User talk:BYF
I hope you like this place — I sure do — and want to stay. Before getting too in-depth, you may want to read about the Five pillars of Wikipedia and simplified ruleset. If you need help on how to title new articles check out the naming conventions, and for help on formatting the pages visit the manual of style. If you need help look at Wikipedia:Help and the FAQ , plus if you can't find your answer there, check the Village Pump (for Wikipedia related questions) or the Reference Desk (for general questions)! There's still more help at the Tutorial and Policy Library. Plus, don't forget to visit the Community Portal. And if you have any more questions after that, feel free to post them on my user talk page or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will be by to help you shortly.
Additional tips
[edit]Here's some extra tips to help you get around in the 'pedia!
- If you want to play around with your new Wiki skills the Sandbox is for you.
- You can sign your name using three tildes (~). If you use four, you can add a datestamp too. Five will get you the datestamp only.
- You may want to add yourself to the new user log.
- If you ever think a page or image should be deleted, please list it at the votes for deletion page. There is also a votes for undeletion page if you want to retrieve something that you think should not have been deleted.
- If you're still entirely confused, or would like to get a better grasp of your wikipedia skills, and you have an IRC client (or don't mind getting one), check out the Bootcamp. It's not what it sounds like, but it is fun and can help you with your editing skills.
- If you're bored and want to find something to do, try the Random page button in the sidebar, or check out the Open Task message in the Community Portal.
Happy Wiki-ing. —Kf4bdy talk contribs
PS: This is not a bot and you did nothing to prompt this message. This is just a friendly welcome by a fellow Wikipedian.
Mandarin and Malaysian Chinese
[edit]While I understand your feelings, Mandarin is necessary for the following reasons:
- 1. Even though Chinese in Malaysia come from many regions and speak many dialects, Mandarin is used in Chinese schools in much of the country. Chinese national-type schools in Malaysia use Mandarin as the medium of instruction. This source says: "She also found 93% of Malaysian families of Chinese origin speak Mandarin with many different combinations of dialects and currently 53% of the respondents speak Chinese dialects with their parents compared with 42% in 1970." so Mandarin is dominant in Malaysia.
- 2. I am not aware of where Choo's "home province" is, so it defaults to Mandarin. As long as there is no evidence of any connection to any particular region in China, there's no other dialect of Chinese that may apply to him
- 3. Readers are going to ask "how do I pronounce those characters?"
Both the PRC and ROC governments as well as Singapore have made Mandarin the official dialect, and so it has become the standard. WhisperToMe (talk) 02:07, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
There is no problem with using Mandarin, but say it is Mandarin. To say Mandarin is "Chinese" tout court is false and supremacist - ask someone like Victor Mair. And no, your point 3 fails on its face. Mandarin is NOT a "dialect", and nor is Cantonese etc etc. Even the Mandarin "fangyan" is itself suspect. You are simply wrong on that point.
- 1. Going back to this edit I should have used the Template:zh. It would still be labeled "Chinese" as that is referring to the hanzi themselves. The part that would refer to the Mandarin is "pinyin", as in Hanyu Pinyin. If the person has Cantonese origins or is from Guangdong/Hong Kong/Macau the Cantonese is indicated by the "jyutping" parameter.
- 2. I've looked through a lot of sources about historical Chinese communities. it's true that in the past Mandarin wasn't always dominant. For example: In the 1960s or 1970s it had almost no presence in Hong Kong and Macau, nor in overseas Chinese communities where Cantonese has been dominant (US/UK/Canada). At the time the Mainland was closed off and wasn't a part of the United Nations. Even in regards to Mandarin, Wade-Giles, not pinyin, was the preferred romanization in the Western academic literature. Things were different in those days. If I talked to Mair I would get a good conversation about this.
- Today, Mandarin is supplanting Cantonese in American/Canadian/British Chinatowns thanks to the large numbers of Mainlanders moving in. The Mainland now has both Hong Kong and Macau (Cantonese de facto is still preferred in those two places but the Mainland presence is causing Mandarin to become more common). While Taiwan has used Mandarin post-1945 (the Japanese were kicked out then, and in 1949 the CKS government relocated to Taiwan), it has used the Mainland's Hanyu Pinyin since 2008. Mandarin and Hanyu Pinyin have clearly become dominant even if they hadn't been so in previous eras. Things change.
- 3. Lastly, I am aware of the vast differences between "dialects" (spoken Cantonese is unintelligible with spoken Mandarin and the grammar is different). When I say "dialect" in a Chinese context I understand it's not so much a "dialect" as a separate language, but I still call them "dialect"s anyway. Now, I didn't know that Mair himself had criticized the use of "dialect" in place of fangyan, but now I know he did.
- One thing I am doing is making sure Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macau-related topics have Cantonese displayed. I agree that the other dialects shouldn't be neglected.
- WhisperToMe (talk) 10:49, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:17, 23 November 2015 (UTC)