User:Gniw/Explanation of Babel codes

en-4: The “en-4” refers to my cousin, a native speaker, telling me “You talk basically the same English as I do”, back when I was still living in Hong Kong. Since my mother tongue is not actually English, “near-native level” is thus technically true but actually quite misleading, since I frequently express myself better in English than in Chinese, and I’m often mistaken for a CBC.

zh-yue: My mother tongue is Cantonese, a dialect of Chinese.

zh / zh-4: 該用戶的母語是中文 (The mother tongue of this user is written Chinese) / 該用戶能以地道的中文進行交流 (The user can communicate in idiomatic written Chinese) refers to poor design in Wikipedia’s Babel system. Technically, since written Chinese (中文) is a written language, no one should be able to claim it as a mother tongue; unfortunately, people do, and so I have to use it here.

fr-2: “Cet utilisateur peut contribuer avec un niveau intermédiaire en français” (This user can contribute with an intermediate level of French) refers to my currently studying at the Alliance Française at the CEFR B1 level.

ja-1: “この利用者は少しだけ日本語を話すことができます。” (This user can only speak a little Japanese) refers to my having studied it for a term (but completely confused by its grammar); the disparity between English/French/German grammar and Finnish grammar has, IMHO, reconditioned me to try Japanese again, so hopefully things will improve in time.

(he-1 should follow since I have studied it for some time, but I cannot even understand the key given by the “he-1” code (משתמש זה מסוגל לתרום ברמה בסיסית של עברית), so my exceptionally low level of Hebrew is obviously practically useless here. In case you wonder about my dabbling in some of the Hebrew-related articles…)

fi-1: “Tämä käyttäjä puhuu suomea vähän” (This user can speak Finnish a little bit) refers to having read books on Finnish I borrowed from the library. I can understand much less Finnish than French, but surprisingly I find Finnish grammar easier to understand than, say, Swedish or Irish.

de-1: “Dieser Benutzer hat grundlegende Deutschkenntnisse” (This user has foundational knowledge of German) refers to my having studied it for 3 terms. Not having to deal with it in real life, however, I have almost forgotten everything. But the “foundational knowledge” is probably still there =P

Problems with Babel codes

The most serious problem with Babel codes is with the ambiguity of zh. Unfortunately, Wikipedia’s Babel does not correctly distinguish between the spoken and written languages; as a result, it is unclear whether Babel’s “zh” code means the spoken or written language, even though ability to speak the language is completely irrelevant for working on Wikipedia. In my opinion, this inconsistency shows a fundamental flaw in the design of Wikipedia’s Babel system, partly due to an insufficient understanding of the Chinese language (and perhaps also Hebrew, Arabic, etc.).

As I have mentioned, I consider it misleading for anyone to claim zh as a mother tongue, since it is a written language. However, since written Chinese is really formalized Mandarin, you can argue that it is reasonable for Mandarin speakers to claim written Chinese as their “mother tongue”. On the other hand, I consider mastery of the written language the ability to write Chinese in a way that is intelligible to non-Mandarin native Chinese speakers. In this regard, being native in Mandarin does not result in being native in written Chinese and so I still tend to believe that no one should use a Babel code of “zh”.

There are also wording problems with the keys, even when this ambiguity does not pose a problem. For example, the “fi-1” key used to use the verb “osaa” (“can”), which was an excellent choice given Wikipedia’s ambiguity about whether spoken or written languages are meant; unfortunately it now uses “puhuu” (speaks), which IMHO is misleading (or should I say wrong) given the situation.

The “fr-2” and “de-1” keys are excellent in their choice of words.