This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archived the move debate. I think however that we should be careful about reverting the wording of the two Cantonese language articles, since we often distinguish Yueyu from Yuehai, and "Cantonese" is ambiguous in such situations. kwami (talk) 10:54, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I wonder why you archived the talk page while it is in the midst of hot discussion. There are lot of oppositions to name of "Yue" anyway.— HenryLi (Talk) 17:09, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Like HenryLi, I also wonder. Can we say, somebody want to stop the roaring of the truth form other people, so he/she use this trick? If this description is wrong, so what is the TRUTH and how can a such STUPID, IRRATIONAL MOVEMENT happened?!? To prevent somebody evade the truth, and the possibility of the reborning of "Yue Chinese", I mark down the following:--

跟HenryLi一樣，我也質疑為何kwami在題目談得火紅火熱時強行打斷它，放進「紀錄檔案」中。是不是：有人企圖阻撓別人揭示出真相，所以用了這樣的手段？若然不是，為何這樣愚笨、這樣不合理的事會發生？為避免有人逃避真相，為避免日後「Yue Chinese」會死灰復燃，我特別記下以下的內容：--

The discussions on "Yue Chinese":Archive 3 (Nov 2007 - Nov 2008)

對「Yue Chinese」的討論:Archive 3 (Nov 2007 - Nov 2008)

Suggestion and Poll:Talk:Standard_Cantonese/Archive1#Suggestion_and_Poll

建議與投票:Talk:Standard_Cantonese/Archive1#Suggestion_and_Poll

I've corrected the links. It seems that somebody who "invent" the wording "Yue Chinese" wanna stop the discussion from other people, so he/she put everything, included the polling and discussion in progress, inside the so called "Archive"? The "maxim" of that guy, "粵 is "Yue" in normal English usage, so "Yue" is what we need to use", has alreadly shows that he/she's living in a world of illusion(or "Lie without a blink"). We should continue to point out the problem of "Yue Chinese", for preventing its reborn.

我已修正了上方的連結。似乎有些想像出「Yue Chinese」的偉人，企圖透過把正在進行中的討論及投票歸檔，來阻止人們繼續發言吧？那位人兄的『金句』：「在日常英語使用中，我們就是說『Yue』來表示粵，因此我們要用『Yue』」已經顯示出他/她只生活在其思覺世界中（或者是「講大話唔眨眼」）。我們應繼續指出「Yue Chinese」的荒謬之處，慎防它死灰復燃。--Syaoranli☞李小狼 19:09, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

First of all, WP:assume good faith; WP:no personal attacks or you may be blocked from editing. Besides, when you accuse people of being dishonest just because you disagree with them, you give us the impression that you are dishonest yourself. It's not an effective way to get what you want.

As for archiving, simple: We've had a long argument that went around in circles for weeks on two articles, and it's filled up the talk pages with a lot of pointless debate. You yourself are evidence that many people won't bother to read it even with it here, and anyone who wants to read it can just as easily go to the archive. kwami (talk) 19:32, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Accusing other editors "Pointless" is a violation of WP:assume good faith, either. It is abnormal to archive a discussion in the course of discussion. It would be better when the discussion come to an end. — HenryLi (Talk) 05:57, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

You misunderstand me. Debate on moving the article to "Standard Cantonese" is pointless after the move to "Standard Cantonese" has been made. That's why I archived it: We had all sorts of arguments on where to move it, came to a provisional decision, and moved it. The point of doing that was to start the debate over from a less contentious starting point. Archiving the old debate is part of starting over. I didn't mean that the debate on where we should go from here is pointless. kwami (talk) 08:23, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok, the article has been moved back to its long-standing name. So lets restart the discussion about the merits of the name. The concern that first resulted in the page move away from its current name was whether or not "Standard Cantonese" really is standardised, and to that effect, if the article name is misleading or not. There seems to be disagreement on this issue, so I suggest we talk about that first. Personally, I am neutral to whether or not we say that it is standardised, or even that we have "standard" in the article name. However, I have to be opposed to the name of "Guangzhou dialect", as I think a name with the word "Cantonese" in it is much more common usage. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 15:20, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

S.o. amended the intro to say "Despite no official status, it is a de facto standard language." Since the definition of a standard language depends on it being official or at least quasi-official, as that is what is generally involved in a government to declare a language standard, I think we at least need a reliable source for this, and if none is provided, that we need to go back to saying it's not a standard language. kwami (talk) 19:01, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Are you implying that Standard Cantonese is not used in TV news broadcasts and in the educational system? Badagnani (talk) 19:29, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Would you please read standard language and prestige dialect? Hundreds of prestige dialects are used on TV, in local newspapers, and in schools. That does not mean they are standard languages. Are standard school textbooks for math and science written in Cantonese, or in Mandarin? Are Hong Kong govt publications in Cantonese, or Mandarin? Is there a govt standardization board for Cantonese? If the answer to these and similar questions is no, then Yuehai is a prestige dialect, not a standard language. kwami (talk) 19:45, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I think part of the problem here is that while kwami might be looking at a strict interpretation of what it means for a language or dialect to be "standardised", you and others might be looking at a more loosely defined meaning. Do we need some official body in government or academia to specifically state that it is standardised before we say it is so? Or is it standardised by the simple fact of its common usage? Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 19:39, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

The latter case is what we call a prestige dialect. As far as I can tell, Yuehai has never been standardized. I may be wrong, but would like to be convinced of that. Also, Cantonese may lie somewhere between a prestige dialect and a standard; if so, then we should have a section on its status explaining that, rather than an unintelligible phrase like "de facto standard". kwami (talk) 19:45, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I've read standard language, and in my opinion, Cantonese obviously do not fully meet all of the criteria. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong though. But the problem is, standard language cites no source for these criteria - where did they come from? From WP editors? Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 19:53, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, sourcing is a problem there, but at least it gets us on the same page. I've reworded the intro to clarify this; let's see if that helps. Even in the USA, people object to the term "Standard English", many preferring "TV news-broadcast English", and US English is AFAIK much more standardized than Cantonese.

BTW, when clearing that up, it became obvious that we were also being ambiguous. Where is Cantonese used on TV news, just Hongkong/Macau, or also Canton?

Another point: Overseas, at least in the West, Taishanese is used for newspapers, radio, and TV. Does that mean there are two Standard Cantonese dialects, Guangzhou and Taishanese? (I'm playing devil's advocate here; IMO they are prestige dialects in different communities, but neither standard.) kwami (talk) 20:07, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

No, in the West, Cantonese is used for radio and TV. Newspapers are in written Chinese, as opposed to written Cantonese. To the best of my knowledge, Taishanese is not used on any medium. Not sure if any media outlets in Guangzhou actually uses Cantonese. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 20:24, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

When you say "written Chinese", not Cantonese, I assume you mean written Mandarin? But in Hong Kong newspapers are in written Cantonese?

San Francisco street signs are in Taishanese (that is, the transcription only works with a Taishanese pronunciation), but I don't know about elsewhere. kwami (talk) 20:32, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I avoid the term "Written Mandarin", because speakers of all Chinese dialects read the same kind of written Chinese, which is to say, Vernacular Chinese. At any rate, HK newspapers write in Vernacular Chinese. But there are certainly books in written Cantonese. Though I don't know if there is a "canon" of it as specified in standard language. In my opinion there are really only three criteria from standard language that Cantonese do not fully meet. 1) While there are certainly academic departments dedicated to Cantonese, I don't know if there is an institution that is the equivalent of Académie française or the Royal Spanish Academy. 2) While Cantonese is a medium of instruction in schools in HK and Macau, and probably certain Chinese language schools overseas, Cantonese grammar and written Cantonese is not taught as a subject. 3) While HK's Basic Law (and probably same with Macau) is very specific that "Chinese" is an official language, it does not differentiate between Mandarin and Cantonese, even though Cantonese is used de facto by government. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 20:48, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Just had an afterthought - Cantonese is definitely taught as a second language in schools, though just not in HK and Macau. (but maybe in their international schools?) Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 20:51, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

The fact that the govt and schools use Cantonese as a spoken language but Mandarin (whatever you want to call it) as a written language does support the idea that the only standardized language in Hongkong and Macau is Mandarin. There are plenty of cases like this around the world, where a local language is spoken, but not standardized or official, in govt and schools, and a non-local (often colonial) language is used in writing and for official capacities. kwami (talk) 21:06, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

No. That's the point of Basic Law not differentiating between Mandarin and Cantonese - it does not specify that written Chinese documents must be in Vernacular Chinese, it can actually be in written Cantonese, though that is not the practice. All it says is "Chinese", so it can technically be any dialect of Chinese, written or spoken. And to further explain, the reason why I avoid the term "written Mandarin" is because no native Chinese speaker actually thinks of it as written Mandarin (普通話/國語/etc). They just think of it as written Chinese (中文). This is the difference between a 語 and a 文. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 03:05, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Mandarin and Vernacular Chinese are different. As for the situation of Chinese languages, Vernacular Chinese is following the steps of Classic Chinese, namely, spoken and written forms would drift apart anyway. § There are a lot of studies in standard Cantonese. All Cantonese are based on the scheme provided by Wong Shik Ling's A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced According to the Dialect of Canton (粵音韻彙). Nearly every study, dictionary and romanisation scheme is directly and indirectly derived by the scheme in the book. — HenryLi (Talk) 05:39, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

That's true for a great many languages. It's part of being a prestige dialect. A standard language is something more than just having dictionaries and being used on TV. This may be OR, but the fact that the law only makes 中文 official, without specifying whether that should be Vernacular or Cantonese, suggests that 中文 is assumed to mean Vernacular—that Cantonese was not even entertained as a possibility. I may be wrong, of course, but if so I do think we need some direct evidence that Cantonese is a standard language, not just OR based on how many TV channels and dictionaries use it. kwami (talk) 08:29, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Standard Cantonese reaches quasi-legal status in Hong Kong. It is used in court and legislative council. It is taught in schools and the educational department of Hong Kong Government created a scheme of Standard Cantonese Pinyin for prescription purpose. Hong Kong Government funded the movement of proper Cantonese pronunciation (粵語正音運動). It is everywhere in transcribing personal and place names that in Standard Cantonese pronunciation with Chinese characters to English in Hong Kong, say transcribing 何文田 into Ho Man Tin of Standard Cantonese, not any other dialects of Cantonese including indigenous Wai Tau Wa. Radio Television Hong Kong, a government department, broadcasts Standard Cantonese since 1960. It is much more than dictionaries and TV. All of them are in Standard Cantonese rather than other dialects of Cantonese, including indigenous ones. — HenryLi (Talk) 09:46, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Okay, that's a good argument. It does sound like it may be quasi-official, then. kwami (talk) 10:15, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) kwami - I'm not going to revert your edit, but I want to point out that the concensus on HK-related articles is basically to call Cantonese the de facto official language. That's why I had put that term "de facto official" in the infobox earlier.

Now, more on the legal status of Cantonese in HK - the Basic Law was deliberately ambiguous in referring to any specific dialects of Chinese to be used in official capacity. The reason why Vernacular Chinese is used in written documents is because that has always been the practice long before HK's handover back to Chinese rule, and one of the advantages of Basic Law not specifying a dialect of Chinese is to avoid controversy and arguments about usage of Mandarin versus Cantonese - which, by the way, is fast becoming irrelevant because HK's population is become more and more fluent in Mandarin as well as their native Cantonese. This way, both Mandarin and Cantonese can be used in official capacity, and Vernacular Chinese can be used in written documents, without it becoming an issue to argue about.

Having said all that, however, I am not arguing for us to state in the article that the dialect is "standardised". I remain neutral on that. If anything, I think the burden of proof is on the proponents of having "standardised" in the article to argue for why it should be there. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 12:35, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Edit as you like. I'm not going to argue against a thoughtful rationale. As for the wording "de facto official language", I'll defer to consensus. I don't care for it, though, because it doesn't make any sense to me: if it's official, it's de jure; from my POV you're saying it's de facto de jure, but not de jure de jure. kwami (talk) 12:46, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I actually don't really like the term "quasi" anywhere on WP. It sounds weasel-like to me. But the reason why it can be de facto without being de jure is precisely as I said - the law is deliberately ambiguous on what dialect of Chinese to use in official capacity. In that sense it is not de jure. But the fact that Cantonese is the modus operandus in Hong Kong would make it de facto. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 14:17, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

That makes sense. It would still be only the official spoken language, though. Since Cantonese has a well developed written form, that's probably a point worth keeping. kwami (talk) 14:22, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Sure thing. I've added that in the infobox. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 15:02, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Previous shifts

One shift that affected Cantonese in the past was the loss of distinction between the alveolar and the alveolo-palatal (sometimes termed as postalveolar) sibilants, which occurred during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This distinction was documented in many Cantonese dictionaries and pronunciation guides published prior to the 1950s but is no longer distinguished in any modern Cantonese dictionary.

Publications that documented this distinction include:

Williams, S., A Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect, 1856. Cowles, R., A Pocket Dictionary of Cantonese, 1914. Meyer, B. and Wempe, T., The Student's Cantonese-English Dictionary, 3rd edition, 1947. Chao, Y. Cantonese Primer, 1947.

Why do you need to rely on work published in 1856, 1914, and 1947? Were there no Cantonese/ HK films with recordings prior to 1950? It is more likely than not the guys with the European names could not tell apart Standard Guangzhouhua from non-Standard Guangzhouhua. There were and are more non-Standard Guangzhouhua speakers than there are Standard Guangzhouhua speakers, and alveolar and postalveolar sibilants most certainly exist in some non-Standard Guangzhouhua's. 86.137.251.212 (talk) 00:40, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Just to say that while my immediate reaction was that the move back to Standard Cantonese might have been premature, on reflection I think it was a good idea. The new name has some relatively minor issues, but the name Guangzhou dialect had major issues and no good arguments in its favour, and we'd had plenty of discussion to find them if they had been there to find.

As I'd already said, I think the new name is acceptable but possibly not optimum. Perhaps there is no ideal solution. Andrewa (talk) 01:41, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Is the new name that you're referring Guangzhou dialect? I agreed with the titles going back to the originals, but the current title is not really based on a fact.--Caspian blue 01:56, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

The new name is a result of the move back to Standard Cantonese. That is, the name to which I am referring is Standard Cantonese. Clear now? Andrewa (talk) 10:17, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

The idea of moving the articles back was really based on the fact that, in retrospect, more time was necessary to reach concensus in the page moves that were performed. We had so many different ideas and disagreements, it wasn't even a choice between just two article names (per article). There are many different options that were discussed. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 03:10, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Moving back to the one of previous consensus is much better than staying in the name of great controversy. It need much more time to reach new consensus. — HenryLi (Talk) 05:44, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, one of the many problems with the name Guangzhou dialect was simply procedural... the article was moved there without sufficient discussion. Andrewa (talk) 10:22, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Many months ago I opposed the "Guangzhou dialect" name since it is so obscure. But I have become more ok with that term. Technically "Standard cantonese" is equally as obscure. Benjwong (talk) 16:49, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Both names are somewhat unclear, but I think "Standard Cantonese" is more aligned with the prevailing English usage of Cantonese, meaning "the standard (regular) language of Canton (Guangzhou as it is known today)". In light of this, the move - in the case of this article especially - was well-advised IMO. The Fiddly Leprechaun (talk) 22:29, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

We could just call it "Canton dialect". That is commonly used in the lit, is common English, and is unambiguous. The real problem is the article currently at "Cantonese", which really isn't Cantonese. kwami (talk) 16:53, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

"The native speakers of Cantonese customarily call their language "Guangzhou Prefecture Speech".[3] In Guangdong province people also call it "Provincial Capital speech".[4] In Hong Kong and Macau, people usually call it "Guangdong (Province) speech".[dubious – discuss][5]. Outside of Guangzhou, people also call it as "Baak Waa"[6]"

In the so called reference section in the Chinese, all the various description of the speech really just mean the "Speech of Guangzhou City". "Baak Waa" simply means plain speech. This is from the Putonghua 'Bai Hua'. There was a student movement in the early part of the 20th century to promote 'Plain Speech' over 'Guan Hua/Yu' (Language of Officialdom) so that the masses could have more access to education. 'Baak Waa' was therefore just street Guangzhouhua (still spoken with a Guangzhou accent), whereas the 'Guan Yu' in Guangzhou would be the reading of official documents and literature (written in classical style Chinese) in Guangzhouhua (still with a Guangzhou accent). 'Baak Waa' has now taken on the meaning of Guangzhouhua whether with (the Standard) or without (non-Standard) a Guangzhou accent. 86.137.251.212 (talk) 00:10, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Why does this article not have any examples of Canto words? I saw that the other dialect pages do. Even Taishanese does a fine job of it. But not this page...? It'd be interesting to show the world how different Cantonese is from Mandarin. Even the way we write is different (ex. it'd be pretty informal, so everyone broadcasts in Mandarin-styled writing). ★Dasani★ 08:08, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

You might read sub-articles like Written Cantonese and Hong Kong Cantonese. — HenryLi (Talk) 07:55, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I did, but Shanghainese and the Mandarin articles, even Teochew, all have a list of sample words. I suppose this is rather difficult because Cantonese generally do not rely on Pinyin... ★Dasani★ 22:26, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Need Cantonese reading at Lü Wencheng. Badagnani (talk) 22:49, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

There is a lot of confusion about what is meant by Standard Cantonese. Standard Cantonese (the English term) is Guangzhouhua spoken with a Guangzhou accent. Move over a few kilometers into Panyu, and you'll hear Guangzhouhua spoken with a distinct Panyu accent, which is not regarded as standard Guangzhouhua by the native people of Guangzhou. It is distinctly a 'peasant' speech, rather than a 'city' speech. On the other hand, the spoken Cantonese of British Hong Kong is very close to the Guangzhouhua of Guangzhou, and is again a 'city' speech. Move a bit further into Guangxi, there you can still hear Guangzhouhua, but its accent is so thick that it is nothing like the Guangzhouhua of Guangzhou. As for native Taishanwa, it is not Guangzhouhua at all. This is similar to the definition of standard British English, which is defined as the English speech spoken around the area of Oxford. English is still spoken all over England, and the local speech in these other parts of England is still English, just not standard English

The same can be said of Indians in India educated in English. These Indians can speak perfectly good and grammatically correct English intelligible to all Englsih speakers around the world. However their accent makes the English they speak non-Standard. 86.137.251.212 (talk) 16:05, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this article is not actually about Standard Cantonese (which in any case is not standard), but about Canton dialect. I've reworded parts of the article so as not to be so misleading, though the title is still incongruous. kwami (talk) 16:49, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Pal, the title of this article is 'Standard Cantonese', so what on earth do you mean that it is not actually about Standard Cantonese? Kwami for heaven's sake you know nothing about Cantonese, standard or non-standard, so please could you stop making such ignorant edits and comments on a subject in which you know nothing about? Please leave the article and its discussion to people who do know and want to improve the article. 86.137.251.212 (talk) 22:49, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

The article is about Guangzhouhua. "Standard Cantonese" was a political choice for the title, because people could not agree on calling it "Canton dialect". (I would prefer to move it, as I've said before, because the current title is factually incorrect.) It's fine to state that a Canton accent is the prestige form of the dialect, but your wording has consistently been POV and often irrelevant in the context in which you put it. You also erroneously speak of "accented Guangzhouhua", as if the pronunciation of Canton were not itself "accented", and you use Chinese words as if they were English without defining them. This is hardly "superbly put", and does little to "clarify" the issue. As for the "standard pronunciation" of the dictionary (speaking of logic, there is no picture of a dictionary in the article), is that really the pronunciation of Canton, or of Hong Kong? kwami (talk) 05:14, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Kwami, you don't have any personal knowledge of any of the languages spoken in Guangdong or Guangzhou. Let me explain to you in a way perhaps you can appreciate. One would say all English people in England speak English. However there is just one form of Standard English. It is called Oxford English, BBC English, the Queen's English, Received Pronunciation and so on. I am sure there are historical reasons why Oxford English (ie the pronunciation of English around the Oxford area) was chosen as the Standard or becoming the Standard. London English is not Standard English even though London is the capital of England. Now tell me Kwami, do you think there are more or less English people who speak Standard English in England? If you don't know the answer, let me tell you. There are many more people in England who do not speak Standard English than there are people who do. That is the there is a vast majority of people in England who do not speak Standard English.

Now let's move onto the Guangzhouhua. This article is about Standard Cantonese. One needs to define what is Standard Cantonese. I have given you the definition. It is Guangzhouhua spoken with a Guangzhou accent. One could have chosen the Panyu accent or Guangxi accent as a Standard, but they were not chosen. So just like Oxford English is the Standard for English, Guangzhouhua with a Guangzhou accent is the Standard for Cantonese (meaning Guangzhou speech). Londoners often say they speak 'London', or people in Newcastle UK often say they speak 'Geordie'. Panyu people say they speak 'Panyuhua' which is understood to mean Guangzhouhua with a Panyu accent. 86.137.251.212 (talk) 10:48, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

First of all, there is no such thing as "Standard Cantonese", because Cantonese is not a standardized language the way, say, English or Mandarin are. The phrase is shorthand for the prestige accent of Cantonese, which, as you've said, is the Guangzhou accent.

Secondly, this article is not about the Guangzhou accent, it's about the Guangzhou dialect, of both "standard" and non-standard accent. It's called "Standard Cantonese" because that was the result of a debate on how to differentiate Guangzhouhua from Yueyu: Guangzhouhua = "Standard Cantonese", Yueyu (including Taishanese) = "Cantonese". I do not think these labels are accurate, but there you are. These articles existed long before their current titles were decided on.

You can argue that an article should be about whatever its title says it's about, and that therefore this article should be about Standard Cantonese. I take the opposite approach, that the title should reflect whatever the article is about, which in this case is not Standard Cantonese. kwami (talk) 11:00, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Kwami, please go and learn to speak Cantonese of whatever variety you like fluently before you start to make comments on this article. You are making a fool of yourself. One can swear, curse, use street vocabulary in English with the Oxford accent, and that would still be Standard English. Standard Guangzhouhua is Guangzhouhua spoken with the Guangzhou accent. 86.137.251.212 (talk) 21:45, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

There's a simple way to resolve this: present evidence from reliable sources for your claims. Calling people 'fools' or 'morons' for disagreeing with you is not a way to win an argument. Things are not true just because you repeatedly say they are. As long as you spout apparent nonsense, I will continue to revert everything you do. Meanwhile, like Akerbeltz, I'm done with this discussion. kwami (talk) 23:11, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

OK Kwami, why don't you present some evidence from reliable sources for your claims? By relaible I mean accurate. Oxford English is the Standard for the spoken English of England. Why do I need to present a reliable source on this? Does anyone in his right mind dispute this? Standard English is known by several other names as already pointed out. It is however not called 'prestige English'. Standard Guangzhouhua (Putonghua Pinyin for simplification)is often just called Guangzhouhua. It is never called prestige Guangzhouhua. Is there anybody of sound mind who disputes this? 'Prestige' appears to be a term you like to quote, so please give a reliable reference to where such a term is used.

Just because the speech or accent of a certain region of a country has been deemed Standard, it does not follow that the majority of the people would speak in the Standard way. Indeed as far as speeches are concerned people are free to develop to speak how they like. I have already pointed out to you that the vast majority of people in England do not speak Standard English, just as in the Guangzhouhua regions, a vast majority of people do not speak Standard Guangzhouhua. Why the speech of a certain region is deemed the Standard for a much wider land area or even country is lost in the clouds of history. It has to do with customs and practices. It generally has nothing to do with officialdom. There is no official or government body or legislation in the UK that specifically says that Oxford English is Standard English, and if you do not conform to this Standard we'll punish you. This is just accepted by the whole country, and indeed the whole world. Indeed legislations and official business rely on the written word, not the spoken word. In China it is accepted that Guangzhouhua spoken with the Guangzhou accent is Standard Guangzhouhua. This is official in the sense that there is now just one Guangzhouhua Pinyin system in use in China, and dictionaries are produced and published by scholars representing the country's official language body, based on this system. 86.137.251.212 (talk) 12:51, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Could I just ask if there are any readers out there reading these posts, is it Kwami or I who is spouting apparent nonsense. Kwami seems to think he has the right to revert other people's contribution based on his own POV when he clearly has no knowledge of the subject. Please give your comments below. 86.137.251.212 (talk) 12:58, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, there is not such a gap between you as your altercation would suggest. Kwami's edits use the standard linguistic vocabulary, where it is quite normal to use the term'prestige dialect'. The problem with "Standard Cantonese" is that there is no actual standardised Cantonese language, with standardised dictionaries, grammar, pronunciation, etc., unlike standardised languages like German, French, Japanese, or Mandarin. 86.137.251.212 is correct in pointing out that Guangzhouhua with Guangzhou accent is regarded by speakers as "standard" -- that is how standard languages come about -- but in the absence of true standardisation as found in national languages, the correct term is 'prestige'.

Bathrobe (talk) 12:22, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I think Bathrobe is at least 20 years out of date. The Chinese government has Standardised Guangzhouhua dictionaries for more than 20 years, after scholars worked for many years to perfect a pinyin system to note down (not to change) the pronunciation of Standard Guangzhouhua using a modified Latin alphabet. The variations in Guangzhouhua is no different from any other language be they as mentioned by Bathrobe, Japanese, French, German, Putonghua and so on. There are reports of how the older Japanese do not understand the lexicon of younger Japanese due to the mass influx of borrowed foreign vocabulary. It simply shows that these so called 'standard linguistic vocabulary' is deficient and insufficient when dealing with real languages, and these short-comings have not been solved by your 'standard linguist'. Perhaps no equivalent of Einstein has yet appeared on the linguistics scene. Oxford English has been the Standard English long before scholars of linguistics noted it down and before recording technologies were available. Yet once people such as peasants heard it, they knew it was Standard English. In the same way, any Guangzhouhua speaker on hearing Standard Guangzhouhua knows immediate that it was Standard Guangzhouhua, whether some so-called European scholar had written it down or not. Just as in English, French, German, Japanese and any other language you can think of, the vast majority of users do not speak or use their standard language. They use it in the way they have been brought up, ie to use local variants. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.150.144.242 (talk) 23:24, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I think I agree with 86.150.144.242's position, although not necessarily with the wording of his edits.

There is a question is to what extent Cantonese can be regarded as a standardised language -- see Prestige (sociolinguistics) and Standard language, for instance. I think the position of Cantonese is made difficult by the fact that Mandarin is regarded as the actual official "standard language", which tends to obscure the fact that a standardised version of Cantonese exists (whether you call it the 'prestige dialect' or the 'standard language').

With regard to the situation between Standard Cantonese and Taishanese, I think German might provide a reasonable model for what 86.150.144.242 is talking about. See the article on Standard German, which points out a difference between what they call "dialects" (ancient dialects, pure local speech, mutually unintelligible, equivalent to, say, Taishanese) and local variants of Standard German (Umgangssprache), affected by the local dialects but actually the standard language with local characteristics, which would be the equivalent of what you get when a Taishanese tries to speak Standard Cantonese.

This is one of the problems with the two articles "Standard Cantonese" and "Cantonese". This distinction is supposed to represent two different concepts.

(1) The language in the Standard Cantonese article is the prestige or standard variety that is called Guangzhouhua or Guangdonghua (and possibly Baak Waa), a kind of lingua franca, with a standard that people recognise as correct, and will try to speak in order to communicate with others, even if they can only produce an approximation of it (such as Taishanese trying to speak Cantonese).

(2) The other is the linguistically identified group of Yue dialects. This is the concept that is covered in the Cantonese article. The Yue dialects are naturally occurring dialects that are related to each other but don't necessarily have high mutual intelligibility. Linguistically speaking, Taishanese is a Yue dialect but it's not necessarily perceived by Cantonese speakers as a dialect of Standard Cantonese -- it's regarded as something else again, a local speech form that perhaps has some similarities to Cantonese but is not really Cantonese at all. The German model is probably the most helpful here, with its distinction between "dialect" and Umgangssprache.

86.150.144.242's edits actually cut to the heart of the problem with the two articles. Given the nature of these problems, I would suggest that the article on "Cantonese" should be renamed "Yue (dialect)". That would remove a lot of the frustration and confusion that these articles are generating. And if truth be known, I suspect that Kwami is just as frustrated by the current naming situation as 86.150.144.242 is.

Bathrobe (talk) 01:19, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I would support that move, except for the word 'dialect', which besides being linguistically inaccurate only causes edit wars when applied to mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. Per 'Mandarin Chinese', 'Wu Chinese', 'Min Chinese', etc., and Ethnologue's 'Chinese, Yue', I would suggest 'Yue Chinese'. kwami (talk) 01:36, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

The German model might be a good model, but surely it can only give a sense of the reality of languages in Guangdong Province, China, if the reader has a highly developed knowledge of German and some knowledge of the speeches of Guangdong and Guangzhou. To help Kwami, perhaps someone should give details of models of African languages, so that he could feel more at home with the cross-over into the Guangdong languages. 86.150.144.242 (talk) 19:06, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

But Guangzhouhua and Taishanhua are mutually unintelligible to monolingual speakers of each of these tongues. 86.150.144.242 (talk) 20:57, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Do you have a good ref for that? It would be important to add to the Cantonese article. Regardless, however, both Cantonese (Canton) and Taishanese are classified as Yue / Cantonese. You have a similar situation within Wu and Minnan, not all of whose 'dialects' are mutually intelligible. kwami (talk) 00:50, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much Bathrobe. I feel totally vindicated. I like your point about a Taishanese speaking Guangzhouhua. This actually gave great comedy in some old and new HK and Chinese films (see one of Jackie Chan Supercop films starring with Michelle Yeoh). However to say that Guangzhouhua and Taishanhua are dialects (of each other?) of Yue would give rise to the assumption that once upon a time, probably in the recent past, they had the same single ancestor spoken tongue. I am not sure whether there is evidence of this. Indeed I would argue that some of the spoken Hakka tongues in Guangdong are as close to Standard Guangzhouhua as is Taishanese to Standard Guangzhouhua. That is to say these Hakka speeches have evolved towards Guangzhouhua, even though the two tongues had different origins. That is to say there was a convergence of evolution. The same may be the case with Taishanhua. That is to say Guangzhouhua and Taishanese have always been different languages, but they have evolved over time towards each other due to social pressures and geography. Arising from this then is that it is perfectly legitimate to call Guangdong Hakka speeches a Guangdonghua, and accordingly Hakka speeches in Guangdong are part of Yue, or part Yue. 86.150.144.242 (talk) 01:22, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

My understanding is that Guangzhouhua and Taishanese are related, both being Yue dialects. However, I'm not exactly knowledgeable about this, or about Hakka dialects. The article should follow what the authorative academic sources say. Again, I would have to leave editing to someone who has more expertise and knowledge than I do.

Bathrobe (talk) 12:59, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Hakka and Yue (Cantonese) are both primary branches of (non-Min) Chinese. Taishanese and Cantonese are Yue lects. Of course, these classifications may be simplified or erroneous, but establishing that requires some RSing before it can be part of the article. Meanwhile, since 'truth' is determined by RSes, Taishanese is Yue, Hakka is not. kwami (talk) 13:08, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Name me a few authorative academics with biographic details, and I'll tell you whether they know what they are talking about. 86.136.60.217 (talk) 00:56, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I have never come across anyone claiming Taishanwa is the most common Guangdong speech in Europe. Has anyone got a reliable source for this? Indeed, prior to the mass legal and illegal migration of Chinese into Europe from the 1990s onwards, the majority of Chinese in Europe were Hakka speakers. If no proof is put forward, I will delete the claim. 86.137.251.212 (talk) 18:41, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Another naming problem. What was meant was that Taishanese is the most common dialect of Cantonese (Yue) spoken abroad. kwami (talk) 19:12, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Not in Europe it isn't. 86.137.251.212 (talk) 22:35, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Which is? kwami (talk) 00:38, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

See beginning of this section. 86.150.144.242 (talk) 23:30, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidently your point isn't important enough to communicate to other people, so I'll simply ignore you and leave the article as it is, and revert you if you delete it. kwami (talk) 01:32, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidently what Kwami? it does not change the fact that you do not know any Chinese. You are better off, and probably contribute more to Wiki and enjoy life more, if you simply editted your native African languages, and leave the Chinese languages to people who know Chinese. 86.150.144.242 (talk) 01:38, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I think you should call off your feud with Kwami. Kwami admits to not speaking Cantonese, but he is knowledgeable about linguistics and has a lot to contribute. The problems with this article aren't caused by Kwami; they are caused by the nature of the subject matter and the controversy over how to name the two articles. If you look at the talk history of the page you'll see that the whole question of "standard language" and "prestige dialect" has been pored over minutely, as has the question of "Yue Chinese", etc. You might be surprised to find that Kwami is mostly on your own side of the fence. I think his main problem has been with the wording of your edits, less with the substance.

Bathrobe (talk) 13:27, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I have no feud with Kwami. I merely do not want people with no knowledge of the subject to interfere with the edits of more knowledgeable people. It's like kinda saying to someone driving a car but who can't drive to get off the highway for fear of causing accidents. 86.150.144.242 (talk) 19:11, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Knowledge is not a given based on your native language, or anyone could be a professor. For our purposes, knowledge is displayed by the quality of your edits. kwami (talk) 00:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

LOL. Kwami, (1)how do you know I am not a professor? (2) WRT this particular topic, who has more knowledge, someone who knows, or someone who does not know? So according to you someone who has no knowledge of mathematics knows more mathematics than a mathematician? Er, who raised a point about logic earlier on? 86.150.144.242 (talk) 00:16, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

The quality of Kwami's edit is a U. 86.136.60.217 (talk) 00:59, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Classification of Yue dialects http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/classification/yue/index.php

Profile and linguistic map of Cantonese http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/Profile.aspx?LangID=73&menu=004

I have looked up the websites cited as references. The first one 'Classification of Yue dialects' links to a website, which I can only describe as giving gibberish.

The second 'Profile and linguistic map of Cantonese' links to a UCLA site. The page clearly stated that it treats Cantonese to be 'Guangzhouhua', and that this Cantonese is only used exclusively in less than half the Guangdong Province. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.150.144.242 (talk) 18:59, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

It is therefore relevant to the opening of the article:

"Cantonese, also known as Canton dialect or Guangzhou dialect, is the prestige dialect of Yue Chinese (Cantonese), especially when pronounced with a Canton City accent."

Cantonese already refers to Guangzhouhua. As this article is called Standard Cantonese, Guangzhouhua is by default already Standard Guangzhouhua, that is Guangzhouhua spoken with the Guangzhou accent.

For any well travelled people of Guangdong Province, they will know that Guangzhouhua, Standard or non-Standard is not the spoken language of northern and north-eastern Guangdong Province.

It is clear that whoever wrote this sentence is confused about 'Standard' and 'Prestige'. Both Nelson Mandela and Robert Mugabe make speeches in English. The speeches are technically perfect, erudite and grammatically perfect, however neither gentlemen can deliver their speeches in Standard English as neither speak with an Oxford accent. They make English speeches because in that part of Africa, English, whether Standard or non-Standard is a privilege language. No one in this article has demonstrated that Cantonese... or Guangzhou dialect, is a prestige dialect of Yue Chinese (Cantonese), ... All this sentence says is that Cantonese is a prestige dialect of Cantonese, which is redundant and indeed senseless. 86.150.144.242 (talk) 20:43, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, if it's not a prestige dialect (which it is), and not a standard language (as it hasn't been standardized), then it's just another dialect, and should be treated as such. As for 'Cantonese is a prestige dialect of Cantonese', that's why IMO we should move the latter to Yue Chinese. kwami (talk) 00:46, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

As I stated before people like you are at least 20 years out of date because Standard Guangzhouhua is standardised and dictionaries of Standard Guangzhouhua are widely available. 86.150.144.242 (talk) 00:52, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

User 86.150.144.242: Despite your assertions, there are people more "knowledgeable" than user Kwami (and telling user Kwami to keep out because he doesn't know what he is talking about is completely arrogant and inimical to the spirit of Wikipedia) who maintain that Taishanese is a dialect of Yue, just like Cantonese. This is from Victor Mair's What Is a Chinese “Dialect/Topolect”? Reflections on Some Key Sino-English Linguistic Terms (www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp029_chinese_dialect.pdf):

If we consider Sinitic languages as a group of the great Sino-Tibetan family, we may further divide them into at least the following mutually unintelligible tongues: Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese (Yue), Hunan (Xiang), Hakka, Gan, Southern Min, and Northern Min. These are roughly parallel to English, Dutch, Swedish, and so on among the Germanic group of the Indo-European language family. If we pursue the analogy further, we may refer to various supposedly more or less mutually intelligible3 dialects of Mandarin such as Peking, Nanking, Shantung, Szechwan, Shensi, Dungar and so on just as English may be subdivided into its Cockney, Boston, Toronto, Texas, Cambridge, Melbourne, and other varieties. The same holds true for the other languages in the Sinitic and Germanic groups. Where Dutch has its Flemish and Afrikaans dialects, Wu has its Shanghai and Soochow forms. Likewise, Yue has its Canton, Taishan, and other dialects; Xiang has its Changsha, Shuangfeng, and other dialects; Hakka has its Meishan, Wuhua, and other dialects; Gan has its Nanchang, Jiayu, and other dialects; Southern Min has its Amoy, Taiwan, and other dialects; and Northern Min has its Foochow, Shouning, and other dialects.

Notice how Mair treats Yue as a language, with dialects of Canton, Taishan, etc. Now Mair is a respected academic in the field. He is not a person you can treat with the same condescension as you reserve for user Kwami. If you have issues with Mair's characterisation, you need to come out with reputable sources for your views other than the fact that "it is clear" to user 86.150.144.242.

I have also checked the two sources you give above. Glossika very clearly states that these are the dialects of Cantonese (Yue): Danzhou (in Hainan), Gaoyang, Goulou, Guangfu (which is your "standard Cantonese"), Haihua, Qianlian, Siyi (which is Taishan), Wuhua, and Yongxun.

Am I seeing a different version of the above because what I see are lots of red question marks against the mentioned place names? 86.150.144.242 (talk) 00:50, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

The UCLA site also says that the major dialects of Cantonese are Yuehai, Siyi, Gaoyang, Guinan. Yes, it does state that:

recent studies ... reveal that Cantonese is exclusively used in less than half of the areas in the province. It is the only or major language in forty counties and cities of the province. It is also spoken in sixteen other counties, co-existing with other variants of Chinese. In the neighboring province of Guangxi, it is used in twenty three counties, usually together with other varieties of Chinese.

but the fact that (1) Siyi is given as a dialect of Cantonese and (2) "Cantonese" is spoken in twenty-three counties of Guangxi indicate that the article is not referring to "Guangzhouhua", it is referring to Yue dialects in general. See also the map. In other words, Mair and both the sources you give treat the Yue dialects as a whole -- including Taishan -- as "Cantonese". The UCLA article does note, however, that "If not otherwise specified, the term Cantonese often refers to the Guangzhou Dialect, which is also spoken in Hong Kong and Macao." This sentence is the only support for your position in any of the web-based sources.

You have articulated a picture of Cantonese that sounds more plausible than what is found in many places around the web, but it would be helpful if you could stop attempting to steamroller objections with abuse and condescension, and dig up a few reputable sources that support your case.

Bathrobe (talk) 01:12, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Please let me cut and paste what the UCLA article says:

Given all the dialects that exist within Cantonese, the language is sometimes referred to as a group of Cantonese dialects, and not just Cantonese. Oral communication is virtually impossible among speakers of some Cantonese dialects. For instance, there is as much of a difference between the dialects of Taishan and Nanning as there is between Italian and French.

According to its linguistic characteristics and geographical distribution, Cantonese can be divided into four dialects: Yuehai (including Zhongshan, Chungshan, Tungkuan) as represented by the dialect of Guangzhou City; Siyi (Seiyap) as represented by the Taishan city (Toishan, Hoishan) dialect; Gaoyang as represented by the Yangjiang city dialect; and Guinan as represented by the Nanning city dialect, which is widely used in Guangxi Province. If not otherwise specified, the term Cantonese often refers to the Guangzhou Dialect, which is also spoken in Hong Kong and Macao.

Although the UCLA article at first calls the group of languages Cantonese dialects (rather than just Cantonese), it makes a comparison which is 'as much difference as between Italian and French. Italian and French are different languages.

Then it goes on to say, "If not otherwise specified, the term Cantonese often refers to the Guangzhou Dialect, which is also spoken in Hong Kong and Macao."

With all due respect to the person or persons who wrote the UCLA article, it is quite clear that they are mixing up the terms languages and dialects and were not being consistent in their own reasoning. It is therefore not a vigourous enough analysis or thesis and cannot be accepted at face value. 86.150.144.242 (talk) 01:10, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

"According to its linguistic characteristics and geographical distribution, Cantonese can be divided into four dialects: Yuehai (including Zhongshan, Chungshan, Tungkuan) as...." With respect to the UCLA people, it is clear they don't really know what they were talking about, but wrote the article from the POV of a journalist. Zhongshan and Chungshan are the same place and not 2 different places. The names are just transcriptions using different systems. Tungkuan is Dongguan. The UCLA article cannot be taken at face value. 86.136.60.217 (talk) 01:32, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

You place great store by "standard accents" (e.g. The speeches are technically perfect, erudite and grammatically perfect, however neither gentlemen can deliver their speeches in Standard English as neither speak with an Oxford accent.) Like many of your other pronouncements on what is "standard English", this is your personal interpretation. The question of "standard accents" is one that varies by language and society. It's not necessarily a basic or indispensible criterion for defining the standard language. And an "Oxford accent" is certainly not a decisive criterion for defining standard English.

Bathrobe (talk) 02:44, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Bathrobe, firstly please note Mair said at the beginning 'if'. Logically this is equivalent to the statement, 'If pigs can fly, then I am Barack Obama'. The statement is true enough because pigs can't fly and I am not Barack Obama. Secondly I do not believe Mair personally has or had a working knowledge of all the Chinese languages and dialects he mentioned, so he can give no guarantee on what he stated as a hypothetical statement is true. Thirdly, Standard English in the UK is called Oxford English; this is an established term. Is there anyone who does not agree with this? If so, then please say so, with reasons. Fourthly, I have never heard anyone call Standard English (ie Oxford English) prestige English. I'll concede this point if you can come up with a reliable reference. Fifthly, when it is clear that Cantonese means Guangzhouhua, then Standard Guangzhouhua means Guangzhouhua spoken with a Guangzhou accent. Sixthly, I have never heard anyone in authority call Standard Guangzhouhua, prestige Guangzhouhua (whether in China or internationally). I'll concede this point if you could come up with an authoritive reference. Seventhly, I have never come across any Taishan people call Taishanhua 'Yue', but I have come across them calling it Punti (or the equivalent in their local pronunciation). The only language refered to as Yueyu in China is Guangzhouhua. 86.150.144.242 (talk) 00:42, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

None of these points are relevant, even when they're not incorrect. For one thing, it is utterly irrelevant whether Taishanese call their language "Yue": this is English wikipedia, not Taishanese. In English, "Yue" includes Taishanese. And the word is "prestige", not "privilege", which may be why you can't find it. A "prestige dialect" is one that has social prestige over local dialects - that is, a "standard" dialect without being formally standardized. Cantonese is the prestige dialect of Yue, just as at first Suzhou and later Shanghainese are the prestige dialects of Wu; what we call Standard English (which, BTW, is not called "Oxford English") is again irrelevant. Etc. kwami (talk) 00:54, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

My apologies. I have amended to read prestige. So Kwami please find prestige English and prestige Cantonese for us. Like you said before, in English, at least your kind of English, a bat (the flying mammal) is a fox. So by default you can call Taishanhua Yue in English. Indeed by your reasoning you can call Taishanese anything you like in English, perhaps even a bat or a fox. 86.150.144.242 (talk) 01:19, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

This article is titled 'Standard Cantonese'. It is not titled 'The Linguistics of Standard Cantonese'. If Kwami thinks he knows about the linguistics of Standard Cantonese, but no knowledge of Cantonese itself, then by all means he should start an article titled 'The Linguistics of Cantonese', and leave the 'Standard Cantonese' article to people who know Standard Cantonese. 86.136.60.217 (talk) 01:32, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

86.150.144.242, while you obviously have a good inside understanding of the situation of Cantonese and Hakka, it is very clear that you are not a professor. The expression is (as Kwami said) "prestige dialect", not "privileged dialect" -- no professor would make such an elementary error as that. "Oxford English" is just one term for Standard English. BBC English and the King's/Queen's English are at least as common (although with some differences in connotation). The pronunciation of British English that is often held up as "standard" has traditionally been known as RP (for "received pronunciation"). Anyway, this would be pretty irrelevant to the article, except that claims about "Oxford English" keep popping up in support of your claims about Cantonese.

The naming of these dialect/dialect groups is not a straightforward matter. I suggest 86.150.144.242 should have a look at the Chinese Wikipedia article on 粤语 = Yue-yu (http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%B2%A4%E8%AF%AD), where after a long discussion on different usages (白话, 广东话, 广府话, 省城话, 广州话, 粤语), we finally get this comment: "以上各种民间俗称所指范围都比语言学上的粤语概念小。在语言学上，粤语是一个语言概称，包括通常意义上的各种两广白话、广西平话、海南儋州话、迈话、蛋家话等。" 86.150.144.242 obviously doesn't need this, but for non-speakers of Chinese, this roughly means: "The scope covered by the above popular names is narrower than the linguistic concept of Yue-yu. In linguistics, Yue-yu is a concept that includes the Baak Waa of Guangdong and Guangxi, Pinghua of Guangxi, Danzhou-hua of Hainan, Maihua, Danjia-hua, etc."

The language that 86.150.144.242 is speaking of, Standard Cantonese, popularly also called Yue-yu (粤语), is covered at 广州话 = Guangzhou-hua in Chinese Wikipedia.

See also this statement at the 粤语 article: "有些粤语方言和广州话较为接近，如广东西部和广西东南部的某些粤语；而广东台山、广西玉林一带的粤语口音和广州话差异就非常明显。" Roughly: "There are some Yue-yu dialects that are relatively close to Guangzhou-hua, such as those in the west of Guangdong province and the southeast of Guangxi province. The pronunciation of Yue-yu in Taishan (Guangdong) and the area around Yulin (Guangxi) is very different from Guangzhou-hua." The article quite explicitly refers to Taishan-hua as a kind of Yue-yu.

The problem is NOT that Kwami has got it wrong. The problem is the difference between popular usage and linguists' usage of the term. In English Wikipedia, the best way of disentangling these two concepts is to use "Cantonese" for "Standard Cantonese" (both a linguistic and sociolinguistic concept), and use "Yue Chinese" for the purely linguistic concept. That will defuse a lot of the acrimony, contention, and confusion that these articles are causing.

Bathrobe (talk) 01:35, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

If Guangzhouhua and Taishanhua are dialects of each other or from a common root, then the term 'Yue' should not be used because 'Yue' in Chinese is reserved for 'Guangzhouhua'. A term such as Cantonic or Guangdongic would be more suitable. Hey Bathrobe I didn't say I am a professor of what, but it is certainly not of typing. Have you not heard of a professor of dentistry pulling out the wrong tooth, or a professor of pharmacology who claimed homeopathy works, or perhaps a professor of Chinese who can't tell the difference between Guangzhouhua and Taishanhua?86.150.144.242 (talk) 01:41, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, 86.150.144.242, but none of this "professor of Chinese who can't tell the difference between Guangzhouhua and Taishanhua" will cut it. No one is suggesting they are the same. It seems that this entire storm in a teacup is purely due to 86.150.144.242's insistence that Yue-yu can refer only to Guangzhouhua. Since I've already pointed to sources that clearly indicate the use of Yue-yu in a broader sense for Taishanese and other dialects, 86.150.144.242's contention simply doesn't hold water. In an linguistic/academic sense, Taishanese is a form of Yue-yu in a broader sense.

Bathrobe (talk) 01:54, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

But not by the people of Taishan or the people of Guangzhou. They are the people who really count. Of course no one is suggesting they are the same, otherwise why would one be Guangzhouhua and the other Taishanhua? It is just unfortunate that some people cannot tell them apart. As Kwami pointed out this is English Wiki, 'Yue' is a Hanyu term. Cantonic sounds much more English than Yue.86.150.144.242 (talk) 02:03, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

The nub of the problem is that terminology used by the people themselves doesn't always match the results of linguistic research. Chinese linguists use "Yue", despite the usage of people on the ground (which is quite varied, as you can see). The term "Cantonic" is a nice term, but you need to show that it's used in the academic literature. Unfortunately Wikipedia isn't a place for pushing your own terminology (due to the ban on "Original Research").

Bathrobe (talk) 02:13, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

How can the term 'Cantonic' or 'Guangdongic' be original research? You can research the terms as much as you like, but you won't find them, because they have just been invented and first appeared here. Is there a ban on publishing new ideas in Wiki? This inventor wishes to remain anonymous, be the great mind behind concepts and allow the world and other slow-minded academics to feed off new concepts and ideas for free. 86.164.56.2 (talk) 23:03, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there is a ban on publishing original research at Wikipedia. See No original research. Sorry, but I didn't make the rules. Bathrobe (talk) 00:16, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Ah, no apologies required as the earlier point is not a piece of original research, but an original idea for which there is no ban. No I agree, Bathrobe you didn't make the rules, and neither are you here to interpret the rules. An idea is an idea, a piece of research is a piece of research, ideas and researches are different things. 86.164.56.2 (talk) 00:34, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

This article is about 'Standard Cantonese' the speech (spoken language). It is not about the linguistics of Standard Cantonese. If you want to write about the linguistics of Standard Cantonese by all means start an article called 'The linguistics of Standard Cantonese' or 'Standard Cantonese, its linguistics'. 86.136.60.217 (talk) 01:06, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it's about Canton dialect - all aspects of Canton dialect. The term 'Standard Cantonese' was chosen later on, because some people objected to calling Canton-ese "Cantonese". The title may change again in the future - there's an ongoing discussion - but the topic of the article probably won't change. kwami (talk) 02:31, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

And what do you mean by Canton dialect? I notice you had it as a singular. Do you mean Guangzhou dialect, in which the singular means just one language, Guangzhouhua; or do you mean Guangdong dialects (plural), which encompass all the languages of Guangdong? 86.164.56.2 (talk) 23:09, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

"Canton dialect" means the dialect of Canton, which is Guangzhou. HK is included as it's the same dialect. kwami (talk) 00:07, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

To amplify Kwami's comment, I draw your attention to A_Chinese_Syllabary_Pronounced_According_to_the_Dialect_of_Canton, originally published in Hong Kong in 1941. There are editors (such as the person who initiated the following section) who vehemently argue that "Canton" is "Guangdong", but Wong was clearly writing about Guangzhouhua. He wrote (in English):

In spite of the multifarious varieties of the Chinese language which exist in Kwangtung and Kwanghsi provinces, there has prevailed one dialect which clearly commands the respect of thirty million people over an area of one million square li. This is the dialect of the city of Canton.

Thirty years ago foreign students still argued over the position of standard Cantonese... Nowadays with sufficient data concerning the dialect on the book shelf, it is hardly excusable to bring up the old question again. Any one who has been in contact with the people here for some time should be able to tell the difference between the standard dialect and the many patois of it.

Bathrobe (talk) 00:16, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Bathrobe, by dialect do you mean language? As pointed out earlier, French and Italian are regarded as separate languages. However on another level they may be regarded as dialects of Latin (a dead language), as a measure of their genetic closeness. However some people here are very confused as they are using Cantonese to mean a living language (Guangzhouhua) and also equate it to a hypothetical language called 'Yue' which they have equated with a dead language such as Latin, as a measure of closeness between Guangzhouhua and Taishanhua. As already pointed out, Standard Cantonese is Guangzhouhua spoken with a Guangzhou accent, and it is the pronunciation of this form of Guangzhouhua for which standard Guangzhouhua Pinyin Dictionaries have been developed by Chinese linguists with the approval of the Chinese Government. Guangzhouhua spoken with regional accents other than that of Guangzhou are therefore the dialects of Cantonese (meaning Guangzhouhua). The Chinese word 'Yue' when referenced to 'the language of Guangdong' refers only to the Guangzhouhua of Guangzhou. I challenge anyone to find a Yueyu film in which the language used is Taishanhua. Taishanhua is not a dialect of Guangzhouhua, it is a separate language to Guangzhouhua, in the same way that French and Italian are separate languages. The use of 'Yue' in linguistic circles to lump Guangzhouhua and Taishanhua together is a mistake, because the term Yue already has the meaning of Guangzhouhua. However it is acceptable if you understand where the mistake lies. The mistake was probably not made by Chinese linguists, as Chinese linguistic was not first studied and codified by the Chinese, but by Western scholars. Chinese scholars simply continued the Western system of classification rather than argue for an updated and more accurate classification. The only way out of this mess is to introduce new words, of which Cantonic or Guangdongic or Guangzhouic are the best because it reflects existing descriptions in words such as German and Germanic used in English. Cantonic means 'like or similar to Guangzhouhua, but not identical to Guangzhouhua', ie Cantonic means 'similar to Cantonese but not identical to Cantonese'. 86.164.56.2 (talk) 00:08, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Yue is not hypothetical; it's the English name of the language of which Cantonese and Taishanese are dialects. ("Cantonese" is another name for this language.) The Chinese meaning of Yueyu is not relevant; that's like saying Portuguese cannot be considered a "Romance" language because it's not spoken in Rome. "Cantonic" is not an English word. If we were really stuck we might be tempted to adopt a made-up word, but we have one ready made in the linguistic literature: "Yue". kwami (talk) 05:51, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

So Yue is an English word is it? And Mr Kwami, where do you think this English word 'Yue' came from in the first place? I think you should use a good English dictionary from time to time. For example look up Romance and report back here. But then like you say in your English a bat can be a fox. 86.164.56.2 (talk) 23:15, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Mr Kwami, just quoting your passage: "it(Yue)'s the English name of the language of which Cantonese and Taishanese are dialects. ("Cantonese" is another name for this language.)" Could you please tell us what this language "Yue" (or as you say, Cantonese is another name for this language, and Cantonese which according to you is also a dialect of Cantonese) actually is? Is it a living language, a dead language, or a language halfway between Guangzhouhua and Taishanhua? Let me make my position clear "Yue" is simply Guangzhouhua. But Mr Kwami, if you think you know better than all of us, then tell us what this language "Yue" actually is. 86.164.56.2 (talk) 23:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Since both Cantonese and Taishanese are living, Yue is a living language. Indeed, it has something like 60 million speakers. It is the language assigned ISO code yue. It is a language in the cladistic sense that its varieties are largely mutually intelligible (though sometimes with some difficulty), while not being mutually intelligible with other branches of Chinese. Yue is not Guangzhouhua: it is the language of which Guangzhouhua, known as "Cantonese" in English, is the prestige dialect. The relationship between Yue and Cantonese (Canton-ese) is like the difference between Wu and Shanghainese, or Mandarin and Pekingese. Yes, we *can* say that "Cantonese" is a dialect of "Cantonese", as these articles used to, but Bathrobe and I are arguing that we should *not*: This nearly nonsensical wording illustrates why it is so confusing to use the term "Cantonese" when referring to both Yue (Yueyu) and to Canton-ese (Guangfuhua). kwami (talk) 23:59, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

User 86.164.56.2, I don't want to get into a discussion over the term "dialect" and "language". In quoting Wong, I was merely pointing to a reputable source which strongly supports your position on the meaning of "Cantonese" and the position of Guangdonghua as the standard dialect/language.

With regard to the "Yue language", I must part ways with editor Kwami here. I don't believe that such a language as the "Yue language" exists. According to my understanding, linguists have identified a group of related Sinitic dialects which are known in the English-language literature as Yue dialects. This name is obviously taken from Chinese 粤 and is based on the work of Chinese linguists. The naming dialects/languages/speech varieties in China is a big problem. In the popular consciousness dialects are identified with places, meaning that there is Guangzhouhua or Taishanhua or Chaozhouhua etc., but not necessarily any strong consciousness of dialects falling into larger language groupings. The Wu dialects are all related, but no Shanghainese or Suzhou person or Ningbo person would say "I speak Wu". They merely recognise that these different local speech forms ("dialects") are often mutually intelligible to a greater or lesser extent. It is purely a linguists' concept that "Wu Chinese" is a language or "Yue Chinese" is a language. If native speakers don't have a concept or consciousness of speaking Wu or speaking Yue, how can we characterise these as "languages"?

In Western Europe there are nation states that have developed national languages (usually based on prestige dialects) on their territory, so we feel at least reasonably comfortable identifying the French language and its "dialects" or the German language and its "dialects". But the situation even in Europe is actually far more complicated. If we followed the findings of linguists, we would have to replace the German and Dutch languages with Alemannic, Bavarian-Austrian, East Middle German, West Middle German, Low Franconian, Low Saxon, etc. (See Wikipedia articles on Alemannic German, Low German, Franconian etc.) These are the "languages" that linguistic research has revealed. There is nothing wrong with the way that linguists have clarified these languages (or groups of dialects), but they are not necessarily identified by speakers as "languages". I would be curious to know how many Germans or Dutch people would say "I speak Alemannic" or "I speak Franconian". So in the same sense, how many speakers of Yue dialects would say "I speak Yue", and how justified is Wikipedia in identifying a "Yue language" that speakers themselves are not necessarily conscious of?

What we do know is that there is a prestige speech variety called "Cantonese" or "Guangzhouhua" that occupies a comparable (although not exactly equivalent) position to Standard French or Standard High German or Standard English (which I don't want to debate but arguably exists in several forms -- English, Scots, American, Australian, etc.) It is a prestige speech form both in areas where Yue dialects are spoken and areas where Yue dialects aren't spoken. All the other Yue dialects are what Wong described back in 1941 as "patois".

Bathrobe (talk) 02:58, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

But Guangzhouhua is only prestigious when spoken with a Guangzhou accent. When spoken with any other accent, the speaker will be regarded as poorly educated or a person from the countryside. This is especially true in Hong Kong. 86.164.56.2 (talk) 22:06, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Quoting Kwami: "The relationship between Yue and Cantonese (Canton-ese) is like the difference between Wu and Shanghainese, or Mandarin and Pekingese." And pray Mr Kwami, could you please tell us the difference between Mandarin and Pekingese (and I don't think we are talking about a citrus fruit and a dog)? 86.164.56.2 (talk) 22:23, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Pekingese is the dialect of Beijing. I assume you wouldn't call the dialects of Xi'an or Chengdu "Pekingese". But they're all Mandarin. Likewise, we no longer include Quzhou and Wenzhou under "Shanghainese", but they're all Wu. Once upon a time, perhaps, Chengdu was considered Pekingese and Wenzhou Shanghainese, but these days we tend to be more careful with such distinctions. We tend to be a bit sloppier with Cantonese, but the principal's the same: Cantonese is prototypically the dialect of Canton, not of Taishan, Gaozhou, or Wuchuan, but all are Yue. kwami (talk) 23:38, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think that Chengdu was ever considered Pekingese, or Wenzhou Shanghainese... I'm not sure where you get the idea from that they were. Mandarin is not even identical with Pekingese historically. Mandarin is the standard northern language used as a kind of lingua franca among bureaucrats. I believe it changed its geographical base over time, ending up in Beijing because Beijing was the capital and seat of the emperor for such a long time. Sichuan is called "Southwest Mandarin" by linguists, but I doubt whether this term would click with most Chinese. 官话 is an old term that means 'officials' talk' and is not normally applied to dialects like Sichuan. The term 北方话 'northern talk' doesn't apply to Sichuan, either, since Sichuan is in the south.

Shanghai is a very young city and has only become the most prestigious dialect in recent times. Before that the prestige Wu dialect was Suzhou. Shanghainese refers very much to the speech of Shanghai and has never been used for Wenzhou.

Bathrobe (talk) 14:43, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I doubt Chengdu was ever called "Pekinese". But I have seen "Shanghainese" used for Wu in general, just as "Cantonese" is used for Yue in general. Here "Shanghainese (Wu) Chinese" is listed with 78M speakers, "Cantonese" with 68, which can only mean Wu and Yue, resp. And that in a linguistics volume from 1986. kwami (talk) 19:12, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I stand corrected. The fact that no one who knows anything about anything would call Wu "Shanghainese" is irrelevant -- we have ourselves an impeccable source, and a linguists' source no less. It seems that anything is possible and anything is sourceable.... Congratulations, user Kwami, you have driven the first nail into the coffin of "verifiability" and the sanctity of sourcing for all edits.

Bathrobe (talk) 03:28, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, that's why we ask for RS, and not just for citation. That volume does not specialize in Chinese, and so would not be considered as reliable as something that did. I think it's rather unusual to use the word that way any longer. But in maybe the 1950s? it was quite common to speak of the dialects of Chinese as Cantonese, Shanghainese, Amoy, etc, where each stood as the prototype of a larger group. Such usage has mostly fallen by the wayside, with the exception of Cantonese.

I wouldn't say "one who knows anything about anything would call Wu 'Shanghainese'". I think it's more a matter of intentional accessibility for the intended audience. "Wu" is hardly assimilated into English even today. All the arguments we've heard about "Yue", that it isn't really English, that per Common Name we must go with "Cantonese", etc., all would apply equally well to Wu and Shanghainese. I imagine someone writing or editing that volume thought, "No-one's going to know what Wu is, so let's just call it Shanghainese. Close enough." The same evaluation occurs with editors who know different deciding on Cantonese for Yue. kwami (talk) 04:05, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm a little doubtful about your last point. I don't think it's valid to use Shanghainese for Wu. Just plain incorrect. For Cantonese, I think the sheer dominance of Guangzhouhua among the Yue dialects, and its clear-cut nature as a "standard", puts Cantonese many notches above Shanghainese. Shanghainese is just one variety of Wu. Cantonese is the variety of Yue. I think you're being just a little doctrinaire insisting that all dialect groups have to be treated the same. It's a little too Procrustean. There are dialect groups and dialect groups. Neither Wu nor Yue is necessarily a model for all the other groups.

Bathrobe (talk) 11:07, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

whoever editted this wiki to read "Canton = Guangzhou" has not seen his own argument through to its end, nor can he under his own rules.

Native speakers of Cantonese customarily call their language 广州话 (Guang Zhou Hua) meaning Guangzhou Prefecture Speech or 白话 (Bai Hua) meaning "Stardardized, Clear, or Formal Language"(of Guangdong/Canton Province). Guangzhou people also call their dialect 粤语 (Yue Yu) meaning "Language of Yue/ Guangdong province (which always refers to the prominent dialect of Guangdong/ Canton province) the Guangzhou language), 广东话 (Guang Dong Hua) meaning "Canton/Guangdong Province speech (which can also be used by any speakers of any local variant of Cantonese), or (rarely) 省城话 (Sheng Cheng Hua) meaning "Provincial Capital speech". In Hong Kong and Macau, people usually simply refer to it as 广东话 (Guang Dong Hua) but it should be noted that the term also refers to many non-standard Cantonese speakers with accents and variants of their dialect which are not standardized 白话 (Bai Hua)

you see, Guangdong Hua = Cantonese, because Canton = Guangdong.

or do you simply not care to get that?

MOST hongkong people come from Canton province, NOT Guangzhou city. Nor do they differentiate between themselves in HK nor do they care to. hence, they simply refer to Guangdong and Guangzhou both as "Canton" either because they dont know where they are from or dont care to admit it.

Now I have restored the article to contain truth, rather than quasi-references and HOCUS POCUS

it is clear and explained in detail.

any changes need to be written and explained here.

and not simply moving the article so you can get rid of all the comments and re-write things yourself

you'd better understand. —Preceding unsigned comment added by L31 G0NG L41 (talk • contribs)

• sigh* Once again, this article is in English, not in Cantonese. When writing in English, we need to stick to English. In English, "Canton" means Canton City, not the whole province. This article is about the Canton-HK dialect, not about Yue. Yue has a separate article at Yue Chinese (perhaps soon to be moved). kwami (talk) 00:25, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

We will come back to this article, when Yue Chinese is properly named. Benjwong (talk) 06:38, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Baihua or Baak-wa, does not mean clear or standard language. Bai means 'white' and 'hua' means speech. Together 'Baihua' means 'Plain Speech', ie 'White, not colourful, speech' of the Guan (official class) speech. In straight forward English 'Baihua' means 'No gobbledegook talk please'. 86.164.56.2 (talk) 00:18, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

No, in actual usage Baakwa is used to mean "Cantonese" or "Yue". It reflects a consciousness among speakers of some Yue dialects that they speak a single "language", but not necessarily one they want to call "Guangdonghua", "Yueyu", or "Guangzhouhua".

Bathrobe (talk) 03:04, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually I agree with Bathrobe because "Flowery or Colourful" spoken Guangzhouhua can still be called Baakwa nowadays, although of course it defeats the original purpose of the name Baakwa. This brings the discussion back to the beginning of the circle which is that nowadays Baakwa is nothing but Guangzhouhua whether spoken with a Guangzhou accent or not. 86.164.56.2 (talk) 22:00, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I am unsure of the rationale for the original split, but I move that the two articles should be merged under the name "Cantonese".

There does not appear to be any strong reason for separating the two -- unless we want to have separate articles for "Canton dialect" and "Hong Kong Cantonese". But in any case, the main article should be "Cantonese" or "Standard Cantonese", not the Canton or Hong Kong varieties. (I now note that there is a separate article for Hong Kong Cantonese. Much of the article is devoted to describing certain features of Hong Kong Cantonese and its differences from Guangzhou Cantonese -- a sure sign that there's not much of great import to talk about. I don't believe that this is a major impediment to the merger. The articles on Standard Cantonese and Canton dialect should still be merged, although a rump of the Canton dialect article could be retained as Guangzhou Cantonese, describing the typical features of Guangzhou dialect -- although I'm not sure how useful that would be. The raison d'être of the article on Hong Kong Cantonese is that the Hong Kong variant has some differences from the traditional standard. Whether these mean that Hong Kong is now a new "standard" setting itself up against the traditional standard is a moot point. Is Hong Kong Cantonese a "standard"? I say this because an article on Guangzhou dialect and how it differs from the new "Hong Kong Standard" would be rather incongruous and would possibly be opposed by many editors. That's because old standards tend to be the yardstick against which new varieties measure themselves, and not vice versa.)

Bathrobe (talk) 11:05, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

"Canton dialect" includes Hong Kong and Macau. "Cantonese" is not practical, due to the interminable argument over whether that means Guangfuhua or Yueyu. We could make it "Cantonese dialect", maybe. (But some would argue that also means Yueyu.)

And then, if we move it to "Cantonese" and then somewhere else, we'd have those hundreds of ambiguous redirects to go through again.

But I agree with the merger. (That's already been discussed above, or maybe at Standard Cantonese.) I split up the article to try to bring some clarity to the naming/topic debate. But I never really meant it to be permanent. The only question is how much merges here, and how much to Yue. kwami (talk) 17:33, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Well there are some differences between HK, Macau and Canton Cantonese but these could probably dealt with (for now) in subsections of a page. Overall I agree with merging the two. Since we went with Cantonese (Yue), Cantonese (Yuehai) seems appropriate as a title to cover all three. Alternatively, since these 3 dialects are what people normally think of as "Cantonese", Cantonese (prestige dialect) or something might work too. Perhaps we should flush out a list of suggestions? Akerbeltz (talk) 09:09, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

List of suggested titles (for merging Standard Cantonese and Canton dialect; separate from Cantonese (Yue):

1. Cantonese
2. Standard Cantonese
3. Canton dialect
4. Cantonese (prestige dialect)
5. Cantonese (Yuehai)
6. Cantonese (language)

My take: 1. ambiguous; also future probs w redirects. 2. previous consensus against this name, as it's not a standard language. 3. good; the most common name besides "Cantonese" itself. 4. maybe. 5. quite rare in English. 6. ambiguous; more likely interpreted as Yue.

What's the diff between Yuehai and Guangfu, anyway? kwami (talk) 23:28, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I believe Cantonese language would be the simplist and most appropriate, and cantonese as a redirrect. If it was a dialect of chinese then I should understand Mandarine, which i don't. Enlil Ninlil (talk) 02:35, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

But it isn't a language. (You're thinking of Yue language.) Even if it were, we have long-standing consensus not to use that term for varieties of Chinese. kwami (talk) 03:11, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I again disagree with user Kwami. We would need more than a few linguists' pronouncements to prove that Yue is actually a language. While I don't necessarily agree with Chinese political tendencies to suppress dialects as valid languages, I am certainly sympathetic to Chinese views on being "carved up" by foreign countries when foreign linguists try to come in and set up independent "languages" in China that aren't backed up by local perceptions. If the Chinese people aren't aware that they speak "Wu" or "Gan" or "Mandarin" (when the latter is used for something broader than putonghua), what justification do linguists have to come in and decide the issue? "Wu", "Gan", etc. are what might be called "embryonic" languages -- embryonic in the sense that everything is in place for them to be unified with a standard dialect and a written standard, but it just hasn't happened, and people are simply not aware that they are "languages".

Bathrobe (talk) 06:20, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

What do you disagree with? You haven't said anything contrary to what I said. kwami (talk) 07:01, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

You said that it isn't a language. You're thinking of Yue language. I disagree that Yue is a language. I've outlined my objections before this but you either sidestep the question or just assert that "Yue is a language" (based, it seems, on Ethnologue).

Bathrobe (talk) 07:43, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

You misunderstand me. I did not say Yue is a separate language, I said that Canton-ese is not a separate language. If Enlil thinks Cantonese is a separate language, he is presumably thinking of Yue Chinese, not of Canton dialect; that is presumably the case regardless of whether you or I or anyone else agrees that Yue is an independent language. I understand that there are other considerations that simple mutual intelligibility. kwami (talk) 18:57, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Slow down guys. This isn't about West vs East in my experience (and I fortunately sit in the native speaker camp) but a question of linguistic training vs layman traditional interpretation. I have had endless discussions about this topic with lay native speakers on this issue and the problem for the most part is that they apply inherited historical ("it's all China") or cultural ("it's all Chinese culture") beliefs rather than use a systematic principle (for example intelligibility vs non-intelligibility). There is also a deep-seated inferiority complex about a lot of Cantonese "lect-related" issues, especially the writing system. On the whole, if you get into a discussion with a linguistically trained speaker, agreement is relatively common that by applying a strict principle such as intelligibility of neighbouring dialects, they qualify as languages.

The fact that it is more common described as a language in linguistic works published outside South East Asia may have socio-political, rather than linguistic reasons. Publishing a treatise on the Wu Language is probably not the best way to advance at a Chinese University, in the same vein as it might not be ideal to publish a Critical Study of the Tiananmen Protests in political studies in China...

As far as the written standard goes, a lot of that was lost after the Culture Revolution. I have a Shangainese friend whose father used to hold rallies for "the other side" and they were all written in written Wu/Shanghainese, using a lot of non-Mandarin characters. But after the CR these were ... not encouraged, let's put it that way. You will also find that if HK hadn't been with it's lax regulation of the print media, the Cantonese characters would have fared similarly; even today they are much less well known in mainland China. Akerbeltz (talk) 10:59, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Just saw that there is Hong Kong Cantonese as well. Based on that, how about we do

1. Cantonese (some dab to identify HKGZM) for the variant most people think of as "Cantonese"
   1. Hong Kong Cantonese (with a Cantonese (Hong Kong dialect) redirect)
   2. Guangzhou Cantonese (with a Cantonese (Guangzhou dialect) and Cantonse (Canton dialect) redirect)

Guangfu afaik stands for 廣府, "Canton district" loosely translated. Yuehai is 粵海 "the Yuet Sea" and to me a wider geographical term which sums up the areas surrounding the mouth of the Pearl River.

I agree that options 3-5 are the most promising (of there may be ones we haven't though of before). Akerbeltz (talk) 14:28, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I understand Guangfu, just wasn't sure about Yuehai. It would seem then that, taken literally, Guangfu would include Guangzhou and environs but exclude HK and Macau, whereas Yuehai is HK and environs but excludes Guangzhou. But I've seen both used to include all the above. James Campbell, for example, uses Guangfu for the Guangzhou-HK dialect. kwami (talk) 01:11, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Akerbeltz, what you say makes sense. But languages can be strongly influenced by political and social factors. I'm sorry to keep bringing up the German/Dutch example, but it seems to me that different criteria are applied to European languages and languages like Chinese. As I've noted earlier, the Ethnologue recognises a number of "dialect groups" or "languages" for the West Germanic area, languages like Alemannic, Franconian, etc. According to a linguists's classification, the German/Dutch area would be split up into these separate "languages" (which apparently have poor mutual intelligibility). But because we are used to the German and Dutch nation states, each with their own "standard language", and because these standard languages have moreover gone on to strongly affect (sometimes replace) local dialects, very few people would argue that the standard languages should be scrapped and the linguistic map rewritten to reflect the findings of linguists about dialect goups. In China, however, it seems permissible to impose linguists' categories on native speaker perceptions. I'm perfectly aware of the intense pressure (of various kinds, not necessarily honest) that is applied by the powers-that-be to destroy any nascent consciousness of Chinese dialect speakers belonging to anything other than Chinese. But this does not justify "objective specialists" coming in and laying down the law as to what dialects "belong" to a particular language.

As for Cantonese, I think that oversplitting is overproductive. Even if Hong Kong is regarded as somewhat different, I think that it is largely regarded as a form of "Cantonese" in the narrow sense (correct me if I'm wrong). I think that we should maintain the concept of a standard dialect (even if there is variation). Falling into a topolect-type approach is a backward step.

Bathrobe (talk) 14:43, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree about oversplitting. I doubt there is any point in having separate Canton and Guangzhou dialect articles, and they would probably be confusing and spark interminable objections that Canton = Guangzhou (at least given current naming). HK is considered Canton dialect, but the article focuses on things unique to HK. This isn't just a topolect issue, but a sociopolitical one, given HK's divergent history from the rest of historical Guangdong. It looks to me as if it might be well enough developed to justify maintaining it as a separate article, but we could always merge it with Canton dialect and Standard Cantonese if people feel that's best. kwami (talk) 18:57, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm in agreement too. I was just trying to keep it simple. As I've said before, ideally I believe we should lump HK M GZ together under X (dab) and deal with features special to each within that page.

I'm aware of the German/Dutch/Luxembourgish paradox and have always argued that on the basis of mutual unintelligibility of neighbouring variants, you actually have about 6-7 German languages rather than dialects. One can never separate completely the intricate relationship between language and culture/history/politics/etc in everyday life, as seen in the case of Croation, Bosnian and Serb... Akerbeltz (talk) 19:31, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

But if the HK section is of article length, it might be best to split it off as a separate article. There's no need to therefore split off Macau as a separate article, any more than splitting off Cantonese phonology means we should also split off Cantonese syntax. kwami (talk) 20:19, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, agree with Akerbeltz and Kwami on HK variety. One article for the prestige dialect. An article on HK Cantonese is fine, but mainly as a subcategory of the prestige dialect elucidating its peculiarities. Not sure about a similar article on Guangzhou Cantonese, for reasons given above.

For (Standard) Cantonese as a language, actually I tend to be sympathetic to this view. Just as Standard High German is a language. Standard High German is simply a "prestige dialect" that is used extensively in Germany, Austria and (to a much smaller extent) Switzerland, but Standard High German is what allows us to speak of German as a language. Standard French (of France) is similar. There are many "languages" in France, including the German of Alsace-Lorraine (actually one of the West German dialects, not exactly a language), but it is Parisian French that makes French a language. Similarly, "Cantonese" is a language, based on the prestige dialect. In other words, I would argue that Standard Cantonese is what makes Cantonese a "language". The problem with Cantonese is that it isn't the language of a nation-state, so there is no consensus as to what is a "dialect" of Cantonese and what is not. If Guangdong were a country, then this standard dialect (Cantonese) would be the language, and Toisanese etc. would be dialects. Plus Hakka and other languages would be considered to be separate languages spoken on Guangdong territory. HK Cantonese might be a second standard (like Austrian German or Canadian French). And Guangxi and Danzhouhua would be variants of Cantonese spoken outside Guangdong province (similar to Walloon vs French, or to Flemish vs Dutch).

This is all hypothetical talk and not much use in the end because Guangdong is not a country. But the idea that (Standard) Cantonese is what makes Cantonese a language is the point that I am driving at. In fact, (Standard) Cantonese probably has more validity as a "language" than "Yue dialects" do. I don't know if you understand what I mean.

Bathrobe (talk) 23:01, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I understand what you're saying. While Yue may be a language based on objective criteria of mutual intelligibility, it may not be perceived that way by actual speakers, and such subjective judgements are critical. But while Parisian French may be the standard upon which the identity of the French language is based, no-one speaks of a "Parisian language". Rather, Parisian is seen as the prestige dialect of "French", which includes all dialects, including disparaged ones like Norman. It would seem to me that the parallel situation for Cantonese (insofar as any two languages can be truly parallel) would be for Canton dialect to set the standard for all Yue dialects, though popular conception of what is and is not Yue, or what is and is not French, may differ from the linguist. kwami (talk) 00:15, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I think we're reaching the nub of the problem and the source of disagreements. I don't believe that the "Yue dialects" are dialects of Cantonese in the same way as the French (or German) situation. The difference is that the French and German languages are national languages. Cantonese is not. The German example is the one I've used before. Although the West Germanic dialects stretch right across from Austria to Holland, few would argue that all West Germanic dialects are dialects of Standard High German. There is no linguistic reason why all the West Germanic dialects couldn't be considered dialects of SHG (just as there is no linguistic reason why all the Yue dialects couldn't be considered dialects of Cantonese). But the fact is that there is a separate standard in the Netherlands called "Dutch". And in territories politically under Dutch control, the "natural" linguistic dialects of German don't belong to German at all.

This is why I'm arguing against the identification of Yue dialects and Cantonese. Cantonese is a prestige dialect without a nation. So the assignment of "dialects" is not as neat as it is in the case of German and Dutch, or even French, for that matter. It is precisely because Cantonese doesn't have its own nation that we are having many of the arguments at this article. We have two extreme positions:

(1) Only the prestige dialect spoken with a Guangzhou accent should be regarded as Cantonese. This is the narrowest interpretation. Only the nucleus is truly Cantonese. All the rest are "patois".

(2)All the Yue dialects belong to Cantonese, whether native speakers regard them as such or not.

Definition (1) is an extremely narrow view but has the beauty of being relatively well defined. Definition (2) is the view of those who feel that Cantonese should be similar to German or French, with a well-defined centre and an array of dialects. Proponents of this view are frustrated by (what appears to be) the reality on the ground -- varieties like Toisanese and Danzhouhua, which refuse to fit into this neat classification.

My argument all along has been that the Yue languages are not necessarily the dialects of the Cantonese language. Just as the dialects of the Netherlands are not dialects of German, despite the fact that on purely linguistic grounds it could be claimed that they should be. (Or it could be argued that linguistically speaking Low German dialects should be dialects of Dutch. The problem is that they're not dialects of Dutch.)

To reiterate my position, I think that we have two overlapping but distinct concepts:

• Cantonese in the narrow sense is a prestige language. It is spoken natively (with some variation) in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau. It is a prestige dialect (lingua franca) over a very large area, including areas where Yue dialects are spoken natively, and areas where other dialects are spoken natively.

• The Yue dialects are a group of linguistically related dialects, one of which is Standard Cantonese, which are found in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Hong Kong, Macau, and overseas.

The problems lie in the overlap. One problem is that Cantonese in the narrow sense (Standard Cantonese) is too narrow. There are Yue dialects that are so close to Standard Cantonese that they are virtually regarded as variants or rustic dialects of Cantonese. I believe that Baakwa is the term employed to express the perception that these dialects are all basically the same language.

The other problem is that the Yue dialects (a linguists' concept) is too broad to be called "Cantonese". While Baakwa may be essentially the same as Cantonese, there are dialects that really push the envelope, and possibly/probably shouldn't be regarded as dialects of the Cantonese language.

I repeat: I don't think we would have half of these problems if Guangdong were its own country, but the fact is that it isn't. Despite the temptation to compensate for this by claiming the Yue dialects as a whole are "dialects of Cantonese", I think this temptation should be resisted as it is not the true linguistic reality.

As I've also stated many times, I am not an expert and would welcome any corrections to what I am saying. It is unfortunate that no one has come up with any good sources that could clarify beyond all doubt what the situation on the ground is. Ironically, it is the Wikipedia article itself, with its detailed explanations of the names of the language (Guangzhouhua, Guangdonghua, Yueyu, Baakwa, etc.) and their implications that is the best resource I've seen yet on the actual situation regarding Cantonese and the Yue dialects!

Bathrobe (talk) 01:23, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I think the problem still lies with the fact that the vast majority of Yue dialects are essentially very intelligible variations of Cantonese. Yes, Luxembourgish may or may not be German, but Bavarian dialects are almost undisputably German dialects and can be called "German". The same case here. Cantonese is an exonym. Some users continue to assert that it can only be used in the narrow sense as "Canton-ese", and continue to harp on this despite serious evidence to the contrary. But the reality is that all Yue dialects, with the exception of Taishanese and Danzhouhua, are almost certainly just as "Cantonese" as the Guangzhou or Hong Kong variations. In fact, Hong Kong Cantonese, which is now the de facto standard in Hong Kong, was an amalgamation of Southern Guangdong dialects and the Guangzhou prestige dialect, but sounds awfully similar to Guangzhou accent anyhow. To say that HK Cantonese is the same as "Canton dialect" is ridiculous. To say that 80% of Yue dialects which sound very similar to Guangzhou dialect cannot be called "Cantonese" and must be called "Yue Chinese" or some such is even more so. It is not only inappropriate, but indeed may be an insult to the people who come from those areas. Colipon+(Talk) 02:08, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Who here ever said that "Cantonese" can only be used for Canton dialect?

Who here ever said that HK Cantonese is the same as Canton (do you mean Guangzhou?) dialect? kwami (talk) 02:15, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

One thing we tend to forget is that the variations between varieties of Yue is minimal compared to a language like German, or a Chinese variety like Min. Min essentially has four or five different mutually unintelligible forms. Yue, apart from Taishanese, is more-or-less similar all across the board. A person from Maoming understands one from Nanning with little difficulty - because they are both basically speaking Cantonese.

One big misconception is perhaps the idea that Guangzhou dialect is a "prestige dialect" when it is in fact a "prestige accent". Canton dialect isn't "Cantonese" as much as it is the "Guangzhou accent of Cantonese". Colipon+(Talk) 02:18, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

That's why Ethnologue considers Yue to be one language, but German and Min to be several. kwami (talk) 02:25, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

User Colipon, no one is saying that Yue dialects should be called "Yue Chinese". In fact, I thought we'd already changed the name of that article to "Cantonese (Yue)". You are flogging a dead horse. The normal Chinese usage is to use a topolect. Toisan is an example. The question is thus which topolects should be called "Cantonese".

One-off out-of-context assertions like 'Bavarian dialects are almost undisputably German dialects and can be called "German"' don't address what was presented above. Nor do emotive statements like "it is not only inappropriate, but indeed may be an insult to the people who come from those areas". I have asked people to come up with good sources to clarify beyond all doubt what the situation on the ground is. User Colipon, I think that the issue should be discussed from that point of view rather than shooting off random lightning bolts.

Your comments on the variations on Yue being minimal in comparison with Min are highly illuminating. As I said, published sources on the Yue dialects / Cantonese don't really say much about what is considered Cantonese and what is not; nor about variations among the dialects. So this is precisely the kind of information that we need -- and with sources would be even better. Bathrobe (talk) 02:48, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

My impression of why an article on Canton dialect would be separate from St. Cantonese is that they have now become two different concepts. Standard Cantonese is the current "prestige version" of Cantonese, be it an accent or a "dialect" per se. Although St. Cantonese may be based on Guangzhou's sounds, at least in the latter half of the 20th century, much "standardization" actually occurred in Hong Kong. The point here is that Hong Kong Cantonese and Guangzhou Cantonese are now two different things, therefore you cannot say that one is a standard over the other. If we merge Canton dialect with St. Cantonese, do we also merge Hong Kong Cantonese?

What is Standard Cantonese? For all practical purposes, due to a lack of institutionalized standardization, it is the Cantonese that you hear on Hong Kong or Guangzhou television. I do think that a lay user coming online to look up "Cantonese" is trying to search for what we are now calling "Standard Cantonese". But no more than a user looking up "Mandarin" when s/he is in fact looking for "Standard Mandarin". The only question is, can we call something a "standard" when it's been only somewhat standardized? What other alternatives are there? A Google Scholar search reveals 187 results where "Standard Cantonese" is used, and 368 results for "Modern Cantonese". I cannot say I know that they are all used in the same context, but I do think those two names are the only ones that satisfy the concept of "Standard Cantonese".

I oppose merging Canton dialect with "St. Cantonese" on the grounds that we cannot definitively say Guangzhou is presently the "standard", when Hong Kong also arguably plays an even more influencial role. I think we should modify the "Canton dialect" article to talk about present-day variations between St. Cantonese and Canton dialect, if there are any - much the same way it is done over at Beijing dialect with Standard Mandarin. I am also a bit skeptical of retaining this page at "Canton dialect". I think "Guangzhou dialect" is the proper, modern name.

Right now much of the confusion stems from the content of the different pages. For example, on "Canton dialect" we see that "Cantonese vs. Mandarin in Hong Kong and Singapore" is presented there, when it belongs over at the Standard Cantonese article. When delving into solutions perhaps it is better to sift through all the content first and see where it all fits together. Colipon+(Talk) 09:53, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I think your last sentence sums it up. "When delving into solutions perhaps it is better to sift through all the content first and see where it all fits together." User Kwami decided to split the article on Standard Cantonese into two articles without really having a clear idea of what he was about, and it shows. Now you are putting obstacles in the way of putting them back together again on rather dubious conceptual grounds, without considering what the articles are actually about. Reading the articles, I have great difficulty actually figuring out the difference between them. I would be most grateful if user Colipon could point out which portions of the two articles actually refer specifically and unambiguously to "Canton dialect" alone, so that we can put those parts into an article on "Canton dialect". The rest can go in Standard Cantonese.

(In fact, I am rather sceptical of the idea of Hong Kong dialect as a standard, not because Hong Kong isn't influential, because it is, but because quite a bit of the Hong Kong article is devoted to how Hong Kong dialect has deteriorated vis-à-vis the standard! That is NOT the mark of a standard variety!)

Bathrobe (talk) 13:35, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I am not going to claim to know the ins and outs of Cantonese, but I will suggest perhaps going to one of the native speakers to ask him whether or not Canton dialect is sufficiently different from "Standard Cantonese" the same way Beijing dialect is to "Standard Mandarin". If we can establish this then we should definitely keep the articles separate, but if we cannot then a merger may still be necessary. Colipon+(Talk) 14:55, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I was not aware of Standard Mandarin and do not think that terminology makes sense. "Mandarin" is a translation of "guanhua" meaning official(s') language. The word "guanhua" gave way to the current governments' official terms, guoyu, putonghua, and huayu, all of which are still official standards and still translated into English as "Mandarin". "Mandarin" has always referred to an official language (even if some variation is tolerated in actual usage) and using it for the dialect complex covering the majority of China is negating its meaning.. --JWB (talk) 16:28, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Let me just say that the pronunciation of Standard Guangzhouhua in Guangzhou and Hong Kong are for all intent and purpose identical. The main difference is that the lexicon of HK Cantonese (Guangzhouhua) and Guangzhouhua of Guangzhou has come under different influences. In the case of HK, some of its street language and slangs are influenced by English, thus giving rise to Chinglish, and that of GZ speech is influenced by Putonghua. An obvious example is that of telephone manners; in HK picking up the phone you can say 'Wei' or 'Haa-lo' (from 'Hello'). In GZ, picking up the phone you say 'Nei-ho'- from Putonghua 'Ni hao'. In Putonghua 'Ni hao' is used as a greeting and not its literal meaning of 'you OK?' In HK, 'Nei- ho' still has the meaning of 'You OK?' so sounds strange as a greeting on the telephone, although with the return of HK to China, the HK Cantonese is once again being influenced strongly by mainland Chinese usage. Both HK people and GZ people when saying 'Haa lo' or 'Nei ho' would pronounce these terms the same way. As for calling Cantonese Guangfuhua, the only time I have come across this usage is from a Malaysian Cantonese speaker, who has never set foot in HK or China but spoke with a perfect GZ accent, because he claimed that was what his grandparents called it. 86.147.245.137 (talk) 23:35, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

As for Mandarin or 'Guoyu': Mandarin is from Portuguese 'To command'. Guoyu means 'National Language', so much so that the Vietnamese and Japanese also call their respective language 'Guoyu', but of course pronounced in the way of their respective language. 86.147.245.137 (talk) 23:43, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

After you've reviewed the content in these articles, if anyone has any proposals, please post them. I have already posted about 4 or 5 back in the other discussion but we always end up deviating to theoretical debates or personal assertions. Endlessly criticizing will not get us anywhere. If we engage in debate, it should be directly relevant to the article.

This is a highly complex issue, but in my fully honest opinion, I still believe the state of the articles pre-Kwami-move was the best we've had, and that it's gotten a lot worse since the moves happened. Of course, the model pre-moves was not perfect, caused confusion, and could be improved upon, but in my view it was still much better than what we have now. Perhaps we should actually review the contents of the articles before all these moves happened to get a better idea on how to sort out the mess. Colipon+(Talk) 15:11, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

As you have seen, Cantonese is not a simple name. It involves the cultural, political, and various other issues. Before Kwami's move, it was the consensus over years. Upon Kwami move, it inevitably stirs endless debates on the issue, from City to Province, from dialect to language, from a Chinese name to other names, from one scheme of romanisation to other schemes, from native to Putonghua, from an English name to other names. I wonder why Kwami insists to incite the debates again as votes were cast last year.

In fact, I do not like Yue as the name our languages, namely Cantonese. It is neither from Cantonese nor from English. The native name of our languages is Kwang-tung-wa or Yuet-yu. As for an English article, it is Cantonese. It would better not to reinvent the wheel.

Back to the topic of Standard Cantonese. I prefer the merger. There is no significant differences in the pronunciation between Hong Kong and Canton. Grammatically they are the same. Academic- and educational-wise, there is an agreeable set of rules how to pronounce each Chinese character. The differences between Hong Kong and Canton is largely the set of vocabularies as they are separated culturally and politically for 60 years. Without significant difference, if there must be an article to signify the minor deviations, I would rather prefer that there are articles like Cantonese in Canton or Cantonese in Hong Kong.

— HenryLi (Talk) 16:03, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Henry, please correct me if I'm wrong. You are saying that all "Yue" dialects should be known as "Cantonese" in the English language? You also talk about academic agreement on certain pronunciations - this shows that a "Standard" within Cantonese does in fact exist, but simply may not be politically sanctioned, correct? If this is the case, then the pre-move solutions were indeed the most appropriate. Colipon+(Talk) 17:58, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Henry's last paragraphy - the main differences are terminology and some minor pronunciation differences. I've said before that I have no bone with using Yue, the world is full of exonyms.

Would it be possible to sidestep the issue of language etc by calling the page Cantonese (hear me out) and then adding a dab link at the top saying "for other senses of the word see Cantonese (dab)"? I'm sure I have seen pages like that. Akerbeltz (talk) 16:35, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with Akerbeltz. We could, in that case, do one of two things:

1. Merge St/Cantonese and Canton dialect, then rename that resulting article "Cantonese".
2. Same merger, but retain name "Standard Cantonese", but move "Cantonese (Yue)" to "Cantonese", with the note appended. (note that this is basically how things were before Kwami conducted his tornado operation). Colipon+(Talk) 17:54, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

This from "Standard Mandarin":

I can see a comparable way emerging here as well:

Perhaps not a perfect solution... but food for thought nonetheless. Colipon+(Talk) 18:13, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Don't forget that we also have an article on Written Cantonese, which covers much of this area.

If it's not clear if there is a standard Cantonese, nor whether it is Guangzhou or HK that sets the standard, wouldn't it be better to just have an article on Canton dialect / Cantonese (or whatever we call it), and note that both Guangzhou and HK accents are influential? Some of the material at that article belongs to Yue or written Cantonese, but much of it can be merged here.

As for moving this article to Cantonese, it was under that name at one point. Then it was moved out and Yue was moved to that name. This war has gone back and forth, over and over, resulting in a real mess with the hundreds of Cantonese links from other articles. Because of that, IMO it is better to avoid the name altogether. However, if it has to be one or the other, I support having Canton-ese rather than Yue at "Cantonese". kwami (talk) 00:31, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Kwami, it may be hard for you to understand as you know no Cantonese, but for the last time, the pronunciation of Standard Cantonese in Hong Kong and Guangzhou are identical. There are of course differences in lexicon as the 2 places came under different influences over the past 200 years. This is of course not the same as saying native HK Cantonese is the same as the current Standard HK Cantonese, because native HK'ers are those people in the old villages in HK who can trace their roots back for centuries, whereas the current Standard HK Cantonese was brought into HK by immigrants from the GZ region, and adopted as the Standard for HK. Had Guangxi immigrants to HK outnumbered GZ immigrants, the Standard Cantonese adopted in HK may have been a different story, but that never happened. 86.147.245.137 (talk) 00:07, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'm becoming confused. Let me tell you what would satisfy me. I want to know the actual situation of Cantonese on the ground. I want people to stop the ideologising and tell us the extent of an identifiable language/dialect -- call it 粤语, 广州话, 广东话, 白话, its Chinese name is not relevant -- and what dialects are recognised as belonging to it. What I mean is dialects which are generally recognised by native speakers as belonging to a single linguistic entity. Colipon talks of language that is essentially the same from Maoming and Nanning. If there is such a range of mutual intelligibility, it means that this language/dialect (call it 粤语, 广州话, 广东话, 白话) is basically a single entity and would be recognised as such by native speakers.

I am frustrated by the fact that we seem to have a limited native-speaker demographic here on Wikipedia, heavily skewed to Hong Kongers and emigrant Cantonese-speakers. They are bringing a somewhat slanted, often politicised stance to the issue. It would really be helpful if someone from Guangxi province or Hainan or the Four Districts or Malaysia were contributing to this discussion to let us know the perspective of people from these places. And since Wikipedia expects sources, it would be even better if we had some kind of written sources to base the article on.

I don't have a doctrinaire position on this issue. If it can be demonstrated that there is a defined area that speaks a language that can be identified as "Cantonese" -- and I don't particularly mind what geographic extent it covers, as long as it can be backed up -- then I am happy to include that in the article on "Cantonese". I don't mind if there are fuzzy areas (like Toisan). But I am opposed (one might say violently opposed) to attempts by some Cantonese speakers on Wikipedia to unilaterally extend the range of "Cantonese" to dialects that aren't normally regarded as belonging to the Cantonese language/dialect.

I am also aware of the problem posed by Mainland scholarship. Since the only Sinitic "language" recognised in China is putonghua, anything else is naturally defined as "dialect". That leads to the a priori assumption that, since the dialects are not actually "languages", the job of the linguist is to try to define groups of dialects that belong together in a linguistic sense. This means that Gan and Xiang and Hakka and Wu and Min and Yue are all treated the same, when in fact their situations are all quite different. Yue probably comes out worst off under this scenario, because the Mainland scholarly assumption that these are all bunches of undifferentiated dialects is least justified in the case of Cantonese.

That is why I have been trying to get editors to get down off their hobby horses and give us the hard tack on Cantonese / Yue dialects, with some kind of sources to back them up. If the vast majority of Yue dialects are, in fact, varieties of the Cantonese language, then the article on Cantonese will be the major article! The article on Yue dialects as a linguistic category will be reduced to a short article noting that the Yue dialects are spoken in Southern China, that by far the most important and numerous in terms of native speakers is Cantonese, and that in addition to Cantonese there are dialects like Danzhouhua in Hainan that are not considered to belong to Cantonese, and aberrant dialects that are disputed in status (Toisan).

This way the name "Cantonese" is retained for the most important article, and Yue is used only for the linguistic classification that accounts for remaining dialects in the group. I have been waiting and waiting for editors to come up with something that we can work on, but instead we continue to get polemic and emotive arguments about calling Cantonese "Yue". I repeat, I am not advocating calling Cantonese "Yue". I am trying to get editors who have knowledge and understanding of the actual situation to tell us how much of these "Yue dialects" can actually be regarded as belonging to the Cantonese language/dialect. Anything else can be consigned to the larger Yue grouping, which shouldn't be such a big issue since it is not something that laymen talk about. (People talk about the English language all the time, yet how many of them know that English is a "Germanic language"? One could even imagine some Germanophobes arguing that referring to English as a Germanic language is an insult to English speakers, which is just about the level of the current debate on using "Yue").

Bathrobe (talk) 02:20, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

If you're asking speakers of which dialects self-identify as speaking the language of Canton, I doubt that will be an easy question to answer. Even with Taishanese, it would seem that some speakers consider it to be Cantonese, and others do not. Smaller dialects would likely be even more difficult to reach any conclusion about. For all WP language articles that I'm aware of, we consider two things in creating articles: gov't etc. recognition, and linguistic classification. More malleable things such as speaker identification are then left for the text. kwami (talk) 02:42, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Kwami, Taishanese is a Guangdong-hua. It is however not Guangzhouhua. In your other edits you have stated that your position is that Canton = Guangzhou. 86.147.245.137 (talk) 00:14, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I deliberately avoided using "the language of Canton" because that will elicit exactly the wrong response. (Imagine what you would find if you asked English speakers whether they speak the "language of England".) As I said, there are various names for this language/dialect in Chinese, some of which indicate an entity broader than the dialect of Canton. But even if it goes by a variety of names in Chinese, there is no reason that it shouldn't be called "Cantonese" in English. Bathrobe (talk) 03:15, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I think it should be called "Cantonese"; my only concern with that is the mess that would result if people later decide that Yue should again be called "Cantonese". Also, I imagine that self identification is going to be pretty amorphous, and will have little to do with any objective criterion of relationship, which is how we usually decide such things. Since we're not going to have articles on every Yue dialect, it won't matter too much what the exact delimitation of "Cantonese" (or "Taishanese") is, whether we ultimately decide on Yuehai or Campbell's Guangfu or ultimately something else. kwami (talk) 03:45, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, self-identification would be pretty amorphous, but it would be no worse than the mess that we have now. I would really like (1) information from knowledgeable people in that area (Henry Li produced some interesting information) and (2) published sources. One source, not a very reputable one, is the Lonely Planet, which declares that, whatever folks from Canton or Hong Kong might think of the local accent, the language of Nanning is unmistakeably Cantonese. See [1] Bathrobe (talk) 03:52, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

And if self-identified Cantonese is neither a dialect, nor a language in the sense of mutual intelligibility, but a purely social construction? After all, the Zhuang see their language as a dialect of Chinese, when it's not even in the same family. There are plenty of cases such as this around the world. Self-ID is good info to have, but if it isn't codified, I don't see why it should be more relevant to Cantonese than to any other dialect or language. kwami (talk) 05:35, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Kwami, can you present a decent reference to this? But then again why shouldn't the Zhuang see their language as a dialect of Chinese? After all it is a language/ dialect of China, even though grammatically it may not be a Sinitic language. 86.147.245.137 (talk) 00:07, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

And when self-identification and mutual intelligibility criteria coincide? Bathrobe (talk) 06:38, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Since we're not going to have articles on every Yue dialect, it won't matter too much what the exact delimitation of "Cantonese" (or "Taishanese") is. This doesn't sound like a very responsible approach to me. Basically you're saying, "We'll deliberately confine Cantonese to Guangzhouhua and everything else can stay in limbo". Bathrobe (talk) 07:00, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Responding to the question above about overseas Cantonese; my mother has (native) friends from Singapore (originally mainland Guangdong), Malaysia (various) and the US (dunno where from) - all more than 3 generations emigrated to those places - and when they moan that their children don't speak the language, they say that they "唔識廣東話" (not know Gwongdungwaa).

HK is, by the way, not "pure HK" itself if you remember that it had an enormous influx of mainland speakers during the political upheavals on the mainland. Both my Cantonese grandparents came from the mainland, one from the Yuehai area and the other from the Toisan area. Akerbeltz (talk) 10:26, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Akerbelts, your parents, grand-parents and their friends are absolutely correct, as Guangzhouhua, HKhua, etc are Guangdonghuas (plural). 86.147.245.137 (talk) 00:25, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I will outline my latest position on the issue. Finally I have found what I'm looking for on the Chinese Wikipedia. This section briefly explains the naming controversies and the controversy surrounding the term 'Cantonese' and provides very useful insight. I encourage everyone to read it. Although it's unsourced, it really puts the issue in perspective. Let's face it. 廣東話 is "Cantonese", 粵語 is "Cantonese". 廣州話 is more of an academic term, can be translated as "Cantonese" or "Guangzhou dialect", and serves as the basis for "Standard Cantonese". To me, the disambiguation is then very simple.

1. The Yueyu article, discussing all Cantonese-related concepts, be placed at "Cantonese".
2. Delete "Canton dialect" and merge it into "Standard Cantonese".
3. Move current page Cantonese back to Cantonese (disambiguation).

Yes, this means reverting everything to the pre-Kwami-move stage, considering the merits and weaknesses of every model presented so far. One of these assumptions for our current scheme was that the 'primary' usage of "Cantonese" refers to "Canton dialect". But this assumption has not stood scrutiny from a wide range of users and available sources. Let's be honest, the previous Cantonese-Standard Cantonese model was established for 6 years on English wikipedia, and only now did I truly see its serious merit. Another assumption held by most of us, including myself, was that the article name, not its contents, was causing the confusion. After thorough debate I am also less convinced that this is still the case. The primary factor of confusion was because content was not streamlined properly and not well-organized. A month ago, the right approach would have been to re-align and re-write content. Thinking that changing a few article names will solve all the confusion is naive, and the way it was carried out seriously contravened Wikipedia policies. All the more reason to go back.

Now the final question, what will happen to the dialects that straddle the line in Cantonese classification, such as Toisanese and Danzhouhua? I believe this is very easily addressed in the "Cantonese" article. We just need to say that there is no uniform agreement about whether Toisanese should be considered "Cantonese", and how it has a largely separate identity; for more info, you can always click on the Toisanese link.

Another advantage to this model is that it's topic-oriented, and adheres to WP:COMMONNAME and WP:TITLE. We can almost all agree that there are essentially two topic areas for "Cantonese" - the broad Yue sense, and the narrow Canton sense. "Cantonese" describes the Yue, "Standard Cantonese" describes the Guangzhou. Cultural aspects go into "Cantonese" page, political considerations can go into the "Standard Cantonese" page; classification issues go into the 'Cantonese' page, phonology goes under the 'Standard Cantonese' page. Please take a look at the two respective articles on the Chinese wikipedia. Hong Kong Cantonese retains its happy little corner to describe the nuances of that variation, and the Toisanese and Danzhouhua articles separately explain their own classification debates. Once we have the content streamlined, confusion will be significantly reduced, and we have four or five clean article names. I ask all of you to give serious consideration to this model. Colipon+(Talk) 19:17, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

That seems like the best approach to me. As it is now it is confusing, both in the names of the page and the contents of them. My own main thought is there should be an article “Cantonese”, describing the language known by that name by English speakers, or at least by those with some exposure to it. This is the language of Hong Kong, and of Guangzhou, i.e. 廣東話, and there is no confusion at least among most English speakers in Hong Kong and here in the UK about what it is, nor among Chinese speakers I know.

That Cantonese is also used to describe a wider range of languages or dialects spoken in and around Guangzhou, i.e. the Yue branch of Chinese, that should be covered in the article: rather than two articles either duplicating this or contradicting each other it will be easier on readers and editors if it is in one place. The differences between the different lects and Cantonese is best covered in the articles for those languages, which can be linked from this article.

I also agree with merging the other articles, into one describing the Guangzhou city dialect of Cantonese, but I don’t have any thoughts on what the result should be called, as I’m not familiar with “Standard Cantonese”, except what I’ve read here recently. Hong Kong Cantonese does the job for the language there, so another name would be “Canton Cantonese” or “Guangzhou Cantonese”: not very pretty but there’s no prize for aesthetically beautiful article names. JohnBlackburne (talk) 20:26, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. Especially with the statement that 廣州話 is more of an academic term. That's against anything I have ever read in or about Cantonese and make me highly dubious as to the source. Akerbeltz (talk) 23:14, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

That's what they say over at Chinese Wikipedia. In addition, I'm fine with differing opinions, but more solutions need to be offered. You can choose to add to my proposal to make one of your own. But constantly criticizing this model and the next is just not getting us anywhere. Colipon+(Talk) 23:24, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with user Akerbeltz here. 廣州話 (Guangzhouhua) is not an "academic term".

However, I agree with user Colipon that content has taken a back seat to naming. But this is not totally bad. The naming controversy may have finally jolted us into putting the content into shape. It truly was a confusing mess before.

As the debate has raged, it appears that one of my original assumptions was mistaken. I originally believed that only Guangzhouhua, the standard, could be glorified with the name "Cantonese". Because no one was able to clarify the status of other dialects in the Yue group, I was very reluctant to use Cantonese for such dialects. No one seemed able to clarify whether dialects like Wuchuan, Qinzhou, Luoguang, etc. could really be classed as Cantonese, or whether people wanted to put them in Cantonese on the principle of "the more the merrier". This was especially the case with dialects like Toisan and Danzhouhua, which seem to be disputed. However, following a lot of discussion, it appears that most of these so-called Yue dialects are indeed not only mutually intelligible, they are also perceived as being essentially the same language as standard Cantonese. That's why people use terms like 白話 (Baihua/Baakwa), which to me demonstrate that people are conscious of speaking a single language/dialect. The fact that it has a different name in different places is irrelevant. It is a single language/dialect.

My concern, however, is that there are still dialects that shouldn't be called "Cantonese" because they aren't considered to be Cantonese by either speakers or by other people. At this stage, my understanding is that Toisan is a controversial case because it is so different from Cantonese (either Standard Cantonese or the broader meaning of Cantonese). Since it is controversial, it can be noted and treated as such. The other is Danzhouhua (known locally as Junhua in Hainan). There is also Lingui near Guilin, which is not in the Wikipedia articles but is claimed by one researcher to be related to Cantonese. These are not really Cantonese, even though they may be related to it. As for Wuchuan, Qinzhou, Luoguang, etc., I'm sorry, I still think we need a better idea of their status vis-à-vis Cantonese. (I note that the article at Chinese Wikipedia says: "莞城话与广州话口音差别很大。未受过训练的广州人不经过适应比较难以听懂莞城话；反之很少接触广州话的莞城老人也很跟广州人沟通也存在一定的困难。" Basically, Dongguanhua is very different from Guangzhouhua, to the extent that mutual intelligibility is difficult. Should such a language be treated as "Cantonese"?

For that reason, I still feel that there is a need to retain an article on Yue dialects, simply to hold all dialects that aren't considered to belong to the "Cantonese language/dialect".

My personal feeling is that we need three articles:

• Standard Cantonese -- the "standard" -- 廣州話 (Guangzhouhua)
• Cantonese -- the "language" (or dialect) -- 廣東話，白話 (Guangdonghua, Baakwa)
• Yue dialects -- the "dialect family" -- includes Cantonese as well as dialects not considered Cantonese.

But being as clearcut as this when there is in fact a great deal of fuzziness and indeterminacy may be verging on OR :)

Bathrobe (talk) 23:50, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

User Bathrobe, I enjoyed reading your contribution and I think this is moving us forward. As for Dongguan, I am fairly confident that it's a case rather parallel to Mandarin dialects spoken in Kunming or northern Jiangsu. These dialect forms are so divergent from the 'standard' that calling them "Mandarin" would be anything but accurate. But they are classified as such anyhow. I do not see a problem in the same being done with divergent versions of Cantonese. Having been to northern Jiangsu recently I can easily attest that their language is beyond the comprehension of any native Mandarin speaker from Beijing, and I can certainly say that the locals do not at all identify their tongue as "Mandarin". Or, to use a non-Chinese example, we have a large number of Scottish dialects of English that are basically unintelligible to the average English speaker. But they are still treated as dialects of "English". Colipon+(Talk) 00:27, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

User Colipon, I hope you realise that this rather cavalier treatment is taking us back to the problem that initiated the whole dispute. Can such totally divergent dialects really be called "Cantonese"? Since "Cantonese" in its pure sense really only refers to Guangzhouhua, the standard dialect and lingua franca, it's quite a stretch to use it for any old linguistically related but unintelligible local dialect. That is why "Yue" was promoted in the first place. Bathrobe (talk) 01:02, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I fully realize that this is taking us back to the pre-Kwami-move stage. The situation before the move was confusing, but only required some reorganization and streamlining of content. The situation after was just an absolute mess. After spending about a month on this talk page, and taking into all the considerations that we have discussed, I have become convinced that the proposal above holds the most merit. And let us be reminded again that the mess began predominantly because of our assumption that Cantonese primarily means "Canton dialect", not because of classification issues with Toisanese or Danzhouhua, which was brought later into the discussions. But again, all in all I think our two positions only differ with you proposing the creation of an additional "Yue dialects" article. I may still be open to this idea. Colipon+(Talk) 02:03, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with this characterisation. The mess didn't start because we assumed that Cantonese means Canton dialect. It began because "Cantonese" has a narrow sense (which we can all agree on -- Guangzhouhua) and a broad sense (which we can't agree on -- Cantonese/Yue dialects). It is the second one that is the problem. I agree that Baakwa can probably be characterised as "Cantonese", i.e., a language that is mutually intelligible with and is almost a variant form of Guangzhouhua. But now we have dialects (Toisan was the sticking point, but Toisan obviously isn't the only one) that are considerably removed from the prestige dialect. The problem has been there all along. Can we consider these to be variants/forms/dialects of the Cantonese language (or dialect if you prefer)? Or should they be placed in a mixed bag known as "Yue dialects"? Since we have no one who can tell us definitively, then we are back to Kwami's position that only Guangzhouhua can be truly defined as "Cantonese", and anything beyond the narrow sense can only be "Yue dialects" as defined by linguists. (The Chinese government only recognises putonghua as a proper language. It obviously isn't going to help us define dialects of Cantonese, since the "standard with dialects" model tends to assume an independent state).

Bathrobe (talk) 03:34, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

There are several branches of Yue, which is defined as having a certain degree of mutual intelligibility, though sometimes with difficulty. These branches have near complete intelligibility, but of course such things are a cline, not absolute. If we go with speaker impressions, I'm afraid we'll end up fighting over which speaker is more reliable, not a good position to be in. Better IMO to follow the opinions of dialectologists. At Cantonese (Yue), we break the dialects down into 9 groups, not counting Ping. Assuming this is the classification we wish to go with, we could include anything under Yuehai as "Cantonese", and those outside Yuehai as other dialects of Yue. Otherwise I don't see how we'd ever come to any kind of stable agreement. kwami (talk) 03:47, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Based on Development of the Stop Endings in the Yue Dialectsand Testing Intelligibility Among Sinitic Dialects and zh-yue:粵語方言分片 in Cantonese Wikipedia, I support for the creation of Yue dialects. The article must be the academic oriented and confined to linguistic. I openly reject the newly created content based on Chinese Wikipedia's zh:粵語方言 because that article has no reference and intro is erroneous. As to Standard Cantonese, I will talk about it later.--WikiCantona (talk) 03:19, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Sure. I am supportive of Bathrobe's "Yue dialects" model provided we have two other articles named "Cantonese" and "Standard Cantonese". Colipon+(Talk) 11:14, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

So, using the analogy of English (but excluding the complicated Scots-Scottish English continuum) the proposal is to have:

1. Yue dialects, covering anything from GJW to Toisan (analogous to English dialects, covering anything from Broad Yorkshire to Kentish)
2. GJW (analogous to what, Oxford English which was the basis for RP or more recently Estuary English?)
3. "Standard (whatever the ultimate name)" Cantonese (analogous to historically RP, BBC English today?), both technically unstandardised?

Let me think on this over lunch. Akerbeltz (talk) 12:53, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

My understanding is that level 2 is not GJW but actually "Cantonese" in general. This talks about Cantonese in the broad sense. GJW is essentially the same thing as Standard Cantonese anyway, and I proposed a merge of the two articles above. Colipon+(Talk) 13:06, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I support having an article Yue dialects or Yue dialect group for comparative and historical linguistics, with content comparable to Langues d'oïl or High German, and an article Cantonese for the language in the usual sense, comparable to French language or German language, which has brief and less technical summary coverage of the other article's topics. With details of dialectology moved to the dialects article, there is then no need for a separate article Standard Cantonese with a contrived name inviting questions of what "standard" really means. Canton dialect or Guangzhou Cantonese only needs to be a separate article if description of its peculiarities grows to a length similar to Hong Kong Cantonese. --JWB (talk) 20:47, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

This 3 page request looks like a proposal to split Guangzhou waa 廣州話 from Yue 粵. Put down the source and English name debate for 5 seconds. This is what is being proposed.... that Guangzhou waa 廣州話 is not in the same article as Yue 粵?! Benjwong (talk) 02:26, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Standard Cantonese?

Standard Cantoense is problematic. First, there is no organization or government to standard it. Second, The standard cantonese is all about Guangzhau accent and also Hong Kong' Cantonese. They are very similar in accent but different in Vocabularies. It is analogues to Canadian and American English. Does standard only imply the accent, not the vocabularies? Third, if a person from Zhongshan speak with a thick accent, the person is definitely speaking Cantonese. but s/he is not speaking Guangzhauhua, s/he is speaking Zhongshanhua, Cantonese with Zhongshan accent. Is he speaking Standard Cantonese, I don't know. Forth, the current Cantonese written forms is largely based on Hong Kong speech style and vocabularies. So, the standard Cantonese my give a people an impression that both written form is based on Guangzhau Cantonese. Fifth, the standard based on prestigious form is a socio-political construct. Therefore, I prefer Modern Cantonese --WikiCantona (talk) 13:53, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree that Standard is problematic, I think everyone agrees Cantona, we just haven't thought of a better name yet. I'd be happy with Modern Cantonese but I think there were some objections. Akerbeltz (talk) 17:00, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

User HenryLi asserted that there is some 'general agreement' within schools, news media, and the academic community on how Cantonese should be pronounced, and this has emerged as a de facto standard. In this sense, I am not opposed to using the name "Standard Cantonese" provided we give a detailed explanation of what the word "Standard" means in the article. I would also be open to "Modern Cantonese". Colipon+(Talk) 17:27, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Hm, RTHK possibly has some guidelines, perhaps akin to BBC English but I hasten to admit ignorance in this area. Akerbeltz (talk) 00:02, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Colipon in the previous section: Standard Cantonese should be merged in with Canton dialect, at whichever name we choose. Both "Standard" and "Modern" are objectionable, the latter because it in effect claims that Taishanese is not a modern language. I mean, how would Cantonese speakers feel if we moved Mandarin to "Modern Chinese"?

As for "Yue dialects", is this a proposal to move Cantonese (Yue) again? kwami (talk) 01:48, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I honestly don't think that modern is objectionable, just walk into any bookshop and check the shelves on languages, language courses teching you modern X are legion. And while a course on Modern German is likely to be teaching Hochdeutsch (Standard German), that does not imply either that Bavarian or Low German are not modern. It's a temporal descriptor. True, you might run into the problem of what to call it in 300 years but that's their problem ;) Contemporary would be a possibility but if one objects to modern, then the same probably applies to Contemporary. Akerbeltz (talk) 09:50, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

But it does imply that the outgroup is not modern! Modern Chinese in used in contrast with Classical Chinese, not with Cantonese. Modern French is used in contrast with Medieval French, and Modern English is used in contrast with Middle English. In our case, we wouldn't be contrasting "Modern Cantonese" with "Classical Cantonese" or "Old Cantonese", we'd be contrasting it with Taishanese & Ping. That would be like contrasting Modern Spanish with Catalan, or Modern English with Scots. Can you imagine the indignation? Again, how many Cantonese speakers would be agreeable to writing in the article in China, "XX% of the population speaks Modern Chinese. However, millions of people speak other forms of Chinese such as Cantonese and Shanghainese"? kwami (talk) 21:18, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Contemporary Cantonese sounds better. It deals with contemporary aspects of Cantonese - namely all the standardization efforts by schools, university and individuals. However, I think there may be a need for Guangzhau Cantonese (廣州話) in contrast to Hong Kong Cantonese (which should not be merged), however, I don't think there is not much materials for GZ Cantonese.--WikiCantona (talk) 14:55, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

NO, Yue dialects should be created as new article, with a very narrowly focused - as one User puts it, in comparative and historical linguistics (I believe there are more than enough material). The current Cantonese (Yue) is not suitable. However, some materials could be in Yue dialects article. I will be interested in the history of how current classification (either by Linguist or Chinese government) come into being. --WikiCantona (talk) 14:47, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

The current Cantonese (Yue) is wikilinked to dozens of articles in other language Wikipedias, mostly called simply "Cantonese" in each language. Moving it to Yue dialects would play havoc with this. Compare the move of Transmutation to Nuclear transmutation which is still causing confusion years later with no obvious easy way to reverse it. Yue dialects should be created anew (i.e. changed from the current redirect to an actual article) and given the appropriate interlanguage wikilinks, unless there is another article that already bears the appropriate interlanguage links, which I doubt. Cantonese (Yue) should go back to simply Cantonese for compatibility with other languages. In general, editors should start paying attention to integrity of interlanguage links when considering article name moves. --JWB (talk) 15:43, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

What is the best translation of 粵語方言分片? Yue dialect classification? Division? First google hit on "分片" gives "fragmentation" which is amusing but not appropriate. --JWB (talk) 15:55, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the "Yue dialects" article should contain mostly linguistic classification information and literally can be a list of "Yue dialects". It should be created as a new article and the "Cantonese (Yue)" article should therefore be moved to "Cantonese". Colipon+(Talk) 16:23, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

If it's only going to be a list of Yue dialects, it will be redundant with Cantonese (Yue) and with List of Chinese dialects. What's the point of having yet another Cantonese article? If Cantonese (Yue) ever becomes well developed, we could of course always split off an article on comparative dialectology.

We've had reasonable agreement that it is Canton-ese which should be moved to Cantonese. Now you want Yue moved to Cantonese. Since it appears that we're never going to reach agreement on this, we either take the default linguistic use and use that space for Canton-ese, or move neither article there, and keep it as a dab page. kwami (talk) 20:25, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I would advise you to read the above discussion carefully and re-think your comment, because that is not what has happened at all. I don't know where this "reasonable agreement" is, and I would also advise you to refrain from confusing word usage like "Canton-ese" to perpetuate and legitimize your failed assertions. It actually seems to me that most users have come to agree that two topical areas need to be covered - broad and standard Cantonese. Of these, "Cantonese" seems to be a better name for the broad form, while "Standard" or "Modern" Cantonese seems to be a good name for the narrow form. What we have not fully agreed upon is whether or not to have another article on "Yue dialects". Colipon+(Talk) 20:38, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

And I suggest you try to remember more that the last few hours of discussion. Yes, broad and narrow. In common linguistic terminology, when a distinction is made the broad is Yue, Yue Chinese, or unassimilated names such as Yueyu or Jyut, and the narrow Canton dialect, Cantonese, or any of several unassimilated names such as Yuehai. Perhaps Yue dialects can be split off of Yue, the way Mandarin dialects has been split off of Mandarin, but I suggest we try to get the current articles past the embarrassing state they're in before we start to add more. Meanwhile, "Standard Cantonese" is unacceptable, as several editors have pointed out to you, because it is not "Standard", and "Modern Cantonese" is unacceptable because Toishanese and Ping are also "Modern". kwami (talk) 21:10, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Sigh*. My impression has been that for the whole time, Kwami's position has been "my way or no way". I'm sorry. I cannot accept this, and I doubt other users who have dedicated their hours here will either. He has rehashed his argument so many times now that I feel tired as I put my hands on the keyboard typing a reply. He does not seem to give a damn that it was his unilateral moves and reorganization of these pages made the mess a hell of a lot worse than it was to begin with. Without a hint of consensus, links were modified, content was changed, articles moved, yet until this day, User Kwami continues to insist that he was "right all along", and continues to harp on his own inflexible positions as if they are the gospel. I'm sorry, but for me, this is too much. This in no way advances the collective interests of this encyclopedia, and I am a bit perplexed about how an administrator is capable of such distasteful actions. Colipon+(Talk) 21:41, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I insist on a few things: following sources, using English, and attempting consensus. That's not "my way", that's how encyclopedias and cooperative enterprises work. Some of your preferences violate those things. If I rehash my arguments, it's because you or others apparently do not get it. From my POV, you are also insisting on your way or no way, and rehashing the same tired arguments. That's the main reason I think it's best to avoid the one-word name "Cantonese" for any article: these arguments will just pop up again and again and again, no matter which topic we choose for that name. kwami (talk) 21:49, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Please not going down this path again. It is true that there is no consensus for moving Cantonese (Yue) which is under discussion. A few users (including me) believe Yue dialects should be a new article with a narrow focus which is also under discussion. The Canton dialects and Standard Cantonese is also open but everyone seems to agree the "Standard Cantonese" is problematic. As usual, everything is still on the table. let throw a few more idea before closing doors--WikiCantona (talk) 22:13, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

>What's the point of having yet another Cantonese article?

The point is to separate linguistics concerns and terminology from language concerns and terminology, since they have turned out to be in sharp conflict. Separate them and both sides can get on with more productive work in each field.

>If it's only going to be a list of Yue dialects, it will be redundant with Cantonese (Yue) and with List of Chinese dialects. If Cantonese (Yue) ever becomes well developed, we could of course always split off an article on comparative dialectology.

It need not be only a list, although that would also be acceptable initially as a stub. It will be the main (sub)article for the topic and the others will have only summary coverage. We have at least one user who has looked at zh-yue:粵語方言分片 and thinks it is good, who might well be willing to translate material from it.

>We've had reasonable agreement that it is Canton-ese which should be moved to Cantonese.

Do you mean Canton dialect by the former? This has a mixture of linguistics and other material, at least some of which is concerned with the language rather than dialectology, and should be in the non-linguistics article on the language as a whole. The largest single section currently is Phonology and this should be in an article Cantonese phonology to match the names and content of the 69 other articles in Category:Language phonologies.

>Now you want Yue moved to Cantonese.

Do you mean Cantonese (Yue), the article that historically was called Cantonese until your recent move adding (Yue)? --JWB (talk) 22:57, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes. "Cantonese" has alternately covered Yue Chinese, to use the Ethnologue term, and Canton/Hong Kong dialect. There seems to be no end to that debate, which is why I think neither should be named simply "Cantonese". (It recently looked as though a consensus might be forming to use it for Canton dialect, but Colipon was not active in that discussion. Colipon has been pushing for Yue to be returned Cantonese for some time, with quite a few editors opposing him; recent debate finally settled on Cantonese (Yue), though without any real consensus.)

We have quite a few articles on Chinese dialects in addition to the branches which contain them: Mandarin Chinese (Beijing dialect, Tianjin dialect, Xi'an dialect, Chengdu dialect, as well as Jilu Mandarin, Southwestern Mandarin, etc.), Wu Chinese (Shanghainese, Suzhou dialect, Wenzhou dialect, etc.), Min Dong (Fuzhou dialect), Min Nan (Hokkien, Teochew dialect, etc.), etc. To follow that pattern, we'd have Yue Chinese [the Ethnologue term] with Canton dialect/Cantonese, Taishanese, etc.

Now, personally, I think we should have separate articles for the main branches of Chinese and their constituent dialects; most editors would seem to agree, though in this case there have been some calls to merge Yue and Canton-ese under "Cantonese". Assuming we keep them separate, there have been years of argument as to which should be called "Cantonese"; both can be justified by cherry-picking the literature, though it seems to me that when a distinction is maintained, it is generally the dialect of Canton & Hong Kong which gets that name. But whichever position one takes, it's very easy to come up with recent, reputable sources which use the opposite convention. Anyway, the reason I moved the article was vociferous objections to classifying Taishanese as "Cantonese". Much if not most of the opposition to the move was from Canton-ese speakers who are adamantly opposed to using a name of Mandarin origin (Yue) for their language, regardless of the fact that it is current English usage. (A similar objection could presumably be made against using Mandarin "Guangzhou" for the city, but IMO that isn't a valid argument.)

There appears to be something approaching consensus to merge Standard Cantonese into Canton dialect. The current name might be problematic in that "Canton dialect" suggests it covers only the city of Canton, rather than Hong Kong and Macau as well. This has been an argument to move it to "Cantonese", and I thought we might be approaching consensus on that, but there appear to be several editors who agree with Colipon that Yue should be moved there instead. This seems to me to be an excellent example of why we have dab pages.

As for separating linguistic material from language material, I doubt that will solve very much. We usually split stuff off when an article becomes so detailed that a separate article is warranted, not to settle a naming dispute. (Though I did just that with Canton dialect and Standard Cantonese, which were complicating the debate on Yue.) Both the Yue and Canton-ese articles are pretty crappy, with endless arguments over naming by people who for the most part do nothing to develop them. There's nothing wrong with separate articles on Cantonese phonology, Yue dialects, and the like, but they strike me as distractions. Maybe I'm wrong, and if they were split off we'd all agree on how to name the current articles. kwami (talk) 01:36, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Very small point. Canton, which Kwami insists it can only mean city of Guangzhau, which is not the entirely picture. It can also mean Guangdung, the province. --WikiCantona (talk) 04:06, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Yue is in current English usage among comparative linguists (who are concerned with the whole dialect continuum and all its dialects including the one(s) the language is based on) but is not in common English usage for the language, which is why people have objected to it so strongly; the fact of it being a romanization from Mandarin by itself would not be enough cause, as you noted for Guangzhou.

If the name Yue is to be used at all for one or more articles, separating articles primarily about descriptive, comparative, and historical linguistics from others is a way to avoid the naming conflict. This conflict does not occur in English usage for most languages, where the dialect area and the language share the name. But consider if you insisted on moving French language to French (langue d'oil). You might get similar reactions to the ones in this case.

If the name Yue is not to be used in articles, then there is no naming conflict, at least between the words Yue and Cantonese. I believe you were in favor of use of Yue, though, and nobody is objecting to its use for the dialect complex or linguistics topics.

I would not object to Yue Chinese instead of Yue dialects or Yue dialect group but in this case the article intro has to make it very clear it is not about the language, and all material about the language beyond summaries has to be moved to the Cantonese article(s) to avoid temptation to expand it.

Again, the article currently called Cantonese (Yue) is the historical and interlanguage-linked article Cantonese and should be moved back to that title and be primarily about the language. Yue dialect material should be moved out to a new article, instead of moving the article to a Yue title.

Standard Cantonese only has a small number of interlanguage links, probably recent translations. It and Canton dialect (minus linguistics material) should be merged back into Cantonese, not moved to Cantonese. Standard, Modern, Contemporary are all problematic terms as you agree. Canton dialect is not a commonly used phrase either.

I think solving the naming arguments couldn't hurt the content and will likely improve it. The confusion discourages contribution as well as taking up time in itself.

The preponderant use of the word "Cantonese" is for the language, so I think it makes sense for the language to have Cantonese with a top note for other usages, though a dab page would also be acceptable. But using just Cantonese is also worth it to avoid the contentious debate over what word should follow "Cantonese". --JWB (talk) 05:10, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, forgot to answer your question regarding the 粵語方言分片, should read as "粵語方言" and "分片" "Cantonese/Yue dialect" and "sub-division". Since there only 7 major group of Chinese dialects (方言, more appropriately regiolect), some of dialects can further divided into sub-grouping. This is a very Chinese government position: one language, seven dialects and many sub-divisions. The sub-division is a geographical oriented; hence "片" which is a "part of a place". Remind you, Chinese Wikipedia in same interwiki article suggested that Cantonese is further divided into different 'dialects' that implies Cantonese is a language (that I am very sympathetic), a POV for some but not the current consensus. The Western scholars tend to call the sub-grouping a dialect. i.e. Hakka is a dialect. --WikiCantona (talk) 05:47, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

So, JWB, you propose conflating the topics of Yue and Canton dialect. The main reason these articles were and to some extent remain such a mess is that editors were working at cross purposes, with no clear idea of the topic: some writing about Yue, and some about Canton dialect, but all calling it "Cantonese". Several editors who've contributed to these articles were glad that the move finally straightened this out, even if it created a storm in a teacup about naming.

What you're suggesting would be like merging RP and English language, or Wu and Shanghainese. I really feel that if we're going to have an article on Taishanese or other Yue dialects, we should also have a dedicated article on Canton-ese, and not pretend that it's the same thing as Yue. Either that or merge in Taishanese as well, merge all dialects of Mandarin into Mandarin Chinese, all dialects of Wu into Wu, etc. kwami (talk) 06:25, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

JWB, am I correct in saying that you want to create two articles, "Cantonese" and "Yue dialects"? We move "Cantonese (Yue)" back to "Cantonese", we create an article on "Yue dialects", and we merge "Canton dialect" and "Standard Cantonese" back to "Cantonese"? Colipon+(Talk) 08:25, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Colipon, you are correctly describing my suggestion. Although, unless we have consensus on all of this solution already, we can start by creating linguistics articles like Yue dialect group and Cantonese phonology and transferring appropriate content there. So far there has been less consensus on re-merging the other Cantonese articles, but I think it will become more apparent once we've moved out the linguistics material.

kwami, I have no idea how my proposal can be viewed as "conflating the topics of Yue and Canton dialect" or "merging RP and English language, or Wu and Shanghainese". I'm proposing the opposite, one article clearly on Yue (the dialect complex, from a linguistics perspective) and one article clearly on Cantonese (the common language based primarily on the Guangzhou and HK dialects, from a social perspective of use in media and in any interpersonal communication beyond the shared local dialect level). --JWB (talk) 10:29, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

So are you saying that we should limit the "Cantonese" article to only the HK and Guangzhou dialect? What is your proposal on the dialects such as Cantonese spoken in Guangxi? Does that belong in the "Cantonese" article or the "Yue dialects" article? Colipon+(Talk) 11:09, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Cantonese would be the general language and have only brief summary coverage of dialects. Main coverage of dialects and their relationships would be in the dialects article, which would have only brief summary coverage of the general language. --JWB (talk) 18:51, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

So you're saying Yue should be moved to Cantonese. Would you want this article left where it is? kwami (talk) 22:09, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Which article is this "Yue" of which you speak? --JWB (talk) 01:58, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

"Yue" is the lect given ISO3 code "yue". It's currently at Cantonese (Yue). kwami (talk) 04:47, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

There is a proposal again. Please if we can concentrated on the first item first. The item 3 or any move regarding this item may be avoided for now.

1. Standard Cantonese and Canton dialect merge together and move to Contemporary Cantonese, with focus on standardize issues and pronunciation.
2. Yue dialects or Yue dialect group is to be created, with a focus on comparative and historical linguistics.
3. Cantonese (Yue) to keep as it is now, the content needs to be modified to make it a general topic (going back to Talk:Cantonese (Yue) for discussion)

The first item can be done independently without touching the heated Cantonese (Yue). It is a bad idea to make the proposal a "package deal" which always send us to nowhere. --WikiCantona (talk) 22:58, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Since we're only considering #1, and the others are distractions, let's not consider the others at all right now, okay?

I object to the term "contemporary" for the same reason I object to "modern": Taishanese is also "contemporary Cantonese", using the broad meaning of "Cantonese". The English word "contemporary" has nothing to do with choosing one dialect over another: it means current, modern-day, as opposed to dated or old-fashioned. "Contemporary French" does not mean Parisian; one also speaks of "contemporary French dialects" etc. It is therefore completely inappropriate as a dab to distinguish Canton-ese from Taishanese. I'm not wedded to the current name, but the only other one I've seen that is both English and not factually incorrect or misleading is simply "Cantonese", and that generates howls of protest.

Another possibility is the Ethnologue term "Yuehai Cantonese", though Yuehai is not assimilated English, and some Cantonese speakers would probably be outraged at the use of a Mandarin pronunciation.

Another, possibly temporary, name might be "Canton–Hong Kong dialect".

As for standardization issues, those consist mostly of pronunciation and a written form. Written Cantonese has already been split off. If Cantonese phonology is also split off, it doesn't seem to me that there would be any significant distinction among what is left between 'standard' Cantonese and Canton dialect. kwami (talk) 01:43, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Small point. The truth in Hong Kong, standardization issues never involve the written forms. No one in HK in their right mind will promote written Cantonese because people think there is only one written Chinese. Split off Cantonese phonology is a good idea - that lower the resistance to merge standard Cantonese and Canton dialect. What to call it remains open. --WikiCantona (talk) 04:18, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Okay, good to know. And the actual phonology of 'standard' Cantonese is just about indistinguishable from Canton/Hong Kong dialect, so that probably isn't much of a problem anyway. kwami (talk) 06:28, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Kwami and Bathrobe. Please elaborate the argument which I found very strange - If we create a Modern Cantonese, then it implies that Taishanese is not modern. Why is by suggesting Modern Cantonese automatically negate the modern Taishanese? For Modern, we talk about the efforts in standardize Cantonese pronunciation and other controversial efforts for correct the pronunciation of Cantonese. There may be effort to standardize or modernize Taishanese, of which I may be unaware. No one hints any opposition to create a modern Taishanese (if there is a will). Please. --WikiCantona (talk) 07:09, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Such an article would be fine. But it's not this article. This article is about the dialect of Canton & Hong Kong, as opposed to Taishanese and other Yue dialects. I think what you want is the article now at Standard Cantonese, which most people appear to want to merge into this article. If we do keep them separate, I think I might prefer your suggestion of 'modern' over the current 'standard'. As I see it, we should have an article on the main branch/language (iso3 = yue); the major dialects of it (Cantonese, Taishanese, etc.), then notable or well developed subtopics (Written Cantonese, maybe Written Taishanese (not likely), Cantonese phonology, Modern Cantonese, Hong Kong Cantonese, Cantonese romanization, etc.). kwami (talk) 07:22, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Point above about interlanguage links by user JWB is a good one. I see Kwami has returned to borrowing legitimacy from Ethnologue, but has admitted that the original move to "Yue" was because of a few vociferous objections about Toisanese. After arduous debate he then admits that "Toisanese" is merely part of "Cantonese in the broad sense". I'm not buying any of it. I endorse the comments of User:JWB above. Kwami is also right in that I am proposing a move of the current "Cantonese (Yue)" article back to "Cantonese", per inter-language links, per common usage, per article links, per ease of accessibility, and basically per what User JWB said above. I talk about why this is a good proposal above. Kwami fails to recognize the merit of this proposal and continues to oppose it and insist that his own actions were correct. That's fine with me. But I don't think there is as much opposition to this proposal now as he'd like to make himself believe. Colipon+(Talk) 08:13, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

The fact that most editors have grown tired of your endless arguing does not mean that they now agree with you. And as usual, you either fail to understand me, or are misrepresenting me. I'm not using Ethnologue as anything other than a convenient naming distinction, and I am not admitting anything I haven't admitted all along. You are still "confused" about common use. I'm not buying that you're this obtuse. kwami (talk) 10:05, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Would you pair please call off your feud!

Bathrobe (talk) 00:46, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Cantona is wrong actually - a bit. It's true that written Cantonese is very rarely promoted or seen as a high status activity but the advent of Unicode has involved a certain amount of standardisation in the sense that the HK delegation has had to look at the body of written Cantonese and come up with the proposals for Cantonese characters (or HK characters as they're often called). Akerbeltz (talk) 08:05, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

HK Government's HK character sets are for the convenience of computerized government office. where big5 character set does not include the characters particular to Hong Kong environment. Hence, HK characters is placed in the superset of Big5 called Big5 HKSCS. As unicode come later, the sets placed into Plane B in version 3.1 of unicode. Most importantly, these characters is not for the standardize Cantonese, but for the reason I have mentioned (especially when the HK police needed to type spoken words for record). It is done out of necessity. Many characters than being put in the set is old Chinese character or alternative written form characters used particular in Hong Kong, and these characters have nothing do with Cantonese at all. So, talks of 'standardization' of Cantonese in light of the efforts of HK government is out of context. If you talks about Unicode is a standardized effort, it is not the effort particular to one language. However, the advent of Unicode really help the written Cantonese. --218.102.143.240 (talk) 10:55, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, whatever the motivation for inclusion (I know that this was initially against the wishes of the HK delegation), it has resulted in a quasi-standardised set of characters. To say that they have nothing to do with Cantonese is... a strange statement, as they are used to write spoken Cantonese, resulting hence in written Cantonese. I'm not suggesting this means the HK Gov't is promoting them but they have, through whatever motivation, participated in the proposals for Cantonese characters for Unicode. Akerbeltz (talk) 12:33, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

The HK character with nothing to do with Cantonese is incorrect. What is also incorrect is that HK character resulted in written Cantonese. Written Cantonese (or writing down the Cantonese in Chinese character) can trace back to 16-18 century and Hong Kong is another instant of written Cantonese in computer age. People write Cantonese with or without HK character. You will often see 嘅 (of) written as 0既, a combining a 0 with a traditional character 既. I am curious as how you know that the inclusion of HK character against the wishes of HK delegation. --WikiCantona (talk) 00:45, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Check the dictionary. What does "contemporary" mean? Certainly not the same as "modern".

Bathrobe (talk) 09:49, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Either Modern or Contemporary is fine with me, only Standard C is problematic--WikiCantona (talk) 11:43, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The title "Canton dialect" is absolutely unacceptable and needs to be changed immediately. Badagnani (talk) 05:05, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

We've been through this before, B. Generic complaints are less than worthless if you don't suggest an improvement. Which titles would be preferable to you? Or don't you plan on contributing anything? kwami (talk) 05:38, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and created Cantonese phonology as previously discussed from the Phonology section of this article. Standing on its own, it probably now needs an introduction and wikilinking.

I have not started editing the Phonology section of this article down to a summary yet, but just added the Main article pointer to Cantonese phonology.

kwami said earlier that "If Cantonese phonology is also split off, it doesn't seem to me that there would be any significant distinction among what is left between 'standard' Cantonese and Canton dialect." I believe this means everyone supports merger of the remainder of Canton dialect and Standard Cantonese, regardless of opinion on other reorganization. --JWB (talk) 13:56, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm in agreement - though Afghanistan will probably have an annual GDP of $50,000 per head and be a beacon of peace, prosperity and secularism by the time we can agree on what to call the merged article. Mayhap we should merge Canton dialect and Standard Cantonese under one page title and then start splitting hairs, at least it will be all on one page and we can begin the necessary rewrites in the meantime. Bitter? No, just a little self-sarcasm. Akerbeltz (talk) 15:21, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

We just need to decide what to call it. I'm fine with "Standard Cantonese" or "Modern Cantonese". Colipon+(Talk) 15:52, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

As the first step let's just merge, and not combine that step with renaming the Standard Cantonese article. My opinion is Standard Cantonese should be further merged into Cantonese, and Yue material should be moved to its own article(s), but that isn't part of the first step either, unless there is already consensus in favor of it. --JWB (talk) 16:08, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Right, but where we are going to merge the article now is the question. Colipon+(Talk) 16:35, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Toss a coin? We'll take your word for it and it's impartial for now. Akerbeltz (talk) 17:00, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Merger is okay. I prefer the new name to be Contemporary Cantonese if no strong objection, with sub-session on brief summary on Guangzhau Cantonese and Hong Kong Cantonese, of course, the Cantonese use Oversea among with Standardization efforts... --WikiCantona (talk) 00:34, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm fine with Contenporary C. Akerbeltz (talk) 00:35, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The merger should be here, even if we decide to call it Standard Cantonese, because this article contains 90%+ of the page history.

"Contemporary C" could be Taishanese in the 21st century. That's not what this article is about. kwami (talk) 04:45, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

That could be true. However, later into the 21st century, Taishanese do become the predominant Cantonese. Other Wikipedians will do the job for us. However, it should not be the argument for a total hypothetical situation which is, IMO, unlikely. --WikiCantona (talk) 04:59, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

You misunderstand me. I'm talking about the present: "Contemporary Cantonese" means "contemporary" plus "Cantonese". It doesn't mean "Guangzhou and Hong Kong" plus "Cantonese". This article is about 粵海粵語, but you're proposing naming it something which could mean 現在的粵語. The latter includes 現在的台山話, but this article does not cover 台山話. kwami (talk) 05:19, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

kwami, I really have a problem following your line of argument on this occasion. The use of "contemporary" (and also "modern") as descriptive terms for the predominent current variety of a language is widespread. This by no means excludes other varieties from being contemporary. A search for "contemporary greek" yields 88,000 results, "modern greek" 2 million results on google, including the "Modern Greek Studies" programme at Oxford. If Oxford is fine calling the language of the day Modern Greek, then why should that be a problem on here? They are highly unlikely to be teaching Pontic Greek or Griko and almost certainly focussing on Katharevousa and/or Dimotiki. One thing I did notice though that "contemporary" seems to be more common in relation to culture, poetry and literature rather than the language itself so perhaps "modern" is actually the better choice. Akerbeltz (talk) 10:37, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Most of the sections other than Phonology are summaries that don't appear to have much content not appearing elsewhere, except for the "Cantonese versus Mandarin in Hong Kong and Singapore" section at the end. The HK part could go into Hong Kong Cantonese and the Singapore part somewhere else. Or it could be a separate article titled Overseas Cantonese or something. The default and probably safest for now would be to merge it into Standard Cantonese or Cantonese language. After this section is taken care of, I think we can simply redirect Canton dialect to Standard Cantonese. --JWB (talk) 16:28, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

If we go with your proposal, that can easily fit under the "Cantonese" article once its created. Colipon+(Talk) 16:36, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Cantonese language#Use outside China already existed with subsections about U.S. and Britain, so this seemed like a very natural place for this section, and I've moved it there. --JWB (talk) 16:41, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Any more content to be rescued in this article? I'll hold off on redirecting the article for a day or two while everyone looks at it. --JWB (talk) 16:44, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

The merge should be here, as this is where nearly all of the page history is. I moved the phonology section of Standard C to C phonology, and the rest here. The large romanization section could go many places: Cantonese Yue, Written Cantonese, etc., but most people have advocated merging these two articles.

JWB, you'll get howls of protest if you try naming anything "Cantonese language". For many Chinese, Yue, Wu, and Mandarin are dialects, and those advocating calling them languages have been accused of having all sorts of ulterior motives: imperialism, trying to undermine China, etc. Sociolinguistically they are dialects; by intelligibility, separate languages. Thus by longstanding consensus we use neither "language" nor "dialect" when naming the primary branches of Chinese.

You said above, "My opinion is Standard Cantonese should be further merged into Cantonese, and Yue material should be moved to its own article(s)". By "Cantonese", I assume you mean "Cantonese (Yue)". But this makes no sense: you appear to be saying that, after merging Standard C into Canton-ese (this article), you want to merge this article into Yue, and then split off Yue: that is, you wish to merge A into B, then split off B. How is that any different than doing nothing? kwami (talk) 05:23, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I was surprised to see the merge here. Canton dialect is a worse name for the language than Standard Cantonese which is in turn worse than Cantonese or Cantonese language. The written language and the rest of what is now covered here are not particularly functions of the local characteristics of the dialect of the capital.

"Dialect" does have history as an English designation for the major branches of Chinese, but it has receded in recent decades. I don't think Canton dialect is either a good description of the general language, or a generally used phrase for it. And in Chinese, nobody seems to be offended that Cantonese is a 語 rather than a 方言. Cantonese language does exist now as a redirect and I haven't seen anyone trying to abolish it. I am not as sure as you that "language" will meet with a veto, but in any case I've proposed simply "Cantonese" for the article about what Cantonese usually means in English, the general medium of communication, while using "Yue" for what Yue is the preferred (but not exclusive) usage for in English, the continuum of all spoken dialects regardless of general usage or lack of it.

You could move Cantonese (Yue) to Yue dialect group or the like, move Canton dialect to Cantonese, and come out the same as my proposal, as far as synchronic content of English-language articles. The reason I proposed creating a Yue-named linguistics article and moving content about the language to Cantonese (Yue) whose name would revert to Cantonese, is in order to preserve the interlanguage wikilinks and edit histories, where Cantonese is the main article about the language, the topic of general interest, and only secondarily about classification of obscure dialects, which comparative linguists care about. --JWB (talk) 06:19, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

"Dialect" does have history as an English designation for the major branches of Chinese, but it has receded in recent decades. Such is the politics of China. When are we going to get some truth and less politics from this country?

Bathrobe (talk) 09:47, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I take it that you didn't read the previous section. The direction of the move has nothing to do with the name of the article. Even if we were to go with Standard C, we would still merge here, then move it, in order to preserve the page history.

My point was exactly that we should pay attention to page history and interlanguage links.

Then I'm puzzled why you would want to turn the article with the page history into a redirect. kwami (talk)

There have been years of debate as to whether Mandarin, Wu, Yue, etc. are languages or dialects. The consensus has been to call them neither. If you think the time has come to change that, you should bring it up at WP:Chinese naming conventions.

I've been participating there in discussions you were involved in. Most recently, nobody answered my post at Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Chinese)#Higher_divisions relevant to exactly this issue. But in any case, I'm not moving that "language" be included in the article title.

"Canton dialect is a worse name for the language ..." But this article isn't about the language. It's about the prestige dialect of the language. Thus the word "dialect" in the name.

The material actually currently in the article is about the language and should be moved to the article about the language. This article could stay if there is actually material about Guangzhou peculiarities; currently there is not, outside the phonology. "Prestige dialect" is not the most apt term either. We have been talking about a standard / general / consensus language, not a class-based distinction like RP vs. Estuary English.

I'm confused by your use of the word "language". (I may have figured it out below.) kwami (talk)

I wasn't aware that "prestige dialect" implied a class distinction. AFAIK, it only implies that one dialect is considered more correct or authoritative than another; whether it has class implications as in the case of English is AFAIK simply the context of that language. I don't know what a "general language" would mean, and I'm not familiar with the phrase "consensus language" being used for this meaning. kwami (talk)

I think standard language fits better than prestige dialect in this case. My main problem with standard language is that it suggests the language is standardized by a central authority, which is not always the case as a lingua franca can evolve in a decentralized way and become a de facto standard. This, by the way, is exactly the difference between the terms guoyu (state language) and putonghua (common/general speech), even though both terms now designate similar prescriptive standards. --JWB (talk) 16:11, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

You're advocating "Cantonese" as the name of the language. However, this tends to be a Canton-ese (narrow sense) POV; we've had vociferous objections from Taishanese speakers against saying that Taishanese is a dialect of "Cantonese". There is also a lot of lit that makes statements such as that the principal Chinese dialects in North America are "Cantonese and Taishanese". You're also saying that the "language" should be at "Cantonese", but that "Yue" material should be under that name; however, Yue *is* the language. That's the whole problem: "Cantonese" has two meanings. Ramsey, Ethnologue, and other sources that distinguish the two meanings very often, perhaps usually, use Yue for the language, and Cantonese for its prestige dialect (the current article). kwami (talk) 06:45, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

"Cantonese" is primarily but not exclusively the name of the standard language. Taishanese can call itself a Yue dialect or Cantonese or anything else; that's not causing a problem here. 粵語 is a name for the standard language in Chinese, but Yue is not a name in common use for the standard language in English. "Cantonese" has two meanings (though the standard language is the predominant meaning and referred to far more often than the dialect group) but English "Yue" does not have two meanings; it is always the whole dialect group and not the language (Ausbausprache). --JWB (talk) 19:43, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I think I agree with you. In English, "Yue" only means the entire Abstand language, and "Cantonese" is primarily the Ausbau. Here is where I think I'm misunderstanding you: you appear to be using the word "language" assuming it means Ausbau, while I assume it means Abstand. kwami (talk) 22:11, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think we are communicating now and agree on the former. I think to non-linguists and probably even non-comparative linguists, "language" primarily connotes Ausbau or standard language, with dialects playing a secondary role only as substandard approximations to the standard, and problems of classifying obscure peripheral dialects are of little importance and certainly do not determine the name or geographic range of the standard language. To comparative linguists, on the other hand, all dialects or languages are on an equal footing and the terms are largely interchangeable. They may give a stock answer of "mutual comprehensibility test" to the "dialect vs. (same) language" question, but really this definition has little to do with their own work and has little importance either in their field or others. There is little reason to interfere with the common meaning of "language" on comparative linguistics grounds.

I don't think this page should move to Cantonese to replace "Cantonese (Yue)". This dialect is the biggest, but it is no way identical to the larger family set. Benjwong (talk) 06:55, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

For the sake of interlanguage links alone, it would be a bit rash to move this article to "Cantonese". Also, where are these vociferous objections from Taishanese speakers? While I do not doubt they exist, is it possible to provide a link to a discussion where a Taishanese speaker came onto these talk pages and objected? I would like to see how that discussion actually turned out. Colipon+(Talk) 10:53, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I'll try to find them. There haven't been any further objections since I move the article to Yue Chinese. kwami (talk) 22:11, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I am very curious that if mutual intelligibility is criteria for a language, then some said Taishanese is not intelligible to Cantonese speakers and vice versa. Are they separate languages? Ethnologue called Cantonese (broad sense)/Yue a language, why would User Kwami accept as such? why would he not accept the Chinese government position that Yue is only a dialect? It is very curious to me. The Ethnologue putting all the various speeches (including Taishanese) in a category called Yue is lot like the Chinese government position, the difference, of course, is Chinese government labelled them a dialect of Chinese, yet Ethnologue labelled them a language. And, also, Kwami said the consensus has been to call them (major group of Chinese dialect/language) neither (language nor dialect). Kwami clearly does not agree this consensus, doesn't he?!

Whether I agree is irrelevant. But in fact I do agree. The word "language" has multiple meanings. According to one of these (the practical one of mutual intelligibility), Yue is a language. (Okay, mutual intelligibility between Cantonese and Taishanese may be marginal, but many languages have this problem. There can be no absolute dividing line using this definition.) However, according to another (the social one of self identification), Yue is not a language, but a dialect of Chinese. I tend to be personally more interested in the former than the latter, but I accept both as valid. kwami (talk)

I am very curious again when the people found the name "Canton dialect" very bad. Yet, I feel the same too. However, Kwami's concept makes perfect sense in word: Canton dialect is a dialect of Yue. Hence, we call it as such. This sentence made no sense if you translate into Chinese: "廣州話是粵語的方言". One concept is very much wrong involving that the Guangzhau hua (Canton dialect) is a prestigious dialect. To put it very straight forward, Guangzhau hua is Cantonese/Yue. Analogously, BBC English is English. Guangzhau hua is not a dialect but some standard/prestigious pronunciation of Cantonese (YueYu). Kwami, If you consider BBC English a dialect of English. it would be very interesting.

That's because Guangzhou hua is not the same as Canton–Hong Kong dialect. I believe a better Chinese equivalent would be Yuehai hua. Take a look at the classification of Yue dialects at that article: I'm taking this article to be about the branch of Yue that includes Canton and Hong Kong, and excludes Taishan.

Besides, whether it makes sense when translated literally into Cantonese is utterly irrelevant. This is English Wikipedia. We don't judge Cantonese WP by whether the articles make sense when translated literally into English. kwami (talk)

It is not personal again. What is the so difference between "Canton-Hong Kong dialect" and "Guangzhau hua"? ? There is no such thing as Yuehai Hua (粵海話). It is neither a dialect nor a language, but a category for geographical grouping. As I found out more, the current classification scheme appears to be based entirely on geographic divisions (assuming the Chinese sources is correct).

You are very right about I'm taking this article to be about the branch of Yue that includes Canton and Hong Kong, and excludes Taishan. Cantonese is irrelevant, of course, you say many times already. What is relevant is only the linguistic classification? which eventually should reflect on Wikipedia naming? Is this sensible? What is so difference about Guangzhou hua and "Canton–Hong Kong dialect"? Can you pin down one difference to justify calling it a dialect? --WikiCantona (talk) 00:35, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps I misunderstood you. It sounded as though you were limiting Guangzhouhua to what is spoken in Guangzhou, whereas the dialect boundaries don't stop at the city limits. By "Canton (-Hong Kong) dialect", I mean that dialect, as identified by dialectologists, that includes the speech of Canton. Perhaps that's the same a (your?) conception of Guangzhouhua, perhaps the same as Guangfuhua, perhaps Yuehai Yueyu, or perhaps all three. Much of the problem is not understanding what each other is referring to by "Cantonese", which is my principal objection to the term.

I think you misunderstand me with "Cantonese is irrelevant". We do not test any article by whether it makes sense when literally translated in another language. I find that a very odd criterion. We don't translate the article on Arabic language word-for-word into Arabic and object if it doesn't make sense, because of course it won't. If we translated the Cantonese WP article on English word-for-word into English, it would be absolute garbage—but that's irrelevant, because it makes sense in Cantonese. What matters here is whether this article makes sense in English, not how it translates into Cantonese. kwami (talk) 05:10, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Kwami 's problem is in thinking Yue, an artificial category, is the language - it is not. In literature, the valid concept is "Yue dialects" - they don't mean dialects of Yue, but a groups of related speeches grouped together, as it is a way for the linguists talks about the various related speeches/dialects. If Yue is language, what is its characterization? Is these characterizations apply to all speeches? --WikiCantona (talk) 17:07, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

A language is a group of (at least partially intelligible) dialects grouped together. So if Yue is a group of dialects grouped together, it is a language. It is not an artificial category, at least according to our sources (which could of course be wrong). That's the whole point. It would seem, however, that your conception of Cantonese might be an artificial category, as it is based on perception rather than on the language itself. We do not classify Zhuang as a Chinese dialect just because many Zhuang speakers think of it that way, nor do we argue that Zhuang is an artificial category. kwami (talk) 22:11, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

This is nothing personal. If you found I do, I apologize. Your POV needs to be further analyzed because your belief has not been affected by any reference which you claimed by large to be irrelevant. In the whole debate, people has been attacking you on lack of native knowledge of the language. I don't believe in knowing the language is the prerequisite for the discussion, but it does give you for some deeper understand. You are adamant on Yue being a language which, according to you, could be groups of dialects put together. If understand you correctly, you are saying as long as linguists (or government) say so, it is so?! --WikiCantona (talk) 00:35, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Of course! With linguistic classification, we go with linguistics, not self identification. Otherwise Zhuang, a Tai language, would be classified as Chinese. In the linguistic classification, imperfect though it may be, Yue is an Abstand language. Within that language there are several dialects, at least one of which is commonly called "Cantonese". Cantonese is Yue, but Yue isn't necessarily Cantonese. I'm not so interested in how we define "Cantonese" (though I have my POV) as in the confusion that resulted in the past from being sloppy about it. kwami (talk) 05:10, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Why is everybody getting personal? For starters, it's not just kwami's position that there is the linguistic category called Yue (Yue Cantonese, Yue Chinese, Yuetyueh... whatever you want to call it). The Chinese Government's position is governed by politics, not linguistic criteria, however loosely applied.

The criterium of mutual intelligibility is far from ideal, I think most linguists will readily agree here but it's the best we have. The reason I suspect why Toisan is usually grouped with Yue, however loosely is that it falls within the broader features shared by individual and collective Yue dialects and is strongly distinct from neighbouring languages such as Hakka, Mandarin or Hokkien. So it's not just a question of "how different are Toisan and GJW" but at the same time, "how different is Toisan from Hakka/Hokkien etc in relative terms". Akerbeltz (talk) 21:50, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, good point. Wu also has some highly divergent "dialects" which could be argued to be independent dialects based on mutual intelligibility. However, Wu stands as a group apart from other branches of Chinese, and so is typically (though not always) considered a single language. But Ping is often considered a separate Abstand language from Yue, just as Jin is from Mandarin. kwami (talk) 22:19, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I think the status of Ping and Jin are both disputed. In my view, having come into contact with both Jin and Toisanese, I would say that Toisanese is probably harder to understand to a GJW speaker than Jin is to a Mandarin one. I think the problem we're running into is that a lot of linguistic definitions don't fit socio-linguistic and common use, and in the case of China, some linguistic definitions outright conflicts with political positions of the ruling regime. I argue over at Wenzhouhua, for example, that socio-linguistic status should have priority over linguistic definition, when a compromise is no longer possible. At "Cantonese", we still have the possibility of compromising in having two articles - "Yue dialects" to cover the broad linguistic topic, and "Cantonese" to cover the socio-linguist idea of "Cantonese". Colipon+(Talk) 22:56, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, they are both disputed, which is my point. There are no clear-cut boundaries. Interesting that Taishanese should be more divergent than Jin; we could mention that Yue is a dialect cluster rather than a single well-defined language.

There are plenty of other cases where we give priority to the sociolinguistic concept of a language, so your point is well taken. "Yue dialects" is currently at "Cantonese (Yue)"; are you proposing that "Cantonese" be a new, third article? would you also want a Canton-Hong Kong dialect article to balance the Taishanese article, or do you think it would be redundant? kwami (talk) 05:10, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I found this sensible. However, current naming system is too linguistic oriented. Common use is being put aside. More importantly, title is technical, however, the content full with common everyday references. "Yue dialect" can get as technical and linguistic oriented is possible. Yet, common/everyday use should not be ignored. --WikiCantona (talk) 23:38, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

"Yue dialect" is currently at "Cantonese (Yue)". Although you now say it "can get as technical and linguistic oriented is possible", a short while ago you were adamantly opposed to using a technical linguistic title. kwami (talk)

Exactly, technical linguistic title with quasi-technical stuffs - the half bred monster I have referred. Let technical be technical. and common sense in common sense. --WikiCantona (talk) 05:35, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry if you found this personal. Kwami's POV need to be understood. For one hand, Kwami push something highly controversial. He believe so much in he is doing, he is willing to use his admin power to push it through. On the other hand, Kwami's POV has validities in it. I found the creation of "Yue dialects" could make his case. --WikiCantona (talk) 23:53, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Again, we already have that article. It is currently called Cantonese (Yue). kwami (talk)

Good pont, it is context that counts. If Yue dialects/Yue uses as a linguist category, let it stay as it is. By extending it to totality, and eclipse the common sense of term is where problems arrive. When a linguistic concept conflate with everyday common usage and give it a functions beyond its origin, linguistic term become a half bred monster. --WikiCantona (talk) 00:48, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

The problem in the case of "Cantonese" is agreeing what it means, in people using it for two different concepts, and confusing themselves and others in the process. kwami (talk) 05:10, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

There is not a great problem in using "Cantonese" for the Ausbau language, since it is not defined in terms of peripheral dialects, not dependent on them, and doesn't discuss them much. There is also no problem in using "Yue" for a cladistic node or subtree in the genetic (linguistics) tree of descent. The problem that leads to arguments is in using "Cantonese" for the dialect group, and this is a good reason to avoid this usage. We shouldn't deny that it exists or expunge all mention of it, but we need to explain this usage whenever we do mention it. --JWB (talk) 16:11, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. kwami (talk) 06:14, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

The world is a complicated place :) As this is supposed to be the encyclopedia of everything, we have to deal both with scientific concepts such as proteoglycan which are anything but everyday concepts understood and used by many and the exact opposite, everyday concepts such as egg white. Yue as a linguistic concept is at the proteoglycan end of the spectrum, the Canton dialect/Cantonese at the egg white end. We're not trying to conflate them, unless I've totally missed the point of these endless debates, we're trying to figure what goes on the proteoglycan page and what goes on the egg white page. But again, if kwami is being accused of "pushing" Yue at the language level, then you must mention me in the same breath because I'm in full agreement with him there. Akerbeltz (talk) 01:44, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

That Yue discussion should have been over after we agreed on the Cantonese (Yue) name. Also, where this page is now, referencing canton dialect, guangzhou dialect at the heading is good enough for the english part. For the chinese part, I have added back 廣州話. The 粵海粵語 term should not come first. Benjwong (talk) 01:52, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Kwami & Akerbeltz. First, let me explain why I want technicality in Yue dialects but not in Cantonese (Yue) article. The weakness and strength in English is the preference toward long article and slide everything together. Kwami has been missing or dismissive about the Yue dialects - thinking about the Cantonese (Yue) article is all about Yue dialects. It is not. The Cantonese (Yue) article includes the sociological aspects, and also the historical aspect the literature clearly referred as Proto-Cantonese. Plus some common sense stuffs. The article does not involve any comparative similarity found in all Yue dialects - very technical stuffs should be deal with a separate article. All these interesting details. This is a much better arrangement than the current one. In the Cantonese (Yue) article, the two sense of Cantonese should be clarified. Akerbeltz, simply, perhaps it is an encyclopedia of everything, but it has not to be everything in one big article.

I will come back on Cantonese (Yue) as a language with Guangzhau hua as a dialect stuff later. Which I found this very unsatisfactory at best and disputable at the least.--WikiCantona (talk) 02:40, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I notice many parts of this article still retain the use of "Yue Chinese". Since we all agreed that this is an inappropriate name, perhaps it is time to change these references? Colipon+(Talk) 06:43, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

What are you waiting for? Bathrobe (talk) 12:46, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

An assurance that other users will not revert it. Colipon+(Talk) 12:51, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I won't, unless you change it to "Cantonese". kwami (talk) 06:10, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Most of the remaining usages seem to be for the dialect group, which is appropriate. --JWB (talk) 18:20, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

There is an article in the New York Times on the displacement of Cantonese by Mandarin in New York's Chinatown. It speaks of the earlier displacement of Taishanese by Cantonese, and the current displacement of Cantonese by Mandarin. Here: [2]

Interestingly, it speaks of Taishan dialect as being "derived from and somewhat similar to Cantonese". This is almost certainly erroneous, another example of laymen's ignorance being reflected in newspaper articles, and shows that such articles shouldn't be treated too seriously as sources.

Bathrobe (talk) 06:16, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

It makes sense only if you interpret Cantonese as meaning both the language and the historical dialect group. Interestingly the article says almost nothing about the dialect of the "Fujianese" immigrants who are from a compact area near Fuzhou. --JWB (talk) 06:53, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

From New_York_Chinatown#Post-immigration_reform: Although Mandarin is spoken as a native language among only ten percent of Chinese speakers in NYC's Chinatown, it is used as a secondary dialect among the greatest number of them and is on its way to replace Cantonese as their lingua franca.[18] Although Min Chinese is spoken natively by a third of the Chinese population in the city, it is not used as a lingua franca because speakers of other dialect groups do not learn Min.[18] (source from 2002 - could be greater than 1/3 by now) --JWB (talk) 05:28, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I've flagged the first sentence, "Cantonese in the narrow sense, also known as Canton dialect or Guangzhou dialect, is the prestige dialect of the Cantonese Yue family", as having POV problems because the statement "prestige dialect of the Cantonese Yue family" is unclear in its wording, but appears to be making the assumption that Guangzhou-hua is the normative dialect for the Yue dialects.

The problem is twofold:

• Guangzhouhua is also the prestige dialect for non-Yue dialects, in areas of eastern Guangdong province, for instance.
• There appear to be areas (such as Junhua) where it is dubious to state that Cantonese is the prestige dialect of the local dialect.

The assumption behind the statement appears to be that Yue is a language and Guangzhouhua is the standard dialect. The article itself doesn't appear to support this interpretation of the facts.

Bathrobe (talk) 00:49, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Where is Junhua? --JWB (talk) 00:58, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant Danzhouhua (Hainan).

Bathrobe (talk) 03:45, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

The POV involved is that of only seeing comparative linguistics constructs. Cantonese as a language is used as a lingua franca over an area not equal to the area where the rural dialects are classified as Yue. The title "Canton dialect" is from the same POV. What is needed is an article on Cantonese as a language, meaning it is used in public life. --JWB (talk) 05:20, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

The title "Canton dialect" is definitely not ideal and I think "Standard Cantonese" would be preferable. The implication is that it is a prestige dialect -- thus a standard form of speech -- over quite a large area of southern China, and not necessarily a normative standard for all Yue dialects.

Bathrobe (talk) 07:45, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

What would you propose to call the dialect that includes the speech of Guangzhou, as opposed to say Taishanese? kwami (talk) 07:51, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

How about "Cantonese" :)

Bathrobe (talk) 10:12, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

But it is about the Guangzhau Cantonese, not Cantonese as such (which has more senses to the word). I think Guangzhau Cantonese is better. To avoid that Language / dialect implication, Guangzhou Cantonese is a more non-POV and descriptive name.--WikiCantona (talk) 11:09, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Bathrobe, that's the way I'd go, but some people include Taishanese as Cantonese, so it might be imprecise for us to just call it "Cantonese". Also, it's been at that name before, only for people to get upset that we don't have Yue at that name, leading to months of squabbling.

WikiCantona, do you think that people would understand that Guangzhou Cantonese includes Hong Kong Cantonese? kwami (talk) 17:49, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I was against Standard Cantonese as a neologism and because there is not a controlling formal standards body, but since then have discovered it is somewhat of a Wikipedia convention with Category:Standard languages containing articles like Standard German also using the "Standard X" format even though that is not a widely used term referring to the language. Now I think this format in general should be reconsidered (discuss at Wikiproject Languages?) but that in the meantime, having Standard Cantonese conforming to it is OK, and much better than having an article oriented to local dialect and comparative linguistics attempt to represent the Ausbau language. Also, I think linking to Standard language would be more appropriate than Prestige dialect.--JWB (talk) 17:49, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Is that what this article is about? Is it the Ausbau register (your use of "language" here can be misleading), or is it about the dialect of Guangzhou and Hong Kong, analogous to Taishanese? kwami (talk) 17:54, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

There should be *an* article primarily about the Ausbausprache (which is the common non-technical meaning of "language") with only secondary summary coverage of dialects. I was trying to consolidate material on the Ausbausprache at Standard Cantonese (with further consolidation at Cantonese as a later possibility) then while I was asking for final feedback on this, you moved most of Standard Cantonese to this article without discussion, apparently trying to make it the article covering the Ausbausprache. I do not feel the title "Canton dialect" is great for the Ausbausprache article. --JWB (talk) 18:12, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

No, I was not trying to make this article about the Ausbausprache, I was consolidating the articles per consensus, but without erasing the article history as you had proposed, and have complained about since—oddly, considering that you claim to want to preserve the history. If "Standard Cantonese" turns out to be the name we decide on, we can move this article there, thus keeping the name you like while preserving the article history.

If we decide to cover the Ausbausprache, I'm not sure we need a separate article on Yuehai dialect. That could perhaps be a section within it. kwami (talk) 23:04, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I think that I basically agree with JWB. Yes, Cantonese (Guangzhouhua) is an Ausbausprache, and that's what should be at this article.

I also think that a big problem with Cantonese is that there is a quasi "standard with dialects" situation in place. I'm sorry to keep harping on it, but Guangxi baakwa is, it appears, so close to Cantonese as to be considered virtually the same language. As Kwami notes, there appears to be a cline in terms of difference from (Standard) Cantonese to incomprehensible Yue dialects. This is what is complicating our task.

I'm not sure we need an article on Yuehai dialect. The point seems to be that Yuehai dialect is the standard. How then would it differ from the Ausbausprache? Bathrobe (talk) 23:10, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I was not up to date on the splits and renaming - the article we are on now is the one historically called Standard Cantonese and moved to Canton dialect a little over a month ago, and the article now called Standard Cantonese is a recent split with little page history. So in effect, I am proposing reversing that move.

As far as I know, Yuehai is a name for an intermediate-sized dialect area unit far less known than the capital's dialect or the larger dialect area. Like langue d'oil, it is a technical term and not in common use for the language.

Have we all agreed that there should be an article on the standard / common language or Ausbausprache that emphasizes ordinary rather than linguistic terminology and concerns, and an article called "Yue (something)" on the dialect group and classification from a comparative/historical linguistics perspective? --JWB (talk) 01:05, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Guangzhou Cantonese is a very suitable name for this article. Of all the ones mentioned above, it makes sense. Benjwong (talk) 06:19, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Would it include Hong Kong Cantonese, though? Bathrobe (talk) 08:49, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

HK Cantonese can be a link to this article. HK Cantonese and Guangzhou Cantonese is highly compatible. Except HK Cantonese has insane amount of English loan words. See Code-switching in Hong Kong. Benjwong (talk) 02:35, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

That would be my objection. A naive reader would expect it to be about the speech of Guangzhou only. Actually, that's the only reasonable interpretation I would expect, since the Canton in Cantonese already means Guangzhou: further specifying it as Guangzhou could only mean that we really mean that city only.

We're not answering JWB. I think it's reasonable to have an article for the Abstandsprache, Yue-whatever, and a second for a conflation of the Ausbausprache and Yuehai dialect, at Cantonese-whatever. kwami (talk) 17:07, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with JWB's suggestion. I have always held this position, although never as elegantly put. The naming issue came about because "Cantonese" is not sufficient to distinguish between the two meanings, resulting in confusion between the two. Bathrobe (talk) 01:28, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

To be honest I don't understand the whole discussion on Ausbausprache still. Benjwong (talk) 02:37, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

You need to read the Wikipedia article on Ausbausprache. It's actually hard to follow, but it helps explain some of the difficulties we've been having.

In a very loose fashion, an ausbau language is a language that forms a "standard language" in some sense (like Mandarin or Guangzhou Cantonese). Cantonese has a lower status as a "standard language" than Mandarin has, but it has some of the properties of a standard language. An abstand language is where linguistic mutual intelligibility suggests that the dialects all loosely belong together, but they have no official or standardised status and are thus purely dialect. That is like Yue dialects.

Actually, I think many of our problems are caused by the third of the concepts at that article, the "Dachsprache". The question is, can Guangzhou Cantonese be regarded as a "Dachsprache" for the Yue dialects? I think the answer is unclear, which is why I added the POV tag.Bathrobe (talk) 02:55, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I read that article multiple times (and still at least partly confused). I was hoping we vote or agree on Guangzhou Cantonese as the name of this article. That Ausbausprache discussion is so linguist-oriented, it may have to come later. Benjwong (talk) 03:22, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Except that it may have consequences for naming. It's basically the difference between a language by objective criteria vs. a language by subjective criteria. We're using these precise terms so that we can agree on what we're talking about, so that we don't argue at cross purposes.

Ausbau is approximately German for 'development' or 'construction'. An Ausbausprache is a language in the sense that it is a dialect or register that has been developed as a separate language, regardless of what an outsider might think just by looking at it. It is what people think of as a "language" in the context of television, or literature, or learning it in school, use by the govt, etc. An Abstandsprache, on the other hand, is a language by the objective criterion of mutual intelligibility, without regards to social conception. For example, going by Abstand criteria, Serbian and Croatian, Hindi and Urdu, Malaysian and Indonesian are not only single languages, but the same dialect of the same language. However, they have been developed as separate registers for political reasons, and so are considered different languages in the Ausbau sense. Similarly, going by Abstand criteria, the language of this article is Yue, not Cantonese. (Or, depending on how strictly one defines mutual intelligibility, one might split off Siyi as a separate language.) Going by Abstand criteria, Cantonese would have to be either a synonym of Yue, or a specific dialect, such as Yuehai. However, if by Cantonese we mean the language in the Ausbau sence—that is, what people expect when they turn on Cantonese TV or learn Cantonese in school, then it need not have any clear correlation to either Yue or any specific dialect of Yue is the objective sense.

So I think we really do need to decide what we're talking about here, or else we'll simply argue in circles. kwami (talk) 06:00, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Kwami, you are introducing confusion here. This article is NOT about Yue, so don't even try to suggest that it is. That will only set us off running in the circles that you say we will. It is perfectly obvious that JBW and myself are talking about the Ausbau dialect -- the [quasi-]standard language -- Canton dialect, Guangzhou Cantonese, or however we are going to define it. Defining it will obviously be a problem if we insist on Guangzhou leaving out Hong Kong, however.

Your so-called objective criterion of "mutual intelligibility" has its own problems, which you should be aware of if you really have a linguistic background, and has never been the criterion by which people define languages. It's not even used for most of the articles on European languages, so why insist on it here? Bathrobe (talk) 09:33, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, I've apparently confused you, because I didn't say those things. I did not say it's Yue, and I am not insisting on using Abstand criteria. I was merely trying to illustrate why we should decide whether this article is defined per Ausbau or Abstand, and thus decide on the subject matter, before we decide what to call it. You and JWB may have decided that it is to be about the Ausbau language, but you aren't everyone: We can't be sure if others agree when they don't know what we're talking about. We all need to understand what we're agreeing to if we're going to get anywhere. Otherwise we'll reach what we think is agreement, only to have people object once they see it isn't the agreement they thought it was. I suspect that many of the problems we've had with these articles in the past have been problems of this sort. kwami (talk) 15:07, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Facts like "Hong Kong TV uses Cantonese" are verifiable, discrete and easy to come by. Mutual intelligibility of dialects has only been studied occasionally (especially for lower level units like Yuehai) and gives a continuum of results (% comprehension) without a clear breaking point, varying from study to study. --JWB (talk) 17:38, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

No doubt. But that doesn't really address the issue. (It doesn't tell us what "Cantonese" is.) Of course, this kind of argument could be made about many languages; the problem we've had is that few other language names have the ambiguity that "Cantonese" does. ("Hindi" is similarly ambiguous, and is even more of a mess, but has also received more attention in the literature to help forge an informed agreement.) For example, there is a chart of Yue dialects in that article. Should any of those branches, such as Yuehai, link here? If so, which ones? Again, I'm not saying we should cover one over the other conception of language, or even choose between them, just that we should have informed agreement as to what this article is about. kwami (talk) 19:15, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

What does "what Cantonese is" mean? In everyday terms, Cantonese is what you hear in Hong Kong movies etc., and has nothing to do with measuring and judging comprehensibility of rural dialects that are never spoken to non-natives. To say that it "is" a certain dialect area is to essentialize comparative linguistics and mapmaking concerns. The bounds of the mutually comprehensible dialect area haven't been researched in enough depth, are continuing to be refined, and we do not even have an agreement on what the comprehensibility test should be. We certainly can not predicate the article on complete knowledge of something that is not known clearly to anyone, and we shouldn't simply make our own judgement call not based on sources as that would be OR. As for wikilinking articles, editors do that on the basis of likely interest, not on a basis of genetic relation of a certain degree. --JWB (talk) 20:37, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

So your definition of "Cantonese" is what a foreigner hears in HK? and what is used in HK movies? How is that different from Hong Kong Cantonese?

Actually, links are not, or should not, be based on judgements of 'likely interest'. If an editor links Yuehai here, that would imply either that the topic of this article is Yuehai, or that Yuehai is explained in this article.

As for predicating the article on s.t. we do not fully understand, that's how nearly all WP articles are written. That's why they require updating as more is learned. Otherwise, we couldn't have the Yue dialects article that you advocate. And no-one is proposing that we not base the article on sources, so I don't see the point of that comment.

Anyway, this is why I'm being such a pain in the ass: You would appear to be advocating that the topic of this article be the speech of Hong Kong. Another editor appears to advocate specifically the speech of Guangdong. Another, Standard Cantonese. Another, all of Yue Chinese. Some the Ausbausprache, others perhaps a dialectological definition. Some of these are nearly synonymous, others are not. kwami (talk) 21:02, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I clearly stated my position above that the "language" article, whatever it is named, should be primarily about the standard language which has minor variations, not equated to any scope of rural/historical dialect areas. Simply citing an example mentioning Hong Kong is not a change in this position. In spite of some confusion about terminology, I think almost everyone would concur that the modern, somewhat standardized urban and media language vs. rural and historical dialects and their relationships are fairly distinct topics that each deserve an article, with only brief summary coverage of the other topic. --JWB (talk) 21:50, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you on that. But because of the confusion of names, it's hard to tell how many others do. kwami (talk) 22:13, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I disagree that "Cantonese" is ambiguous. Outside of linguistics, if English speakers think of "Cantonese" they are almost always thinking of Yuehai. They may or may not know it's the language of Hong Kong and/or Guangzhou. They may just know it from films, from TV or from hearing it spoken and asking about it. This is confirmed and reinforced by the use of "Cantonese" in the media, in academia, officially, as can be confirmed from many sources. As an example I have been looking at the school level examinations in Chinese recently, where as well as a choice between Simplified or Traditional/Full characters the student can choose to do the hearing and speaking parts of the examinations in "Mandarin" or "Cantonese": nowhere are these explained, they are just assumed to be understood, in a context (a public examination syllabus) where things must be clearly specified.

I don't know anything about Hindi, but English itself is a good parallel. English is very diverse: from the mutually unintelligible dialects of these shores, to foreign varieties like Jamaican Patois, it has far more variation than Yue. But to non-English speakers it is BBC English, or the English of the Voice of America. I have some experience of this as when I have from time to time tried to help people learn English I have been told that my accent is wrong - my northern English vowels don't agree with their books or teachers so must be wrong ! My knowledge of the complexities and subtleties of English dialects was lost on them, as the varieties of Yue would be lost on all but a small minority of those interested in "Cantonese". JohnBlackburne (talk) 21:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, until I recently moved it, it was Yue, not Yuehai, that occupied the article name "Cantonese". There are a number of editors (mostly Cantonese) who are quite adamant that that is the proper use of the name, and are furious at me for moving it; it had actually displaced Yuehai there because of those editors. I've long argued that the English word "Cantonese" is prototypically similar to something like Yuehai, and been accused of being anti-Cantonese because of it. So, even if it's fairly obvious to a native English speaker (though Taishanese is frequently said to be a dialect of Cantonese), it's a discussion we needed to have, and I'm leery of similar sentiments inflaming this article.

As for Hindi, in the broad sense it is a dialect continuum within Indic, not unlike Yue within Chinese. The Persianized Ausbausprache of Hindi, based on the dialect of Delhi, is Urdu, but an officially Sanskritized register of Urdu is also called "Hindi". So Hindi is a register of Urdu, which in turn is a dialect of Hindi: a real onomastic mess. kwami (talk) 22:05, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Difference between HK cantonese and Guangzhou cantonese is like NY english and Texas english. There are some word choices that are different, but it is about the same. Anyhow what goes on outside Guangzhou technically does not belong in this article. Does anyone have a better name than the Guangzhou cantonese name proposed by Wikicantona? People are accepting the current Yue table chart too much. I have asked user ASDFGH for references long ago, and so far still no response. That part of the debate never ends and does not have to be exact in order to rename this page. The page is pretty much about 廣州話 (Guangzhou dialect). Benjwong (talk) 04:48, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, you want this article to be about a topolect, the speech of Guangzhou, whereas Bathrobe, JWB, and JohnBlackburne do not. I imagine we might need to settle that before we can decide on a name. kwami (talk) 08:30, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Judging from user Benjwong's comment, we will have two articles: one on the local language of Guangzhou, Guangzhou Cantonese (not regarded as a standard, just a local speech form), and one on Cantonese (Yue) covering all the rest of the Yue dialects. The treatment of Hong Kong Cantonese will fall under the "Cantonese (Yue)" article, along with Taishanhua, Dongguanhua, Guangxi Baihua, Danzhouhua, and many other local dialects, some of which are not even called "Cantonese". Is that correct?

Bathrobe (talk) 08:39, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

User Benjwong, I think I should explain my understanding of Ausbau and Abstand.

In a raw, natural state, as the speech of everyday life, language is made up of a whole heap of bubbling dialects, each one slightly different from the next door village. There is no standard, and no written language. The criterion of mutual intelligibility says that if people speaking these dialects can understand each other, they're speaking the same language. This is the idea of an abstand language. People can understand each other (although sometimes with difficulty), so they're basically speaking the same language. (This actually has problems, because if you go far enough, the speech changes so much that people at one end can't understand people at the other, so "mutual intelligibility" isn't foolproof. According to linguists, many of the dialects in Europe orignally ran in unbroken chains (called a dialect continuum). For instance, in the Romance languages, the changes from the south of Belgium to the south of Italy were very gradual. There is ultimately no way of clearly differentiating between French and Italian as abstand languages because the dialects are all linked, one to another.)

An ausbau language is a dialect that has been developed into something more than just a local dialect. One dialect has more prestige than the others and becomes the "standard" or a "lingua franca" for communication. This dialect may be developed into a language of written communication, literature, scientific thought, administration, diplomatic communication, religion, etc. Such ausbau languages are the languages that people study at school and they are often regarded as having a "correct" form. In our French/Italian example, two ausbau languages have arisen: French (based on Paris) and Italian (based on Tuscan dialect). At one time there was another ausbau language, Langue d'oc, the language of the troubadors in the south of France, but it has been downgraded and is now mostly regarded as just a dialect of French.

In this case, the "bubbling dialects" of local speech are the Yue dialects. They are strictly spoken languages and they are, to a large extent, mutually intelligible (although Taishan, Dongguan, and others may be pretty hard to understand). That's why linguists class them all as one abstand language: Yue.

The abstand language (Yue dialects) are all dialects of one language (the Yue language) on what Kwami calls "objective grounds" -- mutually intelligibility -- because linguists have studied them and decided they all "go together", even though speakers themselves may not entirely agree (for example, the dispute over whether Taishanese can really be regarded as Cantonese or not). It's a bit like saying that French and Italian dialects all really belong to one language because all their dialects "go together" in one big dialect continuum.

The standardised speech that everyone recognises as being a cut above the rest -- the ausbau language -- is Cantonese. This was originally the dialect of Canton, although since Hong Kong emerged it's possible to say that the ausbau language now includes both Guangzhou and Hong Kong Cantonese. This language is recognised by people in Guangdong province, Hong Kong and (perhaps?) to a lesser extent by people in Guangxi province as a prestige dialect, one that is "good Cantonese", used in radio and TV broadcasts, and sold in languages courses as "Cantonese", and also used to a limited extent as the basis of written Cantonese in Hong Kong.

The ausbau language is what I and other editors are suggesting that this article is about. Kwami is calling it Yuehai, but that's just a naming issue. Most people speaking English just call it "Cantonese".

However, you are now proposing to restrict this article to "Guangzhou dialect". To be honest, I'm not quite sure what you're driving at. Why would an entire Wikipedia article be specifically devoted to one dialect, the "Guangzhou dialect"? Unless, of course, Guangzhou dialect is somehow special, i.e., "better" or "more prestigious" than other Yue dialects. And if that Guangzhou dialect is a special or prestige dialect, is there a particular reason for leaving Hong Kong Cantonese out? From everything I've read by Hong Kong speakers at this site, Hong Kong is merely a slight variant on the traditional prestige Canton dialect and has its own influence and prestige. Is there some particular reason (other than that user Kwami unilaterally decided to name the article "Canton dialect") that you want to restrict the article to Guangzhou dialect only?

Bathrobe (talk) 09:46, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, not quite unilaterally. "Canton dialect" was a phrase that had stood without dispute for quite some time as a section heading at the Yue article, and I merely adopted it. It seemed reasonable, since HK Cantonese is generally understood to be included under that term, or at least that's my impression. I doubt that the same would hold under "Guangzhou dialect", though I may be wrong.

Good description of the POV issues. All of Western Romance is a single Abtand language, actually, as a dialect continuum, or at least it was before the standardization of national languages via public education in the 20th century. kwami (talk) 10:03, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank Bathrobe for explaining Ausbau and Abstand. However, it is out of (current political and linguistic) context to talk about Cantonese being an Aubsau language. Granted if Canton or South China were an independent country, Bathrobe's characterization is very good. Cantonese Yue dialects are Abtand language only we cast other Chinese dialects aside. The continuum, comparative to Western Romance, is Chinese language, not Cantonese (Yue) alone. Mutually understanding may be low for Shanghaiese and Hakka. Nonetheless, they could be placed in a long chain of dialectic continuum and grouped together as one language. Are they all fit into one category called Chinese language? Questionable. Yet it is the current consensus among linguists. The situation complicated by the political union has lasted for over at least 2000 years. Only one written form has been used. The politic has much to do with how a language is defined. We has seen that many times over history. Arguably, this one written form really keep all these dialects together because each written character can be pronounced according to the dialect you used. it's a very different situation in most of the world. In a sense, Chinese is the Abtand language with one written form that had not been basing on any dialect until the early 20th century. Can you see the murky water we are into?! Kwami and Bathrobe and others like to define Cantonese (Yue) as language, or others to Cantonese as a language, I love my mother tongue to have a language status. However, it is not up to us to pushing that.

I have purposed called this article "Guangzhau Cantonese" which is (correctly asserted by other) about a topolect. Benjwong pointed to the similarity between HK and Guangzhau Cantonese. He may be thinking about the parallel between HK and GZ dialects in the article. Bathrobe wants to call it Cantonese, that is a position I am very much sympathetic with. Kwami wanted Yuehai which is too linguist. Since we have a Standard Cantonese (I prefer Modern or Contemporary Cantonese), I think Bathrobe's concern about Aubsau language better fit in the currently Standard Cantonese article. Guangzhau Cantonese no doubt at beginning set the standard. However, it has also developed into its own pattern over many years under current Chinese government. Some traditional terms in Guangzhau Cantonese has been lost, replacing with Northern Chinese terms. Some terms can now only found in Cantonese in Singapore and Malaysia (e.g. earth worm zh-yue:黃犬). Guangzhau speech is not the excellant representative of Cantonese you may hear in the China Town. If you go to the Guangzhau subway or Trainstation in, you know what I talk about. GZ dialect had a role in Cantonese being a "standard" or "Aubsau language". The Cantonese in radio, class lessons, used in some other countries are belong to the article of Standard Cantonese (I prefer calling it Modern or Contemporary Cantonese).

BTW, I object to any suggestion of merging HK Cantonese and GZ Cantonese. Smaller article please.

--WikiCantona (talk) 00:56, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I have no objection to separate articles on GZ and HK Cantonese. But the article on "Cantonese", the ausbau language, shouldn't just be about "Guangzhou dialect". Bathrobe (talk) 23:36, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I do not advocate Yuehai as the title of the article. I am merely using it here because it has a well defined meaning.

What you're discussing is more along the lines of a Dachsprach : a form that is used as a unifying factor among mutually unintelligible speech varieties. It's not the case that linguists agree that Chinese is a language: all you have to do is look up Ethnologue to see a very common alternate view. It's not even true that the varieties unified under the Dachsprach of Standard Mandarin are Chinese: currently Zhuang, a Tai language, is included, and in the past (when Classical Chinese was the Dachsprach) other non-Sinitic languages were as well.

This is the article that you want to call "Modern Cantonese". If you want an article specifically on Guangzhou Cantonese, that would be an additional article. kwami (talk) 01:37, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

This is the article that was called "Standard Cantonese" until kwami split and renamed 6 weeks ago, and now the content has been reunited and Standard Cantonese is a redirect to this article. The move can be reversed quickly since there was no consensus for the original move/spli) and then we can get on to discussion of further changes. The current name is confusing the issue. --JWB (talk) 03:57, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Most editors since then seem to be opposed to that name. kwami (talk) 06:44, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

While it is probably most common for an ausbau language to be imposed by a political entity (thus ausbau languages tend to be "national" languages), I don't think that is actually a defining criterion. At any rate, the ausbau/abstand/dachsprache distinction is a simplified model of reality and there are obviously going to be different levels of ausbau-ness. Cantonese is not a national language and doesn't have the full set of characteristics of a standard language, but even though it is a "dialect" in the Chinese context, it is still an ausbau language compared to rural Yue dialects and serves as a "mini-standard language" for parts of southern China. Bathrobe (talk) 04:34, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

User Kwami, you have been very supportive about and often sided with Ethnologue's POV. In what regard this is a good source (I am not saying it is bad)? This is not a challenge. I just want to understand where you are coming from and what this Ethnologue is--WikiCantona (talk) 20:11, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Since there is no answer to question. The wiki page of Ethnologue and talk:Ethnologue do reveal some info. Many editor hold a least favourable position toward this website and its publication. --WikiCantona (talk) 23:19, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

This

"though Taishanese is the most common Yue dialect spoken by overseas Chinese communities in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Europe."

is I think wrong for at least Europe and maybe others. The largest Chinese community in Europe (excluding Russia whose Chinese population is mostly in the far east) is in the UK, more of whom come from Hong Kong than the PRC. The same is true of Canada. I think it will also be true of Australia. Almost all Hong Kong Chinese are Cantonese speakers, while immigrants from the PRC, many of them recent, are primarily Mandarin speakers. So there's a strong argument for Cantonese being the most common Yue Dialect in these communities.

The only exception is perhaps the US, for the historical reasons given in Taishanese, except even there it says Taishanese was formerly the lingua franca. The New York Times article mentioned above seems to confirm this. It's marked as Citation Needed but I would say it should simply be removed. JohnBlackburne (talk) 09:59, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree, if it still were the lingua franca then frankly I can't tell the difference between the HK dialect and Taishanese. I'd say remove it. Akerbeltz (talk) 10:56, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, got round to replacing it with something that makes sense. No references as the info is pulled from many places, mostly other articles that do have references. JohnBlackburne (talk) 00:58, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

This probably is true for immigrants from 1960s to late 70s. I don't see how this is true today. Benjwong (talk) 05:04, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I used to edit heavily on Cantonese-related articles on Wikipedia but in recent years have been mostly absent or have done mostly light editing on Wikipedia in general due to personal time constraints. Anyway, I just recently noticed that this article had been moved from Standard Cantonese to Canton dialect, and decided to look into this talk page to see what precipitated it. I must say I was overwhelmed by the amount of discussion around the move. I glanced through most of it, and admit that I did not read every single word, but my main impression of the discussion so far is that there seems to be a lot of argument about interpretations of what "Cantonese", "standard", "prestige" mean and how they should apply. Each editor appears to have a slightly different view, and this is what is causing the impasse. I have my own views on these words, but I feel they are irrelevant. What we should really be basing our decision on are the ways reliable English sources use these words — this is the Wikipedia credo. I see there were some attempts of this in the previous discussion, but no specific citations. So I will provide some here (emphasis mine).

• Chinese, by Jerry Norman (Cambridge Language Studies):
  • [p. 214] The Yuè dialects form a relatively homogenous group of dialects spoken over wide areas of Guǎngdōng and Guǎngxī provinces. The term Cantonese, which is sometimes used interchangeably with Yuè, should be reserved for the dialect of the city of Guǎngzhōu (Canton) and not used as a general name for the group as a whole.
  • [p. 215] The language of Guǎngzhōu city enjoys the status of a prestige or standard language, not only among other Yuè speakers but even among Mǐn and Kèjiā speakers who inhabit Guǎngdōng province.
• The Languages of China, by S. Robert Ramsey:
  • [p. 99] Among the Yue people the dialect of Canton has enjoyed prestige for centuries. ... Cantonese is thus more than a widely spoken dialect. It is a genuine regional standard.
  • [p. 100] In addition, standard Cantonese has no medial vowels at all anymore...

The above citations certainly lend support to using Cantonese and even Standard Cantonese (though Ramsey uses the lowercase s) as the title of the article. In addition, they would also point to not using the term Cantonese in the the title of the article on the more general Yue Chinese, though in that article, it should be noted that the term "Cantonese" sometimes refers to it as well. Do others have sources that would indicate otherwise? —Umofomia (talk) 07:14, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Here's another source that also disambiguates Cantonese from Yue - Cantonese: a comprehensive grammar by Stephen Matthews and Virginia Yip:

• [p. 2] Cantonese is the most widely known and influential variety of Chinese other than Mandarin. It belongs to the Yue group of dialects.
• [p. 3] Traditionally, the speech of Guangzhou (Canton) is the standard of comparison, hence the terms Cantonese and Gwóngjāu Wá...

It seems to me that although the term "Cantonese" can be used to refer to Yue in general, I have seen no source that does this without needing to preface the fact that they are referring to the more general group. Every source I've seen always uses "Cantonese" to refer to the prestige/standard dialect whenever the word is unqualified. This appears to be the common English usage of the word. —Umofomia (talk) 07:35, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

There was an even longer discussion at Yue about naming that article "Cantonese", and some sources there. I've advocated calling it Yue Chinese (per our general naming conventions) or Yue (Cantonese), as I think eventually the title Cantonese (Yue) will result in people wanting to use the name "Cantonese" for Yue. It seems that most people here would prefer to restrict the name Cantonese to the topic of this and related articles, and relegate it to a note in the Yue article. Once we settle the name here, I wonder if it might be productive to revisit Yue. kwami (talk) 07:46, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Kwami, before we start talking of revisiting Cantonese (Yue), which is a complete can of worms, let's get this article sorted out.

Umofomia, I quoted a couple of the sources you noted above, but they didn't cut any ice. All it resulted in was editors shouting that there were lots of sources using "Cantonese" to mean "Yue dialects", and on the basis of COMMON NAME, "Cantonese" should be used for the Yue dialects in preference to the Mandarin term "Yue". Bathrobe (talk) 13:40, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Shouting isn't enough though. What are the specific citations that use Cantonese as a common name to refer to all Yue dialects without needing to preface that they're doing so? —Umofomia (talk) 18:45, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

The primary objection was that Yue is a Mandarin word, and therefore shouldn't be used for Cantonese. This was roundly rejected, but seems to have motivated much of the opposition regardless. Akerbeltz put together a table at Talk:Cantonese_(Yue)/Archive6#Data_table. (Not that it's not always clear from the table how the name "Cantonese" is defined in the sources: "Primary" doesn't mean "primary name of Yue", only "primary name used for Yue/Yuehai".) But I think that settling this page might help with that one. kwami (talk) 18:58, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I've tried to shut myself out from this fruitless debate in the past few days, but, a statement like "The primary objection was that Yue is a Mandarin word, and therefore shouldn't be used for Cantonese." is simply not true. There were a myriad of objections to that usage, and not all of it came from native Cantonese speakers. We also have to remember that native speakers deserve some respect as well. If a group of self-proclaimed experts came on cyberspace and told me what name I must use to call my own language, I would be quite irritated as well. Colipon+(Talk) 20:30, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Sure, there were other objections, but many of them only came up in response to the rejection the "Yue = Mandarin" argument.

Respect, yes, but not obedience. If German editors demanded that we move German language to "Deutsch", we wouldn't defer to them either. kwami (talk) 21:18, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Yue being a mandarin-sounding word was not the primary objection. The prime objection has more to do with real life usage. The book sources above seems too sure that Yue is the main branch and the only branch. It is half right. 廣東話 and 粵 are compatible. The books didn't mention that. Benjwong (talk) 05:13, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Benjwong, I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you mean when you say: "The book sources above seems too sure that Yue is the main branch and the only branch. It is half right. 廣東話 and 粵 are compatible." Bathrobe (talk) 16:28, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Standard Cantonese is a subset of Canton dialects that finally emerges as a standard among Cantonese languages. Even inside and the surrounding of the City of Canton, there are various dialects of Cantonese. For example, Sai Kwan Wa (西關話, tougue of West Gate, in the area west of the city wall), was once prevailed. Standard Cantonese is a variant of Cantonese languages, or more specifically, a variant of Canton dialects that has been promoted and institutionalised by numerous scholars through tons of dictionaries, textbooks, radio and television programmes. The concepts of Standard Cantonese and Canton dialects are different and should not be confused. Standard Cantonese is somehow prescriptive. Scholars tends to say there is a right way to speak Standard Cantonese.— HenryLi (Talk) 17:21, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

"Even inside and the surrounding of the City of Canton, there are various dialects of Cantonese" - actually, those would probably be called accents of the Canton dialect. But regardless, it looks like we only have one editor here who wants this article to be about the dialect rather than the semi-standardized Ausbausprache. kwami (talk) 17:40, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

"actually, those would probably be called accents of the Canton dialect" This kind of assertion is not very helpful when there is no source or native knowledge to that language. --WikiCantona (talk) 20:01, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

The rare occasions when Henry Li comes on to comment are always a pleasure. He obviously has both local knowledge and an insight into the issues.

I would like to ask Henry if he can give us some insight into the wider Cantonese or Yue dialects. I think Kwami's suggestion that various dialects "even inside and the surrounding of the City of Canton" are "accents" of Standard Cantonese is slightly off the mark. That is, they are probably very close to Standard Cantonese, but Henry's comment was that "the concepts of Standard Cantonese and Canton dialects are different and should not be confused". That indicates to me that Standard Cantonese is a clear standard: either you speak it or you don't. Even if you speak one of the dialects from near the City of Canton, you are still speaking "dialect", not Standard Cantonese.

And of course, the further you go out from Guangzhou, the more different the dialects are going to get. You might be able to get by speaking Panyu dialect and maintain that you're speaking "accented Cantonese", but once you get to the Four Districts (四邑) or perhaps even Dongguan (东莞), the idea that you are just speaking "accented Cantonese" becomes more than a little strained. I wonder if Henry could give his perspective on the relationship of dialects like, say, Panyu, Dongguan, Taishan, Western Guangdong province, Guangxi province, and Hong Kong to Standard Cantonese.

Bathrobe (talk) 00:18, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I didn't say that it was an accent of Standard C, I said it was probably an accent of Canton dialect. Variations of pronunciation within dialects are typically called "accents", though of course there are seldom clear-cut boundaries. Yuehai and Siyi are generally accepted as distinct dialects; I certainly never implied that one was an "accent" of the other. However, I seriously doubt anyone would consider different districts within the city of Guangzhou to be different "dialects", unless you have the kind of variation within the city that you do between Guangzhou and Taishan, which AFAIK you do not. kwami (talk) 00:55, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Bathrobe, the way you are putting up all the categories of Panyu, Dongguan, Guangxi etc is like trying to have a english article for every state in the US. Even the US english is not split that way. They have Inland Northern American English for example which covers a couple states. Naming this article Guangzhou cantonese does not limit other provinces from using it. For once I take back my comment of "What goes on outside Guangzhou does not belong in this article". That probably has caused more confusion. I am beginning to see what you mean. Benjwong (talk) 05:28, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

"Canton dialect" is an unacceptable page title because this term is not in wide use. Please provide examples that this term is actually prevalent in the literature. "Cantonese" is a widely used term but "Canton dialect," I believe, is not. Badagnani (talk) 15:47, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, thank you for finally providing a reason. You could also add your comment to the above discussion about this very topic. The problem with "Cantonese" is that it's ambiguous. We might decide go with it, but given the past insistence from some editors that "Cantonese" means all of Yue, not just Canton dialect, and since moving anything into or out of "Cantonese" will result in merging or splitting redirects from hundreds of other articles, that requires some discussion. Every suggested title has received objections for one reason or another.

As for the current name, how about Stedman & Lee A Chinese and English phrase book in the Canton dialect? That's from 1888, so the phrase has been around a while. Or Morrison Vocabulary of the Canton dialect (1828). I can trace "Canton dialect" back to 1811. For more recent usage, how about Ramsey The Languages of China (1989), Williams The Middle Kingdom (2001), Blum & Jensen China off center (2001), Lackner & Vittinghoff Mapping meanings: the field of new learning in late Qing China‎ (2004), Hinton, Nichols, & Ohala Sound Symbolism (2006), Bush & Engel The China diary of George H.W. Bush (2008)? These include not just linguists but the editors of memoirs by an ex-president of the US, who wish to appear both professional and approachable to a wide audience. Kinda like Wikipedia. kwami (talk) 17:38, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I would otherwise be fine with calling this page "Cantonese", but that also gives rise to confusion at Hong Kong Cantonese. Does that mean "Hong Kong Cantonese" is "Hong Kong Guangzhouhua"? It's translated there as "香港粵語 / 港式粵語 / 香港廣東話", all of which translated "Yue" to "Cantonese". Obviously, in this context, "Cantonese" refers to the broad concept of Cantonese, not the narrow concept. Colipon+(Talk) 18:12, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Not sure exactly what problem you are trying to express. If we are preferring "Cantonese" to "Canton dialect", why would that mean we should make an opposite replacement of "Cantonese" by "Guangzhouhua" in the Hong Kong article? The Chinese translation you give says that Hong Kong speech is both a form of 粵語 and a form of 廣東話, which does not sound like a problem either. If it does refer to both the broad and narrow concepts of Cantonese, Hong Kong speech fits into both and can be described either or both ways. Are you saying "Cantonese" has to be defined to be one and not the other? Clearly it is used to refer to both, although the standard language is referred to more often. --JWB (talk) 19:02, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

About as often as they refer to "Standard Mandarin" as "Mandarin" in everyday speech, you reckon? Colipon+(Talk) 19:07, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

At least, probably even more strongly in the Mandarin case. --JWB (talk) 19:15, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

You've objected to "language" because of the politically sensitive "language vs. dialect" problem, so why do you think "dialect" is ok for an article that is largely about the standard language? Certainly you can find citations for "Canton dialect" but that does not mean it is the most common name or even a major name in current use. "Dialect" was unobjectionable in the 19th and early 20th century but its use has been declining recently for the reasons you yourself have mentioned. Ramsey appears to use "Canton dialect" once and "dialect of Canton" once (at least one of these in a historical context) compared to many more uses of "Cantonese". Citing George Bush as an authority requires no further comment. Cantonese *can* be used to refer to the whole Yue dialect group, but which editor claimed this was the *primary* meaning? --JWB (talk) 18:15, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Hong Kong Cantonese ..is translated there as "香港粵語 / 港式粵語 / 香港廣東話", all of which translated "Yue" to "Cantonese". Obviously, in this context, "Cantonese" refers to the broad concept of Cantonese, not the narrow concept.

Not obvious at all. From what I can tell, you are alone in saying that Hong Kong Cantonese is a different language from standard Cantonese. All the other people who are contributing to the discussion are saying that HK Cantonese can be regarded as a variant or variety of Guangzhou Cantonese. Indeed, expressions like 香港粵語 / 港式粵語 / 香港廣東話 seem to express exactly that positioning. You seem to be proceeding from the assumption that the Chinese terms "粵語" and "廣東話" equate to "Yue dialects in general", and I'm not sure what grounds you have for making that assumption. Bathrobe (talk) 01:28, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I did not make myself clear. But I don't see anything I said that can be construed to say that "Hong Kong Cantonese is a different language from standard Cantonese". "粵語" and "廣東話" are both unambiguously translated into "Cantonese" in English. "粵語" and "廣東話" both refer to Yue in the broad sense. "廣州話" refers to "Guangzhou Cantonese". If we reverse-translate "Cantonese" back into Chinese, we also get "粵語" and "廣東話", rarely "廣州話". If you look at every other interlanguage wikilink, this is how it's treated everywhere. Therefore, the Chinese wiki article "粵語" should link with the English wiki article "Cantonese". The Chinese wiki article "廣州話" should link to "Guangzhou dialect". Some say that "Cantonese" is used more to refer to HK-Guangzhou-Macau, fine. But I am here to argue that it is used predominantly to refer to "Yue" in general. Obviously this position has had its opposition, and I don't think expounding on it further does us any benefit except spin our head in circles. I am currently almost apathetic what the outcome of this debate will be. But to me, I am still unconvinced that any of these Cantonese-related articles should have moved at all from where they were several months ago. Colipon+(Talk) 02:13, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Looks like there is some disagreement on Chinese Wikipedia too. [3] Anyway, does your last sentence mean you would support or at least be OK with reversing the move of Standard Cantonese to Canton dialect? --JWB (talk) 06:27, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

So your position is that 广州话 and 广东话 refer to different things? I was under the impression that 广州话 is more common on the Mainland while 广东话 is used in Hong Kong, and both basically refer to the same thing. This is stated at Chinese Wikipedia and has also been pointed out by some people commenting at these talk pages. As I pointed out a long time ago, I have a number of textbooks, etc. for learning "Cantonese", and the title in most of them is 广州话.

My guess is that PRC materials pointedly use 广州话 to highlight a PRC-proper city as opposed to Hong Kong. --JWB (talk) 06:13, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

As for the "back-translation" problem, I had a quick look at the French and German articles, and despite the existence of a nice map showing the distribution of "Cantonese" over Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, all the examples seemed to be standard Cantonese. So perhaps they should consider renaming or splitting their articles. In a sense, English Wikipedia often leads other Wikipedia articles, and I'm not convinced that modelling the English articles on Spanish Wikipedia (or whatever) is the right way to go about improving the article. Bathrobe (talk) 05:09, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

One assumption in the entire discussion is based on that the Guangzhau Cantonese is the standard of the "Cantonese language". However, this so-called standard, as I am aware of, only refers to the standard pronunciation of a given Chinese character, and this aspect alone. By saying it is prestigious dialect, it gives people wrong impression that Guangzhau Hua actually determine the all aspects of that "dialect". In fact, as I said before, the Guangzhau Cantonese in terms of some vocabularies are so different from Hong Kong Cantonese. I would not go as far as to say the Cantonese you heard outside China is pre-1949, the difference is there. So, "Cantonese" (strict sense) should be referring to the HK Cantonese. Ironically, the standardize movement has largely happened in Hong Kong, not city of Guangzhau.

In additional, the 廣州話 is a relative new name and 廣府話 is the traditional name. That, 廣府 is referred to 廣州府，an old geographical area excess current city of Guangzhau. If you like to more confusion, we can use Gwangfu Cantonese. --WikiCantona (talk) 05:30, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I have great difficulty understanding why the quotations given from Norman and Ramsey above meet with such dogged resistance from some editors. Both sets of quotations lay down quite a clear distinction between two concepts: "Cantonese" for the standard based on Guangzhou city, and "Yue" for the various dialects spoken in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces (note how this already weakens the argument that 广东话 refers to all the Yue dialects). That is not to say that the two are mutually exclusive, but the focus of two articles broaching the topic from these two distinct aspects would be quite different. Overlap, fuzziness, blurriness, these could all be covered in the articles, but the concept is clear enough and easy enough to grasp. User Colipon expressed great indignation that Mandarin origins are not the only reason for opposing the use of the term Yue. But I frankly can't see any other real reason for the dogged resistance to using Yue for the Yue dialects, and restricting Cantonese to the prestige dialect of Guangzhou and HK/Macau.

Even in the newspaper report I linked to earlier draws a distinction between "Taishanese" and "Cantonese". If Taishanese is Yue and thus also Cantonese, how can we talk about switching from Taishanese to Cantonese? Bathrobe (talk) 05:55, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

"Yue dialects" is a valid linguistic construct/category but does not automatically make "Yue" a concept of a language. That until now, no one gives a clear indication or consensus that it is a language. On the contrast, some official position is only a dialects. The source Ethnologue, that refers Yue as language, as I last check, is controversial (see the Talk:Ethnologue).

"Yue as a language, Cantonese as its dialect" is very clear and logic position to take. However, please come to real world. You may find an easy way to deal with complication problem in your mind. It is only one views among others, which many editors has shown the problem is more complicated that. It is Wikipedian's duty to "clarify" things but not the expense of distort the reality. Please read: "The Yuè dialects form a relatively homogenous group of dialects spoken over wide areas of Guǎngdōng and Guǎngxī provinces. The term Cantonese, which is sometimes used interchangeably with Yuè, should be reserved for the dialect of the city of Guǎngzhōu (Canton) and not used as a general name for the group as a whole. [p. 214] Chinese, by Jerry Norman (Cambridge Language Studies)"--WikiCantona (talk) 23:34, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the objection above that calling a standard language a "dialect" could be a bit iffy. But I have two reservations: (1) there have been arguments by several editors that it isn't really a standard language, and (2) while I think most of us would be willing to accept this article being about the "standard" language, rather than Guangfu/Yuehai dialect as the current title suggests, AFAIK a consensus hasn't been established. How is Guangfu/Yuehai as the prestige dialect different from Cantonese as the "standard" language? (And I don't mean standard accent.) kwami (talk) 08:06, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

1. It is not formally standardized by a standards body, but this is more of a problem with the Wikipedia convention "Standard X" than with this individual language. Standard English is also not standardized by an academy, and is a pluricentric language. Also there is no brief way in English to communicate the distinction between written language (wen) and spoken language in Chinese terminology; most of the objection to "language" is because of the former sense, and this has to be explained early in the article.
2. They're quite similar, similar enough to share the same article, but the media language and lingua franca is a much more notable and familiar referent than the exact geographical boundaries of the area of dialects deemed sufficiently similar to the dialect the standard is based on. Therefore the article should primarily cover the former with brief summary of the latter that can be continued in more detail in a subarticle if needed. --JWB (talk) 15:49, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

This discussion has gone on for quite some time, so how about a poll to see whether we actually agree? There are two related questions: the topic and focus of the article, and its title.

1. Should the article be about the Yuehai/Guangfu/Guangzhou-Hong Kong dialect, only incidentally as the basis for the language of the media and education, or should it be about the media standard, and only incidentally about the Yuehai/Guangfu/Guangzhou-Hong Kong dialect?
2. Should it stay here (Canton dialect), move to "Cantonese" (with Yue not at that name), move to "Standard Cantonese", or move elsewhere, such as Guangzhou dialect/Cantonese?

We've had plenty of time to justify our views, so how about we just enumerate our choices? kwami (talk) 17:49, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Focus of article

• This is not so much an either/or question, as it is hard to distinguish the two as speech varieties. It is more of a question of different uses of the same speech variety and which uses are more notable and deserve more space in non-specialist articles. In this case the standard language has more weight, and lengthy or extensively technical coverage of dialect issues should be hived off to subarticles. --JWB (talk) 18:01, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
• Should be about the form of Cantonese socially perceived to be prestigious - thus mostly about Guangzhou Cantonese, but can also cover content such as attempts at standardization etc.. Colipon+(Talk) 18:40, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
• It should be primarily about the Yuehai etc. dialect. Focussing initially on the standard in education or media will confuse as it's not really standardised like e.g. Puthonghua. JohnBlackburne (talk) 22:52, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
• I think user Kwami is talking about the difference between Canton dialect, a local dialect (albeit a prestige dialect) spoken in the city of Canton, and Standard Cantonese, a broader "standard" that has transcended locality and has in some ways taken on a life of its own. In English, for instance, BBC English or RP is not the language of any place in particular (certainly not London); it is a standard language, although definitely class-based. Mandarin is not the language of Beijing, it is a standard based on the pronunciation of Beijing that could be used by anyone, and is indeed used by educated speakers from many parts of China. I am sure that "Standard Cantonese" is based on the dialect of Canton, but has it transcended its local origins? I personally don't know. But, the fact that it is spoken in Hong Kong and Macau, and is generally recognised as being spoken in those places suggests that there is something wrong with confining it purely to the dialect of Canton. This is the kind of thing for which we need sources, not a straw poll. To be honest, I think that the implication of the original article was that there is a "Standard Cantonese". The undiscussed move to "Canton dialect" seems to have been made based on a judgement (never properly expounded or justified) that Cantonese is spoken only in the city of Canton -- Canton-ese as one editor consistently puts it. Bathrobe (talk) 01:10, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Canton dialect is spoken in HK because of immigration. Could call it "Canton-HK dialect". But the question is whether this focus article should be defined by dialectology, or by prestige/standardization. Looks like most editors favor the latter, though as JWB points out we'd cover both to some extent either way. kwami (talk) 12:07, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Name of article

• [summary] [any or no prefix] Cantonese and against the title Canton dialect. I think 'Standard Cantonese' is the best candidate for consensus or at least initial consensus. --JWB
• Move it to "Standard Cantonese" or "Modern Cantonese". Colipon+(Talk) 18:39, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
• "Cantonese" JohnBlackburne (talk) 22:54, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
• Move it to Guangzhou Cantonese, but make clear that is not limited to Guangzhou. Benjwong (talk) 07:45, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
• Cantonese (with Standard Cantonese a second choice). There is no real need to qualify it. The "dialect of Canton", also spoken in HK and Macau, is what is normally regarded as "Cantonese". A HK, Macau, or Guangzhou speaker could claim they spoke "Cantonese" and no one would raise an eyebrow because their language would be uncontroversially accepted as "Cantonese". Bathrobe (talk) 01:19, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

This has the effect of splitting votes for 'Cantonese', 'Standard Cantonese', 'Modern Cantonese' etc. when the more relevant content question is any '(something) Cantonese' vs. 'dialect' and the more relevant procedural question is that the move from 'Standard Cantonese' to 'Canton dialect' was unjustified and should be undone before considering further change proposals. --JWB (talk) 17:58, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

If forced to vote in this framework, I vote for [any or no prefix] Cantonese and against the title Canton dialect (not "as is" as the real "as is" is 'Standard Cantonese'). I think 'Standard Cantonese' is the best candidate for consensus or at least initial consensus because of procedural and historical reasons, but this is a secondary issue that should not be allowed to cloud the main issue of 'Canton dialect' being a poor choice. I urge others to make the same vote of [X] Cantonese as opposed to 'Canton dialect' so as not to allow the main issue to be clouded. If there is now or later enough material for a subarticle on 'Guangzhou dialect' or anything else, one can be created, but it is not the article we are on now, which is historically and contentwise the main article on the standard language. --JWB (talk) 18:13, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I am seriously perplexed as to why such a poll did not take place before "Standard Cantonese" was moved here, why such a poll did not take place before "Cantonese" was moved to "Yue Chinese". If we examine procedures alone, it is clear that neither of these moves were carried out with an established consensus - nor were there serious attempts to establish consensus at all. As such, if we still stand on the side of Wiki policy, both of these articles should be moved back. I maintain that we need two articles - one for Yue, titled "Cantonese", and the other for Canton dialect/Standard Cantonese, titled "Standard Cantonese" or "Modern Cantonese". I've stated this position and its merits numerous times, and do not wish to do it again. Colipon+(Talk) 18:31, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

My own take on this is we need an article Cantonese, as the starting point for anyone using Wikipedia to read about Cantonese. And this should cover first and foremost the dialect known as Cantonese among English speakers, e.g. as described in the many books you can buy to learn it, or as found on a web search for the term - Cantonese is the common English name as needed by WP:NCCN so we should use it. The other candidate might be the article Cantonese (Yue), but that now covers the wider dialect group, i.e. material mostly tangential to the Cantonese article we need. So this article should become Cantonese.

I think in particular Standard Cantonese is likely to confuse as unlike Mandarin or German there is no national standard, just a collection of attempts to standardise and document Cantonese in use. Modern is even worse, as it's meaningless - all non-historic languages and dialects are modern. And these or any other prefix will just get in the way of people finding the article.

After this is done to make the distinction clearer Cantonese (Yue) should be renamed but to how it last was, i.e. Yue Chinese, to better distinguish it from Cantonese. This is as Yue is the best term for the group of dialects, given that Cantonese refers to a particular one. JohnBlackburne (talk) 23:44, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the Standard X convention is confusing but has to be attacked at the level of a Wikipedia-wide convention, say through discussion at WikiProject Languages. I don't think Mandarin is any more standardized than Cantonese; I think all languages used in mass media are effectively standardized by usage in those media. Even in countries with a strong national language standards body like Académie française it is still hard for them to change actual usage. Until we can deal with it as a whole I don't think Standard Cantonese is more offensive than Standard English (which standard? US and UK are of comparable stature) or Standard Mandarin (the very word Mandarin means the standards of a national official class and its extension to the whole northern and central dialect area of a billion people is confusing), none of which are the commonly used terms for their standard langauges. --JWB (talk) 01:01, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not my first choice, but I don't think 'Modern' is completely off track. The standardized language is used in media and for intercommunication especially in the largest and most cosmopolitan cities. 'Media X' would be a similar choice as a term for a standardized modern language variety. Compare "BBC English". Yes, even small rural dialects exist in the modern world, but they are not used for modern activities beyond their immediate area. --JWB (talk) 01:11, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I think JohnB's argument is sound, save for the fact that people looking for "Mandarin" on Wikipedia is probably also trying to find "Standard Mandarin" and not just the Mandarin dialect group. If we go by JohnB's formula, we have to make changes over at "Mandarin" as well. Colipon+(Talk) 04:05, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Agree with JWB. Also remember that China and Taiwan have very different "standards" of Mandarin. Colipon+(Talk) 04:02, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

The "Standard" term is vague. What is Standard? There is not a single word that is considered standardized. There are 3 ways to say everything. Benjwong (talk) 07:48, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with JWB and JohnBlackburne. There is clearly a language based on (but not confined to) the "dialect of Canton" that is called Cantonese. Speakers from Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau speak what is normally recognised as "Cantonese". A person from these places could claim to be speaking "Cantonese" and this would be accepted without question (except, perhaps, for the intrusion of large amounts of English vocabulary in Hong Kong speech). It is a language used in the media and while it may only be vaguely standardised, there is clearly a standard at work. That is what this article should be about.

On the other hand, a person speaking Taishanese could not claim to be speaking "Cantonese" without being laughed at or challenged, simply because Taishanese is not normally identified as "Cantonese". I am aware that many (but not all) linguists have expanded the original term "Cantonese" to cover a broader variety of dialects than the original meaning, but this usage should not be treated as the primary meaning of "Cantonese". Bathrobe (talk) 01:40, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I am glad that Bathrobe at last understands that Taishanese speech is not Cantonese, or if I wish to be pedantic, Cantonese as we know it. If JWB did not realise, Standard English refers to the English in England. In the USA, the standard is standard American English, and its implied difference to the English language in England is generally that of spelling and some pronunciations, and it certainly does not imply that all Americans speaks uniformly with a standard American English accent.

As for calling an article "Yue Chinese" to mean the various Cantonese-like languages, I find that totally confusing as "Yue" is clearly not an English word and not well known to native English speakers, and "Chinese" sounds like a singular. A much better way to describe such is "The Cantonic Languages" .

As for people calling the now official language of mainland China Mandarin, these people are years out of date. The official spoken language of China is now Putonghua, "hua" means speech. Putonghua is also now a written language. So not only is Putonghua the standard spoken language of China, it is also its official standard written language. Mandarin (Portuguese for to command) was never in reality a spoken language of the masses. Anyway, the language of China was never called Mandarin by the Chinese people. I suppose one could say that Putonghua has evolved from Mandarin. The accent of Putonghua and Taiwanese Mandarin are different. Pronunciation of standard Putonghua is based on what is called the Beijing accent, whereas Taiwanese Mandarin is still based on the so called Nanjing accent. 86.134.238.112 (talk) 02:26, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

The Standard English article does not privilege British over American. If you have sources saying otherwise, feel free to add them to the article.

You are quoting another article in Wiki. 86.134.238.112 (talk) 23:50, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I have never seen "Cantonic Languages" which sounds like it is talking about Swiss cantons but if you have sources for that, feel free to cite them.

As in your argument using another article above, the term Cantonic Languages has been used in these discussions in Wiki, and so is in itself a source. 86.134.238.112 (talk) 23:50, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Mandarin is a translation of guanhua (官话). --JWB (talk) 05:08, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

So what does Mandarin mean in English? Guan-hua actually translates 'Speech of officials/ officers'. As far as I know mandarin is also a citrus fruit. 86.134.238.112 (talk) 23:50, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

In HK, the UK style english was considered the most legit english. Lift was the word, not elevator. Same was confectionery, not candy. This is a topic beyond accent. Is not a topic for this talk page either. Anyhow I have not heard of the word "Cantonic" used anywhere. Benjwong (talk) 06:11, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Just noticed this:

The Chinese government forbids their use for official purposes, such as in education and the media, where the officially designated Standard Mandarin is used.^{[citation needed]}

It's incorrect to say varieties of Chinese other than Puthonghua are forbidden in the media: there are state owned TV and radio companies that use Cantonese: here and here for example. I would not dispute that only Puthonghua is used in education and in dealings with officials, but even there 'forbidden' is too strong (except perhaps in education).

A better wording might be that Puthonghua is widely promoted by the Chinese government, in education, the media and dealings with it. This is better supported by the best English reference I can find, Language policy in the PRC, and so would deal with the cn, which has been there for a while it seems. JohnBlackburne (talk) 21:22, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Agree with JohnBlackburne. In Guangzhou you still hear Cantonese in bus announcements, and Cantonese is the working language except in administration, media and accommodating outsiders. The city is practically diglossic. Colipon+(Talk) 21:41, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately the woman's voice on Guangzhou's bus announcements is a bad example as her accent is not that of a native Guangzhou person (ie she does not speak Standard Guangzhouhua). The woman's accent is clearly that of an outsider, a 'Northerner' reading out Guangzhouhua. 86.156.253.63 (talk) 00:39, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, I've changed it, and added links to the broadcasters I mentioned above as context. JohnBlackburne (talk) 20:29, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Apart from JohnBlackburne, I haven't heard arguments for a while that the scope of the article should be based on dialect. But lots of you say you 'agree' with John generally. Do we mostly agree that this shouldn't be a "dialect" article like Taishanese? kwami (talk) 12:15, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Some editors have been confused by the renaming. The content currently in the article is about the standard language and the article historically was about the standard language until you renamed it fairly recently. Wanting a "dialect" article is legitimate (although I don't personally think it is necessary until enough content appears to be worth a subarticle) but this article is not it. --JWB (talk) 15:11, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's a common view. John, is that compatible with you? kwami (talk) 20:02, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that it shouldn't be a dialect article like Taishanhua. The article is not about "just another dialect"; it is about the prestige dialect. That puts it on an entirely different level. To requote Wong writing 70 years ago:

In spite of the multifarious varieties of the Chinese language which exist in Kwangtung and Kwanghsi provinces, there has prevailed one dialect which clearly commands the respect of thirty million people over an area of one million square li. This is the dialect of the city of Canton.

Thirty years ago foreign students still argued over the position of standard Cantonese... Nowadays with sufficient data concerning the dialect on the book shelf, it is hardly excusable to bring up the old question again. Any one who has been in contact with the people here for some time should be able to tell the difference between the standard dialect and the many patois of it.

Yes, Wong refers to the "dialect of the city of Canton" but makes it clear that this dialect clearly commands the respect of thirty million people over an area of one million square li, that it is standard Cantonese, and that Any one who has been in contact with the people here for some time should be able to tell the difference between the standard dialect and the many patois of it (my emphasis). With HK and Macau also speaking this standard dialect, there is no real reason to continue insisting on a narrow "dialect of Canton" approach.

Bathrobe (talk) 01:22, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I've amended my response above as I misunderstood the question. No, Im not looking for it to be on the dialect Yuehai in the same way the Taishanese article is. I am unconvinced it is a standard or prestige language or dialect, like e.g. Puthonghua where great efforts have been made by the PRC to standardise it. But as the best known branch of Yue, the one relative to which other dialects are described, and the one most taught and studied overseas, it is as close to a standard as there is. JohnBlackburne (talk) 21:28, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, then it looks like we're all on board as to the topic of the article. Several people have raised objections to calling it "Standard Cantonese", but that's really just a naming issue. kwami (talk) 01:06, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The PRC and ROC have made great efforts to propagate Putonghua/Guoyu but I'm not so sure about great efforts to standardize it. If anything it has appeared to me to be sacrificing quality to quantity, with truly abysmal pronunciation tolerated. Yes, announcers and some teachers seek exemplary pronunciation, but to my knowledge no more so than in Cantonese or other languages. --JWB (talk) 23:48, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

JWB your unsuredness is due to your deficiency in knowledge of the subject. 86.134.238.112 (talk) 23:54, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I would say that variations in pronunciation are tolerated, much the same way as dialects like Cantonese are. But at the same time they are promoting a standard, based on Simplified characters, Pinyin and the Beijing dialect, through the media, education system and their dealings with ordinary people. And they are succeeding in this, as far as I can tell, in particular through the school system. JohnBlackburne (talk) 00:25, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

It's a bit off topic, but forcing putonghua as a lingua franca on millions of people is no mean task. Many of those people would be called non-native speakers in any other country but China. Many others speak heavily accented northern dialects, vaguely similar to putonghua but with very significant differences from it and often very poor intelligibility. It's early days yet, and given the great variety in linguistic backgrounds of people in China and the presence of regional centres of influence, there is naturally great tolerance for differences in accent and vocabulary. Even the influence of Hong Kong and Taiwan is disruptive of efforts to standardise -- witness words like 电脑, which has to a considerable extent displaced the standard term 计算机. Nevertheless, putonghua is now a fact of life for most Chinese whereas even just half a century ago it was a distant and not terribly relevant form of speech for many people. As putonghua becomes a native or near-native language for more and more Chinese, I think there will be many more developments in the language yet. Bathrobe (talk) 01:00, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, it looks like we're all on board with this article being about "Cantonese" as the prestige/standard form of the language (the Ausbausprache), not about a dialect (Yuehai or Guangfu or whatever) as identified or defined by dialectologists using Abstandsprache criteria, nor about a topolect defined by political boundaries. (Though of course that stuff belongs in the article too.) I move that we close this question as resolved, and refocus on what we want to name the article.

Here are some of the suggestions and the objections to them discussed above. Feel free to add more. kwami (talk) 01:06, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Adding one. Are there actually any generally accepted criteria on what makes a language have a standard? There's the obvious codification by a state or state sanctioned body, but can anyone think of a language without such a body that has a Standard nonetheless? For example, is there someone that regulates Urdu? Or is "standard by general consensus" an acceptable criterium? Akerbeltz (talk) 01:22, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I think that's what the discussion on Standard English was about. Often the "standard" language is defined as the language of the cultural capital of the country; other times it's the language of literature. IMO a standardization body is not a requirement.

I disagree that "contemporary Cantonese" does not have historical implications. I mean, we could speak of "contemporary Taishanese" or "contemporary Cockney". kwami (talk) 01:42, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I think you might need to wait a bit before concluding we're all on board. I would like to confirm that Colipon, WikiCantona and Benjwong (to name a few) are actually in agreement with the proposal. Going too fast isn't going to help reach a consensus.

As for the proposed names, "Modern Cantonese" sounds like it has been made up to avoid controversy, not because it is particularly common, current, or accurate. In other words, a "Wikipedia word". "Contemporary Cantonese" is even worse because despite common usage, "contemporary" isn't really synonymous with "modern". Besides, all the Yue dialects are "contemporary". "Contemporary Cantonese" is only different from "contemporary Taishanhua" in that it is a prestige dialect whereas Taishanhua is not. So why the 'contemporary'? (Also, I can hardly find any hits for "contemporary Latin" except for Wikipedia!)

Given that "Cantonese" is normally understood to refer to the language of Guangzhou/HK/Macau, the title of the article should simply be "Cantonese". Bathrobe (talk) 04:05, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree. "Contemporary" and "Modern" are redundant: most things here are contemporary and modern by default. "Standard" is a bit more plausible except the language is not standardised, in the way e.g. English is, and otherwise it's also redundant: if "Standard Cantonese" why not "Standard Welsh" or "Standard Irish"? "Guangzhou Cantonese" is confusing: readers might find it after e.g. a Google search but move on, looking for e.g. the article about the Cantonese they hear in HK or the UK, before they read any explanation that despite the name it's really the article they want. JohnBlackburne (talk) 09:21, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I would vouch for Standard Cantonese for reasons already given above. Colipon+(Talk) 11:03, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually there is Standard Irish, just not as a page title. I think people normally go by the assumption that a language they're presented with is some form of mid-ground variety/standard unless specified otherwise. So going to an "English Class" or "German Class" you expect something approaching the standard, otherwise it would be specified as "Broad Yorkshire Class" or "Low German Class". Except for Guangzhou Cantonese I could live with most of the above options really, now that we have delinatead Cantonese (Yue). Could we not call this one Cantonese language, this seems to be the standard format for languages (cf Irish) where the term can be either a noun or an adjective or is otherwise ambiguous? Akerbeltz (talk) 11:30, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

No, longstanding consensus that we don't call branches of Chinese "languages". Otherwise we wouldn't be in this mess! kwami (talk) 11:33, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Then can someone please clarify why "Hakka (language)" is named as is? Colipon+(Talk) 11:35, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

"(language)" as a dab isn't the same as calling it the "Hakka language", and so far no-one's had a fit over that title. That dab wouldn't work here, because it could just as well be interpreted to mean Yue. kwami (talk) 11:38, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there's a standard Irish, but as it's no different from Irish that's spoken and taught the article title does without the "standard". Only where the standard is something distinct, such as Standard German, does it make sense - in which case there should also be an article on the variety as distinct from the standard. See e.g. the Standard Language category, where there are only 20 or so entries. JohnBlackburne (talk) 12:07, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, also Standard Tibetan. We tend to use the word for Dachsprachen. It would be nice to keep it that way, but it's also convenient here as a work-around. (Not one that I'm terribly fond of, though.) kwami (talk) 02:09, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the whole problem here is "Cantonese (Yue)". Without a small group of editors maintaining that "Cantonese" = "all Yue dialects", we could quite uncontroversially use Cantonese for this article.

The arguments for "Cantonese= Yue dialects in general" are not very strong.

Argument 1) Cantonese is the common term in English. Yue is not an English term. In common use, Cantonese refers to the standard dialect of Guangzhou/HK/Macau. In common use, Taishanese is not called "Cantonese". It's called "Taishanese". So the Common Use argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Argument 2) Many linguists use "Cantonese" for the wider Yue group. The wider use argument has some merit, but there are just as many reasons for not adopting the wider usage. Yes, many linguists use "Cantonese" for the wider Yue group. Just as many linguists don't follow this usage. Many linguists who do use the term "Cantonese" are careful to indicate in some way (by putting Yue in brackets, for example) that this is different from the normally understood usage. Moreover, there are authoritative sources specifically pointing out that "Cantonese" should not be used for Yue.

3) All the Yue dialects are mutually intelligible. The Yue dialects are a relatively homogeneous group of dialects and it is clear that there are dialects that closely resemble the standard dialect. However, there are also many dialects that have poor mutual intelligibility with the standard dialect and are different enough to not be called by the name "Cantonese". Using "Cantonese" for all of them is both imprecise and misleading.

Given the above, the insistence that "Yue dialects" should be called "Cantonese", overriding Common Usage, is difficult to sustain. For 99% of people searching the Internet for information about "Cantonese", this article (currently named "Canton dialect") is the article they want.

Note: This is not completely accurate as WikiCantona explicitly endorsed my call for an article named Yue dialects as a subarticle for detailed coverage of the dialect area. What he or she objects to is calling the main article on the language Yue. --JWB (talk) 07:32, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I suspect that the cause of all our disputes is Hong Kong usage, but it's hard to get a straight take on this. I would like to ask Hong Kong Wikipedians what the normal range of the term 广东话 in Hong Kong is, and whether normal usage in Hong Kong is to include Taishanhua in 广东话. If that is the case, then this needs to be made clear in the article, e.g., "the term 广东话 as used in Hong Kong is often understood to include all Yue dialects of Guangdong province, and not just standard Guangzhouhua". (I also suspect that the persistent tendency for HK Wikipedians to omit Guangxi province from Cantonese-speaking areas is due to the "Cantonese = 广东话" equation.)

If "Cantonese" in, say, American Chinatowns often referred to Taishanese, a note should also be inserted to that effect. That is the whole point of Wikipedia. A person who just knows that "Chinatowns speak Cantonese" and comes to this article should come away having learnt something -- that the so-called "Cantonese" of the old American Chinatowns refers to a rural dialect that is not normally known as Cantonese. The formulation that "Yes, we can say it's a form of Cantonese, but it's not standard Cantonese, it's actually Taishanese, and in fact it's not normally called Cantonese, anyway" is only going to confuse people. The formulation should be "It's not actually Cantonese, it's a related dialect spoken in rural districts of Guangdong province and is considerably different from standard Cantonese".

The insistence that all the Yue dialects (and especially those of Guangdong province) should be called "Cantonese" is very fuzzy, very confusing, and only leads people to scratch their heads. It also causes editors to get tied up in knots when editing and explaining. It is also causing interminable problems naming this article, which is the article about Cantonese in its normally accepted sense.

(Sorry, I warned Kwami earlier that this can of worms should not be reopened, but the whole problem that we have with the naming of this article is caused by the push to use "Cantonese" for all Yue dialects.)

Bathrobe (talk) 01:42, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Problem is, the can has never really been closed. If we do decide to name this article "Cantonese", that might help settle things down with Yue. (Or am I being overly optimistic?) kwami (talk) 02:09, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Canton/Cantonese

Outside of USA, if one said one's mother tongue is Taishanese, people often scratch their head. An explanation often follows, "Taishanese's very similar to Cantonese" or "Some type of Cantonese" or "it's a dialect of Cantonese"... Someone will even tell you 台山話 (Taishanese) is Cantonese.

Please note that Cantonese is merely referring the speeches in city of Guangzhau (Canton) but also the speeches in provinces of Guangdong (Canton). It is not only Hong Kong 廣東話 containing both sense, the 粵語 contains both sense of the word Cantonese. It is also one reason many editors being furious about using "Yue Chinese" to name the Cantonese (Yue) article. The 粵語 is always known as "Cantonese", not some sort of non-English technical word like "Yue". The insistence the term Cantonese is exclusively use for Gwangzhau/HK/Macau is ignoring other's POV and turns away from the ugly everyday fuss use of language.

To seek clarify or to legitimize a dialect being a language, in and of itself, is not a problem. This becomes a problem when doing so at the expense of common use of a term. --WikiCantona (talk) 05:51, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Please note that Cantonese is merely referring the speeches in city of Guangzhau (Canton) but also the speeches in provinces of Guangdong. This is an unsupported assertion.

From 辞海:

• 粤语：汉语方言之一。分布于广东中部和西南部、广西东南部。海外华侨很多说粤语。内部分歧较小。以广州话为例。Yueyu: One of the dialects of Chinese. Found in central and southwestern Guangdong, southeastern Guangxi. Many overseas Chinese speak Yueyu. Internal differences are relatively small. Guangzhouhua is an example. (Other sources say 以广州话为代表, represented by Guangzhouhua).

From 大英汉词典(外语教学与研究出版社, Beijing 1992):

• Cantonese:....广州话 (Guangzhouhua)

From Far East English-Chinese Dictionary (遠東英漢大辭典, Beijing 1994 -- actually a Taiwanese dictionary printed in Beijing under the joint imprimatur of 商務印書店 and 遠東圖書公司):

• Cantonese: ...廣州話 (Guangzhouhua)

These indicate (1) that Cantonese refers to 廣州話 and (2) that 粵語 is not equivalent to 廣州話.

Taking the above definitions, 粵語 is not the same as Cantonese.

If people scratch their heads over Taishanese, saying that "Taishanese's very similar to Cantonese" or "Some type of Cantonese" or "it's a dialect of Cantonese"... is a way of giving people who don't know much about it a general type of explanation. But it's similar to saying that the triads or the tongs are "Chinese mafia". That is fine as a general kind of explanation for the uninitiated, but is not what people come to Wikipedia for.

Also, I note that I specifically asked Hong Kong Wikipedians what the normal understanding of the term 廣東話 is in Hong Kong and failed to get an answer. Instead I was accused of ignoring certain Wikipedians' POV. The problem is that that POV has been pointing visitors away from the normal, uncontroversial use of the term "Cantonese". Bathrobe (talk) 12:08, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

CEDICT has 粤语: Cantonese language, 廣東話: Cantonese language, nothing for 廣州話. MDBG translates all 3 to "Cantonese", and that translates to 粵語. Google Translate sends "Cantonese" to Translation: 粵語 Dictionary: noun 1. 廣東話 2. 粵 3. 廣東人 adjective: 粵. 廣州話 goes to Cantonese. Although I don't have the paper dictionaries on hand, I suspect there is ambiguity even there. This is like asking are French dialects French? Of course they are, but this is not equating them to the standard language. Parisian (disambiguation) gives Standard French as one meaning, and Standard French is in fact based on Parisian, but this does not mean "French" is not a legitimate term for both standard language and dialects. --JWB (talk) 19:21, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

You are going in the wrong direction. 粤语 and 广东话 are obviously going to be translated as "Cantonese", because there is no other easy way to translate them ("Yue" is very unlikely to appear in a generalist dictionary). The problem is how "Cantonese" is translated into Chinese. Google Translate is totally unreliable as a dictionary and isn't really valid.

Incidentally, I checked the very large "English-Chinese Dictionary" (英汉大词典, from上海译文出版社) and found this: "Cantonese: (noun) 广州话；（广州及附近地区使用的）粤语。(adjective) 广州方言的；粤语的。" Bathrobe (talk) 03:30, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

With the parentheses indicating an optional qualifier and semicolons separating alternative definitions, this endorses both the broad and narrow usages, for both noun and adjective. --JWB (talk) 07:38, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

"whether normal usage in Hong Kong is to include Taishanhua in 广东话": How would this question possibly come up in anything other than a taxonomic linguistics discussion? It's not going to come up when simply discussing people from Taishan and their speech, as their locale has already been given more specifically. 广东话 could mean the standard, the dialects of the Yue group, or the dialects of Guangdong Province, and if it can mean more than one of those, then in a situation where context doesn't disambiguate it, people would not be able to use the term without clarification and would have to use a longer description. The Yue dialect group may be the least likely meaning of the three in normal usage, as awareness of the dialect group is low compared to awareness of the province, and it is not clear to the layman that local Hakka or other dialects are more different than Taishan is, as someone said already. --JWB (talk) 20:52, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

But still relevant. I have a number of books and learning materials that deal with "Cantonese". Almost all use 广州话. One uses 广东话, and it's from Hong Kong (and moreover doesn't define what it means by Guangdonghua), one uses 粤语中文. I have a very strong feeling that much of the problem has to do with the fact that Cantonese is called 廣東話 in Hong Kong. The most vociferous advocates of a "broader meaning for Cantonese" appear to be Hong Kong Wikipedians. The insistence that Cantonese is the language of Guangdong province (Guangxi always gets left out) appears to come from Hong Kong Wikipedians. It would be useful if we could pin down what general usage among Chinese speakers, including Hong Kong Chinese, is. I don't expect unanimity or clear-cut categories. But getting a grip on what speakers usually mean could help us move towards a balance. That is why I would like to hear what other speakers, including Guangxi speakers, have to say about the issue -- people who use terms like 白话 rather than 广东话.

Most of the editors arguing for the broad meaning of Cantonese are simply citing sources to justify their POV. That is, they are going through the literature to prove that there are people who use "Cantonese" in the wider sense. (There are, we admit it.) They are arguing from Chinese names like 粤语 and 广东话. In other words, they appear to have a passionate commitment to the notion that "Cantonese = Yue", but they haven't told us why. Is it because "everyone in Hong Kong knows that Cantonese is more than just Guangzhouhua"? Or is it because they have a particular commitment to push Cantonese over Mandarin and are eager to give Cantonese as broad a scope as possible to bolster their language? That is why I consider it important to find out what normal Hong Kong usage is. Bathrobe (talk) 23:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

French is primarily known as the language of the political unit called France, even though the French dialect area extends farther to Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy, and there are also areas within France where the historic local speech is not a dialect of French but Breton, Basque, or German. The French dialects are generally referred to as French rather than more technical and less ambiguous terms like langue d'oil, langue d'oc that cannot be confused with any political unit. Sure, this is ambiguity, but one that is tolerated in common usage and poses no real problem, and does not contradict the fact that "French" usually refers to the standard language. Yes, it's possible that people outside the main political unit might use a different term for the language, though according to all reports Walloons are happy to acknowledge that Walloon is a variety of French rather than say this is too confusing because Wallonia isn't in France. Does this make sense? Now simply transpose from France and environs to Guangdong and environs, and the position that 廣東話 can label both standard and dialect is comprehensible. As for 白话, it has been used for both standard Mandarin and standard Cantonese and seems to have the same sense as 'putonghua' - the default / regular / plain / comprehensible speech (of whatever area assumed from context) that serves as the lingua franca and de facto standard, as opposed to the local dialects not understood by outsiders. --JWB (talk) 00:27, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Might I also add the parallel for Mandarin. Disregarding the fact that it is standardized and politically enforced by a government, Mandarin is very much comparable to Cantonese. Is Sichuanese commonly regarded as "Mandarin"? No. Is Taishanese commonly regarded as "Cantonese"? No. When people say "Mandarin", they generally refer to Standard Mandarin. When people look up "Mandarin" they are looking up "Standard Mandarin", not "Mandarin dialect group". When people say "Cantonese", they generally refer to "Standard (prestige) Cantonese". When people look up "Cantonese" they are looking up "Guangzhou-HK prestige variety". Having said all this, we see that the article on "Mandarin" covers the dialect group, and no one would ever think of moving "Mandarin Chinese" to, say, "Guan Chinese" or "Guanhua", just so "Standard Mandarin" can be moved to "Mandarin". Colipon+(Talk) 00:40, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

"Northern Chinese" would be a better name for an article on the dialect area, both as a common and commonsense name in English and identifiable as equivalent to Chinese "Beifanghua". In my opinion "Mandarin" is acceptable if flawed for an article on both, but should not be the name for an article primarily on the dialect area, and the "Mandarin" name should be associated with the Guanhua/Guoyu/Putonghua/Huayu content. --JWB (talk) 01:49, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

There is no consensus, academic or otherwise, that all the Yue dialects are indeed regarded as "dialects of Cantonese", or that they even form a single language. This has been argued before. We are not dealing with a Standard with dialects situation. Cantonese is not French, because Cantonese (for better or for worse) is not a "national language".

As for 白话, the term baihua as a name for the northern vernacular came before putonghua. I am not aware of the background of usage of baakwa for Cantonese, but it is a divergent usage from standard Mandarin, where baihua is not used for Cantonese. The meaning of baakwa is Cantonese, or Yue, or something in between. It may have got there because it originally meant "vernacular" or "plain speech", but this is irrelevant. It is now used in Guangxi as the name of a language -- Cantonese or Yue. The nuances of usage in different Yue-speaking areas is important. At the moment we are being told by a handful of Hong Kong Cantonese speakers what they consider "Cantonese" to mean, and I'm simply not happy with that as a basis for deciding how these pages should be named. The perspective from Hong Kong (located outside of Guangdong province and using its own particular name for Cantonese) should not determine how either Yue dialects or Cantonese are defined. Hong Kong is only one player in this, and while the Hong Kong POV is highly relevant, it is not the only perspective.Bathrobe (talk) 23:36, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

'no consensus all the Yue dialects regarded as "dialects of Cantonese"' - well, this is merely repeating that there are different definitions of "Cantonese".

'that they even form a single language' - By 'language' presumably you don't mean a lingua franca speech variety, as this is not composed of the dialects of an area, but is a variety of its own, usually based on a single dialect. Do you mean whether they pass a mutual intelligibility test? You've agreed earlier this is not a good criterion, nobody actually uses it for anything, the test is hopelessly biased because people are familiar with the lingua francas but not at all with dialects outside their localities, and for all these reasons it has not formed any of my argument.

'Cantonese is not French, because Cantonese is not a "national language"' - would you then argue Catalan is not a language?

'HK POV' - Assuming for the moment these editors are representing HK (not totally clear to me), if they are outside Guangdong, shouldn't they be less suspect of pushing a Guangdong viewpoint, not more? If they were claiming the language should be called 'Heunggongwa', that would be suspicious.

'baakwa is now used in Guangxi as the name of a language -- Cantonese or Yue' - Presumably it means the lingua franca version of Cantonese (perhaps with some local flavor) as opposed to local Yue dialects farther from the standard. It would be quite surprising if it meant any Yue as opposed to any Mandarin. I would be interested in examining any sources on this too. But even if we do demonstrate something about Guangxi, it has much smaller Cantonese-speaking population and significance. It would be very worthy of inclusion in the article, but unlikely to change the article's name. --JWB (talk) 03:45, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The language of the provincial capital...has been an important lingua franca of the region and the province even extending into Guangxi...where it is known as Bakwa (Baiwa). A more formal traditional reference to Basic Cantonese is Kwongfu yahn and the basic language is Kwongfuwa, and this practice is maintained among many Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. This seems to say Bakwa is an informal term as well as localized, which does not sound like a great idea for an article title. It also defines Cantonese as including all of Yue including Szeyap/Toisan, and defines Bakwa as meaning only the standard, which it calls Basic Cantonese. --JWB (talk) 07:22, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Here's a guy from Guangzhou arguing for 广州话 over 广东话 but eventually admitting he originally said 广东话 then later switched. It sounds to me like there has been a recent push for 广州话 by people from 广州 itself. Anyway, this seems to be a dispute over which Chinese name is best for the standard language, not driven by whether peripheral dialects should also be included, and not related to the English word "Cantonese" which translates all the terms. --JWB (talk) 20:46, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

My understanding (which may be wrong, but is backed up in the link you sent) is that 廣東話 is the preferred term in Hong Kong, but not necessarily Mainland China. My point about HK being outside Guangdong province was one of perspective. If you're a Hong Konger, sitting in Hong Kong, your perspective is likely to be that Cantonese is the language that you speak "just over the border there", in Guangdong province, especially the Pearl River delta. I can't actually prove that the difference in location leads directly to the difference in terminology -- in fact the explanation given in the thread you link to suggests that HKers simply transposed the English word "Cantonese" into the phonetically similar "廣東話" -- but nevertheless, the difference in perspective could have a considerable effect on the assumptions and argumentation we are seeing here from HK Wikipedians. You also have to keep in mind HK's special history as an immigrant city that accepted refugees from many different parts of Guangdong province, not merely Guangzhou city. This would also give a perspective on the scope of "Cantonese" that might be missing in Mainland China.

I raised the term 白话 not because I want to name the article that, but because 白话 is the term that I heard when I lived down that way (not Hong Kong, Hainan). A person sitting in Hong Kong saying "I speak 廣東話" and a person sitting in some part of Guangdong or Guangxi province saying "I speak 白话" could have rather different perspectives on and definitions of the language they are speaking, and these have a direct bearing on the content and the naming of these articles. The use of the term 廣東話 by HK speakers could easily lead unconsciously to a broad definition of the English term "Cantonese", one that it isn't confined to the prestige dialect of Guangzhou city, but, in a fuzzy way, contains all the dialects of Guangdong province (with Hakka and Chaozhou disregarded as being kind of "irrelevant"). Indeed, if you read the thread above and at Yue Chinese, you will find at least one HK proponent of the broad concept here consistently (if unintentionally) leaving out Guangxi province, which would be a fairly natural consequence of using the name 廣東話. I am thus suggesting that the HK perspective is skewing debate on the correct scope of the articles (Cantonese (Yue) and Canton dialect).

That is why I asked our Hong Kong Wikipedians to tell us what the normal perception of the HK man-in-the-street is of 廣東話. If my suspicion is correct, HK people have a general notion that all the Yue dialects "over there" in Guangdong province are "Cantonese". My suspicion is also that the attachment to this notion of "Cantonese" is driving the insistence that "Cantonese" is not simply the standard register of Guangzhou city. I am not inimical to the Hong Kong perspective or the Hong Kong definition of "Cantonese", but I do think we need to avoid being hijacked by this one single perspective. The 白话 perspective, as well as the 广府话 usage also mentioned, could indeed lead us to either narrower or broader definitions of "Cantonese" as a language.

The book that you linked to is very interesting. It defines Cantonese as the High Language of Taishanese speakers. This does not actually define Taishanese as a dialect of Cantonese; it is pointing out the sociolinguistic status of Cantonese vis-à-vis Taishanese. In particular, would it be possible for a non-Yue dialect to treat Guangzhouhua as its "High Language"? I'm not totally sure. Nevertheless, there appears to be a tradition of treating "Cantonese" and "Taishanese" as two different things, and some Wikipedians at this and related pages have reacted violently to treating Taishanese as "Cantonese".

At any rate, I think the links you've given us are very interesting and I would like to look at them more closely. They provide the nuanced information that we need, and are better sources than simple lists of authors who use "Cantonese" and authors who use "Yue", which don't necessarily show how the authors used these terms.

Bathrobe (talk) 00:35, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

HK may be a special case, but Guangzhou can just as well be a special case.

I believe the book was saying that Taishanese is taxonomically part of the Cantonese (=Yue, a term not used in the book) group. As for regarding "Basic Cantonese" (=Standard Cantonese) as the Dachsprache, a few pages later it gives statistics that (as of its publication in the 70s) Taishan and Hakka speakers in Hong Kong readily accepted Cantonese and overwhelmingly switched to it in the second generation, while Teochew were more resistant and about half retained the ancestral dialect. It would make sense that Hakka etc. who accepted the Cantonese standard would view it as the property of the whole province rather than just Guangzhou or the Yue dialect area. But this situation is not unique to Hong Kong; Cantonese as the provincial and media standard has made great inroads in the historically Hakka and Min parts of Guangdong province.

I don't think any of this is definitive evidence that anyone does or does not regard "Cantonese" as also a name for the Yue dialect group; rather, the latter is not talked about except by specialists, and speakers' answers to that question are likely to be afterthoughts and rationalizations. Neither do I think the question of the scope of the word "Cantonese" is the key to the articles naming problem here; what people are objecting to is the unfamiliar "Yue" as English name for the standard language. They don't have a problem with "Yue" in title of a technical article strictly about the dialect group, nor with "Cantonese" as a contextual designation for the dialect group (e.g. distinguishing it from other dialect groups) as long as it is still clear the more frequent usage of "Cantonese" is to refer to the standard language.

By the way, a Malaysian friend of Cantonese background once told me that 广府话 was the term usually used around him. --JWB (talk) 01:25, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, that is exactly the problem. My perception is that the only reason we can't just use "Cantonese" here is because what appear to be HK Wikipedians, or Wikipedians with a HK background, are absolutely determined that the name Cantonese should be applied to all the Yue dialects, not just 广州话 or 广府话. The stance, as far as I can tell, is that "Taishanese" absolutely has to be called Cantonese, we will not brook it being called Yue. If the larger Yue article is going to be called "Cantonese" (as it was before) or "Cantonese (Yue)" as it is now, then of course we will continue to bicker about how to name the article on the standard language, which is what you call the more frequent usage. In other words, the normal name of the language (the standard language) is being usurped by the expanded meaning. That is at the base of all our problems. Bathrobe (talk) 03:00, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

My suggestion is: 1. Main article called "Cantonese", devoting most space to the standard language, but with short nontechnical coverage of dialects. 2. Subarticle "Yue dialects" or "Yue dialect group" with detailed technical coverage of dialect group. 3. Any other subarticles desired for detailed coverage of aspects of the standard language, or of individual dialects, etc. I think this scheme is in line with Wikipedia coverage of familiar languages like French, and would satisfy the editors who complained; WikiCantona endorsed it. --JWB (talk) 05:58, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

By "subarticle" do you mean a section within this article, or a separate article?

I think we can disregard the HK-centric editors. This isn't a walled garden: HKers don't get to decide what we call Taishanese any more than Greeks get to decide what we call Macedonia, no matter how righteous they feel. As it currently stands, I only take "Cantonese (Yue)" to be a compromise title, not an endorsement of anything: the topic of that article is still "Yue", not "Cantonese". kwami (talk) 06:35, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Endorse JWB's plan above. This way I think we satisfy both sides. We then have a "Cantonese" article that is mostly about the prestige dialect but makes mention of other dialects, and then we create a "Yue dialects" article covering the details of Cantonese dialectology. Colipon+(Talk) 12:43, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, depending on how it's done, I think that JWB's plan would work. The phrase "short nontechnical coverage of dialects" concerns me a little. My concern is that the "standard with dialects" model shouldn't be uncritically applied to Cantonese and the Yue dialects. No amount of appeals to French or Catalan will change the fact that there are Yue dialects that are not considered "dialects of Cantonese". You can't shoehorn dialects in merely because you think it's "tidy". Apart from this caveat, I think the above suggestion is a way out of the impasse. Bathrobe (talk) 13:36, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

That works for me. I'm not to concerned about the "short nontechnical coverage of dialects". Any such coverage can have appropriate disclaimers and a link to the main article. For me it gets the names right, the point of this discussion. JohnBlackburne (talk) 14:09, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

English and Chinese words generally do not have entirely equivalent definitions, so to argue based on Chinese usage isn't likely to get us very far.

I tagged for clarification your claim that the name "Cantonese" would case IW problems. IW problems are generally caused by a lack of one-to-one correspondence between different WP's. If the articles correspond, it won't matter what we call them; if they don't correspond, then IW's will be a problem regardless. kwami (talk) 08:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Kwami, You missed the point. At the very you rejected the two sense of Canton. you still hold on the point that Canton should only mean City of Guangzhau, rejecting Canton can mean Province of Canton (Guangdong). The two sense of Canton has been used in English dated back to 18th century, still in use today. I merely stated that the two senses also used in Cantonese language. It is not an argument but a statement.

Interestingly, the IW links correspond before the move. --WikiCantona (talk) 12:05, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Move Justified?

1. The move from Standard Cantonese to Canton dialect should be reversed. There is no consensus on picking a new name from scratch, but the same editors objected to the move and asked that it be reversed. Nobody has objected to reversing the unprocedural move, which does not preclude any future move proposals and discussion. Anyone who does object please speak up.
2. The "Standard XXX" de facto convention is less than ideal (equally for Cantonese and other languages) and should be reviewed at WikiProject Languages, which has not actually discussed this convention or made it policy, even though it has been adopted by >20+ articles. If a naming convention is decided there, it can be adopted for the Cantonese articles. I've now started such a discussion there and encourage interested editors to participate.
3. Further unification with the main Cantonese/Yue article (currently named Cantonese (Yue) is worth considering and would be consistent with other language articles like French language where dialects are considered part of the language but not a dominating feature of the article, with more detailed coverage of dialects in subarticles. However, any such unification should be by moving text rather than moving articles (to preserve interwiki links) and the possibility of this happening eventually should not be an excuse to hold up reversal of the move of Standard Cantonese.

--JWB (talk) 09:44, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I mentioned the Standard languages category but it's also worth looking at Standard language which is perhaps a better guide. It has a shorter list, with the differences in large part accounted for by articles which are mis-categorised and/or languages that are no longer in use. JohnBlackburne (talk) 10:15, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

"There is no consensus on picking a new name from scratch": As I've said umpteen times, I didn't pick a new name from scratch. I used the phrasing of the section heading in the Yue article, which had been stable for months prior to the move. It's an entirely appropriate move if the subjects are to be a language and its dialects; I'm not sure we've agreed that the subject should be otherwise (as Bathrobe cautioned me above).

I take it that the 'features' section of the Standard language article are sufficient, not necessary, as for example Standard English does not have a defining institution. Presumably it's a cline, with the more such features a register has, the more prototypically standard it is. Cantonese would seem to meet several of the criteria, though perhaps only partially. It may thus be a borderline case. kwami (talk) 10:41, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely agree with JWB. Please reverse the page move. There was no consensus whatsoever. Colipon+(Talk) 12:27, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Come to a consensus, and I'll happily move it to whatever we decide on. I'll move if we can even decide on 'Standard Cantonese' temporarily pending a final decision. But meanwhile we appear to agree on nothing at all; as Bathrobe warned me above when I though we'd agreed that the topic was the Ausbau rather than the dialect, it's not clear we even agree on that. If we don't agree on that, then the move you want would not be appropriate.

Does everyone here accept 'Standard Cantonese' over 'Canton dialect', pending an outcome of this discussion? kwami (talk) 20:13, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I am a bit perplexed at this whole situation. So it's okay to move a page without even an attempt at reaching a consensus but then asking to move it back requires a consensus? Colipon+(Talk) 00:34, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

We had repeated objections to the term "Standard Cantonese" by those who said it is not a standard language. We had had no objections to the term "Canton dialect". (Objections to that only came later, after the move was made.) So when I split the article in an attempt to help resolve the naming dispute at Yue Chinese (which was compounded by repeated confusion as to what "Yue" was being distinguished from), I put the page history at the undisputed term. That was therefore the name the article was re-unified under. I expect that it may well end up back at "Standard Cantonese". However, we still do have unresolved objections to that name, and it would be odd to move an article in the face of such objections, unless we establish that the objections aren't reasonable. kwami (talk) 01:54, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

(The section was getting a bit long, with the thread getting lost in the middle.)

JWB proposed that we move to "Cantonese", and Colipon, Bathrobe, & John agreed, with reservations only in how some topics should be treated—which as John notes is a separate discussion. JWB's other proposal, moving "Cantonese (Yue)" to "Yue dialects", is a discussion that should occur on that page, not here. (I personally don't care for the latter, but that has little impact on my opinion of the current discussion.) We could start a discussion there saying that (list of consenting editors) propose that move, but I don't think that we should let that hold us up.

Agree with move to "Cantonese", and restarting discussion on moving "Cantonese (Yue)"

Disagree

Discussion

Hold on a second. I don't think JWB proposed that we move this page to "Cantonese". He says that the Cantonese article should primarily deal with the prestige dialect and only briefly mention other dialects, and that is what I agreed to. I cannot imagine the chaos it would cause interwiki links and existing article links if we chose to move this "Canton dialect" article to "Cantonese". My understanding is that the "Yue dialects" article would be a completely new article that would incorporate some of the content currently on the "Cantonese (Yue)" page. To that effect, we would essentially eliminate this page in favour of moving its content to the "Cantonese (Yue)" article, which will be renamed "Cantonese". Colipon+(Talk) 21:14, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

How is deleting an article and recreating it at another location any different than moving it? kwami (talk) 23:00, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Let me make myself clear in the proposal that I wish to endorse:

1. Move "Cantonese (Yue)" to "Cantonese".
2. Redirect this article to "Cantonese"
3. Modify content on "Cantonese" to: a) The Cantonese language as it's commonly understood - i.e. Guangzhou-HK standard. b) brief overview of all Yue dialects c) controversies and definition ambiguities surrounding what is Cantonese and what is not.
4. Create new article at "Yue dialects", covering detailed dialectology and classification data.

Effectively, what we are doing is preserving the history of the article now titled "Cantonese (Yue)", which is the article that most editors have always regarded as the Cantonese article. In this process, we also preserve the myriad of interlanguage and English wikilinks. Colipon+(Talk) 23:29, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

So you want to delete the article on Standard Cantonese, along with its page history; move Yue dialects article to "Cantonese" and change its topic to Standard Cantonese; then create a new Yue dialects article. I don't see the point. Or are you suggesting that this article be maintained for Guangfu dialect, alongside Standard Cantonese? kwami (talk) 01:52, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

If you look at Standard French or Standard German or Standard Spanish they are largely about the standardization process itself and minor differences between standards. They are not the main article on the language, which is the content that Standard Cantonese (currently named Canton dialect) has.

The Chinese language articles, especially the articles on the first-level divisions, are atypical in that they are focused on dialect taxonomy as much as on languages in the ordinary sense; however some of the names like Mandarin or Cantonese are terms that typically connote the Ausbau languages. The confusion in content and name has led to conflict between taxonomists and non-linguists.

kwami's viewpoint seems to be that the existing Chinese language article hierarchy is about nodes in a dialect taxonomy or cladogram. We could just accept that and resolve the confusion by moving content about widely-used languages out of this hierarchy, leaving them as dialect taxonomy articles, and making sure their names also make clear they are about dialect taxonomy. On the other hand, Colipon's viewpoint seems to be that the existing hierarchy are the main language articles and should retain the article history and interwiki links, with the detailed taxonomic content moving out to new subarticles.

I'm not sure about the page history and would have to go through it in detail. The articles in other languages that are interwiki-linked with the article currently known as Cantonese (Yue), though, seem to be overwhelmingly named just with equivalents of "Cantonese" or sometimes "Cantonese language", suggesting they are primarily about the Ausbau language, as primary language articles generally are. Of course to judge their content we would have to look at them individually; it's quite possible many are also mixtures of dialect taxonomy and Ausbau language coverage. But at least if we are going to have an article named simply "Cantonese" or "Cantonese language" in English, it would make sense for its interlanguage links to be with the articles in other languages named simply "Cantonese" or "Cantonese language". --JWB (talk) 04:11, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd also like to note the articles zh-yue:粵語方言分片 and zh:粵語方言 which are interlanguage-linked with each other but not with any English article. A newly created Yue dialects or whatever could be the English equivalent of these. --JWB (talk) 04:18, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Also, they are subarticles of the main Cantonese article, i.e. section zh:粵語#粵語的方言 has summary coverage with link 主条目：標準粵語和粵語方言 for more detailed coverage, and section zh-yue:粵語#方言片 has summary coverage with link 內文： 粵語嘅方言片 for more detailed coverage. --JWB (talk) 04:27, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

The history is rather instructive.

Cantonese (now Cantonese disambiguation page)

• This page was created on 5 November or 25 February 2002 (it's hard to tell) and originally included content on the Cantonese language. It mentioned that the language is “sometimes called Guong-zeo-wa”.

• On 29 November 2002, it was converted into a disambiguation page (disambiguating the meanings of "Cantonese") by user Scipius.

• However, on 14 October, 2003, despite the fact that it was a disambiguation page, user Zhongyi and an anonymous user (possibly the same person) started adding information concerning Cantonese as a language. This included changing the name of the dialect from Guangzhouhua to Guangdonghua and adding mention of four dialects, including Taishanese. (User Zhongyi admits on his user page that he is not a Cantonese speaker, but loves "Guangdonghua").

• On 13 November 2003, user Olivier moved this content over to the article on Cantonese language.

Cantonese language (= Cantonese (linguistics) = Cantonese (Yue)

• On 29 November 2002 User Scipius converted this page from a redirect (to “Cantonese”) into a content page titled (I believe) "Cantonese language". Initially it didn’t carry a Chinese name for the language (although it did say Cantonese is derived from the name for Guangzhou).

• On 13 November 2003, as noted above, user Olivier moved content from the Cantonese disambiguation page to this article, and it was later integrated into the article. The moved content included the name Guangdonghua and information on its four main dialects.

• The article continued on largely in this form, using "Cantonese" as a term for all Yue dialects. It was later changed to Yue (linguistics), Cantonese (linguistics) and now Cantonese (Yue). (I am not sure of the history of name changes.)

Standard Cantonese

• This article was created on 23 October 2004 by user Felix Wan. It started out with the following introduction: "It is casually known as just Cantonese, which in academic context actually refers to its broader category, the Yue Chinese or Yuèyǔ (TC:粵語 / SC:粤语). In Chinese, the term Guǎngdōnghuà (廣東話 / 广东话) is most commonly used, though that can also mean the dialects of the Guangdong province. It is more formally called the Guǎngzhōuhuà (廣州話 / 广州话) or Guǎng-fǔ Báihuà (廣府白話 / 广府白话)"

The intent of the original "Cantonese (disambiguation page)" and "Cantonese language" pages is not clear, although the general impression is that they covered Guangzhouhua.

Problems arose after user Zhongyi changed the name to Guangdonghua and added mention of four main dialects.

It is pretty clear that when the pendulum had swung towards the broad (or linguists') meaning, an editor felt justified in creating a new page to cover the Cantonese language as it is commonly known.

We are now stuck with the problem of cleaning up the after-effects of these past edit swings. It seems that once set in motion, certain edits stay in the article as a result of inertia. We are still fighting here because of a few edits made by user Zhongyi (who stopped editing at the end of 2003). Rather than trying to pull the article back to the narrow meaning of Guangzhouhua, another editor started a new page to focus on the original content!

I don't really care how this is done. I'm not sure how easy it is to do mass redirects on Wikipedia. But given the history of edits to these 2-3 articles, it's hard to say what the original Cantonese article was. The current page on Cantonese (Yue) may originally have been about Guangzhouhua, but it has now been irrevocably converted into a Yue dialects page by edits made way back in 2003. The current page on Standard Cantonese / Canton dialect has also been going for 5 years. These are legacy issues. Do we really need to try and turn the clock back to 2003?

Bathrobe (talk) 08:37, 15 November 2009 (UTC)