Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Written Chinese/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 00:38, 27 February 2008.

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Written Chinese

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Self-nominator: I'm nominating this article for featured article because I believe it is factually accurate, stable, and well written. It is currently a Good Article. BrianTung (talk) 19:52, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Oppose: the articles can stay in the good articles, because there are semi-referenced sections. --jskellj - the nice devil 13:21, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Can you clarify which sections you feel are semi-referenced? The Dictionary section is one I think you might mean. The issue there is that there are entire paragraphs which come from the same reference--how should I cite those without seeming repetitive? BrianTung (talk) 17:08, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I've seen no further comment on this issue, so I have added some references to various sections. This includes sections of text that are already cited, but where the text is sufficiently long that a "reminder" would be useful. I have tried to keep the citations from obstructing reading flow. BrianTung (talk) 22:18, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Comment: Would it be an idea to have some small graphics showing the Chinese punctuation marks? I thought of this particularly because the Chinese almost back-to-front comma that is used to separate items in a list remains a mystery at the moment, with neither explanation nor image to help anyone unfamiliar with it. In fact, would a separate subsection dealing with punctuation marks be a good idea? This would mean one could find the information more quickly, and it would help the structure of the piece a bit more. Additionally, I have seen other kinds of quotation marks used in Chinese other than quotation marks similar to the ones used in Western, Roman script: the ones I have seen are like corner signs or 90 degree arrow heads that point north west (to open quoted text) and north-east (to close quoted text). The addition of graphics would greatly improve understanding as to whether the text currently refers to much more western kinds of quotation marks or these. References to these from some articles or books on Chinese writing might also help. If you don't have any, I may be able to find something suitable in my books on the matter.  DDStretch  (talk) 19:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

(addition to my comment) The article East Asian Punctuation may help with some of this, particularly the names of the punctuation marks. You will see the square corner quotation marks given there (though of a different style I am familiar with), and references may also be needed.  DDStretch  (talk) 19:20, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I think some inclusion of the variant punctuation would be useful, although I'm not inclined to add yet another subsection in addition to the existing "layout" subsection. I think it would be worthwhile adding East Asian Punctuation as a "main article" subheading; that page is currently linked from the layout subsection, but giving it further prominence couldn't hurt. What do other folks think? BrianTung (talk) 00:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I still think it would be extremely useful for readers not familiar with the punctuation marks to have small graphics showing them.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:34, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, I will add those symbols in the next couple of days. BrianTung (talk) 20:31, 20 February 2008 (UTC) Done. BrianTung (talk) 22:18, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Comment: In the last paragraph, the following sentence is written: '"Pīnyīn also uses some letters or digraphs, such as 'q', 'x', and 'zh', that do not correspond to spellings in other languages that are written in the Latin alphabet." I know what is meant here, but I think the wording doesn't capture it exactly at the moment. I think it would be better written as '"Pīnyīn also uses some letters or digraphs, such as 'q', 'x', and 'zh', that do not correspond to spellings of certain sounds in other languages that are written in the Latin alphabet." And I wonder if c should be added to the list here (sounding roughly like ts would be pronounced in English, except that it often occurs at the start of a word in Chinese and piīnyīn)?  DDStretch  (talk) 00:44, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Since the phrase is "such as 'q', 'x', and 'zh'", the list is not expected to be exhaustive, although if 'c' is the only other one...As far as the sentence structure is concerned, I agree that the original is awkward, but I have to think a little while to come up with a better phrasing--I'm not convinced that your proposed alternative is sufficiently clear either. BrianTung (talk) 10:14, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree that my suggestion is also not entirely clear. Perhaps the use of phoneme and orthography somewhere in the sentence would help, though this might introduce too many technical terms? The idea is that the specific orthography used in pīnyīn to depict particular phonemes does not closely correspond to what might be expected in other languages that use the Latin alphabet.  DDStretch  (talk) 10:58, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Let's see now, how about the following? "Also, the pīnyīn spellings for certain sounds are markedly different from their spellings in other languages that use the Latin alphabet; for instance, pīnyīn 'q' and 'x' denote the same sounds as English 'ch' and 'sh', respectively." BrianTung (talk) 20:31, 20 February 2008 (UTC) Done (I amended the wording somewhat). BrianTung (talk) 22:18, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I'd prefer the wording to be "similar sounds" instead of "the same sounds", because they are not identical. For instance, if I just use the "ch" sound for the pinyin "q" when I count up from 1 to 10 in Mandarin, during it, I end up saying "chi ba" (I have not tone-marked this pinyin) which produces sniggers from my son and embarrassed laughter from my in-laws back in China. This is because, instead of saying "7 8", during the course of the count, I have spoken a non-technical word for "penis". You can see why this is in IPA by looking at Pinyin, which is accurate here, and, furthermore, where in section 3.1 (how to pronounce the sounds), q, x, and zh are only said to be like the ch, sh, and ch sounds, respectively, not the same as them. The differences are real, very easily distinguished in native Chinese speakers of the standard Mandarin dialect (and in people who have had to suffer the polite laughter of getting them wrong as I personally know), and are crucial for correct pronunciation and accurate communication to occur (as my illustration, above, demonstrates.) Indeed, note that pinyin q and pinyin zh seem to be sound the same on the scheme (ch), but they do sound different if pronounced correctly, and as the pinyin article notes (and as the IPA representation of the sounds shows) and this difference must be noted. The same point might also occur in other places, though I haven't checked in detail. I would feel that if the article were to become a featured article, it should strive to be accurate in this respect.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:01, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I will change the wording to "similar sounds". However, I find your anecdote regarding the sound of 'q' (versus English 'ch') to be curious, because I pronounce those essentially identically. Certainly, there is no question of confusing the characters for "seven" and "penis". One is spelled qī, and the other is spelled jī; in other words, it's a matter of aspiration. The latter is not pronounced as it would be in English, since it's really unaspirated, not voiced. But English 'ch' is not only unvoiced, it's aspirated, just as pinyin 'q' is, so if someone were to pronounce "chee" in English with a level tone, I would definitely understand "seven", not "penis". Since I learned Chinese before English, it could be that my pronunciation of 'ch' is colored by my pronunciation of 'q' (rather than the other way around), but this seems rather unlikely to me.

At any rate, I will make the suggested change. BrianTung (talk) 00:37, 21 February 2008 (UTC) Done. BrianTung (talk) 02:27, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

You're quite right! I got mixed up and gave a bad example. My apologies. Nevertheless, the main thrust of the point I made remained valid: the three pinyin spellings q, zh, and ch could all be rendered informally as ch in Latin spellings, but the sounds are not the same and some of the differences between them are due to aspiration. A similar point could be made about pinyin x and pinyin sh, rendered informally as sh in Latin spellings, but sounding different, and pinyin z and pinyin c may also be another such pair, though to my ear, they are less easily confusable (but some some of my English speaking colleagues, they are equally confusable) This much is consistent with what is written in, say, Pinyin#Pronunciation of initials. No matter, the article is being improved by all this, anyway.  DDStretch  (talk) 10:14, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, having thought about it, part of the problem is brought about by not using the IPA symbols for the sounds that are being discussed here. It would massively improve things if the IPA symbols were used for these sounds, rather than the informal Latin approximations to the sounds. They should be easy to add, since they can be found in Pinyin, and would help things a lot.  DDStretch  (talk) 15:58, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree about the distinction between the sounds, but I think this is an issue for the Chinese phonology article, not one on written Chinese. The intent here is not to precisely characterize pinyin, but simply to observe that some pinyin spellings are dramatically different from what you'd expect from a language using the Latin alphabet. This is to comply with the "summary style" element of the featured article criteria. For instance, the section on Chinese dictionaries used to have a fairly detailed example of how to look up a character in a standard Kangxi dictionary. In the GA review, it was recommended that that text be removed as it did not comply with the "summary style" criterion, and I agree with that. Introducing a more complete description of Chinese phonetics and pinyin, though interesting, would also not comply with that criterion. (The same would also hold of a section on letter/envelope format, below.)

Incidentally, 'zh' isn't informally rendered as 'ch'; that was its representation in Wade-Giles, but I don't think I'd consider that informal. At any rate, I would only describe one of those three—'q', of course—as actually sounding like English 'ch'. The other two are retroflex (or pseudo-retroflex, depending on whom you ask). BrianTung (talk) 18:29, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, but 'zh' does have 'ch' attached to it in Pinyin, and, coming to it from a native English speaking background, it sounds more like "dr" at times in a range native Mandarin speakers I know from a variety of Chinese provinces. Perhaps this points out a need for some attention to be paid to the Pinyin article? All this merely illustrates to me the advisability of using IPA to avoid all confusion and biases brought about by the influence on one's perception that one's own native language can have.  DDStretch  (talk) 18:38, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "attached". I see what you are saying about it sounding a bit like 'dr', but the tongue is placed further back for pinyin 'zh', hence "retroflex". Obviously, pinyin 'zh' has no exact equivalent in the vast majority of English dialects, but as I said before, this sounds like an issue for the pinyin and Chinese phonology articles, not the written Chinese one. Since the actual sounds represented by pinyin 'q' etc. are a side issue in this article, I think introducing IPA for them here (as opposed to other articles) is unnecessary. BrianTung (talk) 19:03, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Comment: (Sorry, almost all of these comments are coming in one at a time from me)

1. In section 3.3, would there be any advantage to be gained from considering the format or layout of letters in Chinese? I mention this because the gross layout issues are mentioned (direction of writing, etc), but not some of the other differences. The reason I chose letters as an example is that one source I have—Developing writing skills in Chinese (2003) by Boping Yuan and Kan Qian—spends at least two chapters dealing with the format and layout of letters in Chinese, and the differences between their layout and the layout typically used in Western-style letters (for example, the way addresses are written on envelopes). If they cannot be dealt with in any detail, even a mention would be better than nothing.
2. I think there needs to be at least a mention of stroke order in forming individual Chinese Characters when writing them by hand. There is already a link made to Chinese Calligraphy in section 3, but there is little or no mention of stroke order in that article, although it forms a major part of various instructional manuals of writing—for example, the following three sources all deal with stroke order as an important aspect of hand-writing Chinese characters:Reading & Writing Chinese: Simplified Character Edition (2003) by William McNaughton and Li Ying, Teach Yourself Beginner's Chinese Script (2003) by Elizabeth Scurfield, Lianyi Song, and Song Lianyi, and Learning Chinese Characters, Volume One (2007) by Alison Matthews and Laurence Matthews. It would be a good idea to mention, at least, stroke order somewhere in this section, but would probably be better to have more than just a mention. It could fit in section 2, but this is only a possibility, and there is a useful distinction that could be used to help restructure part of the article which distinguishes between the structure/stroke order of individual characters, and the structure/order/layout of groups of characters (writing direction, written letters, addressing envelopes, etc)
3. In section 4.2, although some references are given, very few of them, if any, are of actual Chinese Dictionaries organised along the lines described in the text. I think that it would be extremely useful to have actual dictionaries referred to that use the methods of organisation described.

That's it for now.  DDStretch  (talk) 11:02, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments.

1. I'm dubious about the need for such a section. I would not expect to see a section on envelope format in English under the article "Written English" (if such an article exists). I suppose it might be worth a mention, but I'm not convinced even there. This is not a Wiki HOW-TO on writing Chinese letters. I think a better approach would be to write an article on Chinese letter/envelope format, and then to link to that—and then it would be worth a mention.
2. There is a mention of stroke order. It is right below the pictures of the five writing styles. Please take a look there and see if you feel that's satisfactory.
3. The references are there to back up the descriptions of the ordering mechanisms. I'll try to hunt down dictionaries that use these mechanisms, but I only have one such type in my office.

Again, thanks—it would be nice if someone else could comment, too! BrianTung (talk) 18:29, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

(Stroke Order): Thanks, I've spotted it now. I think that's fine!  DDStretch  (talk) 18:43, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I also would like more people to comment. I feel a bit "exposed" myself being at the moment the onoly one!  DDStretch  (talk) 18:45, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Support: I'm not a specialist in this field, but this seems a well-written and comprehensive article.--Grahame (talk) 02:14, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Oppose Neutral until the problems of redundancy [1] are addressed. See examples here:[2]--GrahamColm^Talk 23:25, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Comment: One of the edits you made (on stroke order) ended up being slightly misleading, and so I've altered what you edited there. I hope I have made it clear and accurate without redundancy. I also added an internal link for people wanting to find out further information.  DDStretch  (talk) 23:33, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

GrahamColm, thanks for the look, but some of the edits you have are a little dubious. "Written Chinese are"? (Emphasis mine.) The "fact" tags you added, I don't agree with. In the lead, you have attached a "fact" tag to Sentence A in "Sentence A. Sentence B.[1]" But the cite [1] goes to both sentences. We're in the lead; I think it's perfectly reasonable not to cite every last sentence, especially when the two sentences clearly go together.

Then, too, in the "other languages" section, you attach a "fact" tag to the initial sentence about Korean and Vietnamese. That sentence does not need to be cited because the supporting evidence in the remainder of the paragraph is cited. I think the requirement to cite all facts should be considered with an understanding of the structure of the article, and not used mechanically to attach such a tag just because a non-trivial sentence lacks a citation.

I think some of the redundancies really aren't. "Written symbols" is not redundant, for instance, because there are oral symbols, too.

I don't wish to sound harsh, because I do want this article to receive attention, and I will pay careful attention to the edits you've made. But please don't be surprised if many of those edits get reverted on my next pass. "Be bold" does not mean "be careless". So far, I've found many, many sentences completely broken by the edits. BrianTung (talk) 00:18, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I've made my next copy-editing pass. Please have another look. BrianTung (talk) 03:05, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, sorry about the mess, it was getting late and I should have waited. In my defence, I called them suggestions in my edit summary. I have changed my opposition to neutral for now. Graham.--GrahamColm^Talk 09:56, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose. The prose needs quite a bit of work to bring it up to "compelling" or even professional, and the organization of the article could also be improved quite a bit. Suggestions are below, but please note that the prose suggestions are only a small part of what needs to be done to bring the prose up to snuff.
  • I find the initial image a little odd for this article. I understand that it is probably supposed to represent the great amount of time that the characters have been in existence, but that's not specified in the caption (and for the purposes of this article it really isn't that important what the translation of the symbols on those pieces are). I would remove that picture and replace it with the image further down ot the traditional and simplified Chinese versions of the word Hanzi. That provides a much clearer illustration of what the article is talking about - written characters.
  • The prose could be tightened considerably to allow for better flow and less repetition.
    • Although I've been the most active editor on this article for a number of months, there have been quite a few hands in this, and it probably could use a clean pass. So as to focus my attention on where it's needed most, do you have any suggestions on which sections need particular help? BrianTung (talk) 20:37, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
      • I would do another pass through the whole article. Tony1 has written a great guide to help tighten prose. Karanacs (talk) 17:15, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Is it really important to the article to define "regionalect", especially since the article won't be using this?
    • Probably not; I'll remove it. Done. BrianTung (talk) 20:37, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
  • There are a lot of weasel words such as "many scholars", "at least one scholar" (name him/her), etc
  • "Classical Chinese gradually acquired features from various dialect" - what type of features?
  • The section "Role of Chinese Characters" doesn't seem named well, and it doesn't
    • Doesn't what? BrianTung (talk) 20:37, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
      • Sorry, my brain apparently stalled there. It doesn't really talk about the role of the characters much, and when I read it I was a little puzzled as to why it was organized as it is.. To me, some of this looked like it could go into the Structure section, while the rest of it should could into a History or Evolution section.
  • I think you need a source immediately after "Written Chinese is the only major modern writing system not based predominantly on an alphabet or a compact syllabary.", even if it is covered by the source later in the paragraph
  • The organization of this article needs a lot of work to make it more clear.

    I think the section "Structure of Chinese characters" should come first in the article. It's important to get a good definition of what a character is before you talk about when/why you use it.

    Next, maybe the Layout section on its own.

    Then a "History" or "Evolution" section to discuss the earlier written forms and the introduction of Simplified and traditional Chinese. A "history or "evolution" section could probably incorporate everything that is in the Role of Chinese Characters section as well.

    Next, Chinese written forms.

    Lastly, the literacy section

  • Can the Chinese written forms section be taken out of a list and made into better prose?
    • I suppose; I didn't want to make the article too long. BrianTung (talk) 20:37, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I think you need a citation for "The need to arrange Chinese characters in order to permit efficient lookup has given rise to a considerable variety of ways to organize and index the characters."
    • Done. BrianTung (talk) 20:54, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
  • The first paragraph of Transliteration and romanization section - does the citation at the end of the paranthetical sentence also apply to the rest of the paragraph? If so, it should be moved outside of the parantheses. If not, you need citations for the rest of the paragraph
    • It applies to the entire paragraph. Done. BrianTung (talk) 20:37, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Are the external links good, reliable sources? I would suggest removing all of the links unless there are official sites.
    • I hadn't felt them necessary, but had been reluctant to remove them. If others feel similarly, I'll remove them. BrianTung (talk) 20:37, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I question the need for a map of where the Henan province is. It doesn't seem that necessary in this article.
    • I agree; I'll remove it. Done. BrianTung (talk) 20:43, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Karanacs (talk) 17:13, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments; as you see, I've inserted responses. BrianTung (talk) 20:37, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.