Talk:Chinese language

Change "dialects" wording?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

The list of Chinese languages on the info card is labeled "Dialects:" but they're not dialects, really not even close. They're mutually unintelligible languages that happen to share a writing system. Mandarin speakers and Cantonese speakers can't understand each other any better than speakers of English and French do. LaymansLinguist (talk) 07:55, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

The analogy of English and French sounds a little extreme – the relationship between these two languages is only remote, and if it weren't for the numerous loanwords they would be hard to recognise as related at all, while even the most divergent varieties of Chinese or Sinitic are still relatively closely related. A closer analogy, with respect to time depth and similarity (from what I've seen), would be West Germanic or Western Romance for non-Min Chinese, with Min being more analogous to outliers like North Germanic or Sardinian in their respective families respectively.

Ultimately, I understand what we have in the case of Chinese or Sinitic is more like a strongly differentiated group (like Germanic or Romance) of several moderately differentiated groups (like Frisian or Oïl) of dialect groups (like North Frisian or Walloon), which elsewhere would be classified as a language family composed of several branches each consisting of several individual languages. Just as a very rough idea. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:44, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Just as an illustration, our article Southern Min says:

Southern Min is not mutually intelligible with other branches of Min Chinese nor with non-Min varieties of Chinese, such as Mandarin, and the principal varieties of Southern Min are not intelligible with each other.

So Southern Min is a merely a branch of Min Chinese, yet itself like a language family.

The tables here give a rough impression of just how diverse Min Chinese is internally. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:56, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

A couple hundred languages, so a larger family than Romance or Slavic or Western Germanic, but maybe about that time depth / degree of similarity. — kwami (talk) 08:57, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not talking about the number of languages, but only the linguistic distance within the family. Some of the most divergent members, such as Standard Chinese and Hokkien, are comparatively distantly related – certainly there's no question their divergence would typically get them classed as distinct languages, that is, Hokkien is an Abstandsprache with respect to Standard Chinese. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:30, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Just a point of emphasis that these linguistic situations do not map neatly onto each other: the European sprachbund, as it were, has had a very different linguistic history than the Chinese one, though obviously you can make various points of comparison. Comparisons to how European language families are structured on the site shouldn't be quite enough to make decisions here.

Ultimately, I've been trying to read more of the Sino-Tibetan/Sinitic academic literature to see if there are better structures to organize these articles into. Unfortunately, bahaha, a lot of what I want to read is in Chinese, and mine isn't good enough yet. Orz... Remsense (talk) 17:47, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

As we all know a language is a dialect with an army and navy, so calling them languages isn't ideal. But they are clearly not just dialects either. That's why "variety" is used, as in the above quote and more generally when discussing Chinese language(s). That would be the obvious thing to change it to I think.--2A04:4A43:907F:FEB1:E804:215E:5C25:7100 (talk) 23:30, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

However, that would mean that we'd have to change the infobox Template:Infobox language to Template:Infobox language family, which uses "Subdivisions" instead of "Dialects", and finally get around to merging Sinitic languages and Varieties of Chinese into here. Standard Chinese is a single language, Chinese is not.

By the way, Mandarin Chinese has an analogous problem: even Mandarin is a language family rather than a single language, by linguistic distance of its varieties. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:07, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I'd be in favor of merging Varieties of Chinese into Sinitic languages, but not into Chinese language. This article is about Chinese as conceived on as a single language, contrary to what the others cover. I could see merging Modern Standard Chinese here, and restricting the scope to that. — kwami (talk) 02:28, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

+1 Double sharp (talk) 05:56, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

That would be a reasonable solution. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:03, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I tagged all four articles to merge into two (Chinese language and Sinitic languages). — kwami (talk) 23:07, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

• I'm not sure I understand exactly what is being proposed here, but I see Standard Chinese has been tagged for merging to Chinese language, which I strongly oppose. Standard Chinese is just one variety of Chinese; the subject of the Chinese language article is much broader. I don't see what would be gained by merging these two together. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 03:51, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

  The idea was to make "chinese language" about the standard language, with everything else in the other article.

  This was because people thought 4 articles was redundant for 2 topics (Chinese in the broad sense and in the narrow sense.) — kwami (talk) 22:16, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

  The idea was to make "chinese language" about the standard language, with everything else in the other article. I would assume that meant merging Chinese language into Varieties of Chinese, as they both cover Chinese in the broad sense, and moving Standard Chinese to "Chinese language". That seems more reasonable, but I don't support it either, because I don't think "Chinese language" is the common name for Standard Chinese as distinguished from Chinese in general.

  The other three articles could conceivably be merged together (leaving Standard Chinese about the standardized form and another article, presumably Chinese language, about Chinese as a whole), though I'm not sure whether that's a good idea. At first glance I think it makes some sense to have an article focused specifically on differences between varieties (currently Varieties of Chinese) separate from the main overview article (currently Chinese language). Sinitic languages does strike me as possibly redundant and maybe should be merged into one of the others. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 02:55, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

  IMO sinitic languages should be the article about the language family. Calling it "chinese language" would be like having an article on the "romance language" or the "slavic language", with french and russian as "dialects". IMO, an article on the chinese language should be about the language. We could have a hatnote that other languages called "chinese" have their own articles. — kwami (talk) 23:29, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

  Well, no one considers the Romance languages or the Slavic languages to be varieties of one language, whereas that is how Chinese is usually seen, including by most of its speakers, and what it is called by most sources. Mutual intelligibility is not the only criterion out there for what constitutes a language. Also, making the Chinese language article only about Standard Chinese would give the impression that only that variety is the "real" Chinese language and other varieties aren't. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 14:54, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  No, people don't generally consider it a single language. That's to some extent a translation issue, where 'topolect' is translated as 'dialect'. There's also common usage of 'dialect' in the sense of not an official language, both in Chinese and English, but that's not WP usage.

  Same issue with only one variety being the "real" French or German or Italian language. Not unique to Chinese. — kwami (talk) 22:42, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

  If people object to the word dialect, we can say topolect or variety instead. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 14:55, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  First, I think there kinda has to be a Chinese language page. So, I understand why Sinitic languages is that, and not Chinese languages, because it would be odd to have with Chinese language, both having different scopes. I also  Disagree strongly with merging Standard Chinese with Chinese language, it is not taxonomically appropriate. I've been working on Chinese characters lately, which has a lot of overlap with this discussion but is naturally not coterminous—the general issue being that spoken and written languages do not perfectly map onto each other, but they do map significantly onto each other–the relevant structure I've been mulling over (insofar as one should be constructed) is as follows, with representative examples of where pages should 'go' in the hierarchy:

  • • Sinitic languages
    • Varieties of Chinese
    —it's really difficult to try to wedge orthography and the spoken languages apart, but maybe this tree should focus on the spoken languages specifically.
    • Mandarin
      • Standard Chinese
    • Yue (&c.)
  • • Chinese characters
    • Chinese family of scripts
    —orthography tree, the first page should provide an overview of the main trunk of the logographic family from oracle bones → modern written chinese et al, while appropriately treating kanji etc.
    • 'Stylistic scripts'
      • Clerical script
      • Cursive script (&c.)
    • Written Chinese
      • Classical Chinese—I basically have been treating this as a wholly artificial written language, almost more akin to a writing system itself than a natural language that was spoken, but I know that's not quite right.
      • Simplified characters
      • Traditional characters
      • Written Cantonese
    • Kanji (&c.)
      • Jōyō kanji (&c.)

  I think, regarding default terms, the best I've settled on is varieties for the spoken language, and forms for the written language, e.g. traditional versus simplified versus kanji, as opposed to the less-structural, stylistic 'scripts', like regular script vs. gothic script, etc.

  this stuff is complicated! help! Remsense (talk) 17:19, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

  Remsense So you're arguing for a dab page at Chinese language? If not, what scope would the Chinese language article be about? (t · c) buidhe 07:50, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

  No, no! Honestly, I'm not sure. It's tricky, I think some overlap in coverage is required, because there are many common, core aspects shared between Chinese understood monolithically, and as a phylum. Remsense聊 08:04, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

  This started with the idea that 'varieties of Chinese' was redundant with 'Sinitic languages'. We could merge those and not these, if ppl want. Or keep all 4, if the overhead and content-fork issues aren't a problem. — kwami (talk) 22:27, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

  yes, certainly, i figured it was worth sharing some extended thoughts while i was at it. are there any languages in that phylum that aren't really considered Chinese per se? Bai?

  i think it might be worth making the articles more distinct instead, i.e. with Sinitic languages for a comparative linguistics treatment of the grouping, and Varieties of Chinese with a historiographical, cultural treatment. Which is already mostly the case, but maybe it would be apropos to more clearly delineate. Remsense聊 22:48, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, sometimes also Bai. Also perhaps Caijia, which may or may not be closest to Bai (if Bai is even Sinitic). So they're not exact synonyms according to some, but not enough of difference IMO to require separate articles just for that point, if there isn't additional reason to split them. — kwami (talk) 23:46, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

  Agreed. I do think the academic/cultural distinction is enough so that they should be separate, is where I'm coming down at the moment. Remsense聊 00:30, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

  I agree that this article should not be merged with Standard Chinese. This article is about a different topic, encompassing all aspects of Chinese including its history, literary styles and modern standard and regional forms.

  The key question is where this article should be placed in the hierarchy of language families and languages on the wiki. It is the worst kind of POVFORK to have separate articles about the same thing just so that one can have a singular title and the other a plural.

  It is generally agreed that Chinese is as diverse as a language family, though we outrun the literature if we try to enumerate languages. So this article should use {{infobox language family}} instead of {{infobox language}}, and have a plural title. To return to the original poster's complaint, the reason the infobox says "dialects" is that it uses {{infobox language}}. Very little of the content would need to change. Kanguole 15:00, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

  I support a family box.

  Yeah, no-one even knows what the Chinese languages are, we only have isoglosses. — kwami (talk) 03:59, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

  Agree with {{infobox language family}} proposal. now not so sure, after reading 209.2.226.172's insights below. Remsense聊 16:52, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

  I would say the Sinitic languages article is a POV fork. It should exist because the Chinese areal features do not extend to Bai, etc. (Bai, etc. do share a lot of areal features with Chinese but those are typical interlanguage features, usually in phonological level, few codevelopement) Yet unfortunately it developed into an article that pretends it's always possible to scientifically separate out different strata in each spoken Chinese variety. 209.2.226.172 (talk) 21:26, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I disagree with the merging and disagree with a {{infobox language family}} proposal. The concept "Chinese language" is a loose translation of "漢語" which should really be translated as the Chinese ''yuyan''. It is not simply a language, a language family, a written language or many languages, but a unified entity that incorporate areal features and codevelopement a lot of intertwined lects. Each sound change in one variety of Chinese may have various degrees of effects on all varieties of Chinese that is usually not borrowings. If an infobox other than "language" has to be used, it might be something like a linguistic area or sprachbund, but infobox language suits with the need of this article better. Using a language family infobox would misled the reader that a tree model works with Chinese, or that it's easy to separate strata in Chinese. 209.2.226.172 (talk) 20:31, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

For the merging issue, a good distinction is that other prestige varieties exist, and many are prestige not due to representing the corresponding subfamily but the Chinese language. For example, Guangzhou Cantonese is definitely not the best variety to represent the Yue Chinese (many Goulou varieties do a better job), but is prestiged in Hong Kong because the locals believe it represents Chinese better. Hangzhou Wu is definitely not as representative to Wu when compared with Shaoxing Wu, however many find it prestiged as a representative of Chinese yet none considers it a representative of Wu (on the other hand, a Gascon speaker would be proud of his language because he speaks perfect Gascon, not because he considers his Gascon is the best French, thus applying a French model to Chinese may be offensive to those speakers). A Chinese language article should has its phonology section focused at the common part of "epicenter Chinese" that are more likely to impose an areal effect on others (such as Beijing Mandarin, Eastern Henan Mandarin, Nanjing Mandarin, Hangzhou Wu, Guangzhou Cantonese and the literary layer of some Min), their relations to the Middle Chinese and the range of acceptable articulation, and the effect of these varieties toward each other and toward varieties less likely to impose an areal effect, rather than any one single specific spoken Chinese. Pure comparative linguistic information should be removed from this article to Sinitic languages since it is terribly off-topic. "Dialect" is a common established translation of 方言 so it doesn't need any change, but it's important to inform the reader that the "dialect"s in these articles should not be understood in the English way, and that it's used simply because there's no better English terms for it. 209.2.226.172 (talk) 20:44, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate the deliberation! if I'm understanding your points correctly, you're saying that this article should focus on the areal overlap of the Chinese varieties, and a comparative lens should be reserved for Sinitic languages? Remsense聊 21:56, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Comparative lens should be kept and stated with the areal overlap in an intertwined way. Pure comparative lens (such as an obsolete layer in Waxiang) should be reserved for Sinitic languages. There should be focus when stating the comparative model: vernacular stratum of Min, although with great linguistic value, is less likely to become an important source of global areal effect, should not be elaborated in this article but instead included in Sinitic languages and Min Chinese. It is important to mention that Chinese is not a dialect continuum, but a chimera of various dialect continuums that connected with each other with complex structures, and that when such connection fails it's also common for Chinese to have apparent internal borrowings as if it were a family of independent languages. 209.2.226.172 (talk) 22:11, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Grammatically speaking, there are certain Cantonese (and Wu) grammar that has somewhat entered "common Chinese" but not yet in MSC (yet well understood by all). Such features should be included (such as 張三大過李四). Features in Beijing Mandarin that has not entered common Chinese should not be included (though I cannot immediately get an example out of my head). In comparative linguistic, all features are equal (or unequal based on "linguistic value"), but in the natural development of a language not all features are equal. 209.2.226.172 (talk) 22:33, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

In English, a language usually refers to a smallest unit that develops relatively independently, subject to some sprachbund restraints (but not strong enough to be affect its evolvement) and to some sprachbund borrowing process (but not to a degree that one cannot tell whether a word is borrowed or evolved independently), usually characterized by mutually intelligible classes. Such a concept is successful when dealing most languages in the world, such as the Dungan language (even though this one is not characterize by mutually intelligible classes). However, it has some problem when dealing with some dialect continuums and has serious problem when dealing with many Asian languages with complex internal relations such as Chinese. Consequently, it would make better sense to move this article to the Chinese linguistic monster (which it is) than to move it to the "Chinese languages". --209.2.226.172 (talk) 22:20, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to mention the following fact: "On the other hand, Dungan speakers like Iasyr Shivaza and others have reported that people who speak the Beijing Mandarin dialect can understand Dungan, but Dungans could not understand the Beijing Mandarin." It may be explained with the assumption that Dungan contains strictly more information than Beijing Mandarin, but that's not the case. It makes more sense to say due to there's is no monolingual native speakers of any individual spoken Chinese variety (no matter it's Standard Mandarin or something else), a "native speaker" of either Beijing Mandarin or Standard Mandarin can grasp the meaning of Dungan sentence with his prior knowledge in some other varieties. If even Standard Mandarin doesn't not have a monolingual native speakers (with the exception of some earlyschoolkids near Beijing, but I wouldn't say schoolkids have complete knowledge on Beijing Mandarin either), the "Chinese languages" would be a family of dead languages that as a whole spoken by everyone. Since there are a good number of Dungan speakers without knowledge of any spoken Chinese and a good number of Chinese speakers without any knowledge of Dungan, these are two independent languages. Suppose one day every Chinese speaker speaks perfect Standard Mandarin and uses Standard Mandarin as the single source of absolute standard, like the case of French, one may say probably Chinese is a language family. 209.2.226.172 (talk) 00:54, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Chinese publications, including the Encyclopedia of China, often use the formulation 汉语在语言系属分类中相当于一个语族的地位。 'In language family classification, Chinese is equivalent to a language family.' This argues for a language family infobox.

The aim of enwiki is to communicate information in English. Blanket translation of all uses of fāngyán 方言 into English as "dialect" has long been recognized as misleading, so we should avoid it. Using {{infobox language family}} would label Wu, Yue, etc as "subdivisions", which everyone agrees they are. There is no implication of a tree model, let alone separation of strata. Kanguole 11:46, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

When I mentioned "Chinese languages" would be a family of dead languages that as a whole spoken by everyone, I didn't mean to deny the diversity of Chinese, but to confirm it yet meanwhile point out that it forms only one small aspect of the topic. Take the article George Washington as an example: if we write "George Washington is an un-mummified symbiote of microbials, protists and protostomes" in the top paragraph introduction, the tone of the article would be terribly inappropriate even if the statement itself may be technically correct; however, if that sentence appears in a "Tomb" section and starts with "Physically speaking, the body of George Washington is equivalent to ...", it would be appropriate though of no importance to be mentioned. The situation with this article is similar: if the language family infobox appears in a section of this article there's no problem (though for such infobox qieyun-strata should not be mentioned at the same level with colloquial Min strata), but the infobox appears on the top paragraph should be a language infobox or a "linguistic monster" infobox instead of a language family one in that Chinese is a living yuyan with codeveloping varieties. The aim of enwiki is to communicate info in English and you are right that "dialect" is not a perfect translation, but that doesn't mean one should use a worse one that brings more misleading than clarification. I said the Sinitic languages is a POV-fork not because the mention of language family, but because the article failed to inform the reader that the topic of the article is only one small aspect of the Chinese language. It's like an article tomb of Washington failed to tell the more important fact fact Washington was once a human being that rewrote the track of the history, or an article about Macanese man'o'war failed to tell a Macanese man'o'war is a single living creature in ecology point of view. Otherwise, the development of that article apart from the top paragraph is okay. No only is it practical both infoboxes to be mentioned with the language, if we make the language family infobox in corresponding section concise, it is somewhat necessary because, taking Min Chinese as an example, it is a sprachbund of literary strata and a cognitive family of colloquial strara, but not quite a sprachbund of colloquial strata and probably not at all a valid family of their literary reading strata. What's more, the two main topics of Min only roughly coincide: some topolects near Shaojiang Min may be considered in Gan sprachbund but in Min family or reverse (since it's hard to tell which stratum is the main stratum and even unlikely to separate a stratum out from the intertwined system). That said, probably each large topodivision of Chinese should also be introduced both as an actively developing intralanguage sprachbund and a cognitive family of diverse "dead" languages, but currently even this Chinese language article doesn't manage to inform the fact that Chinese is actively developing as one integrated body (while Encyclopedia of China of course does).

The below section on Ba-Shu Chinese can also be solved this way because Ba-Shu seems to be well-accepted as an extinct linguistic area but not so clear as an extinct comparative family. 209.2.227.244 (talk) 02:17, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

This is an example of a two-infoboxes solution. In the language infobox, each variety is a linguistic area (intralanguage sprachbund, 区片), while the language family infobox lists only legit toplevel comparative entries. The Template:infobox language may be edited to allow a parameter to change "dialects" to "varieties", and maybe more. The Chinese designation 方言区 and 方言片 apparently refers to geographical area, which is the origin of the current classification, and are not comparative linguistic subdivisions. Chinese is a "language" jn the sense of, if you send a some Standard Mandarin speakers to 300 light years away, then even if they still remember their language and still use Chinese characters, what they speak is no longer Chinese because their language has lost all possible coevolutionary opportunity with Chinese (that's why Dungan is frequently not considered Chinese until/unless coevolutionary conditions from again). Similarily, a few "speakers of a variety of Chinese" once reach 300 l.y. far away, based on their full knowledge of their variety, partial (passive) knowledge of varieties of their neighbor area before migration, their choice of knowledge about Classical Chinese terms and so on, a new living language just formed from a not-individually-living variety of the living language Chinese and become a separate language at the same time of becoming a living language (just like what happened when a zooid is cut off from the colony-body and put into a growth medium). Simply being Overseas Chinese or simply being illiterate cannot guarantee a sever of codevelopement, only by cutting several ties could a sever of coevolution to be guaranteed. 209.2.227.244 (talk) 04:48, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion. Why don't we just create a {{Infobox Chinese variety}} infobox? I don't think it's unwarranted given all the special considerations. Remsense聊 11:48, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't believe it is warranted – though Chinese is an extreme case, dialect continua, dialect borrowing and diglossia also occur elsewhere in the world.

But in any case, it wouldn't touch on the question being discussed here, namely what infobox should go in this article. Kanguole 12:38, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree with your stance that creating an {{Infobox Chinese variety}} infobox is not warranted, but I disagree with your reasoning. It is oversimplification to describe the Chinese language phenomenon as simply "dialect continua, dialect borrowing and diglossia" but an organic interaction among dialect continua, multi-directional dialect influencing (not just borrowing), bidirectional diglossia, social linguistic, etc. Some of these phenomenons are not common among western languages (espcially multi-directionality of dialect influencing and of diglossia), not to mention a combination of them all. However, it is a somewhat typical phenomenon in the Chinese yuyan, in the Tibetan skad, and in a number of Asian linguistic entities. That said, what we need is a {{Infobox cognate coevolving areal linguistic entity}} for this article and for a number of other articles (such as the Tibetan skad), but it's premature to do that. As for now, the best fit should be {{Infobox language}}.

Talking about the directionality of diglossia is beyond common logic. What I intend to say is that a speaker of A is likely a speaker of B may or may not imply a speaker of B is likely a speaker of A: in Chinese monodirectional diglossia exists only for a few varieties such as Standard Mandarin, most diglossia phenomenon are bidirectional. This is not very common in the west (espcially not common in nation-states with a titular ethnic group amd in the "Five Eyes" English-speaking world), but common in a number of eastern linguistic entities where indigenous cultures dominate. 209.2.231.4 (talk) 02:24, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

By "elsewhere in the world", I did not mean the West, or even the Anglosphere. Kanguole 23:53, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

I have reverted these changes. The second infobox is mainly prose, which belongs in article text (provided it can be supported by citations) – infoboxes are for summary information. A further problem is that the subdivision proposed here appears to be novel rather than taken from the literature.

I have also reverted the re-addition of Ba–Shu for the reasons given in #Ba–Shu below.

More minor points are:

• The link to macrolanguage is unhelpful – it is not a linguistic concept.
• The link to stratum (linguistics) refers to a different concept than the vocabulary layers intended here.

I'm afraid that phrases like "a sprachbund of literary strata and a cognitive family of colloquial strata" convey no meaning. The individual words, and even "literary strata" and "colloquial strata", have meanings, but the combination does not.

And I'll repeat that labelling Wu, Yue, etc as "subdivisions" (which {{infobox language family}} would do) is uncontroversial, even if people would disagree on the meaning of the subdivisions. Kanguole 12:38, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

I apologize for my mistake: all "cognitive" above should be "cognate". I was reading about something about psychology that day and when writing a comment at night my output experienced a disorder. So it really should be "a sprachbund of literary strata and a cognate family (with shared innovations) of colloquial strata". Now the combination should make sense. Talking about "stratum", it was a slight abuse of the term because the stratum usually refers to the source language but I identified it with its image on the object language, that is, the part of vocabulary, phonology, grammar, etc. of the object language that can be traced to a forementioned stratum. Under such a conceptual equivalence, the vocabulary layer is an instance of stratum (because all the information we can attest from the substratum language are from its image on modern Min Chinese). 209.2.231.4 (talk) 02:38, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Macrolanguage, on the other hand, is helpful. The definition of macrolanguage is due to SIL, and under no clause did SIL say the concept is not linguistic. So your claim is unfounded. The official definition, clusters of closely-related language varieties that, based on certain criteria is clearly leaning toward a linguistic rather than non-linguistic definition. Social linguistic is an integral part of linguistic and even if it doesn't, the inept of the current linguistic is no excuse to deny the very existance of Chinese language as something beyond a language family. Like, that biologists hadn't developed a concept for Portuguese man'o'war by 18th century didn't mean Portuguese man'o'wars in 18th century should be physically severed into individual zooids and then wait for malnutrition-death. The conventional concept of Chinese and of Tibetan doesn't need linguistic to justify. If a ljnk to macrolanguage is not usable, the only way to achieve NPOV in the head paragraph is following the Chinese Wikipedia tone: "The Chinese language is both a language and a (paraphyletic) language family (due to the exclusion of Dungan and Taz)." (The Encyclopedia of China you mentioned above can be used as a citation for this.) The current leading paragraph development represents a strong western bias. 209.2.231.4 (talk) 03:00, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Labelling Wu, Yue, etc as top-level "subdivisions" itself was never a problem because "subdivisions" could mean "areal subdivisions". The problem is:

1. The use of the infobox language family alone in the top paragraph is inappropriate (however it can be used in a section);
2. The "subdivisions" in {{infobox language family}} are language family subdivisions (generally based on shared innovations), not areal subdivisions. Labelling Wu, Yue, and other top level areal subdivisions other than Min as top-level family subdivisions (generally based on shared innovations) are inappropriate.

209.2.231.4 (talk) 03:13, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

A "macrolanguage" is an entity that has an ISO code and is composed of smaller entities that also have ISO codes. It has no meaning outside of ISO. — kwami (talk) 07:57, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion. It seems the bigger linguistic values a feature has, the less importance it has in "common Chinese" development. So IMHO the following arrangement may be a solution:

1. The article Chinese language may cover any phonetical features equivalent to the various yunbai systems (incl. Pekingeese yunbai, Suzhou Wu yunbai, and Cantonese yunbai), to the Old National Pronunciation, to the literary reading systems in Cantonese and Hokkien, but with without inclusion of any specific one of them, together with the grammar mentioned above and the frequent incorporation (switching) of Classical Chinese grammar in formal speaking, how different varieties interact, etc., with 80% of its content. The remaining 20% covers various spoken varieties, with maybe one or two sentences mentioning vernacular Min and Waxiang.
2. The article Varieties of Chinese may cover a thorough phonetical development from qieyun to all spoken Chinese varieties except for vernacular Min and Waxiang, briefly mentioned in the article without deep introduction.
3. The article Sinitic languages have qieyun-derived phonetics occupying less than a third of its contents, and include the development from Old Chinese to qieyun (and then to modern varieties), Min, Waxiang and Bai; and briefly mention the fact that a good number of modern pronunciations may involve a mix of different strata thus cannot be referenced, and the fact that with such a limited info available the reconstruction of Old Chinese is highly inconclusive (unlike PIE). An article with such a name deserves highly technical contents. 209.2.226.172 (talk) 01:18, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

All of that seems to belong in History of the Chinese language and Historical Chinese phonology, both of which have much scope for improvement. Kanguole 11:46, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

That one piece of information can be included in one article doesn't mean it cannot be included in another. And by including some information I didn't mean only including that information. The map from Old Chinese to Sinitic languages can be concisely mentioned in a way that from Old Chinese reconstruction directly shooting into modern varieties while a history of a language has to deal with how it develops step through each dynasty (and Middle Chinese was never a legit unitary language as qieyun was based on two varieties of Chinese, a modern variety based on qieyun is based on one of the two varieties, or a thrid intermediate one, or many of the above mentioned. Historical linguistic is different from both comparative linguistic and areal one). Sinitic languages may deal with the influences between modern varieties due to unintelligibility such as internal loan words; while Varieties of Chinese may deal with influences from common core. There are a lot to be included that cannot be covered by historical linguistics. 209.2.227.244 (talk) 04:34, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Agree with {{infobox language family}} proposal, despite insights from 209.2.226.172. None of the factors mentioned change the fact that the Chinese languages are, for the most part, extremely mutually unintelligible, and the subdivisions should be treated as separate languages. In any case, there should not be two separate pages for Sinitic languages and Chinese language [sic], as Chinese-Bai monophyly has not to my knowledge been shown definitively. If "Sinitic" is preserved as a term for Chinese-Bai separate from "Chinese", it is merely a hypothetical subgroup akin to Italo-Celtic, which its infobox does not reflect. The page also has less than 10 lines on Greater Bai, with the vast majority of its content on comparisons between Chinese varieties, so I support its merger. I would also suggest moving Chinese language to Chinese languages, with Chinese language redirecting to a disambiguation page linking to both Standard Chinese [sic] and the new Chinese languages. Vampyricon (talk) 19:40, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you that the Chinese-Bai monophyly should probably be discussed separately, but my point is never to deny the diversity of Chinese, but to point out that Chinese should not be introduced in one aspect, when most readers would search Chinese for a more broad topic and usually its more important aspects. Even without Bai, the article may still be developed in a way that qieyun-derived phonetics occupying less than a third of its contents (so the above arrangement still works). For the development of the article Chinese language, Portuguese man o' war makes a perfect example: "Portuguese man o' war constitutes a single individual from an ecological perspective, but is made up of many individuals from an embryological perspective." with a top paragraph introduction "The Portuguese man o' war, is a marine hydrozoan" instead of "a colony of tiny marine hydrozoans". A redirect page cannot serve the purpose of introducing Chinese as a whole, but more like

Portuguese man o' war may refers to

• An individual tiny Portuguese man o' war zooid
• The Portuguese man o' war colony (like a group of ants)
• The sail of a Portuguese man o' war, or Standard Manowar

209.2.227.244 (talk) 02:36, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

References

While there are still subjects to speak about, are there any objections to closing the two proposed mergers with the consensus not merged? Remsense留 09:23, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

No objections. Please go ahead. 2001:8003:9100:2C01:2C47:80BD:EAA6:D798 (talk) 15:12, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Also I believe it's time to create a {{infobox topolektbund as well as comparative family}} to meet the need of Chinese, Tibetan, and a number of other language that may need it. The concept Swiss German (contains both Swiss Standard German and Swiss Alemanian) may be a concept similar to Chinese language but for that case it is not a comparative family (strictly speaking not is Chinese a comparative family because it probably doesn't contain Dungan). 209.2.228.41 (talk) 01:54, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

NPOV

re: your recent edits: for shorthand/leading terminology like this, our choices really need to be backed up verbatim by plenty of sources, as well as being accurate. English language sources would not introduce Chinese as a "coevolutionary linguistic entity with highly mutually unintelligible varieties". It is not our domain to invent our own phraseology, even if we think it's better—we have to pick the most accurate, but adequately well-attested and representative, descriptors that we can from existing sources. Remsense留 04:00, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree that such phraseology should be avoided whenever avoidable. But the alternative should meet NPOV. Putting language family as the main topic of the article, espcially on the top sentence, doesn't meet the NPOV criteria, just like calling a Portuguese man-o-war a colony in the first sentence wouldn't be a NPOV introduction. One option would be following the article in Chinese Wikipedia "Chinese is a language and a synonymous language family". 209.2.228.41 (talk) 01:37, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Ba–Shu

I have reverted the addition of Ba-Shu to the infobox, because it seems to have no coverage in any overviews of Chinese dialects or Chinese language history. There is a Wikipedia article Ba–Shu Chinese, but it appears to be a synthesis of one of the dialect areas mentioned in Fangyan and studies of poetry from Song-era Sichuan. Kanguole 23:52, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Would you please tell me why you thought this BaShu issue couldn't be solved in the two infoboxes way above, Given that Ba-Shu seems to be well-accepted as an extinct linguistic area but not so clear as an extinct comparative family? Or you just reverted the re-addition of Ba–Shu because it is improper to put it into a single infobox and that the two infoboxes way was "prose"? 209.2.231.4 (talk) 03:06, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

As I mentioned, it seems to have no coverage in any overviews of Chinese dialects or Chinese language history. Kanguole 10:06, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

It's not covered primarily because its relative importance is not as high as those living topolects, but there is strong evidence of its existance as a historical topolect. IMHO it can be here with an asterisk. 209.2.228.41 (talk) 02:16, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles need to be based on coverage in reliable secondary sources, to avoid original research and undue weight. If those sources don't find it worth mentioning, nor should we. Kanguole 10:49, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Lead NPOV

Creating a new heading for 209.2.228.41's NPOV concerns raised here, where they would like the article lead to initially define Chinese as something like

a coevolutionary linguistic entity with highly mutually unintelligible varieties

—which I feel is too novel a phraseology for an article with such a large scope. But I appreciate their concerns, and am not quite sure what to do about it. Remsense诉 20:44, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

I would really like to get this banner off the top of this article. IP 209..41, is there any formulation where we use the term "group of languages" in the first sentence that would be acceptable? It's simply an issue of prose. Remsense诉 07:44, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Hokkien and Hakka

Both hokkien and hakka are official in taiwan. Both are sinitic languages. Should it be added into the "Official status" section of the template? Guotaian (talk) 15:59, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Yeah why not. Rynoip (talk) 05:32, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Infobox

@Vampyricon et al., after thinking about it, I strongly suggest we switch back to {{Infobox language}}. The notion that removing significant parameters of expected and important information is acceptable if is what it takes to use the language family box, is one I don't really agree with. Especially given the fact that this article, vis à vis Sinitic languages, exists primary from the lens of a "macrolanguage" rather than a family. Frankly, I don't think it's fair to omit the information about Braille, writing systems, and language codes. Remsense诉 03:58, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I've actually gone and added a tiny hack to {{Infobox language}} so that it says "Varieties" instead of "Dialects" now. Remsense诉 05:14, 5 August 2024 (UTC)