, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

The reason it's called {{du}} is because its default behavior is to make two underlines. But when it's wrapped in a {{lang|zh}} template, then it shows up as a thick underline (at least on every browser I had tried it with at the time we implemented this, although apparently with your current version of IE it's not doing that). rʨanaɢ (talk) 10:42, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
? If I understand that right, it implies to me that in all your browsers, you're seeing different versions of the underlining in the Chinese text (which is wrapped in template zh) and in the pinyin and glosses (which is not). That surely isn't a good thing, as it loses the visible connection that I thought was the whole point of the underlining in the first place. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:36, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
Yes, they are appearing differently. That's the whole reason the pinyin wasn't underlined (until you started adding those). rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:42, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
So I no longer see what on earth is the point of the underlining, if it actually fails to make the visual link successfully between the "个" and the "CL". W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:57, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
This looks alright to me. I'd be happy to support this. As for which exact colour(s) to pick, we can decide on it later. --benlisquareT•C•E 08:06, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I haven't had time to read all of this yet. But a quick comment: using different colors is probably not a good solution, because of WP:ACCESS issues. I'm already not 100% comfortable with the use of different colors in the big table. rʨanaɢ (talk) 10:31, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't see any relevance of accessibility issues here. Presumably someone who doesn't see the colors will still see the underlining; in other words, it won't be any worse for such people than it is now. But for the rest, probably the majority, it will be better, in that it would be likely to avoid the potential confusion referred to above (and related confusion that came up at the village pump thread). WP:ACCESS says basically that colors should not be the only way of conveying information, not that colors should not be used per se. W. P. Uzer (talk) 14:30, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

So how does this look (I've created a very basic Template:Csu to provide the colored solid underlining):

  • 一个人 (yí ge rén, one-CL person

This has the Chinese characters encased in the lang|zh template as mentioned above. Is everyone seeing consistent and visually tolerable underlining on their browsers? W. P. Uzer (talk) 06:55, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

It looks fine to me, but if you're going to start replacing stuff you need to make sure you do it consistently, across all the examples through the entire article. Consistency is something that was lacking in your earlier revisions, where you made wholesale changes to one or two sections and left the rest of the article inconsistent. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:09, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
it doesn't work with my screen reader. Frietjes (talk) 21:38, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Does the current formatting work with your screen reader? What are the differences in its reactions? W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:17, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I've just been replacing the old "du" with "csu", and in the process making the presentation of the examples a bit more consistent than they were. How does it look? Any screen reader problems that weren't there before? I suggest that further formatting tweaks be made by editing the Template:Csu. For example, it may be possible to change the color of the underline or even go back to black, if the color is found to be too glaring (it jars a bit at first, I admit, but I think it's something our eyes would soon get used to). W. P. Uzer (talk) 09:32, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Add Traditional Support?

Just wondering if it's possible\desireable to add support for traditional characters. Came to this page to look up a measure word and discovered it's all simplified so I can't actually read the characters - have to rely on the pinyin. Well I can get the 個 but that's about it. Somewhat frustrating! 114.35.25.165 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:17, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, that's simply not true. Throughout the page, in every case where the simplified and traditional characters are different, both are given (and displayed in different font wrappers--it's all actually very cumbersome). See, for example, 张 and 条 in the second paragraph: each is followed by a traditional character. I don't know what article you were looking at. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:09, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
I wish that were true, unfortunately it's not so. The first paragraph lists 一個人 but uses simplified. Does clarify further down I'll concede. The first table lists various forms of 這三隻... but you need to know 這 and 隻. The next table uses what I think is 頭 but I'm not sure - I'm relying on pinyin\English to guess. Shortly after there's 買匹馬. Skipping way down toward the bottom the link for 馬氏文通 is given as 马氏文通. Anyone not familiar with 簡體 is going to have trouble :-( 114.35.25.165 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:01, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
You're talking about examples of whole phrases. Where a specific classifier is cited, both forms are given (e.g., the second paragraph has "张 (張) zhāng" and "条 (條) tiáo"). This is already a lot; changing every example phrase such that it's written in both scripts would break up the prose and be distracting. Most articles choose one writing system and stick through it (except for e.g. names, like you'll see at the beginnings of many articles). Likewise, most articles in English stick to American or British spellings, they don't give both spellings where they're not relevant. Likewise, most academic writing on Chinese linguistics sticks to one writing system for its examples, only giving both writings when the difference between them is relevant. I feel like giving both traditional and simplified character renditions of single classifiers (like the examples I gave above) is already a concession, not something that was necessary.
Also, I'm not sure why you came to this page to "look up a measure word". This is not a dictionary entry; if you want information on a specific classifier, you could look in a dictionary or a classifier list. rʨanaɢ (talk) 09:17, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Simplified/traditional characters, and Cantonese

This article naturally gives many examples of usage. Giving both simplified and traditional forms in each of these makes them very cluttered and difficult to follow. The previous compromise – giving both forms for each classifier when introduced, but examples in simplified form only – is much more workable.

There is also no reason to single out Cantonese for alternative forms of pronounciations. Kanguole 10:33, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

History

Thanks JorisvS for your improvements. Regarding this point: that's a good question. It's discussed more down in the History section, but I think someone would have to look back into Wang (1994), which is cited there, to get to the bottom of it. Unfortunately I'm not much of an expert in Chinese historical linguistics, so my understanding of these diachronic aspects is a little foggy. My understanding is that Old and Middle Chinese are genetically related to most or all of the varieties that exist today, and thus that there's not a need to distinguish between e.g. old "Mandarin", old "Cantonese", old "Min", etc. But that may be incorrect. (And it's certainly not plausible to imagine that 12th century China only had one Chinese language, as much as some Chinese historians like to believe this fantasy of a wonderful unified history... although, it's certainly possible that there was only one written variety that we have any remaining record of.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 12:58, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Regarding the date that classifiers became mandatory, you cite Wang Lianqing for the 11th century, but Norman (1988), p117 says Wang Li (1957) argues they were mandatory in the vernacular in Nanbeichao. There must be considerable uncertainty, as we have the patchiest of records of vernacular speech before the 12th century. Kanguole 13:22, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
There must already have been at least most of the great variation that exists today (otherwise there could not have been so much of it). Given that sub-subgroups of the main groups are sometimes mutually unintelligible, it is hard to imagine that the main groups (or at least most of them) did not exist at the time of Middle Chinese). Min certainly split off before Middle Chinese. I can't tell much more, though. --JorisvS (talk) 13:25, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

@Rjanag, Kanguole, and JorisvS: was this issue resolved? The source (Wang Lianqing, 1994) simply talks about "Chinese", which to me indicates that making a distinction here is not necessary. If you want to get to the bottom of this, you can check his source (Wang 1958, in Chinese, which I neither have access to nor can read). – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 01:12, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

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