Talk:Mandarin Chinese: Difference between revisions

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	== a question about the headline ... ==
	sorry ...
	i know i should not ask the question here ....

	but i do not think that i got the way to speak out .... especially i do not know how to edit the wikipedia
	moreover ... i am afraid of editing the article ... it is because of making no mistake .

	i am a native speaker of mandarin ....
	but i do not know why you all here make the headline mandarin chinese ...

	is it not supposed to be chinese mandarin ? macintosh--] (]) 07:56, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
	:Good question. "Mandarin Chinese" is a short way to say it which we have to use in the title of an article. "Chinese mandarin" would be a person (that is, a mandarin) who is Chinese. I suppose you could have a "French Mandarin." "Mandarin Chinese" is the Mandarin dialect of the Chinese language. You can also have "Shanghai Chinese" or "Sichuan Chinese," though it is more common to say "Shanghaiese" or "Sichuanese."

	:Hope this helps. ] (]) 20:50, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
	::Like ch said, it's fine to ask questions here, and his answer is mostly right: English language names are based on adjectives so it's a little confusing. That said, the order is important: a Chinese Mandarin is a mandarin which happens to be Chinese but we're talking about the kind of Chinese which happens to be mandarin.

	::However, it would be "Shanghainese" (with an ''n''), "Shanghainese Chinese" (the Chinese spoken by Shanghainese people), or "the Shanghai dialect of Chinese". The first vaguely implies that Shanghainese is its own 语, the second and third that it's a 话 of 汉语. People can prefer different versions for logical or political reasons. — ] 12:01, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

	==Name of this article==		==Name of this article==
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	:::::::A partition of the Chinese dialect continuum based on mutual intelligibility is not available – that's the point. We have dialect groups, not languages. ] 20:29, 28 December 2013 (UTC)		:::::::A partition of the Chinese dialect continuum based on mutual intelligibility is not available – that's the point. We have dialect groups, not languages. ] 20:29, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

	==Requested move to Mandarin dialects==
	<div class="boilerplate" style="background-color: #efe; margin: 2em 0 0 0; padding: 0 10px 0 10px; border: 1px dotted #aaa;"><!-- Template:polltop -->
	:''The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. <span style="color:red">'''Please do not modify it.'''</span> Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. ''

	The result of the proposal was '''not moved'''. I'm note sure to what extent this reflects a consensus on the substance of the matter and to what extent it reflects a rejection of the initial proposer, so I'll say there's no consensus against a future RM. It may still be best to let the issue rest for a few months, however. --] (]) 19:54, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

	] → {{no redirect\|Mandarin dialects}} – <small>(re-opening discussion started by a banned user but with many comments by other users)</small> "Mandarin dialects" is the usual name in English-language sources for this topic (a group of Chinese dialects spoken across northern and southwestern China), e.g. . The primary topic for "Mandarin Chinese" is ], so that name should redirect there. The relative traffic numbers for the two articles suggest that the current arrangement is misdirecting a thousand readers a day. ] 01:49, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

	<s>The current title suggests a conventional language article with a focus on the standard form of the language. But here the focus is on the variousness of the Mandarin dialects, with Beijing dialect presented as just one dialect in the mix. Other languages have similar articles with titles such as ], ], ], ], ], and ]. Of course, it seems like Misplaced Pages should have an article that focuses on the main spoken language of China, Mandarin Chinese, Mandarin language, Chinese language, or whatever it is you want to call it. But from the discussion immediately above, the consensus seems to be that this is not that article. <small>--'''Relisted'''. ]] 04:14, 26 November 2013 (UTC)</small> ] (]) 16:11, 15 November 2013 (UTC)</s>

	*'''Note''': The discussion was initiated by a sock of a site-banned user, and the closing admin may ignore his !vote per ]. ] (]) 15:56, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
	**I have stricken the banned user's nomination and replaced it. ] 01:49, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

	*'''Oppose''' This '''is''', of course, that article. This article is about a coherent entity, reflected in our sources, and would have been called "Mandarin language" if it weren't Chinese. (We use the same convention for ], another case where the label 'language' is problematic for ethnic and cultural reasons.) It is not about the various dialects, which are covered at ]. <br>This request is disingenuous. It's actually a proposal to have this name redirect to ]; "Mandarin dialects" is just an ''ad hoc'' name to get this article out of the way so the title can be redirected. And parallel to ] vs ], and many other pairs of articles, it's appropriate that we keep the basic name for the ''abstand'' language rather than as a redirect to the standard language. <br> At the very least, the proposer should be honest enough to include the actual motivation for the request in the request. If we're going to be consistent, we would need to redirect ] to ] and also ] to ]. The rational provided in the previous section applies just as well to those cases, and to many others. — ] (]) 01:57, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
	*'''oppose''' again, given this is a new/formal vote. 'dialects' is opens a can of worms in a Chinese context, and just makes the title less clear. There is no perfect title, but "Mandarin dialects" is a notably worse as a title.--<small>]</small><sup>]</sup><sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">]</sub> 03:13, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
	::It is contentious to claim that Mandarin is a language, or that it is a dialect, but it is uncontroversial to speak of the ], ], ], etc, and to collectively call them "Mandarin dialects". That is what our sources do. ] 16:03, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
	*"Mandarin dialects" is the usual name for this topic in English-language sources. For example it is the title of the (8.6) in the Cambridge Language Survey volume on Chinese by ]. The term "Mandarin dialect group" is also used, though less frequently, but not "Mandarin Chinese". In fact the primary topic for the term "Mandarin Chinese" is ], so that name should redirect there. The current arrangement is misdirecting 1000 readers a day in a quixotic attempt to override usage in reliable English-language sources. ] 10:40, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
	::As you know full well, your bogus numbers are as likely to be due to bad redirects caused by the past history of page moves as anything, and so are not support for your argument. — ] (]) 12:00, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
	:::The numbers of misdirections are real. Apart from the disservice to readers, there's a continual problem with people editing this article thinking it's about the other topic, despite the hatnote and source comments to the contrary. I've looked through the move history and see nothing to explain the numbers, but if you have identified bad redirects, please fix them. If on the other hand you mean an article linking to ] when the standard language is meant, well that's the common usage. ] 12:16, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
	::::As you say, if the redirects are bad, they should be fixed. There are thousands of redirects, though, and I've probably fixed a thousand myself, so you can do your share. Moving this article will not solve the problem, because many if not most of the redirects are currently correct, and will be made into misdirects if we do that. We'll potentially have even more to fix.
	::::BTW, the same pattern occurs with German and other languages. By your logic, we need to turn all of our language articles into redirects if we have a separate article on the standard language. — ] (]) 12:37, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
	:::::There are 26 redirects to this article. Some are alternate forms of the current title, and thus equally inappropriate. Others, like ] and ], will need to be fixed. There are thousands of links to this article, but what is wrong there is that the name they use is attached to something other than its common meaning.
	:::::The relationship between these two articles (and the underlying topics) is not analogous to the German ones. In that case the thousands of readers are getting the major topic they're looking for. The reverse is happening here. ] 13:08, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
	::::::How are you reaching that conclusion? Where is the evidence that readers are directed to the wrong article, and what is the evidence that the problem isn't bad links? You gave examples above of articles you said should link to the standard, but actually most of them either belonged here or were ambiguous. Repeating yourself doesn't make your statements true. You need evidence. — ] (]) 15:15, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
	:::::::That over 1000 readers are being misdirected each day follows from the imbalance between the hits on these two articles and the relative importance of the two topics, as measured for example in the amount of space given to each of them in secondary sources. That our usage of "Mandarin Chinese" is in conflict with usage in reliable sources is easily verified from those sources (and that alone should be sufficient reason for change). So anyone searching for "Mandarin Chinese" is almost certainly after ]. I don't believe I gave any examples above, but that most of the links to "Mandarin Chinese" are actually about the standard language quickly becomes obvious if one goes through the incoming links. I agree that Standard Chinese is a more precise and accurate term for the standard language, and I used to go through some of the thousands of links to "Mandarin Chinese" redirecting them to ] when that was what they meant. But then I realized that the task was never-ending, precisely because that is what most people call it. The only place to fix the problem is here. ] 16:03, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
	::::::::You have no evidence for any of that. You don't know how many readers are being misdirected. You don't know how many are entering this in the search engine by mistake. That's all just speculation. And if we move the article, what will we do about the thousands who are misdirected to MSC when they really want this article, since many if not most of the links actually do belong here? When links are scrambled, no amount of page-moving is going to fix the problem. We simply need to go through them one by one, or else turn the target into a dab page. — ] (]) 16:38, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
	:::::::::I'll try again. The standard language is a topic of broad interest, as one can see from the shelves of books on the subject in any bookstore or library, while the topic of this article is of much narrower interest, getting only a section or chapter in a typical survey and book-length treatment only in highly specialized research monographs. But here on wiki it's upside down. The article on ] gets 530 hits a day, while this one gets over 2000. That means that over a thousand readers a day are arriving at this article when they were after ]. I think that's a problem. They would have got here either by searching for "Mandarin Chinese" or by following a link to ] that an editor put in an article. But you've agreed above that "Mandarin Chinese" most commonly refers to the standard language, so it's not really surprising that readers and/or editors are using it that way. ] 00:53, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
	::::::::::How does that differ from any other language? While you're at the bookstore, check out German, Hindi, Japanese, French, Italian, Swahili, etc. In most cases, what the books cover are the standard language, just as with Chinese or Mandarin. Does that mean that "German language" should be a redirect to ]? Consider also that when people look up "Chinese", they are most likely looking for the standard language (judging by shelf space at the book store), so by your argument "Chinese language" should also be a redirect to Standard Chinese. Compare the stats for Chinese (ca. 4,000) with MSC (ca. 600). As you can see, ] is the wrong article, and needs to be move to "Chinese dialects", with the name made a redirect to Standard Chinese; that's an even greater priority than moving this article. — ] (]) 07:12, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
	:::::::::::Regarding this article, are you denying that a 2000:530 ratio of page views in comparison with ] is the opposite of the relative interest in the two topics? ] 15:07, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
	::::::::::::Yes, or at least that it's been demonstrated. When I checked the supposed examples of mis-links earlier, I found that some were correct and that many were ambiguous, so that the number of mis-links at this name are comparable to or might be less than the number we'd have if we redirected this title. — ] (]) 02:35, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
	::It seems that the imbalance between the hits on this article and ] isn't due to incoming links – I've fixed the incorrect links in the highest-traffic referring articles (accounting for over half the hits on referring articles) with hardly any effect on the traffic to this article or ]. That suggests it's due to searches. Indeed this article is the top result in a Google search for "Mandarin Chinese", while all other search results on the first page are about ''pǔtōnghuà'' (with the partial exception of the ''Ethnologue'' page, which combines ''pǔtōnghuà'' and ''běifānghuà''). That is of course to be expected, as we know that "Mandarin Chinese" usually refers to ''pǔtōnghuà''. ] 15:50, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
	*'''Oppose'''. The dialects as a group are correctly called "Mandarin Chinese", Standard Chinese is just one variety of Mandarin. ] ('']'') 12:13, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
	::Who calls the Mandarin dialect group "Mandarin Chinese"? Outside of Misplaced Pages, that term usually refers to ]. ] 14:27, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
	:::Mandarin Chinese is a term commonly used in linguistics. Ethnologue in its classification of Chinese specifically uses ''Mandarin Chinese'' "Member languages are: Gan Chinese, Hakka Chinese, Huizhou Chinese, Jinyu Chinese, Mandarin Chinese...etc." Ethnologue's Mandarin Chinese is not referring to the standard language.--] (]) 01:06, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
	::::As kwami will no doubt tell you, ''Ethnologue'' isn't a reliable source on classification. Have a look at the experts in the subject, e.g. the sources cited in the article. ] 01:26, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
	:::::''Ethnologue'' is certainly relevant as far as COMMONNAME goes – the ISO names are derived from it – but it's true we do not want to rely on it for classification. The same for sources like the EB. — ] (]) 07:00, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

	*'''Support'''. The proposed title accurately reflects the article's contents. Misplaced Pages is a general reference and, to a general audience, Mandarin Chinese refers to ]. ]'s numbers presented above reflect this and, as s/he notes, quite a few searchers are being mislead by the current situation. (I put a pipelink in the hatnote to test the number of readers using the hatnote.) — ] 05:28, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
	* '''Support,''' For the various reasons given above, especially that readers assume that "Mandarin Chinese" is what Wiikipedia calls "Standard Chinese" and search for the wrong term. ] (]) 04:32, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

	*'''oppose''' Unwarranted value judgement. All the other pages on other Chinese dialects do it the same way - ], ], etc. Seems odd to make this a special case and ruin the consistency. ] (]) 18:52, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
	*'''Oppose - on procedural grounds.''' This is the second or third time a RM has been posted by the socks of the same community banned user, allowing the RM to continue just encourages more of the same. There is evidently no consensus and it should not have been relisted by a non-admin. ] (]) 08:22, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
	**Favonian has already left a note for the closing admin saying the sock's view should be ignored, and since other editors have made comments, that is sufficient. ] 01:49, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

	*'''comment''' I have never heard of "Mandarin dialects" before. That may be because of my unfamiliarity with the topic, however, Google Ngram Viewer clearly shows that "Mandarin Chinese" is a universally accepted term. --] ] 04:10, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

	::Many thanks to Yerevantsi for the Ngram, which strongly supports the move. That is, the items on which the Ngram is based (you can click on them at the bottom of the chart) shows that "Mandarin Chinese" is the "universally accepted term" indeed, but for the modern spoken language, not for the topic of this article. The list starts with textbooks on "Mandarin Chinese" which absolutely clearly do not teach "a group of dialects" (the topic of this article). That is, as Kanguole has clearly established, the subject of this article is not "Mandarin Chinese" in the sense which the Ngram shows is the common English usage. The term "Mandarin Chinese" in the Ngram actually refers to "Standard Chinese" and a reader entering a search for "Manadarin Chinese must be directed to the article "Standard Chinese." ] (]) 04:59, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

	:::You keep saying that, but it's no more true now than it was the first time. This article is not about Mandarin dialects, but about the division of Chinese called "Mandarin" in multiple RS's. As such, the current title is appropriate. If this '''were''' about Mandarin dialects, then I would support the move. Even then you wouldn't get the result you needed, because it would be necessary to create an new article at this name for Mandarin as a whole. — ] (]) 05:34, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

	::::It's certainly true that the popularity of the term "Mandarin Chinese" noted by Yerevanci reflects its common use to refer to ]. (You've acknowledged earlier in this discussion that this is the most common meaning.) The division of Chinese that is the topic of this article is precisely the topic of a section entitled in Norman's Cambridge Language Surveys volume ''Chinese'' (ISBN 0-521-29653-6), which is typical of usage in the field. It is also called "Mandarin", of course, but that term is ambiguous (and nobody is proposing it here). ] 11:52, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
	*'''Oppose''' per ]. ] ] 14:39, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
	**"Mandarin Chinese" is the common name of ], not the dialect group that is the subject of this article. ] 14:55, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
	***"Chinese language" is also the common name of Standard Chinese. Shall we therefore change that article to a rd? And do the same with all other languages which have a dominant standard? — ] (]) 21:38, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
	****The argument for making "Mandarin Chinese" a redirect to ] is that the latter is the primary topic for that phrase. (That's not the case for "Chinese language", which is often used for the family as a whole.) ] 00:08, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

	*'''As reference''' for some who might come to this discussion without looking closely at the article, the lede says:

	::::'''Mandarin''' ... is a ''group'' of related ] spoken across most of northern and southwestern ]. Because most Mandarin dialects are found in the north, the group is also referred to as the "northern dialect(s)". When the Mandarin group is taken as one language, as is often done in academic literature, it has ] (nearly a billion) than any other language.

	::and the hatnote:

	:::{{about\|the group of Northern and Southwestern Chinese dialects\|the official spoken standardized Chinese language (Putonghua/Guoyu/Huayu)\|Standard Mandarin Chinese (language){{!}}Standard Chinese}}

	As the Ngram and the testimony of the redirects show, this is not the common name of "Mandarin Chinese."

	::Cheers, ] (]) 20:38, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

	:::Attempts at dab'ing the article in the hat note and lead do not change the topic of the article itself. — ] (]) 21:38, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
	:''The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. <span style="color:red">'''Please do not modify it.'''</span> Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.</div><!-- Template:pollbottom -->

	== Sign language ==		== Sign language ==

Revision as of 00:03, 6 March 2014

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To-do list for Mandarin Chinese: edit · history · watch · refresh · Updated 2012-06-30

Sections needed:

Geographic distribution
- Discussions on official status as well as dialects are usually put under this header.
Grammar
Classification

Sections needing improvement:

History
- Good overall section, but in need of more detail.
  - Many details in 沈钟伟 Shen (2011). The origin of Mandarin. Vol. 39. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |keywords= (help)
Phonology
- A comprehensive summary is sorely needed. What phonological traits do Mandarin dialects share? How do they differ from other forms of Chinese?

Created by Peter 11:09, 25 January 2006 (UTC).

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December 22, 2003	Featured article candidate	Promoted
February 9, 2006	Featured article review	Demoted
July 18, 2006	Good article nominee	Not listed

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Name of this article

I was going to read through and address the points in the discussion above point by point, but it looks like some commenting is backing up over at talk:Standard Chinese and I should put something here. I'm going to just copy my work there; hopefully, I'll be able to come back in a day or two and fill in something more specific to the arguments made above.

tl;dr version

Same as what metal.lunchbox said above. His points were all correct and the opposition's were (with respect) not well-taken. The overwhelming primary topic of this namespace is Standard Chinese. I know this is a data point that is easily "corrected" by a determined-enough editor, but it should be illustrative of the magnitude of the mistake here that only 2 of the first 50 links coming into this page are trying to get "Mandarin dialects" or "19th-century Chinese bureaucrat-speak" as opposed to "the standard spoken form of modern Chinese".

sources

"Chinese" (tout suite) is used when contrasting with non-Chinese languages; "Mandarin" remains (far and away) the non-scholarly standard when distinguishing this dialect from others within China. It's actually the standard even within scholarly use by a 3 to 1 margin per Google. ("Standard Mandarin" has become more common but remains uncommon by comparison with its controlling adjective, which is "Mandarin" and not "Standard".) It is the official use of Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia; it is actively used by the governments of Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada, and the United States (although the last often defaults, like Macao and the UN, to simply saying "Chinese" as in this Census report). Type in 普通话 into Google translate, even on their Chinese servers, and it tells you the English is "Mandarin". Type it into Baidu fanyi and it tells you the English is "Mandarin". Do it the other way round and it will mention 官话 and 北京话, but the primary translation is still "普通话". Of the first 50 links going into Mandarin Chinese (some of them from major articles like D, dialect, and France; others from Chinese articles like Chinese numerals, Hong Kong, and Chiang Kai-shek), all except 2 want to be directed here and not to an article about the northern dialect family. (The two exceptions, China and Chinese language, presumably directly reflect the editors responsible for this page but may simply be conscientious editors deferring to the actual content of the page.)

relevant policies

Basically, PRIMARYTOPIC with generous helpings of USEENGLISH COMMONNAMEs. There are sometimes reasons to break perfectly straightforward rules like them, but none apply here. As seen by the incoming links from major pages, this page is currently broken as far as actual English usage goes and that's hurting the Misplaced Pages. We don't really need to move Standard Chinese over here but we do really need to have this page redirect to what people think they're getting.

The general usage for other Chinese dialect groups is irrelevant, unless WP:MOS-ZH wants to set some new standard. Whatever it is, it will have to account for the fact that "Mandarin Chinese" overwhelmingly means "standard modern spoken Chinese" and that any treatment of its related language group has to go elsewhere. (Fwiw, I'm pleased Cantonese language finally redirects to the language everyone wanted and not to Yue or wherever like it used to.)

suggested action

A move and fixed redirect. I like shorter English names myself (Mandarin dialects) but am open to whatever people feel like, even if it's something overlong like Mandarin dialect group or slightly archaic like Guanhua. — LlywelynII 13:20, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Oppose. I'm opposed to calling languages "dialects". This would be like moving "Received Pronunciation" to "English language", and moving "English language" to "English dialects". The COMMONNAME of this topic is "Mandarin (Chinese)", so this is a perfectly acceptable name. The COMMONNAME of the other article is "(Standard) Chinese", so that is a perfectly acceptable name for it. — kwami (talk) 21:27, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
I appreciate the resistance to labeling varieties of Chinese one thing or the other. If you can think of an alternative, such as "tongues" or "varieties" or an existing policy covers it, kindly share.
As I copiously documented above, however, it is completely untrue that these dialects are anything like the COMMONNAME of this namespace, even on the current Misplaced Pages, let alone in general English usage. "Mandarin" and "Mandarin Chinese" here and in general English means the content of Standard Chinese, not this. — LlywelynII 07:39, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

But "Standard Chinese" is also a common name for it. The most common name is simply "Chinese". Shall we move this article to "Chinese language", then, and move the current occupant of that title to s.t. else? — kwami (talk) 10:46, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

oppose anything with dialects as a can of worms when referring to varieties of Chinese. ~~Guanha~~ Guanhua isn't even English and is unknown in English outside academia/Chinese speakers. It's not ideal that there are multiple articles covering essentially the same language group with varying specificity but as far as there are problems clear introductions and hatnotes can be used to guide readers to the right article.--JohnBlackburne_deeds 21:47, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
The proposal is not to call Mandarin (in the sense meant by this article) a dialect, but rather a group of dialects, which is the usual practice in the field. For example, in his chapter in Sino-Tibetan languages (ISBN 1-135-79717-X, p.72), Jerry Norman criticises a mention of eight languages in a map caption in National Geographic:

If one takes mutual intelligibility as the criterion for defining the difference between dialect and language, then one would have to recognize not eight but hundreds of "languages" in China; moreover, the eight "languages" referred to in the quote are actually groups of dialects. Wú is not a language but a grouping of numerous non-mutually intelligible local forms of speech. The differences among the Wú dialects are in many cases considerable and it is hard to see how such disparate forms of speech could be considered a single language. The same is true of the other dialect groups: Mandarin, Mǐn, Hakka, Yuè, Gàn, and Xiāng. For the comparativist, Chinese is a vast dialectal complex containing hundreds of mutually unintelligible local varieties, each of which can be viewed as a distinct object for comparison.

"Mandarin dialects" or "Mandarin dialect group" are the common terms for this group in the literature. "Mandarin Chinese" is hardly ever seen in this sense, and is of course vastly more common as a popular term for Standard Chinese. This article gets over 2000 visits a day, while Standard Chinese gets under 550, which is seriously out of line with the expected interest in these two subjects. It would appear that over a thousand readers are being misdirected each day. Kanguole 22:28, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Kang, I take it from your comments you understand my reasoning and the importance of getting this fixed. (A) Could you note your support, then, or discuss your reservations? (B) I personally agree with you that these are (for the most part) dialects and the common name of the topic is dialects. For those like Kwami who take exception to the term, though, do you have any alternatives to offer? — LlywelynII 07:39, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
I think I've made it clear that I favour change. Although you've called this section "Requested move" and people have started voting, that was premature, since you weren't ready to make a {{move request}}. As for a target, "Mandarin dialect group" is a little longer, but would avoid a plural name and might perhaps be clearer. (However "Mandarin dialects" does seem to fit with the exceptions listed in WP:SINGULAR.) To overcome the objection of inconsistency, it would probably be necessary to propose similar renames for Wu, Min, Hakka, Yue, Gan and Xiang in the same request. Kanguole 09:45, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Comment The problem of legacy links to other definitions is something we have in common with other varieties of Chinese, such as Cantonese. No matter where we move the article, we will have links that are misdirected. No matter which name we choose, someone will have to go through thousands of articles and correct those links. I've done my part, and can do more, but it's a huge job. (IMO it's a good idea to pipe the links w a completely unambiguous name, so that future moves won't screw up all the links again.) Also, the inordinately large number of people coming here instead of Standard Chinese may have something to do with the large number of links which need redirecting, rather than just people putting "Mandarin Chinese" in the search engine, and so could be evidence of past page moves rather than for COMMONNAME. — kwami (talk) 01:41, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps the links are a major factor – the daily hits fell to 850 on 18 April and went back above 2000 on 14 May this year, but I don't know what link changed then. But surely you don't dispute that the most common referent of "Mandarin Chinese" is the standard language? Kanguole 02:02, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

No, I don't, but the most common referents of "English", "French", "German", "Arabic", "Italian", "Japanese", and "Malay" – and, of course, "Chinese" itself – are the standard languages too, but nonetheless our articles on them cover the entire language, not just the standard. I don't see why Chinese languages should be exceptions to this pattern. ("Hindi" is an exception in this regard, but those articles are a morass, and not s.t. we'd want to emulate.)

Someone commented above about Chinese really being hundreds of languages, not just a dozen, but this is not supported in the refs I've seen. If RS's start dividing up Wu and Mandarin the way they already divide up Min, then I'd be happy for us to follow suit, but as long as RS's consider these to be languages (apart from the occasional divergent lect, like Oujiang), then we should as well.

Also, the claim that nearly all of the links that come here intend the standard language instead seems to be overly enthusiastic. In "dialect", for example (one of the examples given for a misdirected link), "Mandarin" is contrasted with "Cantonese", but they refer to dialectal differences within Chinese, not to the standard languages, and "Cantonese" directs to Yue. In "France" there is no link that I can see, and in "Hong Kong" one link to 'Mandarin' was correct, and one was incorrect – a common problem with terms that have a history of being moved around. In other cases we say s.o. speaks "fluent Mandarin", and while that generally means the standard language, so does saying that they speak "fluent German" or indeed "fluent Chinese". The Chiang Kai-shek article was this kind of situation: If we'd given the form of his name in German, we would have given the Standard German pronunciation but linked to the general German article. Similarly when we say a school offers a course in "Mandarin", or than a movie is dubbed in "Mandarin" – in both cases, you could substitute German, Arabic, or Italian, no-one would think it inappropriate that you didn't link specifically to the standard-language article.

Consider Sekolah Menengah Sains Johor, which lists the languages in the info box as Malay, English, Mandarin, German, Arabic. Presumably by "Malay" they mean Standard Malaysian; by "English", RP (Standard British English); by "Mandarin", Standard (Mandarin) Chinese; by "German", Standard (High) German; and by "Arabic", Modern Standard Arabic. How is the link to this article any less appropriate than the links to the generic Malay, English, German, and Arabic language articles? — kwami (talk) 02:30, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

You may wish to read that comment about hundreds of languages again. It's not a remark of one of the commenters here, but a quotation from Jerry Norman's chapter in Sino-Tibetan languages (Routledge, ISBN 1-135-79717-X, p.72), which should be reliable enough. He's not proposing a further subdivision into languages, but criticising the labelling of the dialect groups as languages, and goes on to say "It is fundamentally difficult to apply the terms 'language' and 'dialect' derived as they are from a different linguistic context in Europe, in a perfectly consistent way in the case of China." And for the most part, workers in this area do not attempt to; they usually speak of "dialect groups" rather than trying to partition them into "languages". So should we. Kanguole 09:39, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Chinese exceptionalism is no more justified than American exceptionalism. The problem of classifying dialect clusters into languages is universal, not something unique to Chinese. As for Norman's claim, if he has an actual classification or even list of mutually unintelligible lects, then we could certainly expand our articles with it. Does he ever say anything substantial like that, or is it just a passing comment? — kwami (talk) 10:21, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

The analogy with American exceptionalism is as ridiculous as the earlier analogy between Standard Chinese and Received Pronunciation. As I mentioned, Norman is not interested in classifying "languages", and indeed argues that such an attempt is misguided and misleading. He is far from the only worker in the field saying that the situation with Sinitic is unparalleled elsewhere, and explicitly rejecting such analogies. His approach is, in fact, the norm in the field. Kanguole 11:08, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

The norm in the field in that there is human language and there is Chinese language? — kwami (talk) 11:14, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

That is a straw man of your own construction. Kanguole 14:57, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

If he says that X and Y are not intelligible, but won't say what X and Y are, then he's not good for much more than a passing comment.

Every language is unique, but there's a rather silly tendency for linguists to think that the language they work on is more unique than all others. Doesn't matter what the language is, because what you are most familiar with is what you see best. It is, however, unscientific and should not be included in our articles unless we have good reason. — kwami (talk) 03:20, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

We seem to have drifted a bit. Regarding the question of the name of this article, we have Norman saying that to call Wu, Mandarin, etc "languages" is inaccurate and misleading, and instead referring to them as dialect groups. And indeed the usual terms for this topic in the literature are "Mandarin dialects" and "Mandarin dialect group", not "Mandarin Chinese". So we should use one of the two names usually used in our sources, not a term for which the primary topic is Standard Chinese. (I do not favour moving Standard Chinese, but rather having "Mandarin Chinese" redirect to it.) Kanguole 09:11, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

There is no Mandarin for any country besides China, so the current title is redundant. It is not so much a name as an explanatory note telling the reader "Mandarin" and "Chinese" are two names for the same language. If we can have English language, Swahili language, and Arabic language, then we can have Mandarin language. I agree with Kwami. All this stuff how unique Chinese is treats languages like they are kindergarten students, each one more special and unique than all the others. Nobody, nobody at all, calls this subject the "Mandarin dialect group," at least according to this ngram. The Holy Four (talk) 09:55, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

"Language" means a "standard language" or "lingua franca" anywhere but dialectology. The term "Abstand language" to denote a putative equivalence class of dialects with mutual intelligibility is linguists' jargon not at all known outside the field, and defining plain "language" to mean only this is blatantly against COMMONNAME, though Kwami has successfully, almost singlehandedly defended this during Misplaced Pages's history.

If this were uniformly wrong across "X language" articles in Misplaced Pages, it still would not be a valid argument for keeping it wrong in this case. But it's not uniformly true; French language, for example, is already almost entirely about the standard language, with the Dialects section only a list of links to French dialect articles and a map image.

Kwami, can you accept "Mandarin (Abstand language)" for this article, if it continues to focus on the dialect area not the standard? If not, what clarified title are you willing to accept? "Mandarin Chinese (Abstand)"? "Varieties of Mandarin Chinese" or "Mandarin varieties of Chinese"? "Mandarin Chinese language family" or "Mandarin languages"? Or rolling the content back into Varieties of Chinese? Any idea on how to move forward is welcome. --JWB (talk) 10:31, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Standard German mostly talks about its history and relation to dialects, and spends a greater share of its text discussing dialects than German language, which has a short summary of the dialect situation, as one section among many longer ones about the standard language. This example does not support the anomalous situation of Mandarin Chinese being extremely weighted towards dialects and history. --JWB (talk) 10:39, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Instead of attempting to craft new terminology for use on Misplaced Pages by extrapolating from French and German, it would be better to examine the practice of reliable sources on this topic. One issue is that a number of them say that Mandarin is not one language but several. Kanguole 13:24, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Refs are always welcome. — kwami (talk) 02:11, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I've given one above (Norman). Others (Escure, Mair) may be found in the article. Kanguole 02:52, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Kanguole, I'm citing the other language articles just to point out that in those cases, the main language article is primarily about the standard language and only secondarily about dialects. In this article, proportions and order are reversed with only the last 20-25% devoted to describing the standard, plus brief mention of terminology at the end of the history section. --JWB (talk) 20:20, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

In speaking of "other language articles", you are assuming that Mandarin is a language, an assumption that ultimately derives from Ethnologue having assigned it a language code. But since we have subject experts saying it is not a single language, that assumption should be re-examined. (Even the previous version of the Ethnologue entry acknowledged mutual unintelligibility between Mandarin varieties.) And that is why treatments of this topic in the sources do not follow the structure you suggest. Kanguole 01:47, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

It does not derive from Ethnologue or from the ISO, as you should know by now. It derives from a long history of describing Mandarin, Cantonese, etc. as distinct languages. Dalby's Dictionary of Languages, for example, speaks of "Chinese languages", and describes Mandarin, Wu, Xiang, Gan, Hakka, and Yue as "languages" and Min as nine "mutually unintelligible dialects". That's the general take in the basic lit. LaPolla & Thurgood, Sino-Tibetan Languages, also purposefully speak of "Chinese languages": "The three that are PP-V are all Chinese languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, and Hakka." Haspelmath & Tadmor, Loanwords in the World's Languages: "Mandarin Chinese is a language spoken natively in northern and central China ... Other Sinitic languages (Chinese languages) include Wu, Yue ..., Hakka, and the numerous and diverse Min languages". Etc. etc. etc. Lots and lots of sources describe Mandarin (meaning the entire Mandarin area) as a language; there are rather few sources which describe it as multiple languages. — kwami (talk) 03:18, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

The quote you attribute to LaPolla & Thurgood is actually from Matthew Dryer's chapter on word order in Sino-Tibetan. It's not clear which meaning of "Mandarin" is intended there. Thurgood's chapter on subgrouping in that volume describes Mandarin, Wu, etc as dialect groups or families. Norman's chapter on phonology of Chinese dialects in that volume says: "the eight 'languages' referred to in the quote are actually groups of dialects. Wú is not a language but a grouping of numerous non-mutually intelligible local forms of speech. The differences among the Wú dialects are in many cases considerable and it is hard to see how such disparate forms of speech could be considered a single language. The same is true of the other dialect groups: Mandarin, Mǐn, Hakka, Yuè, Gàn, and Xiāng."

Linguists studying Chinese have divided the varieties into a hierarchy of groups and subgroups based on a variety of mainly phonological criteria, not on the basis of mutual intelligibility. It's true that generalist works often make incidental reference to the top-level groups (or perhaps subgroups in the case of Min) as "languages", but specific treatments with sufficient depth to be useful as sources for this article tend to speak of Mandarin, Wu, etc as dialect groups and acknowledge their internal diversity. Kanguole 10:34, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we know that Norman says that, but evidently the traditional view is the only one we have in sufficient detail to be useful. Norman never does say which Chinese languages there are based on mutual intelligibility, correct? In any case, this is precisely why we avoid the terms "language" and "dialect" in the article title. By this definition, German is also a group of dialects rather than a language, as is Italian and many other "languages". In all cases, we attempt to distinguish the Dachsprache from the Abstandsprache. — kwami (talk) 18:17, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Norman's approach is typical of those who work in the field. To repeat: these dialect groups were not defined based on mutual intelligibility. Kanguole 19:06, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we heard you. What you've failed to provide is anything that is. — kwami (talk) 20:19, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

A partition of the Chinese dialect continuum based on mutual intelligibility is not available – that's the point. We have dialect groups, not languages. Kanguole 20:29, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Sign language

I have re-reverted the addition of the sign language to the infobox. It's not appropriate to clutter the infobox with things specifically about Standard Chinese, where this is already recorded, rather than the broader branch of Chinese. Kanguole 13:35, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

So, we should remove the writing system as well, as that belongs to Standard Chinese? And we should remove the scripts from all language articles if we have an article on the standard language? Of course encodings are going to be designed for standardized forms of a language. Chinese is no different than anything else in this regard. — kwami (talk) 18:49, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps we should also remove the writing system. This is not an article about a language. The sources on which the article is based describe Mandarin as a dialect group, many of whose members are not mutually intelligible. Kanguole 19:16, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

You keep pushing that opinion, but it's a minority view. — kwami (talk) 23:31, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

If you look at the sources on which the article is based, you'll see that the view of Mandarin, Wu, etc as dialect groups is standard in the field. Viewing them as languages is not. The subdivisions of Chinese were not determined by mutual unintelligibility. Kanguole 02:34, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

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