Talk:Gan Chinese

Pinyin

Should the standardized pinyin be used to transliterate the phenomes? or does gan have it's own pinyin? (I don't know of any). The present Wade-Giles is used by the Cantonese... 207.61.212.92 (talk) 01:12, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Also the transcription (you cannot transliterate from Chinese characters) seems to contain some sort of error or unclarity, since "ts" is used for both ts 渣 and tsʰ 茶. Based on the underlying logic I would expect ts 渣 to be transcribed as dz or z. --Sannaj (talk) 19:53, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

Will peolpe call English "English Germanic"? I'm afraid not. This name is full of nonsense. --Symane TALK 11:25, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

There are good reasons for the current name: see in particular Naming Conventions (Chinese), especially the section on Language/dialect NPOV, as well as that article's talk page (and archives) and the article Varieties of Chinese. In brief "Gan" on its own would be too ambiguous while e.g. "Gan language" would be challenged on language NPOV grounds. --JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 12:07, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Even linguists don't have a clear guidline to distinguish a "language" and a "dialect", I don't see any ground that Wikipedia or some users could hold to absorb so many Sinitic languages into the "Chinese". I'd never express dissent if the article be entiled "Gan (linguistic)" that is the best way to find a balance between "language" and a "dialect", but it's never acceptable in regard to Gan Chinese.--Symane TALK 13:01, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

But it's not about linguistics, or the linguistics of Chinese or a part of it. As well as the above links the article summarises the dispute quite well in Gan Chinese#Classification.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 15:38, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

wikt:linguistics means the "scientific study of language", so any words to describe a language (or "dialect") belong to this notion. Moreover, "Gan (linguistic)" is to differentiate from Gan (river) or Gan (opera), so Gan followed by "linguistic" is absolutely appropriate. If you still insist, maybe Gan (language) is a good choice for us.--Symane TALK 22:19, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I've added a request for comment below to get some other opinions on this as I don't think I've persuaded you and you've certainly not persuaded me. I may seem set in my ways on this but that's as I've been involved in essentially the same naming dispute over at Yue Chinese, a.k.a. Cantonese (Yue), on and off since last year.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 22:47, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Rfc on article name

A quick Rfc to get some other editors opinions. Should this article be renamed and if so what to? --JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 22:44, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

• Gan (linguistics) is definitely not a good name, for the same reasons I opposed Cantonese (linguistics) over there: this article is not about linguistics, it's about a language. I think the current name (Gan Chinese) is fine, as it's clear to readers and it's not an unheard-of naming style (people often use "Mandarin Chinese" as well). I wouldn't be opposed to Gan (language) either; among people familiar with Chinese this is often just called Gan (and the (language) is for disambiguation)...but I'm not sure if this would be a COMMONNAME for lay readers. The other issue with Gan (language), of course, is that it's controversial... on the one hand, over-nationalist people will be like "it's not a language, it's a dialect!" (but who cares about their opinion), and on the other hand, people more familiar with typology may disagree over whether Gan is a language or a subfamily. rʨanaɢ (talk) 23:15, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
  • If you speak of Commonname, I shall say that "Gan Chinese" is clearly uncommon. Western books, when referring to Gan language, often use "Gan" simply, or "Gan dialects" sometimes, such as Laurent Sagart's les dialectes Gan or On Gan-Hakka. The fact that "Mandarin Chinese" is occasionally heard is because "Mandarin" has several meanings in English, but I never heard the weird "Cantonese Chinese". Cantonese is directly mentioned most of the time. Thus I suggest naming this article Gan alone, in adding (language) for disambiguation. So I'm for Gan (language).--Symane TALK 00:25, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
    • <tangent>There are several reasons why "Mandarin Chinese" is used. One big one is that if you say just "Mandarin" it sometimes sounds as if you're referring to it as opposed to other Chinese languages (i.e., "Cantonese has syllable-final /p,t,k/; Mandarin doesn't"). So I myself use "Mandarin Chinese" in a lot of academic writing—knowing what I do about the Chinese languages, I am loathe to refer to "Chinese" when I know I'm just talking about Mandarin, but also it sometimes feels weird to say "Mandarin" when I'm not comparing it to anything else, so I say "Mandarin Chinese" (especially when my audience is people who are less familiar with Chinese and therefore are more familiar with the term "Chinese" and need to think for a moment before they remember what "Mandarin" is). In other words, it preserves the COMMONNAMEness of "Chinese" while avoiding the yuckiness equating Mandarin with all Chinese languages or assuming Mandarin as the "default". (This doesn't really have any bearing on the naming of this article, it's just an aside.)</tangent> rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:56, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

We could move this to Gan language, along with Mandarin language and the like per our general language-article naming convention, but I don't think that would go over well. And per familiarity and WP:Common name, I'd think it would need to be "Gan Chinese language, Mandarin Chinese language", etc., so that doesn't help any. Ethnologue just goes with "Gan Chinese". It gives two alternate names in English: Gan and Kan. However, as noted above, those are ambiguous without something to indicate that they're about a language. — kwami (talk) 01:55, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't know how you define the word "common". For me, it's too vague. An American may not know where is China, so shall we rename China "China (the biggest country in Eastern Asia)"?

As I said above, the name that scholars use most often is "Gan" simply or "赣语" in Chinese which literally means "Gan + language". It's true that the page on Ethnologue chooses "CHINESE, GAN: a language of China" as the title, but we shall notice that there is a comma (",") between the two names. Besides, the website approves the status of Gan of being a language, thus someone really doesn't need to take pains that it would be "controversial".

Briefly, I propose we choose one between Gan (language) and Gan language--Symane TALK 14:06, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually, Ethnologue tends to be quite controversial. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:17, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

It's "Gan Chinese" at Ethnologue. They reverse the order for the entry, but then they put people's last names first in the biblio too. Same as "Arabic, Standard", "Frisian, Northern", etc.

I'm not opposed to "Gan language", but that would mean changing all the Chinese language articles. Is it worth the opposition? Maybe. — kwami (talk) 12:31, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Either "Standard" or "Northern" is an adjective which is contributed to detail the feature of the first name, whereas "Gan" is a proper noun itself. So we cannot treat them in the same way.

Under Chinese macrolanguage or Sinitic languages family, there're only seven that correspond to the status of being a language, i.e. Mandarin, Wu, Xiang, Gan, Hakka, Cantonese, Min. Thus we won't have a lot of work to do and I'd like to take this task for everybody. Moreover, I find it very imprudent that we hesitate to make correction only owing to our laziness.

Finally, I advocate changing the names of articles for "Mandarin, Wu, Xiang, Gan, Hakka, Cantonese, Min" into "Mandarin (language), Wu (language), Xiang (language), Gan (language), Hakka (language), Cantonese (language), Min (language)". Do we agree on it?--Symane TALK 14:06, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Ethnologue words all noun phrases that way, so yes it's entirely equivalent. There's no question that "Gan Chinese" is the Ethnologue name. Take a look at the map, where they don't revert the word order.

This is not the place to request a move for all Chinese language articles. That should be done at MOS:Chinese naming, Chinese language, and the like. Also, there are more than seven: Besides leaving out Ping, Huizhou, and Jin, Min is a family of half a dozen or so languages. The Min Nan article currently even discusses the "Min Nan languages". — kwami (talk) 19:36, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

It's "CHINESE, GAN: a language of China" that I saw on Ethnologue as the article's title, though it alternately uses "Gan" and "Gan Chinese" in the introduction. And for me, "Chinese, Gan" is obviously different from "Gan Chinese". Moreover, as Ethnologue being one single source, I can cite dozens of papers to prove that "Gan" is the most common name used by scholars.

As you said, here is the talk page of Gan language, I never try renaming other related articles. Back to my point, "Gan (language)" should be the right name for this article and I demand to rename the article on the instant.--Symane TALK 22:45, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Now you're just being silly. This is like saying that "George Washington" should be moved to "Washington, George" because you have a source that words it that way and these are "obviously different". I can no longer take you seriously. Your "demands" are also worthless: No-one "demands" anything around here. I will ignore you now, unless you have something intelligent to say. — kwami (talk) 23:08, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for finding a good example for my idea. When we see "Washington, George", we shall notice the difference between the two while one is a surname, the other is a forename, and the existence of unmentioned "George"s after "Washington" and "Washington"s after "George". However, "George Washington" just gives us a unified unity that the two combined names belong to one concept.

Anyway, it's a waste of time to analyze here the nuance between "Gan Chinese" and "Gan, Chinese", since my point is to rename the article to one of "Gan (language)" and "Gan language" which both correspond to common usage among scholars and also the language's name in Chinese.--Symane TALK 13:55, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

So you're arguing that George Washington should be moved, because the name is too confusing for people? I think any even semi-literate reader would understand both of these instantly, but you're right, it's besides the point.

What you're proposing is a broader issue than just this one language, so really should be taken up at MOS:Chinese. Hakka had similarly been changed to Hakka (language) as an isolated move, but there was later objection to that and it was eventually moved back. — kwami (talk) 20:07, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Ethnologue lists the individual Chinese languages as:

   * Gan Chinese [gan]
   * Hakka Chinese [hak]
   * Huizhou Chinese [czh]
   * Jinyu Chinese [cjy]
   * Literary Chinese [lzh]
   * Mandarin Chinese [cmn]
   * Min Bei Chinese [mnp]
   * Min Dong Chinese [cdo]
   * Min Nan Chinese [nan]
   * Min Zhong Chinese [czo]
   * Pu-Xian Chinese [cpx]
   * Wu Chinese [wuu]
   * Xiang Chinese [hsn]
   * Yue Chinese [yue]

Personally, I think we could just move this to Jiangxinese, and the same with Hunanese. "Gan (language)" is not bad, but may prove problematic as many people would argue it's not a language, but a dialect. In any case, that's an issue that IMO should be made for all of Chinese, since it would potentially affect all articles. "Jiangxinese", on the other hand, is a local issue, and could be decided here. — kwami (talk) 23:57, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Gan (language) is the way to go in my opinion. Chinese refers to a family of languages. Chinese as a single language dosen't make sense to me. Gan (Chinese) seems like naming English (language) -> English (German). Whenever I hear Chinese used in a conversation, it means Mandarin because often people think one contry = one language. Correjon (talk) 13:21, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

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