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Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Mandarin Chinese

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Mandarin Chinese Wikipedia

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submitted verification final decision
  This proposal has been rejected.
This decision was taken by the language committee in accordance with the Language proposal policy based on the discussion on this page.

The closing committee member provided the following comment:

This was the second request for the same project. Explanation from the first one: Vernacular and Mandarin Chinese don't have significant written differences and Wikipedia is about written language. If you really need somewhat different written form, please consider Automatic conversion between simplified and traditional Chinese. --Millosh 12:56, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal summary
Please read the handbook for requesters for help using this template correctly.

Mandarin Chinese has more native speakers than any other language in the world. The Chinese Wikipedia, which has code zh for Chinese as a macrolanguage, is mainly written in Mandarin, but use Chinese characters, which can be pronounced in any Chinese language and fail to represent many unique features of Mandarin. The proposal is to create a wikipedia in Pinyin, which faithfully represents Standard Mandarin, parallel to the Southern Min Wikipedia and the Hakka Wikipedia.

Arguments in favour

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Arguments against

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  • Mandarin Chinese is not phonogram.

这里的”Mandarin Chinese “是哪种话呢，明清官话？普通话？看来说的是普通话/国语/华语。zh的维基百科的内容的语法按照——普通话/国语/华语语法、发音，并不是说可以用任何其他方言发音，官方都有相应的法律标准。

 
  Comment That's a problem. So I advice to request several Mandarin Wikipedia:
  1. cmn-manchu.wikipedia.org for Northeastern Mandarin in IPA;
  2. cmn-beijing.wikipedia.org for Beijing Mandarin in IPA;
  1. cmn.wikipedia.org for Standard Mandarin in Pinyin;
  2. cmn-t.wikipedia.org for Taiwanese Mandarin in Tongyong Pinyin or Hanyu Pinyin;
  1. cmn-ji-lu.wikipedia.org for Jilu Mandarin in IPA;
  2. cmn-jiao-liao.wikipedia.org for Jiaoliao Mandarin in IPA;
  3. cmn-central.wikipedia.org for Zhongyuan Mandarin in IPA;
  4. cmn-lan-yin.wikipedia.org for Lan-Yin Mandarin in IPA;
  1. dng.wikipedia.org for Lan-Yin Mandarin in Xiao'erjing and Cyrillic;
  1. cmn-sw.wikipedia.org for Southwestern Mandarin in IPA;
  2. cmn-jianghuai.wikipedia.org for Jianghuai Mandarin, which is disappearing, in IPA.
--虞海 (Yú Hǎi) 06:52, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is merely a new script; we don't create new Wikipedias with the same language but a different script. The text on zh.wikipedia is clearly Mandarin, and not say Cantonese, and splitting off a new WP would have no advantage to anyone.--Prosfilaes 00:10, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  Comment It's not only a different dialect, but a preserving of a culture:
Also, sometimes to be a language or a dialect is merely a political game: Lan-Yin Mandarin used by Dungans is considered Dungan language, but when a Han or Hui Chinese met a Dungan, they can chat with each other with no trouble at all. Will you say Dungan Wikipedia "merely a new script"? We Chinese determine a language or dialect by testing "can the writing system unified?". For example, the "Tibetan languages" is one language because Tibetan script is transdialect script - different dialects written in Tibetan script shows no different, nevertheless a U-Tsang Tibetan people do not understand Khams dialect without training. For the same reason, zh-min-nan, zh-yue, Hakka, Gan, Wu are merely different dialects. And with your opinion, merely different orthography. So since we have zh-min-nan, zh-yue, Hakka, Gan, Wu, etc. It's not excessive to have several Mandarin Wikipedias. Those Wikipedias, are not aimed at "apply for a new language", nut merely preserving the culture. If you like, I can prove all those different languages (in some counties of China even 2 neighbor villages of people can not communicate without training, so in western ideals language definition, China will have thousands of Chinese languages), and zh.wikipedia.org a translingual Wikipedia, but we Chinese treat them (together with min-nan, yue, etc.) as dialects. --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) 07:20, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  Comment zh.wp is a transdialet Wikipedia, does not preserve the original voice of mandarin. --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) 06:52, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think it is not necessary. The only effective way of recording Chinese is to use the Chinese characters. In China, wherever you are, you can understand the Chinese characters easily, but it is much more difficult to identify the Pinyin(which is used in this version of Wikipedia). Perhaps it is for the little kids who can only read Pinyin? And if you want to translate Chinese into Pinyin (here you call Mandarin Chinese),the computer can do it perfectly (except some special usages). It doesn't need us to translate, perhaps the Google Translator is enough. It is just the phonetic way to spell Chinese, the grammer or vocabulary that sort of things are just the same as Chinese. It's a completely waste of time. In history, it has been proved that Pinyin can't be used as a main written language.It can be just used as a way to help people to learn Chinese, to know the pronunciation. Once people wanted to change Chinese characters into Pinyin, but they all failed. Because the Chinese characters describe the meaning but not only the pronunciation, to understand Chinese characters is much more faster than to understand Pinyin. At last, I think if there are really a number of people wanting to read Pinyin, this version can be added into that Chinese page. Just like Simplified Chinese and Traditonal Chinese in the Wikipedia.--ZhangHaowen 12:48, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  Comment It's not aiming at recording Chinese into Pinyin for children or learners. It's aiming at record different dialects or languages, the phonology. This is not "simple Chinese" Wikipedia. --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) 07:34, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Other discussion

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  • The proposal is rejected as Wikipedia in Chinese is Wikipedia in Mandarin. --Millosh 12:07, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Millosh, your main explanation for rejectg this project is understandable, however you totally mistake the meaning of "Simplified/Traditional Chinese" on this. Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese are both forms written with the syllabic Chinese characters, only that the Simplified set, issued by PRC government after 1949, have generally simplified the strokes from the Traditional ones, which are still in use in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. However the cause of the original request was about "using Pinyin (Roman alphabet) to write Mandarin". I'm not scolding you on this, only to suggest that you may know the Chinese writing systems better if you have interests.--MilchFlasche 14:36, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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