Talk:Yue Chinese/Archive 8

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Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Naming again

"Canton dialect" has been moved to Cantonese. During the discussion, many users commented that this article should be move too, as having two articles named "Cantonese" and "Cantonese (Yue)" sounds a bit redundant. That discussion should now move here. One obvious and hopefully not too controversial solution would be the runner-up in the recent straw poll, "Yue (Cantonese)". kwami (talk) 21:07, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I would prefer Yue Chinese. I think I complained about that name when it first appeared, but it seems the best option now. I guess it comes down to these two names — or no change. JohnBlackburne (talk) 21:38, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, "Yue Chinese" is also my preference, but I wasn't going to bring it up if no-one else did. kwami (talk) 02:21, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest merging that article with this one to form a main article on the topic named Cantonese, then spin out a subarticle with all the detail about dialects and taxonomy that is clearly a subarticle of this one, rather than the main article. This will give a more normal article structure similar to French language and subarticles, that is not dominated by taxonomic linguistics concerns to the annoyance of others.. --JWB (talk) 03:10, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Again the proposal to delete an article (and its page history) and then recreate it. I still don't get it. kwami (talk) 03:44, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why it's so difficult to understand. I support JWB's suggestion. I will try to explain this once more. Cantonese is a topical area. Readers will be mainly interested to find out a general summary of the "Cantonese language" - of which the most widely known form is the HK/Guangzhou dialect. This does not limit the scope of a Cantonese article to just that dialect; if this limitation is placed, it relegates every other form of Cantonese to become "Yue" simply for the sake of linguistic clarity, even those that are only slightly divergent from the Guangzhou dialect, such as those spoken in Guangzhou's suburban counties. Interested parties are interested in the Cantonese language - not just its taxonomic classifications. Not everyone is an enthused linguist concerned with the formal details of which dialect is under which topolect is under which branch; articles on WP targets general audiences, not just linguistic specialists. Thus creating a "general" "Cantonese" article, with a subset of articles on phonology, dialects, attempts at standardization, slang etc., is the common sense solution and conforms with the de facto standard in every other language article. Creating a new "Yue dialects" article also means that editors will no longer come to this talk page and discuss general Cantonese topics, which will all be merged into "Cantonese". That said, we do not need to delete this article. We merely redirect it to the "Cantonese" article after moving some of its contents, thus preserving the page history. Colipon+(Talk) 14:34, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

If I remember rightly, I suggested that the article on Cantonese should consist of several "concentric" levels: Guangzhouhua (Canton dialect and Canton/HK/Macau), Baakwa, and finally Yue dialects loosely regarded as "Cantonese". That is the article structure similar to French that JWB keeps suggesting, namely narrower and broader concepts of Cantonese within the bounds of one article. User Colipon agreed to that suggestion. So why are these two users again pushing for a merger of Yue dialects back into the Cantonese article, so that Yue dialects = Cantonese language? It was this insistence on pushing Cantonese beyond the limits of its sociolinguistic envelope that led to the creation of "Standard Cantonese" in the first place back in 2004.

My original proposal, which was rather rough and might need refining, was:

Rather than work on Chinese names, could we just work on English and define "Cantonese" as follows:

The prestige dialect of the city of Canton -- the traditional prestige variety (and perhaps surrounding areas, although not necessarily with "standard accent") (广州话, 广府话)
This dialect is also spoken in HK/Macau, with admixture of English vocabulary. HK variant is also an influential Cantonese-speaking centre. (The language is known in those places as 广东话)
Also spoken as a lingua franca in Guangdong/Guangxi province (again not necessarily with standard accent) -- in this role known as 白话
Many other dialects from the Yue group diverge considerably from the standard, but are often also loosely referred to as "Cantonese"

We thus encompass the topolect of Canton, the prestige variant, the lingua franca, and the more loosely associated rural dialects within the article without violence to the spirit of the article.

(The above suggestion copied the talk page for Cantonese).

Note to user Colipon: I tried to access your talk page but the download was interrupted. Maybe you have content that triggers blocking by the Chinese government.

The problem is that Yue dialects (the abstand language) is a linguists' concept. There are Yue dialects that don't belong to the Cantonese language and they shouldn't be forced into "Cantonese". At least two that I have raised are Danzhouhua and Lingui dialects. The obsession with taxonomic linguistic concerns will only annoy others if it is continually pushed in their faces at the Cantonese article. If it is discreetly pushed out of the way to a more specialised article on "Yue dialects", it will not bother anyone. The fact that this article is entitled "Cantonese" is the problem. The solution is simple: retitle.

Bathrobe (talk) 15:43, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

User Bathrobe, please do not misunderstand me again. I think this is a purely procedural issue. We have to understand that this massive Cantonese debate not only calls for renaming of articles, but the structure and topical definitions of each article should be reviewed accordingly. I still agree with user Bathrobe's definitions on the topics to be covered in the "Cantonese" article. User Kwami fails to grasp this because he insists without any flexibility that one of these articles must cover the abstand variety, and the other must cover the ausbau variety, and the two must be mutually exclusive. This is what I have issues with.

I'm fine with renaming this page "Yue dialects". But regardless of whether we move this page or create a new "Yue dialects" article, that article will be a sub-page of the "Cantonese" article. This in no way implies that all Yue dialects are Cantonese. Taishanese may not be Cantonese, Danzhouhua, maybe not either. But we should stop denying that the majority of these dialects is essentially Cantonese with a different accent. Some of them are quite strong accents; some of them maybe hardly intelligible. If you don't believe me, you can always send an e-mail to Henry Li and see what he says. Colipon+(Talk) 16:00, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I think Cantonese now is about where it should be. It broadly describes Cantonese as it's most widely understood, as the language of e.g. Hong Kong and Guangzhou. but it also explicitly relates it to the wider group of dialects, via a dab link at the top, a mention in the very first sentence, a whole section of explanation and a link near the end. Arguably it doesn't need four links here, but each makes sense individually. So for those people who find Cantonese looking for Yue there are lots of links and a good explanation. I don't think copying content from this article to there will improve on this. JohnBlackburne (talk) 16:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I am against merging the two articles, because there are enough content to make two articles. Taishanese itself, another dialect under the Yue umbrella, has plenty of content, and the articles for the other dialects can either be created or expanded. This article, regardless of naming, should be about the Yue group in general. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 16:50, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Colipon, Cantonese is about the Cantonese language in the narrow sense: Standard Cantonese, Yuehai/Guangfu, etc., but excluding Taishanese etc. This article is about Cantonese in the broad sense: Yueyu, including both Cantonese proper and Taishanese. I still don't understand why we would want to delete this article, relegating its history to a redirect, and then create it anew, as if it had no page history. That makes absolutely no sense. kwami (talk) 21:59, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The point is that the taxonomic dialects article should be a specialist, more technical subarticle of the main topic article, rather than assuming that taxonomy is the main topic.

Another way to try to implement this would be to repurpose this article (currently Cantonese (Yue)) as a technical dialects subarticle and make the current Cantonese, which was a subarticle, into the main article. This is turning things upside down in terms of main/subarticle structure, but would be OK if you can show that you can actually fix all the interwiki links across all language versions and in the face of bots trying to autorevert changes, which you've made no effort to demonstrate. There are probably yet other pointers I don't know about which assume the current main article-subarticle structure, that will show up as broken only once we try to implement this this way.

Doing this would be much harder in terms of links, and I don't see that it would be significantly better for preserving article history (would still be there at the redirect article, and we can add a note at the talk page) or talk history (since you have to follow archive links anyway to get to old discussions, and we can just have links to both article's archives instead of just one).

If we at some point also want a subarticle on the standard language, we would have to recreate the subarticle, the current Cantonese. We could also simply leave that article as a subarticle on the standard language, although if we want the main article to be called Cantonese (as it is in dozens of other Wikipedia languages) we would have to rename the subarticle back to something else indicating the specific focus.

The move proposals all require admin powers, but creating a dialects subarticle is something any editor can do at any time. I've often created starter subarticles simply by pasting; alternatively, it wouldn't be that hard to write an article that is more detailed or technical than the current Yue dialect coverage, by translating the Chinese articles or consulting experts in the field, as WikiCantona suggested. --JWB (talk) 00:14, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Do as you like with the IWs; we shouldn't be deleting articles because they don't match up perfectly with some other language project. If they don't match, they don't match. And anyway, anything we can do by deleting and recreating an article we can do by simply moving it.

As for subarticles, we link related topics. We don't need to define one as a subarticle of another. Under Yuehai on this article, we can say 'See Cantonese', and under related dialects on that article, we can say 'See Yue'. Is Shanghainese a subarticle of Wu Chinese, or is Wu Chinese a subarticle of Shanghainese? If we disagree, should we delete Wu Chinese and recreate it under a new name?

Also, "Cantonese (Yue)" is pretty useless as a redirect. Once all the articles linking through it are bot-redirected, it would likely be deleted. Better just move the article to the name we want. kwami (talk) 01:13, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

You can repeat "deleting and recreating" until you're blue in the face, but that doesn't make it what I'm talking about. Neither does saying you don't care about interlanguage links or coordination obviate the real and significant issues with them.

WP:Summary style is of course not implemented everywhere and not completely everywhere. It is a tool for managing complexity, which we have in this case.

"Cantonese" is used for both the dialect group and the specific language and also has some identification with Guangdong. This is not replicated with Shanghainese which is not used for the Wu group as a whole and Wu which is not a popular name for Shanghainese. "Mandarin" however does have similar problems. ("Problem" in the sense that it does not fit into the current Chinese article format with large, separate, but comparable and overlapping articles for the dialect group and the major urban lingua franca. It actually fits well into the model for European and other languages, where there is a main article covering both, and the dialect subarticle is much less popular and more technical.)

AFAIK redirects are deleted only when someone requests deletion and goes through an approval process. Redirects that are merely less common terms and not incorrect stay in all cases I know of. --JWB (talk) 01:57, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

And you can deny it until you're blue in the face. Equally meaningless.

We have 2 articles, Cantonese and Yue. You want to delete Yue, then create a new article Yue, merely because other language WPs don't have the exact articles we have. I didn't say I don't care about IWs, and I have spent some time clearing up problematic ones, but they shouldn't determine how we organize our articles. They should reflect how we organize our articles. Tell you what, why don't we move this where we want it, then redirect the redirect to Cantonese? That will double up your IWs for you, while keeping the article history with the article. kwami (talk) 03:03, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Wait, I need some clarification here. JWB - there is technically no such thing as a "subarticle". You want to have two articles, one is about both the Yue dialect group as well as about the Cantonese dialect, and another article about...? Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 05:24, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Please read WP:Summary style! --JWB (talk) 05:58, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand why creating "subarticles" for topical subjects of either the Yue group or the Cantonese dialect would require the merging of the two articles. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 06:03, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't consider Yue to be a subsidiary article to Cantonese; if anything, it would seem to be a subsidiary article to Spoken Chinese. kwami (talk) 09:12, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

User JWB, it seems many users feel that Cantonese should be completely separated from Yue, as long as we clarify in the "Names" section of the "Cantonese" article. While I personally disagree with this approach, some users are so particular about this preference that they have edited all former article references to "Cantonese" to "Yue" when it talks about the dialect group. Cantonese and Yue are not separate things, and we are trying to impose that on Wikipedia to fit the pedantic notions of linguists. Think Italian. It's really composed of numerous mutually unintelligible dialects. But the article does not separate the Italian dialect group with "Standard Italian", which is based on the dialect of Florence. It discusses the dialect group in Italian dialects, and talks about all its forms in the main article "Italian", which has a focus on the standard dialect. It also discusses Neapolitan, Piedmontese, Sicilian, and other "dialects" that can be rightfully considered as not Italian in their own right, similar to how Taishanese can be not Cantonese. There should be the same approach here, except we can name the dialects page "Yue dialects" or "Cantonese dialects". Colipon+(Talk) 11:09, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Nice article on Italian dialects there. Apart from the multiple issues (including neutrality, original research, need for a cleanup, and need for attention from an expert), it starts out with this statement: "The Italian people generally refer to Italian dialects as all vernacular idioms spoken in Italy other than Italian and other languages recognised by the Italian state. As a rule of thumb, all Romance languages spoken in Italy are customarily termed as dialects." Exactly what words do you propose to use instead of "Italy/Italian" in our article on "Cantonese dialects"? How about: "The Cantonese people generally refer to Cantonese dialects as all vernacular idioms spoken in Guangdong (???) other than Standard Cantonese and other languages recognised by the province of Guangdong (??). As a rule of thumb, all Sinitic languages spoken in Guangdong province are customarily termed as dialects." It just doesn't fit. This is, in fact, the reason that I challenged JWB on his comparison with national languages in Europe. The existence of the Italian nation-state is what makes Italian dialects.... well, Italian dialects, even if it doesn't make linguistic sense to call them that (as the article on Italian dialects points out). Cantonese is not the same as Italian. In fact, Cantonese probably belongs together more than Italian does! But there's no "Cantonese state" to act as a framework, which is why it doesn't work to treat Cantonese the same as Italian. Bathrobe (talk) 14:11, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

In that sentence, the subject "The Italian people" is unnecessary, vague and possibly inaccurate. As far as I know, views on what "Italian dialect" means are not sharply different on different sides of the Italian border, or between Italians in whatever country and other nationalities in whatever country. Unless the article has sources documenting such sharp differences in attitude, it should be careful about who it is stating to have such beliefs. I would stick to passive voice and no subject unless we have sources on who believes what.

The attitude that "Italian dialect" covers Romance speech varieties in Italy even though this is a paraphyletic group is analogous to the attitude that "Guangdong hua" covers Chinese speech varieties in Guangdong possibly including Hakka which is perceived as close enough despite its taxonomic classification as non-Yue. This should be mentioned as a possible viewpoint, though to say any more about a viewpoint we should really have evidence.

The fact that Guangdong is a province-level unit (with a lot of autonomy) and Italy is an independent country (increasingly coordinated with the European Union) is not significant. What is significant is that there is an accepted idea of the standard language, which is true in both cases. In China there is also a China-wide standard language which everyone is expected to know, but this is also the role English is moving into elsewhere. Not sure about Italy, but in Scandinavia and Holland there has already been backlash against immigrants who don't bother to learn the national language because they can get along in English. --JWB (talk) 18:44, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

It is clear that JWB's perception of Cantonese is the European "nation-state with standard language" model, namely, "Guandgong is a province with Cantonese as its standard language". This leads to almost surreal statements like (1) "Guangdong hua" covers Chinese speech varieties in Guangdong possibly including Hakka which is perceived as close enough despite its taxonomic classification as non-Yue and (2) there is an accepted idea of the standard language (of Guangdong province). With regard to the first, no one would describe Hakka as "Cantonese" except in a geographical sense. Neither Hakka nor Chaozhou are regarded as variants of the "Cantonese language" by anybody, Chinese or Western (although there are people who might describe Chaozhou as being half way between Cantonese and Minnan). To say that they are the same language is truly a strange proposition and I find it difficult to understand how we should consider incorporating it in the article. As for (2), this is a misrepresentation of the situation. "Cantonese" is not the standard language of Guangdong province. It is a prestige dialect for an area of southern China that covers parts of both Guangdong and Guangxi provinces. Its "power base", if you like, is located in the western part of Guangdong province, namely the city of Guangzhou and the non-Guangdong city of Hong Kong. Its zone of influence is not solely the province of Guangdong as it covers important parts of Guangxi; nor can it be interpreted as the "standard language" of all people of Guangdong province. The Hakka people are not confined to Guangdong province and don't necessarily take Cantonese as their standard, which JWB seems to be at pains to point out.

(1) and (2) are actual attitudes found in surveys I referenced earlier, as well as being mentioned by participants in this current discussion in surveys of friends and relatives. They are at variance with linguistic taxonomy, but most people are not aware of linguistic taxonomy.

The region where Cantonese is a lingua franca is centered farther east than the region where the local dialect is classified as Yue by linguists. In the east there are Hakka and other people who accept Cantonese as the Ausbau language and are even shifting completely to Cantonese (Teochew speakers were slower to do this in the 1970s survey I referenced), and yes, provincial boundaries and media are actually a significant factor in this, while in the west there are Lingui, Danzhou, and other dialects that are classified as Yue or possibly Yue whose speakers are not familiar with Cantonese and use Putonghua or local Mandarin-type dialects as lingua francas. Not sure if you are forgetting all this or just trying to gloss it over for rhetorical effect. --JWB (talk) 01:05, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I think you will have to refresh my memory on the survey. But if it is the survey that I think you are referring to, it was about the propensity to switch to Cantonese by Hakka and Chaozhou people in Hongkong, not in their ancestral lands. And it could also be interpreted as showing the varying degrees of resistance to the acceptance of Cantonese. But as I said, I need my memory refreshed as this discussion has been going for a very long time over at least two different talk pages.

by 1966 81.4% spoke Cantonese as the home language compared with 54.7% of basic Cantonese stock. By 1971 88.1% reported speaking Cantonese at home. In descending order of language shift, (1) Szeyup (2) Out-of-Stater (3) Hakka (4) Chiuchow. The rural Hakkas saw social mobility via Cantonese as desirable.

As far as I can see, it is about the propensity to assimilate to Cantonese in Hong Kong. I can't see anything about this statement that says that this massive language shift was taking place in Guangdong province. Bathrobe (talk) 23:18, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

In Shanwei (translated from the Chinese article): "As Shanwei is adjacent to the Pearl River Delta and Hong Kong, together with the impact of television programs from Hong Kong and population movements within Guangdong province, many local residents, especially the younger generation, have communication skills in Cantonese." "由于汕尾毗邻珠江三角洲，又毗邻香港，加之香港电视节目的影响和省内人口流动，当地居民，特别是年轻一辈，大多具备粤语交际能力。" --JWB (talk) 18:39, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

zh:梅州市#语言: "由于地处广东省，当地学生和年轻人对广州话颇感兴趣，经常听粤语流行歌曲和收看香港电视剧。就连成年人都经常收看珠江频道的《外来媳妇本地郎》和粤语新闻。"

Looking up zh:外来媳妇本地郎 mentioned above, it is actually right on topic - the four wives and some other characters are from various parts of Guangdong, other provinces, and abroad, and the show is all about their adaptation to Cantonese culture. --JWB (talk) 22:00, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Showing the strong linguistic influence of Cantonese. That is fine. They listen to Cantonese songs in Hainan. They listen to them in Beijing. I'm sure they also listen to them in other areas, as well. That is part of a wider influence from Cantonese and Hong Kong. And I am not surprised that this is happening in Guangdong province, especially because of proximity and media influence. It does not prove that Cantonese is the "national language" of Guangdong province.

They don't listen to the news in Cantonese in Beijing. Proximity and media influence was exactly the point I was making. Much media is segmented by province. You also passed over the mention of circulation of population within Guangdong province as another cause for the growth of Cantonese in Meizhou. "National language" is your phrase not mine. Other than that strawman you have set up yourself, what are you claiming? That we have somehow slighted people in Guangxi? I can't keep track of what you are arguing for, and I'm not sure you have either. --JWB (talk) 23:47, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I dashed off the comment above with little time to spare. I'll return to this later. Bathrobe (talk) 23:51, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Would also like a source for "provincial boundaries .... are actually a significant factor in this". Since Baakwa extends well into Guangxi province, at least as far west as Nanning, and further west than Hainan or Guilin, I'm not sure what you're point is. Bathrobe (talk) 12:24, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

The point is that Cantonese assimilates speakers of various dialects in clearly Cantonese-majority regions like Guangdong and Hong Kong. The language situation in Guangxi is more complex and I would like more information on it, but it is certainly less Cantonese-dominated than Guangdong. --JWB (talk) 18:39, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I am quite sympathetic to Colipon's claim that the article on Cantonese should be extended to cover a broader range of Yue dialects from a sociolinguistic perspective (namely, that Yue dialects tend to be identified as being linguistically related to standard Cantonese and Cantonese is treated as their High Language), but the attempt to put the Cantonese language and the province of Guangdong into lockstep is simply misguided. The reason that I have called attention in the past to the term baakwa is that it is a very common term in some Cantonese-speaking areas that specifically plays down the geographical identity and spatial location of the dialect. This does not seem to have had any impact at all on what seems to be a single-minded focus on merging the concepts of Guangdong province and the Cantonese language into a single entity. I simply do not understand where this is coming from. Bathrobe (talk) 00:42, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Just to clarify this issue, my understanding is that the term baakwa is not only used to avoid geographical connotations, but perhaps more predominantly used when spoken in an internal context - i.e. with other speakers of Cantonese. For example, a Guangxi speaker of Cantonese would tell a person from Guangdong that he is speaking baakwa, but will tell someone from say, Hunan, that he is speaking Yue-yu. Colipon+(Talk) 01:27, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

That's fine, but at least the term baakwa doesn't force an identification with Guangdong. Also, do Guangxi speakers tell people from Hunan that they speak 粤语? Or are we again unconsciously assuming that baakwa speakers are all from Guangdong province? Bathrobe (talk) 12:57, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

How do you manage to read a sentence about "a Guangxi speaker" and come out with "assuming speakers are all from Guangdong"? --JWB (talk) 18:39, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

OK, my error. So I am assuming Colipon knows Guangxi speakers who tell Hunanese that they speak 粵語. If he does, it is an interesting clarification. Bathrobe (talk) 23:18, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm a little confused about the relationship that JWB is describing as "article" and "sub-article". For instance, is Standard German a sub-article of High German languages, or is it the other way round? Bathrobe (talk) 13:37, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Both are subarticles of German language - just search for the Main article: headings within that article. German language is the whole-language summary article. --JWB (talk) 18:44, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

So why isn't Dutch included? Dutch may be a separate Ausbau language, but in Abstand terms it should be in with German. Bathrobe (talk) 13:01, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Dutch is in various Germanic language articles but I'm not sure what point you are making regarding this discussion. --JWB (talk) 18:39, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Quite simple. The non-Cantonese Yue dialects could only be included as sub-articles of Cantonese based on Abstand criteria, since they are not seen as being Cantonese in any other sense. But the German article group specifically excludes Dutch, even though it is part of the same Abstand group. Bathrobe (talk) 23:18, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Dutch is an Ausbau language that is separate from Deutsch the Ausbau language because of political history. I don't know of anything analogous in the Cantonese area. (Taiwanese however is an example of an Ausbau language that is separate for geographic/political reasons even though it is close to Minnan dialects elsewhere in terms of dialect taxonomy.

You are still not making any point I can discern about the Cantonese situation. --JWB (talk) 23:47, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Well there's already a section on the Cantonese dialect in the Yue group article, and there's plenty of content on the Cantonese dialect for its own article. That's why I don't see the point of a merge. Note the existence of articles for Tuscan dialect, Romanesco, etc, which are all dialects of the Italian language. Go ahead and create an article for Yue similar to Italian dialects if you like, but merging the two articles would create a pretty huge article that basically would need to be split. My opposition toward a merge has nothing to do with linguistic categorisation or anything like that. It's for the simple reason that there's enough content for the Cantonese dialect to have its own article. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 17:53, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I am fine with maintaining a subarticle for the standard language. However I think it should be clear that it is a subarticle of the main article, with content appropriately distributed between the two. We are not at the point where we have to split for size, but as I pointed out above we can be prepared for it. I do not favor turning the current subarticle into the main article and vice versa because of potential complications. --JWB (talk) 18:44, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Translation issues

The problem with Interwiki links is coupled with problems in translation. "Cantonese" means 广东话 before it means 广州话. There is little debate here. "Cantonese" is also translated as 粤语. 粤语 is also translated back to "Cantonese". These translations reflect common usage with the term "Cantonese". If you ask a speaker whether they understand "Cantonese", you are asking if they speak 广东话, or 粤语, NOT 广州话. With the article structure now, we see that "广州话" is translated to "Cantonese" while 粤语 has been "assigned" the translation of "Yue". I do not believe this conforms with common sense, nor does it conform with common usage of the terms, and I see the only solution is the model proposed by JWB above, which I will not repeat again. Colipon+(Talk) 11:25, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

User Colipon, that is one crappy on-line dictionary. I have already cited other dictionaries that don't give this definition. If you're from Hong Kong you might get away with saying that the primary translation of "Cantonese" is 广东话, but there are so many sources that don't use that definition, I don't know why we keep coming back to it. Bathrobe (talk) 13:52, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I believe user WikiCantona has already listed several dictionaries that define "Cantonese" the same way I do. It's not conclusive to say it goes one way or the other. It's not just a "Hong Kong" thing. The overseas Chinese community also regards "Cantonese" as the English translation of the term 粤语, of which the colloquial term is 广东话. Sometimes people say "白话" if it's spoke in an "internal" context. But no one in the overseas Chinese community calls "Cantonese" "广州话". Don't believe me? Go to Vancouver or San Francisco and listen to people talk. Colipon+(Talk) 15:54, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

It's not conclusive to say it goes one way or the other. I think that is what I was trying to say. Bathrobe (talk) 17:05, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

"many users feel that Cantonese should be completely separated from Yue". Colipon, who has ever said that? Of course they're intimately related. However, we have a long history of people making confusing edits because they weren't clear what an article meant by "Cantonese". If we stick to "Cantonese" for the narrower sense, and "Yue" for the broader sense, then there's no confusion. If we use "Cantonese" sometimes in the narrower sense, and sometimes in the broader sense, and sometimes use "Yue" for the broader sense, so that sometimes we contrast Cantonese and Taishanese, and sometimes subsume Taishanese within Cantonese, then we're going to be back where we started, with both articles an unintelligible mishmash. kwami (talk) 20:49, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

If we stick to "Cantonese" for the narrower sense, and "Yue" for the broader sense, then there's no confusion. Ideally, this seems like a great, even Utopian solution. But let's be realistic. Just because you want to call the broader "Cantonese" "Yue" doesn't suddenly make it "Yue". It is an artificial standard imposed by several (or one) Wikipedians, and as such amounts to WP:OR at best, and WP:DISRUPT if you are a bit more critical. It's the same as saying that Wenzhou dialect must be called "Wenzhou Chinese" just because linguistic specialists don't consider it a dialect. Colipon+(Talk) 01:21, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

In linguistics, we tend to follow linguists. Calling that OR is rather bizarre. kwami (talk) 02:01, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Not WP:OR but WP:Jargon, WP:COMMONNAME. --JWB (talk) 02:38, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

By that argument, Wu should be renamed "Shanghainese", and Xiang "Hunanese". (Actually, I wouldn't mind the latter.) kwami (talk) 05:01, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

No, the whole idea of following "common usage" is to not rationalize or systematize, but just use what terminology is actually in use. You already said something similar for Wu, so I won't repeat my response. In Hunan, there is a major difference between "Old Xiang" and "New Xiang" dialects. To nonlinguists "Hunanese" will most likely call to mind the capital Changsha, which is New Xiang, which is little more divergent than other Southwestern Mandarin dialects. Anyway, there is so much less Hunanese presence in the English-speaking world that I'm not aware of precedents in English terminology. In that case, we might have to resort to an educated or systematic guess, but established usage trumps that whenever it exists. --JWB (talk) 05:47, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

And common usage when disambiguating from Cantonese proper is "Yue". Besides, common usage isn't followed for subarticles. kwami (talk) 07:26, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Another thought: Since Chinese does not normally indicate plurality, 粤语 could mean "Cantonese language" or "the Cantonese languages" / "Cantonese dialects" / "Cantonese idioms". Most often the standard is what is being referred to, but 粤语 also applies to the Yue dialect group as a whole. --JWB (talk) 00:16, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I think all users here want to reduce confusion on the part of editors and readers. I stand firmly in the belief that redefining "Cantonese" as purely the HK-Guangzhou variety while calling the broader language group "Yue" or "Yue Chinese" will actually cause the same confusion that we were trying to eradicate; it is counterproductive. Essentially all we've done with a months worth of discussion is substitute the name of one "Cantonese" for another, and I do not see at all how this will reduce the amount of confusion from both editors and readers. Editors who believe Cantonese means the broader language will continue to edit the 'Cantonese' article as such, unless they read this painstakingly long discussion, regardless of how many dab notices are inserted and how much clarification is provided in the names section.

No matter how much we try to artificially dictate what "Cantonese" means, it is still commonly used to refer to both Yue and the Guangzhou dialect, not because people don't get the distinction between the two, but because they are intricately related (one could say, almost the same) concepts that should be discussed in one single, coherent article. As such, I believe the only real solution is to integrate the contents of the two articles, and then create a specific article discussing dialectology - namely, Yue dialects. This article is not meant to discuss "Yue" as a whole, but rather just the dialectology aspects. Thus we have two articles - one that clearly discusses the Cantonese language in all its definitions (but predominantly its prestige form), and the other that discusses its dialects without subscribing that the dialects are uniformly called 'Cantonese'. This would solve all future editorial and readership confusion. Colipon+(Talk) 00:36, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

They really are not the same though, no matter how much confusion there is in their English naming. We shouldn't be merging/splitting articles because there is ambiguity in naming. That's what disambig pages and "otheruses" tags are for. And the Cantonese dialect is already discussed in the Yue group article - there's a section devoted to it that could be expanded. But there's also enough content for the dialect that it deserves its own article. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 06:12, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

The "Yue group article" Cantonese (Yue) actually currently devotes most space to material applicable to the standard language, or equally to the standard language and dialects, and much less to other dialects. It really is a main article covering both. --JWB (talk) 18:49, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Most of it could be applied to Cantonese at the same time as other dialects, but that is understandable as Cantonese is a Yue dialect. In particular the history, the relationship with Middle Chinese and the contrast with Mandarin apply to the dialects as a whole. It features Cantonese more prominently, but not excessively. The section on Sound could maybe do with some editing for clarity and layout but it's as far as I can tell correct and appropriate for the article. JohnBlackburne (talk) 19:12, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Cantonese as the Standard Language of Guangdong Province

The statement that started the debate above was JWB's following statement:

I would suggest merging that article (Cantonese) with this one (Cantonese Yue) to form a main article on the topic named Cantonese, then spin out a subarticle with all the detail about dialects and taxonomy that is clearly a subarticle of this one, rather than the main article. This will give a more normal article structure similar to French language and subarticles, that is not dominated by taxonomic linguistics concerns to the annoyance of others.

The problems with this statment are that: (1) the French language and subarticles is the "normal" structure for language articles; (2) Cantonese is the main article; Yue dialects etc. are "clearly" subarticles of Cantonese; (3) taxonomic linguistics concerns are annoyances for readers.

I challenged the concept that "Italian" or "French" or "German" are the proper models for articles on Chinese dialects/languages. The reason that the different "languages" spoken in Italy or France are regarded as "Italian dialects" or "French dialects" is essentially because they are found within the Italian or French states (although French is also found in Belgium and Switzerland). Similarly for German, although standard German also covers several countries.

JWB then took this point and maintained that Cantonese is, in fact, just like German is for German-speaking lands, French for France, or Italian for Italy. He specifically mentioned the following points:

Cantonese is the standard language of Guangdong province.
Hakka also belongs to the Cantonese language.
He bolstered his point in the west by mentioning only Lingui and Danzhou (where Cantonese is not accepted as the standard language) and failing to mention Guangxi Baaakwa at all.

In support of this,

He cited a survey proving that Cantonese was accepted as the standard language of Guangdong province.
He mentioned the use of Cantonese in Hakka areas of Guangdong province (Meixian) and the adoption of Cantonese by young people in Shanwei.
When I brought up Guangxi province, he basically dismissed it by saying "I would like more information on it" and "it is certainly less Cantonese-dominated than Guangdong". When pressed further, he responded "what are you claiming? That we have somehow slighted people in Guangxi?"

The sum effect of JWB's claims -- the attempts to play down or exclude Guangxi from "Cantonese proper", the wild claim that Hakka is a Cantonese dialect, the mention of the encroachment of Cantonese into Chaozhou and Hakka areas, and the citing of a survey proving that Cantonese is accepted as the standard language in Guangdong province -- is to show that Cantonese is the standard language of Guangdong province in the same way that Italian is the language of Italy.

JWB's claims are not persuasive arguments for treating Cantonese as the "standard language" of Guangdong province.

- Sadly, JWG's cited survey was not about Guangdong province at all, it was about Hong Kong.

- With reference to the adoption of Cantonese in Shanwei, this is a good example of encroachment by one language on the territory of another (proximity to the Pearl Delta, the Cantonese-speaking heartland) and immigration. It is also a good example of the spread of a prestige dialect via the media (the article actually notes the influence of Hong Kong, which doesn't belong to Guangdong province at all). There is no need to resort to "Cantonese as the standard language of Guangdong province" to explain its spread.

- The encroachment in Hakka-speaking areas is also encroachment by a prestige urban dialect, and the vectors are made specific (Guangdong media and Hong Kong soap operas). As he points out, the fact that they are in Guangdong province is also relevant as they basically fall in the cultural hinterland of the Pearl River delta, including the media influence of the metropolitan centres.

I have no argument with the fact that Cantonese is a prestige dialect and that its natural route of expansion is into the eastern areas of Guandgong province, via media, population movements, etc. It appears to be blocked in the north by areas that are impervious to Guangdong's cultural influence; but it is not blocked in the west and there is a significant Cantonese/Yue speaking population across the southern part of Guangxi province.

The Wikipedia article on 粵語 (Yue, not "Standard Cantonese") gives the following population statistics:

67 million in Guangdong province (out of a total provincial population of 90 million)
10 million in Guangxi province
7 million in Hong Kong
5 million in Thailand
4 million in Singapore and Malaysia
2 million in the US and Canada

I think you will notice that far from being unable to keep track of what I'm arguing for, I'm quite clear about the thrust of JWB's argumentation and why I do not accept it. JWB is trying to prove that Cantonese is the "standard language" of Guangdong province in the same way that French is the standard language of France or German of Germany. I can only reiterate my point: Cantonese is a prestige dialect, with its centre on the Pearl River delta (Guangzhou and Hong Kong) and a spreading area of influence that extends east into Guangdong province and west into Guangxi province. Its area of influence covers both Yue-speaking areas and non-Yue speaking areas. There are also some places where it is not regarded as the prestige dialect of Yue-speaking areas.

That is why I continue to uphold the differentiation into two separate articles: one on the prestige dialect and Ausbau language Cantonese; another on the Yue dialects as an Abstand language/dialects defined by linguistic research. The attempt to locate Yue dialects as a subarticle on the model of a "normal" language like French is misguided, the attempt to fold all the Yue dialects into Cantonese is even more so, and the proposal to treat Hakka as a Cantonese dialect verges on the frivolous.

Bathrobe (talk) 14:46, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

There is supposedly a specific definition of what a Standard language is, and if the article on standard language can be trusted, I don't see how Cantonese fits the definition. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 17:34, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Correction - I've used "standard language", "lingua franca", etc. to mean that there is a consensus version of Cantonese used for intercommunication, and deliberately varied between the terms and added disclaimers to "standard language" a couple of times. Remember the article called Standard Cantonese until a few days ago? What did you think this name meant? I have not said "the standard language of Guangdong province" as of course that statement would be highly questionable. Guangdong has at least two lingua francas. That said, some of the impetus for adoption of Cantonese is from provincial institutions and provincial media. I have not said that these are a larger or smaller influence then simple geographical proximity, economic gradients, or Hong Kong.

I am very interested in finding out more about the linguistic situation in Guangxi, which sounds complex from what I've heard. I simply haven't seen much hard information so far. It is ridiculous to say this means I am trying to exclude Guangxi. I'm not clear what Bathrobe is trying to argue about Guangxi, beyond that there is a sizeable population speaking Yue dialects, which of course nobody is contesting. And even though comparisons to other parts of the globe are apparently off limits to some here, they apply just as well to this charge - the fact that France speaks French does not mean that French is not also a main language of Belgium and other territories.

I have not been against separate articles on Abstand Yue/Cantonese and Ausbau Cantonese. I've said that there should also be a main article covering both as much of the material applies to both, and contested that there are currently separate Abstand and Ausbau articles - the current situation is more like a main survey article and an Ausbau article.

Finally, I did not say that Hakka is Cantonese. (Although by at least one measure, Hakka is the closest other top-level dialect group to Yue.) I am sick of having to defend myself against things I haven't said, which has taken up this whole reply. Please, do not spend everyone's time on debate tactics which do not actually advance our knowledge, and instead go find some actual interesting data on Guangxi or whatever area interests you. --JWB (talk) 19:46, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that Bathrobe advances a series of rhetorical tactics and logical propositions (mostly fallacies which become extremely confusing or circular) which do not add much besides the length of text. While I think User Bathrobe has been a great contributor to this page and is, more often than not, a voice of reason and a phenomenal orator, I want to remind him, and all users, that the goal of our discussion is ultimately to reach a consensus about how to organize and write about Cantonese articles, not to show who is "right" or stroke our own egos. Consensus involves a vastly different process from debate; the goal of consensus is to find common ground, not to dissect or prove arguments. As editors, we all have a common goal of improving knowledge on Cantonese and its related articles for the international readership of this encyclopedia, and as far as I can see, no one here is particularly aiming for the promotion of any kind of unwarranted agenda. I earnestly call upon all users to work towards consensus in a polite and civil manner (imagine if we are sitting in a conference room; so as to think twice when we next make snide remarks against fellow editors), and always assume good faith of others.

Additionally, I would not mind having a discussion on Google Wave. Colipon+(Talk) 20:15, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

In response to JWB's comment above, I agree that while Yue and Canton-dialect are two different concepts, there is enough de facto overlap between the two that it is possible to write a coherent, topical, and informative article that incorporates both. For topics like "Cantonese outside China", Guangzhou Cantonese and say, Cantonese from Maoming, are both treated as "Cantonese" by overseas speakers, although Maoming is considered to have "a strong accent". There isn't enough distinction to say conclusively that Guangzhou and Hong Kong Cantonese is Cantonese, but Maoming and Shanwei Cantonese is not Cantonese. A few linguists merely prescribe two names for these two concepts to avoid confusion in linguistic taxonomy, but this artificially prescribed distinction is a technical detail is by no means a golden rule of nomenclature on an encyclopedia that aims to describe general topical areas. With two separate articles for the two concepts, we would have to treat Maoming as merely a "dialect of Yue", and delete all references to it in the current Cantonese article. In addition, we would also have to treat Guangxi baakwa (which is analogous to say, Kent vs. London accent) as merely another "dialect of Yue" and not "Cantonese", because we now explicitly define "Cantonese" to mean Guangzhou Cantonese due to this obsession to provide for linguistic distinctions. Such an approach is simply not pragmatic, and not very useful to the average reader, who will likely grow even more confused about what "Cantonese" is. Colipon+(Talk) 20:25, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Straw man, Colipon. "With two separate articles for the two concepts, we would have to treat Maoming as merely a "dialect of Yue", and delete all references to it in the current Cantonese article." Nonsense. We mention Standard Cantonese in the Yue article. Does that mean we have to "delete all references to it" in the Cantonese article? The general consensus for years has been that we should have a broad-topic article (Cantonese/Yue) and a narrow-topic article (Cantonese proper/standard), just as we do for every other Chinese article. We no more need to merge the two just because we can any more than we need to merge Shanghainese and Wu, or all the Min languages, or Beijing dialect and Mandarin. kwami (talk) 20:50, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid you are again misunderstanding what I'm saying. Colipon+(Talk) 20:54, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

It is very easy to take umbrage when people keep opposing you. I am not advancing the above arguments in order to score personal points or stop the advance towards "consensus" (by which user Colipon presumably means I am stopping us from getting to the position that he wants us to get to).

The only point I have been making is that Cantonese should not be automatically treated like French or Italian or German. I've been opposed to applying the European standard language or national language model from the outset because Europe and China have different linguistic backgrounds and perceptions, political backgrounds, and historical backgrounds.

The corrollory of user JWB's position that Cantonese should be treated the same as French or German is that Cantonese should be the main article, with Yue dialects essentially treated as dialects of Cantonese. I would maintain that the opposite is true. Yue dialects is the higher ranking article in terms of linguistic taxonomy; Cantonese is a member of the Yue dialects. The main reason for our difference in position is that many -- perhaps most -- of the Yue dialects are indeed perceived as dialects of Cantonese in some sense. This is why user Colipon keeps referring to Maoming dialect, which he feels is a dialect of the Cantonese language, not just one of the "Yue dialects". It is tempting to tidy up the Yue dialects as subdialects of Cantonese. But it would not be correct.

My position is that the Yue dialects should be akin to the article on West Germanic languages, with Cantonese as an article about the most important member of that group, just as English language, Dutch language and German language are members of West Germanic. I am aware that the situation with Cantonese is different from West Germanic, because Yue dialects are a very homogeneous group, because the main prestige dialect has such disproportionate influence, and because there are no other Ausbau dialects within the group. But this is not a reason for insisting that we should treat Cantonese (Yue) like French or German. Simply put, that is my position on this issue. I admit that I have been giving JWB a hard time about Hakka. That is because I feel that his position, which goes in the opposite direction and, on the model of European languages, tries to make Cantonese into a standard language and Yue dialects into subvarieties of Cantonese, ultimately results in that kind of strained interpretation.

As far as I am concerned, my "concentric" proposal for treatment of Cantonese adequately addresses the issues that user Colipon raises about Maoming, Taishanese, etc. What I am opposed to is the user JWB's proposal, which would go further than this and simply sweep all the Yue dialects into the "Cantonese language".

Bathrobe (talk) 23:30, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Instead of trying to refute the specific points I've been trying to make by analogy, you erect yet another strawman of mindless equation of European and Chinese situations, which of course nobody is advocating.

The Chinese terminology is exactly like what you are calling the European model - zh:粵語 includes zh:標準粵語 and zh:粵語方言 in its scope. By the way, take a look at zh:粤语#粵語地位爭議 for an explicit discussion of the language vs. dialect issue, which gives both arguments but clearly comes down on the language side, while we here in English Wikipedia are afraid to touch it.

To take another example, the position of Catalan in Spain is quite similar to the position of Cantonese in China - despite efforts to impose a nationwide standard language, the regional language survives and has even revived due to its region's economic success and is assimilating immigrants. I asked you earlier whether you would also call Catalan not a language and you prudently did not respond. --JWB (talk) 00:07, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I am afraid that user Colipon's appeal to Italian dialects is exactly the "mindless equation of European and Chinese situations" that you are talking about and is what sparked my opposition to that equation.

Catalan is a regional language that reemerged from the shadow of Castilian to reassert itself as a separate language. I agree that the European situation is quite complicated. However, the overall conceptual framework and the "mind map" of most people is still largely set by the nation-state. In fact, one point belaboured in the article on "Italian dialects" was that talking about Italian dialects is essentially incorrect. Some of the so-called dialects are virtually separate languages. Bathrobe (talk) 00:41, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The Italian dialects is an excellent one for showing that taxonomy need not coincide with geography ("dialects of Italy" is a paraphyletic group, while cladistic taxonomic units including standard Italian all have territory either smaller or larger than Italy) yet the two concepts are poorly distinguished in common terminology. It should be possible to make the latter point without you making accusations of actually conflating the two concepts.

I've reviewed in detail which specific facts are comparable or differing about several sociolinguistic situations in China and Europe. You seem to be stuck on ascribing abstract, poorly fitting generalizations to other people. --JWB (talk) 02:36, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

We have fundamentally different views of what constitutes "Cantonese" and what should be defined as "Cantonese". Bathrobe and Kwami wants to limit this usage to Guangzhou dialect; JWB and I, it seems, believe this usage should apply to most Yue dialects. This is an irreconcilable difference that will not be resolved through further discussions amongst these parties. I am also disappointed that my honest effort at seeking consensus and bringing the discussion back to civility has been trampled upon by more snide personal remarks from User Bathrobe ("It is very easy to take umbrage when people keep opposing you."). WP:3O and WP:MEDCAB are the best options right now. Colipon+(Talk) 00:22, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

User Colipon, I fail to see where the irreconcilable differences are. You have got your article on the Cantonese language, centred on Guangzhouhua (which anyone will admit is the prestige dialect), with reference to wider usage like Maoming, Taishanese, etc. Tell me what more you want. The only point I am making is that Yue dialects as a linguistic group is broader than the Cantonese language and should not be subsumed under it. This usage should apply to most Yue dialects is not good enough; there are Yue dialects that are not Cantonese. You have not replied to this point at all.

We have fundamentally different views of what constitutes "Cantonese" and what should be defined as "Cantonese". Actually, the problem is not that user Kwami and user Bathrobe want to confine "Cantonese" to Guangzhouhua. The problem is that user Colipon wants to treat Danzhouhua and Lingui as dialects of Cantonese.

Bathrobe (talk) 00:56, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I have replied to every point ad nausea. I even suggested that we use your "four definitions" of Cantonese model as a means to write the new "Cantonese" article. You never responded to this, never replied on your talk page for my recent request, and settled for partisan bickering here instead. I have offered three or four proposals up to this point, and have endorsed JWB's proposals twice. I advocated for a new "Yue dialects" article under the condition that parts of the current contents be merged into "Cantonese". But none of this has been good enough. What's wrong with pursuing some form of external dispute resolution? Colipon+(Talk) 01:11, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

My reply was made above, since your talk page appears to be semi-blocked in China. What I wrote was:

If I remember rightly, I suggested that the article on Cantonese should consist of several "concentric" levels: Guangzhouhua (Canton dialect and Canton/HK/Macau), Baakwa, and finally Yue dialects loosely regarded as "Cantonese". That is the article structure similar to French that JWB keeps suggesting, namely narrower and broader concepts of Cantonese within the bounds of one article. User Colipon agreed to that suggestion. So why are these two users again pushing for a merger of Yue dialects back into the Cantonese article, so that Yue dialects = Cantonese language? It was this insistence on pushing Cantonese beyond the limits of its sociolinguistic envelope that led to the creation of "Standard Cantonese" in the first place back in 2004.

I have no idea what you mean. I did mention the opposite, merging current Cantonese formerly Canton dialect formerly Standard Cantonese back into Cantonese (Yue) formerly Cantonese (linguistics) etc. because both are predominantly about the standard language and facts that apply equally to the standard language and the dialect group, but gave up advocating this because it is reasonable to have a subarticle for the standard language and because the suggestion was persistently misunderstood. The points I am trying to make now are (1) Main article / subarticle hierarchy according to WP:Summary style (2) Main article mentions both standard language and dialects because they are not only related but conflated in many contexts (3) Subarticles OK for any subtopics including dialectology and standard language. (4) Writing article leads so that this structure is clear so that future editors don't break it. --JWB (talk) 02:36, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I have never withdrawn that suggestion and stand by it. Inasmuch as some of the content of this article is relevant to the article on Cantonese I cannot see any problem with transferring information from this article to that one. But I oppose merging Yue dialects into Cantonese because of the points I have made ad nauseum above. Cantonese is one of the Yue dialects, and that is how it should be positioned in these articles. Bathrobe (talk) 01:33, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Let me explain diagrammatically what I mean (and hope that this turns out ok in your browser):

             YUE DIALECTS (AKA CANTONESE DIALECTS)
___________________|_____________________________________________________
|            |        |           |       |        |            |       |
Cantonese Maoming  Taishanese  Dongguan  Guangxi Baakwa      Danzhou  Lingui
(narrow)
|-------------------------Cantonese (broad)--------------|......not "Cantonese"....

My position is that Yue dialects is the broadest unit, a unit defined by linguists.

Cantonese in its narrow sense is confined to Guangzhouhua. Cantonese in its broad sense can be extended to include most of the Yue dialects. The broad and narrow senses of "Cantonese" are both recognised in the article on "Cantonese". The sticking point is the relationship between "Cantonese" and "Yue dialects". I maintain the position that Yue dialects is higher in the taxonomic ranking than Cantonese. The proposal to merge Cantonese (Yue) into Cantonese would result in this kind of diagram:

             CANTONESE LANGUAGE/DIALECT
___________________|_____________________________________________________
|            |        |           |       |        |            |       |
Cantonese Maoming  Taishanese  Dongguan  Guangxi Baakwa      Danzhou  Lingui
(narrow)
|-------------------------Cantonese (broad)-----------------------------|
(with sub-article on "Yue dialects")

I believe that it is incorrect to structure the articles in this way because it doesn't represent the reality. The linguists' article on "Yue dialects" should remain as the overall linguistic frame, not as a kind of footnote to Cantonese.

Bathrobe (talk) 02:32, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

zh:粤语#名稱 actually makes a similar statement about the marginal dialects: "以上各種民間俗稱所指範圍都比語言學上的粵語概念小。在語言學上，粵語是一個語言概稱，包括通常意義上的各種兩廣白話、廣西平話、海南儋州話、邁話、蜑家話等。" However, the Chinese terms discussed in that section include 粤语, 「白話」、「廣東話」、「廣府話」、「省城話」. When it says "the above folk terms" it appears to mean Guangdonghua and possibly others other than Yueyu. Your statement would be equivalent to theirs if English "Cantonese" were equivalent to Chinese "Guangdonghua" etc. However, "Cantonese" can also mean "Yueyu", in which case your statement becomes "Yueyu is not Yueyu". This difference and ambiguity in the English terminology is what this whole controversy has been about. --JWB (talk) 02:46, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

in which case your statement becomes "Yueyu is not Yueyu" -- I don't think it's as clean as all that. In fact, the reason that I have been pushing for an Abstand article on "Yue dialects" and an Ausbau language on Cantonese (narrow sense) but also with a broader usage covering Taishanhua, etc. is precisely to avoid forcing us into positions like "Yueyu is not Yueyu", or "It's Yueyu but not it's not Yueyu". It is messy and fuzzy. Forcing all Yue dialects into "Cantonese" is just as bad as forcing "Cantonese" to mean only Guangzhouhua. That's why I don't want a merger because it's going too far in one direction. Bathrobe (talk) 03:28, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I have been arguing for an article on "Yue dialects", just not as the main survey article on the Cantonese/Yue topic as a whole.

I don't think it is our role to delimit the scope of "Cantonese" absolutely, even a rather broad delimitation that you are proposing. Are we sure that nobody in English includes the peripheral dialects, especially if they are not distinguishing Cantonese and Yue, either because they aren't familiar with the English term Yue or because they are familiar with the Chinese term Yueyu which is both Cantonese and Yue dialect group? If we can't rule that out, we should just admit that Cantonese is sometimes used for the whole dialect group, even if this is neither the primary usage of Cantonese nor the most unambiguous way to refer to the dialect group. It does not mean we have to present such usage as normative or desireable. --JWB (talk) 03:39, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm fine with mentioning that Yue dialects are also often called "Cantonese". My point is that the article on Yue (or Cantonese) dialects should occupy a similar position to West Germanic languages in the hierarchy. Even if 95% of Yue dialects are effectively equivalent to Cantonese in a broad sense in popular usage (as explained by user Colipon), the existence of another 5% means that Yue dialects should be treated as the "family" and Cantonese, Danzhouhua and Lingui as members of the family. Whether Taishanese is just a "Yue dialect" or a "dialect of the Cantonese language" is one of the problems we have encountered. I have proposed a definition of "Cantonese" that allows Taishanese to be loosely treated as "Cantonese" as noted by user Colipon, while also making it possible to regard it as a separate Yue dialect from Cantonese. That seems to be the reality. No need to force it either way.

Having written the above, I need to think this over a bit more. My feeling is that even if there are people who apply the term Cantonese" to the Yue dialects, it is conceptually different from that of the "Cantonese language". However, I can see your point. There may be people who are adamant that "Cantonese" includes Danzhouhua and Lingui because of their particular linguistic orientation (namely, that the Abstand Yue language is Cantonese). By the way, I suspect that no one would describe Danzhouhua as 粤语, even if they linguistically assign it to the Yue dialects. Bathrobe (talk) 03:50, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

West Germanic languages is not a familiar term except in linguistics. "the article on Yue (or Cantonese) dialects should occupy a similar position to West Germanic languages in the hierarchy" - yes, this position is as a technical subarticle, not as a main nontechnical survey article.

But you're still assuming we have to stick to some sort of definition. We don't have to, we can and should just report major POVs.

It is likely that many if not most people would agree that Cantonese = Yue (or Guangdonghua = Yueyu, etc.) if they even know both words. But this is not because they have specific opinions about Danzhouhua, which they don't even know exists. It is that they haven't distinguished them into separate concepts. This is not science, but it is the everyday POV which must be taken into account. --JWB (talk) 04:18, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I was not aware that we had to follow everyday POV in organising knowledge in Wikipedia. Yue dialects is also not a familiar term except in linguistics. So there is really no need to worry that "many if not most people would agree that Cantonese = Yue", since "many or most people" don't have the foggiest notion what the Yue dialect group is about. It is indeed a technical article, and that's fine!

As for being a "technical subarticle, not as a main nontechnical survey article", I think my point (to repeat it again) is that Yue should not be a subarticle of Cantonese, but should occupy a similar position to West Germanic vis-~a-vis German. If my understanding is correct, West Germanic is not a subarticle of "German". Bathrobe (talk) 04:43, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

It is completely appropriate for the article on classification of Yue dialects to be a technical linguistic article. My point is that it should not be in the position of the general-interest main article on the whole topic of Yue/Cantonese, which is the current situation. It is at least as bad with Mandarin where you go expecting information on the language and it turns out to be a dialects classification article. If the Yue dialects article were in a similar position to West Germanic or other technical articles, that would be appropriate. --JWB (talk) 01:07, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

If there is ambiguity in naming, we use "Others" templates and disambig pages to sort that out. Now I think we can all agree that "Cantonese" is a common name, but whether or not "Yue" is the most common name, I personally am not sure about that. Thoughout these discussions, I really just have two main concerns:

There be one article for the Yue dialect group, and another one for the Cantonese dialect, because there's enough content for two articles.
We don't use some tragic name like "Guangzhou dialect" or the even worse "Canton dialect" that completely defenestrate the rule of using the most common name. I actually don't have a problem with "Standard Cantonese", but I see the point that some have made in the past regarding the fact that it is not a standard language in the strictest sense of the term. However, I think that is something we can address in the content of the article.

Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 04:24, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The preceding discussion between User Bathrobe and User JWB seems to hint at some loose form of consensus. It seems we agree that "Cantonese" cannot be broadly defined as to contain "all Yue dialects" and cannot be narrowly defined as the "Guangzhou-HK variety". The problem, for the most part, originates in the translations of the term "Cantonese". 粤语 means "Cantonese", and 广州话 also means 'Cantonese'. When our predecessors saw this confusion - they resorted to making the former "Cantonese (linuistics)" and the latter "Standard Cantonese". It really is not that hard to see their logic. We can explain these translation issues in the "Cantonese" article. But we will never, ever be coming to a point where we can distinguish the abstand and ausbau varieties by calling them two separate terms, by editing all references to the abstand variety to say "Yue" and editing all references of the ausbau variety to say "Cantonese". "I don't see a problem with an article on "Yue dialects" being higher on the hierarchy than "Cantonese", but we must not take this as a free pass to assign usage of the term "Yue" to the abstand variety, and similarly assign the usage of "Cantonese" to the ausbau variety. In other words, our system should allow us to refer to Maoming as a "dialect of Cantonese", not a "division of Yue", but also allow us to refer to Taishanese as a "division of Yue" rather than a "dialect of Cantonese". It is not fair to the 95% or so of dialects that are popularly regarded as "Cantonese" that they be banished from the term "Cantonese" in favour of the technical linguist's term "Yue". Colipon+(Talk) 11:47, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

That is why I suggested that the article on "Cantonese" should include both a core meaning (Guangzhouhua, the standard) and outer, somewhat less precise meanings. It is precisely because some of these dialects appear to be regarded, at least in many situations, as a form of Cantonese, perhaps not standard but still Cantonese. Bathrobe (talk) 15:52, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

So does anyone oppose fixing the intro and the structure of the "Cantonese" article to fit those definitions? Colipon+(Talk) 16:12, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I have a problem with it. As I've mentioned, if there is disambiguity in naming, we use "Others" templates and disambig pages to solve any confusion. We don't retrofit articles to article names. We do the reverse. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 17:01, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I too disagree. The meaning of Cantonese in English is primarily the language of Hong Kong and Guangzhou. I.e. if I pick up a book, or visit a web site, or attend a course on Cantonese that is what I will find out about. The only discussion I've seen (primarily in a couple of books) on variations is on the differences between Hong Kong and other speakers, or young and old speakers.

Other uses of Cantonese to refer to the wider group of Yue dialects, or to refer to some but not all of them, are largely unknown. Or if they are used, for example to lump together various Chinese speakers for whatever purpose, they are used in ignorance (as an aside I received a booklet from our local health authority last week, which had on the back a list of written languages into which it could be translated, one of which was labelled Cantonese above an explanation in traditional Chinese characters). This usage is often less correct than others. But it's what is understood by almost all users of English.--JohnBlackburne (talk) 17:33, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

These distinctions are somewhat misguided. "Mandarin" for example, almost always means "Standard Mandarin", in both spoken and written contexts. Its use by linguists, however, stretches to a wide variety of dialects from northeastern to southwestern China. Could we ever think of Sichuan or Kunming dialect as Mandarin?? Would you two also advocate for the "Mandarin" article to be about Standard Mandarin only then, simply because of its "primary use"? If that is your position, I see its merits. But if so, then we should make that change there as well to maintain consistency. It would make little sense to have the "Cantonese" article focus on one dialect, but have the "Mandarin" article cover everything from Sichuan to Yunnan to Beijing. Unless someone can establish why this particular way of organizing articles is warranted at Mandarin but not at Cantonese. Colipon+(Talk) 17:40, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I would prefer it if you say how I am "misguided". As for Mandarin it would be nice if they corresponded straightforwardly, and that correspondence could be reflected in the articles, but we should not use the structure of another group of articles to impose a confusing or unnatural structure on these articles.JohnBlackburne (talk) 18:19, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I think we both agree that confusing or unnatural structures are undesirable. We merely advocate for different means to solve this problem. It is misguided to conclude that the use of "Cantonese" in the broad sense is "ignorant". Many linguists refer to it as such. Let's take the translation issue, for example. "Yue-yu", under the current system, translates into "Yue", and "Guangzhouhua" translates into "Cantonese. Then, the correct translation for 港式粵語 would be "Hong Kong Yue", not "Hong Kong Cantonese". Clearly, in this context, "Cantonese" (粤语) refers to the dialect group, not the city of Guangzhou, and 粤语 means Cantonese. Colipon+(Talk) 19:17, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

My apologies, "ignorant" was not aimed at anyone here, but rather at the way Yue speakers are sometimes grouped together certainly here in the UK, as in the instance I gave where our local health authority had two Chinese versions of a booklet, labelled "Mandarin" and "Cantonese", for simplified and traditional characters. This is wrong in a number of ways, and shows the general ignorance of this topic in the wider population.

My point is that away from these pages the word "Cantonese" is used at almost all levels, from advanced language text books to the back cover of DVDs, to mean the narrowest sense of the word, so that is what Cantonese should cover. Because it can be used other ways, and is closely related to other dialects, that should be both explained and linked from the article. --JohnBlackburne (talk) 21:04, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Colipon said, "Clearly, in this context, "Cantonese" (粤语) refers to the dialect group, not the city of Guangzhou, and 粤语 means Cantonese." I disagree. Word-for-word translations are basically worthless, and we shouldn't be deciding on terms based on what would make an easier translation into some other language. If Cantonese is the dialect of Yue identified with Canton, then HK Cantonese is the variety of that dialect spoken in HK. Or, if Cantonese is the standard language based on the speech of Canton, then HK Cantonese is the HK variety of the standard language. In neither case does the fact that in Chinese it is called "HK 粤" mean that in English "Cantonese" means "Yue". Remember, English Yue and Chinese 粤 are distinct concepts: in Chinese, 粤语 and Cantonese are basically synonyms, whereas in English, Yue has been borrowed specifically to cover the wider Abstandsprache, in contrast to the Ausbau standard. kwami (talk) 07:57, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

My proposal for the article on Cantonese was that it should first and foremost deal with Guangzhouhua, the prestige dialect. However, since the term Cantonese can also be used to refer to the lingua franca Baakwa, which appears to be not totally the same as Guangzhouhua, I suggested that this should also be mentioned in the article as a sense of "Cantonese". Finally, since "Cantonese" can also loosely be applied to dialects like Dongguanhua or Taishanhua, I suggested that this could also be touched on in the article. The idea is that the primary sense (the prestige or standard dialect) should have prominence, but looser usages should not be excluded. This keeps the article focussed on the strict sense, while maintaining flexibility around the edges to touch on looser usages. This is useful as quite a few of the dialects are, from what I understand, mutually intelligible (Colipon brings up Maoming and others), and adhering to too strict a meaning leads to an unsatisfactory situation. My proposed solution is very clear about the core of the article (Guangzhouhua) but leaves the wider boundaries rather vague. Baakwa is almost definitely in because it is a kind of lingua franca, even if it is not pure Guangzhouhua. But Taishanese might be regarded as "Cantonese" or "not Cantonese" depending on your viewpoint. It seems to me that the vagueness at the boundaries reflects the range of perceptions in the real world.

There would, of course, be articles on specific dialects like Taishanese, and I expect that such articles would say (for instance) that Taishanese is member of the Yue dialects that is sometimes/often (?) regarded as a variant of Cantonese (e.g., in American usage), but has poor intelligibility with Cantonese and is more commonly treated as a separate dialect. For Taishanese speakers, standard Cantonese is regarded as a High Language (following the source that JWB gave). The exact formulation would have to be hammered out.

This article (Yue dialects or whatever it is finally called) should not concentrate on deciding whether they are dialects of Standard Cantonese or not, but more on the linguistic features of the dialects (sound changes, regional distribution, etc.).

At least that is what I was proposing as a way between the strict "Guangzhouhua only" stance of some editors and the broader coverage advocated by others. It is not meant to be an attempt to import "original research", merely a way of accommodating different interpretations within the one article. Kwami has already pointed out that it would not be practicable to go through every dialect and try to say whether they are "Cantonese" or not. There are no sources for this, and there is most likely a gradient from dialects (like Panyu) that are very close to Standard Cantonese and others that are far enough removed to have problems of intelligibility. The whole point of my proposal is "flexibility" -- not to try to pin everything down with exactitude, but to leave things vague where vagueness exists.

Bathrobe (talk) 10:47, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

That is a good proposal. Thank you, user Bathrobe. I personally think that limiting the use of "Cantonese" to "Guangzhouhua" only is original research. User Kwami contends: "Remember, English Yue and Chinese 粤 are distinct concepts: in Chinese, 粤语 and Cantonese are basically synonyms, whereas in English, Yue has been borrowed specifically to cover the wider Abstandsprache, in contrast to the Ausbau standard.". This is undoubtedly original research. It's completely dependent on your point of view what "Cantonese" is. Linguists have one standard, sociolinguists have another standard, Cantonese speakers in China another standard, Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong another, Taishanese overseas yet another, and in Guangxi, well, yet another standard. What is perceived as "Cantonese" varies amongst these groups. We cannot pin the definition of Cantonese on any of these groups, as none of them can be considered more "correct" than the others. Of course, if we had a national body regulating this language, then we would not have this problem as that often takes precedent over linguistic classifications or common perceptions (which is why Swedish and Norwegian are two different "languages"). That said, I have no problem with the "Cantonese" article to be predominantly about Guangzhouhua - it is, after all, how it's widely understood and what readers will be most interested in. But as an encyclopedia that is supposed to merely describe the positive, not prescribe the normative, it is best that we give due coverage to all the different perspectives, and release ourselves from narrow, pedantic notions of what a "standard" really is. Colipon+(Talk) 11:53, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Bathrobe, sounds good to me.

Colipon, once again, what some Chinese word translated as "Cantonese" covers in Guangxi is beside the point. The is English WP. We should cover the sociolinguistics, of course, but should not use Chinese definitions for English words -- it's bizarre even to suggest that. Cantonese is primarily Guangzhouhua/Baakwa because that is how the word is used in English. There's no OR; we're talking about dictionary definitions (English dictionaries only, please), and several editors have provided multiple sources for this. And I don't think anyone is proposing that we shouldn't cover all perspectives, only that we have two articles for the broad and narrow conceptions of Cantonese, and that their emphases should differ. kwami (talk) 12:27, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Firstly, I will not be defending myself from things I did not say. Secondly, it's been shown by multiple users that there are dictionaries and other sources that do not define Cantonese as "Guangzhouhua". Sources exist on both sides, and it's about time people call it quits on saying that sources only say one thing. Thirdly, this notion that translations should not be taken into consideration is ludicrous. It's the main source of the confusion, it's the reason why editors get confused, it's the reason why readers get confused, and it's the main reason we're even having this debate. The problem is not magically solved just because we now artificially ascribe one term, "Yue" to the broad variety and another term, 'Cantonese', for the narrow one. So as long as we can agree that the new system accomodates for describing Shanwei and Maoming and Guangxi baakwa as "Cantonese" but also allows for Taishanese to be described as a "Yue dialect", then we are on the same page. Colipon+(Talk) 13:01, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Although we should not ignore translations there are very good reasons to be wary of them. First Cantonese is not a translation of anything, or at least not anything modern. It is used in the English language without reference to any Chinese or other language. It is because it has acquired its own meaning in English, while Chinese languages, or at least their usage, have changed considerably, that there are multiple possible translations. Second relying on Chinese in particular is fraught with difficulty, as there are words in Chinese used to describe language varieties that simply do not translate well - hence the language vs. dialect debate. This is particular to Cantonese – other terms like Yue, Puthonghua, Wu etc. are Chinese words. JohnBlackburne (talk) 13:45, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

John, I agree with you. It is precisely because we have an ambiguity in the meaning of the word "Cantonese" and ambiguity in the meaning of the Chinese terms related to Cantonese that we have these discussions at all. Heck, if all Chinese languages were well-defined by some recognized national body who isn't afraid to recognize and sanction China's diverse linguistic culture (i.e. not the Communist party), then we wouldn't have this problem at all. Colipon+(Talk) 18:04, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what it is about the way you and I converse, but you evidently don't mean to say what it seems clear to me you're saying. This has happened several times now. Maybe it's just me. kwami (talk) 20:44, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I personally think that limiting the use of "Cantonese" to "Guangzhouhua" only is original research.

User Colipon, I think we have enough sources to show that limiting the use of "Cantonese" to "Guangzhouhua" is not "original research". You have accused people in the past of not having the intention of reaching consensus. You are entitled to your personal feelings, including feelings that the Chinese government, or the Communist party, or whatever is standing in the way of adopting your own preferred definition of what Cantonese should mean. But for the purpose of editing the article on Cantonese, I don't think that branding a common and sourced definition of Cantonese (as Guangzhouhua) "original research" is exactly the stance of a person who is trying to reach consensus. Bathrobe (talk) 23:51, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I do apologize. I do not mean to come off that way and I do see the perspective of other editors. I merely state that there are differing perspectives, and that your "concentric" model of Cantonese works. But could editors respond to my suggestion about Maoming and Taishanese? Colipon+(Talk) 01:49, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

We currently say that people think of many Yue dialects as Cantonese, and I don't see why we'd change that. As for Maoming, that's Gaoyang dialect, which is rather far from the Yuehai standard. I don't think we need to make this black & white: we can state that (or something like, if I've got the details wrong) there are varieties of the Yuehai or esp. Guangfu dialect, which are so close as to be unequivocally Cantonese under nearly any definition, then other dialects such as Gaoyang, which are more distinct but which are often (generally?) considered Cantonese, or which may self-identify as Cantonese, and others such as Taishanese which may not be any more distinct, but which are often contrasted with Cantonese. This isn't much different, as far as I can see, from Zhuang, which is considered a Chinese dialect even though it's Tai. We note that, but don't classify Zhuang as Chinese because of it. kwami (talk) 02:28, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, Colipon, could you repeat your suggestion on Maoming and Taishanese? (Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Shanwei belong to Chaozhou dialect?) Bathrobe (talk) 03:23, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion on the treatment of various dialects

Yes. Shanwei was not the best example as it is a variation of Teochew (Minnan), so please scratch that off the list. Under User Bathrobe's "concentric definition of Cantonese", my suggestion was that we describe what is popularly regarded as Cantonese dialects as "dialects of Cantonese", and what is popularly separated from Cantonese dialects as a "dialect of Yue". Maoming's situation is actually quite complicated. But its dialect (Maominghua) is widely considered to be similar to Cantonese baakwa. My concern is perhaps more magnified with the Yuehai division, namely, Nanhai dialect, Jiujiang dialect, Xiqiao dialect, Panyu dialect and Shunde dialect, all of which are essentially variations of Std. Cantonese. My suggestion is to describe these dialects (and the majority of dialects commonly perceived as "Cantonese") as "dialects of Cantonese" in their respective articles, but leave out cases such as Taishanese, Lingui, Danzhouhua, which are popularly classified to be "not" Cantonese or have separate identities from Cantonese.

As some users have pointed out, Cantonese has taken on a separate identity in the English language, and may not have a parallel in Chinese. However, if you go to any Chinatown in San Francisco or Vancouver, you find that Cantonese means much more than the language of Guangzhou. The reason for this is simple. The immigrants that settled in these regions, where the English word "Cantonese" first came into wide use, are undoubtedly not from Guangzhou. And if you ask them what they mean by "Cantonese", they will tell you "Guangdonghua", not "Guangfu-hua", and in formal situations, they will say "Yue-yu", which actually means Cantonese-baakwa. You can see, again, that the term "Cantonese" has a stronger association to Guangdong province than its association to Guangzhou (Canton) City - and it is the same thing we we say "Cantonese cuisine", "Cantonese people" etc, meaning Guangdong food, people of Guangdong origin, not Guangzhou (Canton) food or people of Guangzhou origin. Cantonese is the language of the Cantonese people. Therefore this is not a parallel to Shanghainese and Wu, because no one has ever perceived Suzhou dialect as Shanghainese, despite what some users contend, inside or outside of China. It is, however, a parallel to Mandarin - people from Northeastern China speak Mandarin, just like people from Jiujiang and Nanhai and Maoming speak Cantonese. They are merely perceived to have "an accent". Colipon+(Talk) 13:50, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Once again, you're confusing Chinese with English.

"The term 'Shanghainese' in those days [after WWII] did not only denote natives of that city; it was also used by people from Hong Kong to refer to places in Eastern China such as Ningpo ... Nanking ... Soochow ... Wuxi and points further north." Jason Wordiep, Streets: exploring Hong Kong Island, p. 184.

kwami (talk) 22:07, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

This is confusing people and language. There is no question of saying "Ningbohua is a dialect of Shanghainese". Shanghai's dominance over its region is relatively recent. --03:07, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

User Kwami might also benefit from knowing that while "Yue" is the abbreviation of Guangdong, "Wu" is not the abbreviation of Shanghai. It is an abbreviation of the Jiangnan cultural region, and until the present-day, used to refer to Suzhou, whose language, until the 20th century, was the lingua franca and prestige dialect of the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region. If you browse earlier discussions dating from 2008 you will see that he frequently confuses the case of Cantonese with Shanghainese and mistakes the two as parallel, and uses it to advance the bulk of his case for moving articles around. I want to clear this up once and for all that Shanghainese is unambiguously the language spoken in the city of Shanghai. "Cantonese", in modern usage, primarily connotes the province of Guangdong, not the city of Guangzhou. Colipon+(Talk) 04:16, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

User Colipon is obviously acquainted with the American situation. He notes that Cantonese is "the language of the Cantonese people". I guess that on that basis Chaozhouhua and Hakka should also be included in the article on "Cantonese". Also, there is the problem of whether these "Cantonese people" in the United States are speaking their pure native dialect or are speaking their own accented version of the lingua franca. I did notice that the newspaper report cited at one stage in this discussion noted the displacement of Taishanese by Cantonese. This suggests that "Cantonese" is a different entity from "Taishanese". And I find it difficult to interpret it as meaning anything other than that the lingua franca was displacing Taishanese. It certainly doesn't suggest that Taishanese was being displaced by Maominghua. Bathrobe (talk) 05:39, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

User Bathrobe, I believe JWB had already addressed the issue of Hakka above, and we should not delve into it again. Saying that "Cantonese" has a stronger association to the province of Guangdong than it does Guangzhou in no way prevents us from discussing the special status of Taishanese and how it is often not considered to be Cantonese, and we already do this in the article itself. It also does not make every language in Guangdong "Cantonese". But we need to focus on the situation of dialects other than Taishanese, Lingui, and Danzhouhua. We should not let the fact that three dialects are identified separately from Cantonese change the status of the vast majority of Yue dialects being recognized as "Cantonese". Colipon+(Talk) 13:38, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Colipon, we all know that the Shanghainese-Wu distinction is much more clear-cut than the Cantonese-Yue distinction (as well as the recent and to some extent continuing prestige of Suzhou), but you're wrong to dismiss it out of hand. Fact is, "Shanghainese" has been used to mean Wu, if not as often as "Cantonese" is used to mean Yue, but it has been and still is: Google "Shanghainese dialects" (plural), and you'll find a fair number of hits that do just that. In English, Shanghainese has come to mean the language of the Shanghainese people, and the Shanghainese people (at least as immigrants in the West) are from Zhejiang and Jiangsu, not just from Shanghai. If you want to be a stickler for WP:CommonName, we'd have to rename Wu "Shanghainese", as Wu is obscure linguistic jargon to most English speakers. Sometimes we need to go with jargon. kwami (talk) 09:46, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't for a moment think Colipon is trying to extend the debate into Shanghainese. It seems that he was trying to underline the unreasonableness of trying to organise the structure of Cantonese articles like the northern grouping. There may be parallels between the two dialect groups, but there is divergence at some point, thus the relevance of comparisons declines. Essentially I believe Colipon has it spot on, and I think that discussion (Wu angle) should end here as being unproductive. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:01, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the example of Wu isn't relevant here. But, associations of "Cantonese" with the province aside, I think we should confine ourselves to the language, not the cuisine or anything else. As for all dialects of Yue in Guangdong province except Taishanese being regarded as "Cantonese", I think I would like a few sources to support user Colipon's statements. Are some of the more impenetrable dialects regarded as "Cantonese" in the same way as Guangzhouhua? Are people identified as speaking Cantonese speaking their approximation of the standard or are they speaking pure local dialect? To what extent is American usage representative? Bathrobe (talk) 16:09, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Sources are difficult to locate, as discussions of these issues rarely enter the English-speaking world. Us Wikipedians may well be the first group of English speakers to have ever discussed these definitions in such depth. Because of the lack of English-language texts that deal exclusively with these scattered dialects (such as Maoming), I suggested that translations of the term "Yue-yu" must be taken into account, but user Kwami seem so dogmatically opposed to this and accuse me and other editors of "confusing Chinese and English" and then harping that this is the "English Wikipedia" and thus the Chinese translations are "irrelevant". http://www.apex.net.au/~jgk/taishan/langs.html. http://www.chinafacttours.com/maoming/maoming.html. http://www.halfthesky.org/work/sites/maoming-maonan.php These are not the best sources, but they give you an impression of what I mean. Of course, speakers of non-Guangzhou Cantonese would not consider themselves to be speaking Guangzhou-hua. But they would consider themselves to be speaking Guangdonghua - which can only be translated to be "Cantonese". User bathrobe also asked about whether we can consider these overseas speakers to be talking in their home dialect or a variant of the prestige dialect. To that my answer is that sometimes the differences are minimal in that they are not differentiated much at all. For example, Northwestern Mandarin speakers will almost certainly tell you they are speaking Putonghua, as most Nanhai, Jiujiang etc. speakers would almost certainly tell you they are speaking Cantonese (Guangdong-hua). Colipon+(Talk) 16:32, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Translating Yue-yu is one thing, but using "Yue" as if it meant Yue-yu is another. It's simply a good if jargony term for maybe-but-not-quite-Cantonese, and there's no reason not to use it. Min, Wu, Gan, and Gan are all jargon: we use them because they're useful.

I agreed with BR's erstwhile comment: Taishanese is merely the best known example of Yue-which-often-is-not-Cantonese. Similar problems could arise for (m)any non-Yuehai varieties. That's why it's proven useful to linguists to introduce the term "Yue". kwami (talk) 01:02, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Sigh. User Kwami, linguists introducing Yue has nothing to do with drawing a clear line between ausbau and abstand varieties. They used "Yue" because "Yue" is the word culturally associated with Guangdong since the Ming Dynasty, and until this day used as the official abbreviation for Guangdong province. In this sense Yue-yu and "Guangdong-hua" connotes exactly the same thing: the language of Guangdong, which we render in English as "Cantonese". Colipon+(Talk)

User Colipon, you are technically incorrect.

"Yue" is a term introduced into English by linguists directly from Chinese. 粤 is used by Chinese linguists as a technical term to refer to the dialect family. Naturally, the term comes from the common-use term 粤, which, in fact, is used in Chinese for both Guangdong and (according to my 现代汉语词典) Guangxi (as in the expression 两粤). As user Colipon points out, 粤 is also an alternative name for Guangdong.
"Cantonese" is an English term derived from the word "Canton", which is etymologically from the Chinese word Guangdong (广东). However, according to many sources, "Canton" refers in English narrowly to the city, not the province.

You will notice several things here. First, 粤 and 广东 do not strictly refer to the same thing in Chinese. Secondly, 广东话 and 粤语 may be largely the same thing in Chinese, but they are also not completely the same. Thirdly, "Cantonese" and "Yue" are much more different in English than they are in Chinese, having entered the language in quite different ways and being used quite differently. One term is completely naturalised and has at least at one stage in its history had a rather different meaning from the original Chinese. The other is a direct borrowing from Chinese and is not a naturalised English term, being used only in very restricted senses (for instance in reference to linguistics and Yue culture).

Your statement "introducing Yue has nothing to do with drawing a clear line between ausbau and abstand varieties" is thus incorrect. Linguists have adopted it as a technical term, and in both its potential and its actual usage it is rather different from "Cantonese". Kwami is absolutely right that we shouldn't keep trying to explain English in terms of Chinese, because it leads to these kinds of sloppy and inaccurate statements. (How much bearing this has on user Colipon's overall arguments is another question, but since user Colipon is incorrect in both his assumptions and his description, he is not really entitled to let slip condescending sighs :) )Bathrobe (talk) 13:36, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

You misunderstand on two levels. Firstly, "Yue" has not entered the English language at all. It is found on some academic papers that deal with Chinese linguistics, and that's the extent of it. And you will notice that in a variety of these academic papers, they use the term "Cantonese (Yue)" or "Yue (Cantonese)" to describe the language, to show that the two are interchangeable. Secondly, I agree that using Chinese to dictate what should be named in English is not the right way to go. As User OhConfucius points out below, the most blaring problem is that "Cantonese" is commonly understood as 廣東話, but with a "Cantonese" article focused on Guangzhouhua, we restrict that definition artificially and create even more confusion. Thirdly, I am aware the "Yue" is also used to refer to Guangxi, which solidifies the fact that "Yue-yu" refers to both Guangdong and Guangxi varieties of Cantonese.

With your onslaught of rhetoric, I must admit I did critically examine my own positions. However, last night I approached several Singaporean friends to discuss the issue. Their ancestors are immigrants from rural areas in Guangdong, who clearly do not speak "Guangzhouhua" in the strict definition of the term. If we define Cantonese as purely the ausbau variety, then we can say what they are speaking is not Cantonese. But when asked what dialect is spoken at home, by their grandparents, they remark that it is "a kind of Cantonese". The convergence of this and a series of other reasons make me believe strongly that the use of "Cantonese" to describe only the Hong Kong-Guangzhou variety is not only inappropriate, but simply incorrect. Colipon+(Talk) 15:23, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

"Onslaught of rhetoric" is a nice rhetorical flourish, but also not accurate. It was an onslaught of hard, sober, verifiable fact. To say that "Yue" has not entered English is also not totally correct. Adoption of foreign words into English is a gradual process and there are many gradations. While "Yue" is definitely not English, it has made the first step, which is usage in technical articles. You mention that you agree with OhConfucius, but OhConfucius's representation has problems of its own, including the translation of 白話 as 'patois'. I notice that your Singaporean friends characterise their grandparents' language as a kind of Cantonese. This demonstrates the fuzziness very well. If their grandparents spoke 廣州話, they would have said unequivocally "They speak Cantonese". Obviously they feel that their grandparents' language is not quite "Cantonese" enough to omit the kind of. I think we are going round in circles. It is clear that "Cantonese" has broad and narrow senses, as we have noted from the beginning. I think this is captured by what I call my concentric proposal.

I don't have any Singaporean friends that I could approach about this. I do remember reading a long time ago of a Cantonese-speaker who went to the United States and, having been told that Cantonese was spoken in Chinatowns there, was very surprised to find that the so-called "Cantonese" was Toisan, a rural dialect from the backblocks of Guangdong province. I haven't got a source for this -- too long ago -- but it is clear that the "Cantonese" in that person's mind didn't mean Toisan. At any rate, the point is that "Cantonese" in its purest sense is normally understood as 廣州話. (I am thinking of JWB's position that Cantonese should be treated in a similar way to French. To the extent that rural dialects are regarded as kinds of Cantonese, this is probably reasonable. My main reservation was that "Yue" should not be treated as a language equivalent to "French". Yue is the branch; not all Yue dialects are going to be treated as "Cantonese".) Bathrobe (talk) 02:14, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I have been quite fond of your "concentric proposal" from the beginning. I am only afraid that once I start editing that article to fit the proposal, I will be reverted by other editors who haven't bothered to understand the proposal. That said, it should be a discussion reserved to the "Cantonese" page. I feel that if we adopt the 'concentric proposal', the best name for this page is "Yue dialects". Colipon+(Talk) 02:29, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

A friend of mine from Malaysia said that his family had referred to their dialect as 广府话.

"Canton" refers in English narrowly to the city, not the province - I would not call this a hard and fast rule, but just the connotation presumed in some periods of history. Cantonese cuisine for example means the cooking of the province, not just the city. Recently English has started referring to the city as Guangzhou.

not all Yue dialects are going to be treated as "Cantonese" - that may reflect some people's perceptions, but for that matter there are disputes about dialects are to be included in the Yue family. These various POV are to be discussed in the article(s) without prejudice. The fact that say Pinghua may be mentioned in an article titled Yue or Cantonese does not mean that the article is asserting Pinghua is or is not included in one or both of those classes, but just that Pinghua is related enough to be discussed in the article. --JWB (talk) 17:17, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I think that mentioning Pinghua makes sense, as it was once included in Yue. As for my "Cantonese referring to the city" comment, I did prefix that with according to many sources. There are other sources to back up the idea that, strictly speaking, Cantonese should refer only to Guangzhouhua. At any rate, I have already indicated that I'm happy to accept the inclusion of broader uses and I'm not going to quibble about this. Bathrobe (talk) 09:30, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Ethnologue still classifies Ping as Yue, so it's covered under ISO3 yue. kwami (talk) 09:58, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

My position is that the common definition of the English term "Cantonese" is synonymous with "Yue" (粵語) and is primarily used to express the idea of "廣東話". It includes the predominate dialects such as 廣州話, Taishanese, and all the dialects and patois (白話) spoken in the whole of Guangdong. Strange as it may seem, but due to its prevalent use, 'Cantonese' (廣東話) is also the name of dialectic variants spoken in neighbouring Guangxi province. 廣東話 is used in Mandarin synonymously with, but also in preference to, 廣州話. As a silent (or not-so silent) lurker, I have borne witness to blasé comments and the very relentless technobabble emanating from one corner in particular. I would applaud Kwami's tenacity in his lone campaign. However, I am not persuaded by his vociferous arguments. I'd also note the rather dismissive comments he has uttered. But back to the core argument, the most important thing I believe which is being missed is that, by its very nature of being a living language, Cantonese moves and evolves, and often defies being pigeon-holing. It would be completely wrong, IMHO, to even attempt to treat this like the Wu language family, (not that I claim any expertise in that). Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 12:20, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

comments moved from poll below

The discussion at this point calls for a topical review of how to organize Cantonese articles, not a simple rename of this article. I suggest we finish that discussion first before considering a rename. The level of discussion has grown quite sophisticated over the past month, and a lot of new issues are being explored. Colipon+(Talk) 02:49, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
- Isn't that pretty much a discussion on what to include and what not to include in this article which is about the Yue dialect group? Do we not all agree that there is one topic, which is the Cantonese dialect, and another topic, which is about the Yue dialect group? Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 04:49, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree, as do many others. kwami (talk) 09:00, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

HongQiGong, no. The above discussion is not just about what to include in this article. It's about how we organize the pages as a whole. Colipon+(Talk) 12:31, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can see, the level of discussion has not grown quite sophisticated in the past month. All that has happened is that user Colipon has built up a head of steam in the past two days for his original proposal that Yue should be treated as equivalent to Cantonese. If I remember rightly, I proposed that the article on Cantonese should follow a concentric formula, and that this article should deal strictly with the Yue dialects in a linguistic sense, an abstand language or group od dialects. I am not sure what has changed that user Colipon should suddenly propose a reconsideration of the organisation of the pages as a whole. Bathrobe (talk) 13:59, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

User Bathrobe, there is no need to misrepresent the situation and take personal swipes. I am perfectly fine with this page being a discussion on the linguistic aspects of Yue dialects, provided we incorporate content on your "concentric definitions" of Cantonese in the "Cantonese" article, which should not be strictly about Guangzhou-hua. Also, if you could address the problems raised above for treatment of different dialects, then we can move forward on this. As far as I can see, your proposal about the concentric definitions and the organization of this article is perfectly fine. But I do get the feeling that other users understand this to mean that "Cantonese" to discuss strictly Guangzhouhua, and this article to discuss strictly the concept of "Yue-yu". Colipon+(Talk) 15:05, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with HongQiGong and kwami - we decided what was Cantonese was to cover when Standard Cantonese and Canton Dialect were merged and the article renamed, and fairly effectively drew a line under that discussion. So that article is on Cantonese in the narrow sense, while this is on the dialect group in the broad sense. Other pages cover particular dialects and specialist topics. I don't see what further reorganisations are needed.--JohnBlackburne (talk) 15:41, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment - The current naming is terribly confusing. We should have an article on "Cantonese (linguistics)" -- covering all aspects of this dialect continuum, then "Standard Cantonese" for the "prestige dialect." No renaming needed to take place, or should have taken place, as the original terms were clear and concise. Badagnani (talk) 18:31, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

If I recall, issues were raised with both of those names (though not by me). An article named "XXX (linguistics)" is usually about a linguistics subject, which, in the narrow sense, should be about the subject of linguistics. And "Standard Cantonese" is problematic as Cantonese is not a standard language in the strictest sense of the term. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 18:46, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Badagnani, if you want to reopen the debate on what to call Cantonese, you need to take it up on that page, not here. kwami (talk) 20:50, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

back to the name

Two names were suggested above: Yue Chinese and Yue dialects. There's also the runner up from the last tie-breaking round, Yue (Cantonese). Or we could stay where we are. Could we get some idea of where we stand? Not pages of debate, just a quick poll to see how far apart we are? As w Cantonese, we could rank the choices: if one name is everyone's second choice, that might be a good consensus name. kwami (talk) 01:11, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Cantonese (Yue)
Yue (Cantonese)
Yue Chinese

(1) JohnBlackburne

(1) kwami (talk)

Yue dialects

(2) JohnBlackburne

(*) Should be reserved for the detail subarticle, not the main article. JWB (talk) 16:48, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

(other)

Comment - Absolutely not. "Yue" or "Yue Chinese" are not the most commonly used terms for these languages in English and should not be used as the titles of any articles.Badagnani (talk) 04:38, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

They are the most common terms in English for anyone trying to disambiguate the two topics. kwami (talk) 21:16, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment - Agree that the two suggestions are based on a false premise. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:01, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

The reason for preferring Yue is that Cantonese is already used for a main article and a number of sub articles, while this article is about the broader dialect group. "Yue Chinese" is better than "Yue" as on its own Yue haas various interpretations. It would be similar to e.g. Wu Chinese which has another article Shanghainese for the dialect of that city, while "Wu" also is not a commonly used term in English--JohnBlackburne (talk) 10:25, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

"Yue dialects" is fine to me, provided we cover only the linguistics and dialectology aspects of this dialect group and define the "Cantonese" article with Bathrobe's "Concentric proposal". A second suggestion is "Yue dialect group". These names distinguish the subject for the reader, who may interpret the article to be about 'Yue-yu' if we use a term like "Yue Chinese" or "Yue". And as a note, the moves to "Wu Chinese", "Min Chinese", "Gan Chinese", and "Jin Chinese" were never discussed anyhow, therefore I can't vouch for its legitimacy as the "standard". None of these names are ever used by linguists or commonly referenced. Perhaps there was some kind of attempt to mimic "Mandarin Chinese", which is a name commonly used to refer to Mandarin and therefore acceptable. But I do feel as though appending "Chinese" to every division of the language is a rather inadequate (and inaccurate) approach. Colipon+(Talk) 10:41, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you weren't there, Colipon, but there was a long discussion and finally consensus on the "X Chinese" formula. And the names are used in linguistics: "X Chinese" is the format used by Ethnologue, which has Yue Chinese, Hakka Chinese, Gan Chinese, Min Dong Chinese, Min Bei Chinese, Min Zhong Chinese, Pu-Xian Chinese, Min Nan Chinese, Xiang Chinese,[1] Huizhou Chinese, Wu Chinese, Jinyu Chinese, and Mandarin Chinese,[2] just as they have conventions for "X Zhuang", "X Tibetan", and "X Miao". kwami (talk) 21:14, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Could you give me a link to where this discussion about the "X Chinese" formula took place, and specifically, where the "consensus" is? I am fully aware that Ethnologue uses the "X Chinese" formula. This does not mean that Wikipedia has an obligation to follow it. Colipon+(Talk) 21:35, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

You just said, "None of these names are ever used by linguists or commonly referenced. Perhaps there was some kind of attempt to mimic 'Mandarin Chinese'." If you're aware that these names are used by Ethnologue, and that Ethnologue is written by and referred to by linguists, and that the ISO3 codes we use on WP also refer to these names, then your statement is not credible. Also, no-one is arguing that WP "has an obligation to follow it", only that the precedent is there if we care to use it. (We do tend to follow E as a general convenience, tho we not uncommonly diverge from it.) As for the link, you provided it yourself below. As for mimicking "Mandarin Chinese", I think it is rather an attempt to mimic English: "Mandarin Chinese", "Swabian German", "Castillian Spanish", "Amdo Tibetan", "Cuzco Quechua", the list of analogous language names is quite long. kwami (talk) 00:27, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment - the name selection is immature. With respect to the voteonly about 2 months ago, the voting result for Cantonese (Yue) is clear. The current renaming looks like and feels like User Kwami's continuing quest to get what he want - "Yue Chinese" - which was rejected many times before - and never been discussed in current session. I here ask to stop any renaming before more views was expressed and some consensus.--WikiCantona (talk) 15:11, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

There was never any consensus on the name. The straw pole 2 mo. ago was just a provisional solution so that we could move on, and much of the argumentation was based on the then-name of "Canton dialect" for the narrower article. kwami (talk) 21:14, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

some of the opposition to "Yue Chinese" (well, at least mine) was at seeing the article than named "Cantonese" summarily renamed, and the name used for a dab page. This has been resolved hopefully to most peoples satisfaction, with a Cantonese page with a clear focus on the variety of Chinese as it's best understood. As such I think it makes sense to revisit the naming now as the current name was a compromise between "Cantonese" and "Yue Chinese", i.e. trying to get the article to cover two things. --JohnBlackburne (talk) 18:04, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

The article is in the position for the main topic article surveying both (all) topics. --JWB (talk) 19:42, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Kwami - whatever the outcome of the poll, I would like to request that you don't personally do any page moves on this article anymore. If there is consensus to move, post up a page move request and let another admin handle it. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 00:08, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Sure. kwami (talk) 00:27, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

What is the reason for bringing the vote up again? This article name was acceptable after a long discussion and agreement. Benjwong (talk) 03:59, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

There was never any consensus on this name. It was a stop-gap measure so we could move on to other things. It came up again with the renaming of Cantonese, when people expressed reservations about having two articles with such confoundable names, and that the reasons for calling this "Cantonese (Yue)" were obviated by the renaming of Cantonese, and they started arguing what we should rename this article. I proposed a few times that we stick to the matter of the Cantonese article in deciding what to name the Cantonese article, and that if the name of this article then became problematic, we should then bring it up here. If consensus by silence counts, I believe that is what at least some people were expecting. Thus I brought it up here. If people are happy with "Cantonese (Yue)", then we can leave it at that. kwami (talk) 06:54, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

A bit of history

I would like to point editors to this unfinished discussion. Unless I have overlooked something major, there was never any sort of clear consensus on the five or six page moves to the "X Chinese" formula, which seems to have taken place on September 27, 2008, all by User Kwami. Judging by that discussion linked above, there was no consensus between the parties involved, although kwami certainly claims so here ("Okay, it's been five days..."), only to be refuted by several other editors after he'd carried out the page moves unilaterally. I am unsure how this is acceptable. Interestingly, at the time, very few editors offered "Yue" as a solution for Cantonese, and kwami himself suggested using "Cantonese" for this article. What later made him change his mind to "Yue" or "Yue Chinese" is unclear, but it is probably in the archives somewhere if we bothered to look. It seems a big part of the initial move to "Yue Chinese" was driven by kwami's assumption that the situation of Cantonese is parallel to that of Shanghainese and that "Cantonese" means the language of Guangzhou. These assumptions have been debunked numerous times by myself and several other users. On October 1, 2008, In response to a user who objected to "Yue Chinese", Kwami writes (emphasis mine):

“

Wow you're paranoid.
What you are describing is a prestige dialect, not an official dialect. An official dialect is established by rule, a prestige dialect by usage. That's why other editors have suggested that we might want to change the title. As for Cantonese vs. Yue, this is like Shanghainese vs. Wu: Cantonese is, literally, the language of Canton; and historically the word "Shanghainese" was used for all Wu dialects. The situation is exactly parallel.

”

As much as this is a critique of user Kwami's behavior on this encyclopedia, it is meant to give a bit of a background on how we got into this mess, and lets us carefully reflect upon procedural abuses, which I hope will be prevented in the future. Colipon+(Talk) 21:59, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Okay, point taken, the situation is not "exactly" parallel, only partially parallel. I exaggerated. (And note that the rather passionate editor I called paranoid was objecting to "making people believe that Cantonese is a dialect of single language 'Chinese'!", arguing that it was instead a separate language, something which I have never disputed.) But the primary linguistic meaning of Cantonese is Canton dialect, and is associated with the city of Canton, as has been established by editors other than me. And yes, the situation re. Cantonese vis-a-vis the "X Chinese" formula was left open, but then I'm not insisting we follow it now either, merely noting that people have objected to having two articles named "Cantonese" and "Cantonese (Yue)" and stating that "Yue Chinese" is my personal preference. If you're happy with the status quo, you can certainly sign up for it and give reasons to convince the rest of us. kwami (talk) 00:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Please stop turning the tables. You sounded vaguely conciliatory at the start of the message, but then you clawed it all back. The "give reasons to convince the rest of us" admonition is pretty "holier than thou" - images of his tyranny of one and royal we pretty much come to mind. Whilst I agree that sufficient discussion and argumentation must take place, all this current talk is against a backdrop of a large number of unilateral moves for which there was little or no discussion when it was done. Please can it. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:28, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I resent Colipon repeatedly and it would seem purposefully misrepresenting what I say. That is not editing in good faith, and I'm not going to be conciliatory with such an approach. There was a long discussion at Chinese naming conventions, with several rounds of voting, that seemed to come to an adequate consensus. Once the moves were made, more objections arose, and he or anyone else can certainly re-open the discussion if they wish (so far, despite all his talk, he hasn't cared to), but that's irrelevant to this article, which was not decided in that debate. kwami (talk) 02:48, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

There have undoubtedly been discussions around the wider topic. Kindly indicate precisely which discussion and specifically which consensus you are referring to. What we are discussing here is the local consensus on what becomes of the Cantonese dialect group. Any consensus on the Wu is largely irrelevant here. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:00, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Are you admonishing Colipon, or me? kwami (talk) 06:54, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

The above entry (02:28, 14 December 2009 (UTC)) was directed at you, kwami. The entry datestamped 03:00, 14 December 2009 (UTC) was an information request, to you too. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:35, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Colipon has already linked to that, or at least one point during that debate. kwami (talk) 08:17, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Pardon me for not wanting to wade through kilobytes of circuitous discussion. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 09:27, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Right at the top of this section. kwami (talk) 09:54, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

The link I provided was not to show that there was a consensus. It was to show the exact opposite. There was no consensus at all, before or after the vote. Anyone can read it; there is no need to tell people that there was a consensus when there was none. I am not misrepresenting what you say because there is ample evidence to back up what has happened. I agree that if we are going to debate the procedures of past page moves, perhaps this is not the place to do it. But I felt it was relevant to prevent future abuse of administrative powers on this page. Colipon+(Talk) 10:32, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Yue Chinese just doesn't work. It is so far off. When you ask a Cantonese person what they speak, "Yue Chinese" will never be an answer. Some might say Yue, most will say Cantonese. Hence the name of this article Cantonese (Yue) is the only way to deal with it. Benjwong (talk) 04:32, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

It works just fine. By your argument, we have to change the name of Chinese language too, because when you ask a Chinese speaker what they speak, they never say "Chinese language", they say "Chinese". And if you ask them what their nationality is, they will also say "Chinese". So, by your argument, the articles Chinese language and Chinese people need to be merged at Chinese.

The name of an article is not the answer to a particular question. It's a label that identifies the subject of the article. And "Yue Chinese", like "Wu Chinese" and "Mandarin Chinese", perfectly fits common-name conventions for subarticles of "Chinese language". kwami (talk) 05:54, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

If labeling convention is the main concern, then Yue Chinese will do. Unfortunately is more than that. To keep the labeling convention neat, we could have stayed with the "(linguistics)" title all along. The key is when people look for 粵語 or 廣東話, they find this page. And that the title/article name reflects that. Yue Chinese at best reflects 粵語 only. Benjwong (talk) 06:44, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

kwami, WP works by WP:Consensus, and dissing others' opinions is the wrong the way to go. I suggest that you bury it. You may may have the upper hand in page moves, but here, you are just another editor.Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:46, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I didn't dismiss an opinion, I corrected an error of fact. Language articles are named according to the answer of the question "which language do you speak". kwami (talk) 10:10, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I often find it a breach of policy, not to mention a severe violation of etiquette, for a seasoned administrator to come to the Cantonese article ridiculing the views of native Cantonese speakers who know the subject area better than him. I find it even more ridiculous that he thinks these "by your argument, then X must be Y" statements are convincing. Much of his rhetoric is outright dismissive. Colipon+(Talk) 08:32, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

You "find it a breach of policy"? What, are you inventing policy now? I'm not ridiculing opinions, and I didn't ridicule Ben at all, opinions or otherwise. (Though I am ridiculing you.) I respect Ben's opinion, but as I said above, he got his facts wrong. It is entirely appropriate to address such things, and if he took offense, I'll apologise to him. kwami (talk) 10:10, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

User Colipon has a "thing" about user Kwami. Sometimes it overcomes objective observation, to the extent that whatever user Kwami says is incorrect, even if it's correct. User Colipon has an almost evangelistic attitude to articles on Chinese dialects, and perhaps as a result of this he is also prone to dissing other people's judgements and reacting emotively to issues. His statements have been proved wrong, or sloppily put, more than once (for instance, his stance on the word 粤 earlier in the piece), and he has been known to override written sources if they disagree with his POV.

None of this is to say that user Colipon is necessarily wrong, but his undisguised enmity to user Kwami doesn't help advance his argument. Whatever user Kwami's sins, the fact is that he has a relatively balanced approach to dialect articles. If you are willing to engage him on his own ground -- linguistics -- you will gain a lot of traction. If, on the other hand, you rant and rave at him, you will get nowhere. I suggest that user Colipon abandon his vendetta and start addressing issues, not people. It will get him a lot further. Bathrobe (talk) 15:28, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

"User Colipon has a "thing" about user Kwami." Frankly, I wouldn't blame him for it. Just a look through the archives for the last twelve months, and you see Kwami busy-bodying and imposing his "expert view of Cantonese" on us all. He's been moving these articles about in abuse of his admin owers, thrusting his position down our throats in complete defiance of the opposition or rational debate. Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 16:06, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

User bathrobe, instead of lecturing me for not focusing on content, I suggest you take a look at what I have written over at Talk:Cantonese. In addition, I think it might also be beneficial to our readership if you began editing articles. Your participation over the past while seem rather confined to debates on the talk page. Colipon+(Talk) 18:24, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

User Colipon, I can understand that you're not happy with what I wrote, but is it a good idea to suggest rushing in and editing before people are agreed on the scope and content of the articles? Bathrobe (talk) 02:41, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Do not worry. I am not offended or against anyone. I just feel "Yue Chinese" is branding Guangdonghua to fit into other sub-dialects of "X Chinese" like some product suite for marketing. It realistically is not that organized in real life. If someone can find 粵語 or 廣東話 (technically they already can), then we are ok. The next is whether 2 articles called Cantonese is confusing. Maybe. But I think Cantonese (Yue) reflects reality pretty good. I would not feel comfortable saying that about other dialects/spoken language. For me, I am open to better names. Just not Yue Chinese. Benjwong (talk) 06:22, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Good.

Looks like there isn't much opposition to the current name, apart from John and me, so I guess it stays. kwami (talk) 13:22, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Translating material from Chinese articles

I would like to propose a stronger effort to translate material from the Chinese articles relevant to this subject. In the few cases I have investigated a little, there is often much more detailed coverage that clarifies points that are being debated in the English talk pages. How can we facilitate this? Individuals could translate particular sections, or we could use http://translate.google.com/toolkit for multiple editors to collaborate in translating one text. --JWB (talk) 14:44, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Bathrobe: Would you like to take a shot at zh:广西壮族自治区#語言 as this has a good deal of new information and is your field of interest? --JWB (talk) 21:15, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Let me have a look at it. Bathrobe (talk) 02:52, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

My apologies. It's that time of year. It looks interesting, but will need a bit of work to incorporate. Bathrobe (talk) 09:27, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

The problems with editors' arguments in the discussions here

The problems in arguments used by various editors and contributors here are two-fold. (1) They are taking what so called linguists say and classify at face value, not challenging the fact many these classifications are neither precise nor scientific enough or that indeed they are at best gross over-simplications of the real situation. (2) Many editors, starting with Kwami do not actually know what they are talking about as they have no understanding or extremely limited knowledge of the Chinese (spoken) languages or indeed of how (human) languages work.

To reach a useful or workable resolution, the whole subject contained in this discussion must be precisely defined, rather like Inuits using a number of words in their language to describe the single English word "snow". Unless it is agreed which version of the word "Cantonese" means it is impossible to write a coherent article on it. Inventing titles such as Cantonese (Yue) or Cantonese Chinese or Standard Cantonese, etc, etc, will not help as these terms do not actually exist in the Chinese. Then having invented terms such as Cantonese (Yue) and say Taishanese is a subset of it is simply laughable when all Guangzhouhua speakers and Taishanhua speakers know they are completely different, even though people like Kwami does not know or believe it. Perhaps people who have limited knowledge of the Chinese languages have the grace and decency not to impose their very foolish arguments here as although their contributions make comical reading and entertainment here, they add nothing to further or understand what Cantonese (in the English)actually is. 86.136.143.144 (talk) 10:58, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

If you want to participate in this discussion I suggest you retract what you've written above and find a way of concisely making your point without disparaging other editors' valuable contributions.--JohnBlackburne (talk) 19:05, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

No. Valuable, according to whom? Indeed Blackburne or JWB, you are one of those who do not know much about the subject, but like to add your "valuable" contributions. If it is so valuable then why can ordinary people find so much faults with these "valuable" contributions? If you wish to participate in this discussion, I suggest you improve your knowledge of the subject first.86.136.57.254 (talk) 21:44, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Valuable compared to yours I would say. Other than that I refer you to my last comment. --JohnBlackburne (talk) 22:19, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

The question was "Valuable, according to whom?" not "compared to whom?" People like you should have some concrete learning of a subject before pretending to have reached a level where you can argue about it on Wiki. People with your attitude bring the whole of Wiki into disrepute. 86.136.57.254 (talk) 11:43, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

According to me, as I stand by everything I've written here. But I really think you should do as I suggested in my first post: start again with a short post on the point(s) you want to raise, without mentioning any other editors. You might find you are taken more seriously if you do so.--JohnBlackburne (talk) 20:22, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

And who exactly are you Blackburne or JWB? Why should anyone do as you suggest? Would you perhaps do as other suggest, which is to go and get some proper knowledge (even some working knowledge to begin with) on the subject first before posting here? 86.136.57.254 (talk) 15:56, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Interesting that you would say we know nothing of language, and then illustrate with that silly Inuit myth. AFAIK English has more words for 'snow' than Innuit (at least they do in Colorado). kwami (talk) 02:46, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you name them then? But then according to you, a fox is a bat in English. 86.136.57.254 (talk) 11:20, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you check out Eskimo_words_for_snow? The Internet is also a good place to look up the Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax, etc. Bathrobe (talk) 05:08, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Why? Because "Eskimo" is derogatory. As such nothing coming under such a title could be trusted. 86.136.57.254 (talk) 19:51, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

While I have avoided this discussion mainly due to lack of time in following the very detailed discussions that has been on-going for months, just one simple response to the above: The reason why editors here were "taking what so called linguists say and classify at face value, not challenging the fact" is because one of the most basic rules we Wikipedians abide by, is WP:OR. Maybe you may do yourself a favour to read up on it first before coming back us.--Huaiwei (talk) 00:58, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Then you'll have to abide by the OR rule and not quote anything that is dressed as trusted research when it is nothing more than OR by someone else and comments by people such as Kwami about a language called Yue. 86.136.57.254 (talk) 16:00, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Don't feed the troll. --JWB (talk) 04:09, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think this user is a troll. I think he/she is a person with a strongly entrenched (possibly arrogant) attitude whose mode of argument is to disparage other editors. This is different from a troll, who will take a provocative attitude merely for the sake of stirring things up. I think there is a difference, which is why I have been relatively indulgent towards this editor in the past despite the very poor argumentation he/she has put forward. Bathrobe (talk) 14:29, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Seconded. --JohnBlackburne (talk) 16:05, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

The trouble is, by not feeding people like you Blackburne/JWB, you get hungrier and hungrier, and then you just open your mouth more and more, and then more and more hot air comes out. It is worth feeding people like you just to shut your trap. Go and get some understanding of the subject matter before you open your mouth. 86.136.57.254 (talk) 01:28, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

LOL. And we'll have a Kwami teaching us Cantonese (Yue) next? May God help you all!!! 86.136.57.254 (talk) 15:56, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, 86.136.57.254 might originally have had something to say, but it now seems to have got lost in the torrent of abuse. Time to move on... Bathrobe (talk) 00:29, 26 December 2009 (UTC)