Wiktionary talk:Votes/2011-07/Pinyin entries

Whenever we have a Hanzi spelling?

I agree with this but it can lead to some complications, because it means that anyone who wants to create a pinyin entry has to be able to add the Hanzi form as well. It may make more sense to change that so that the real entry doesn't have to exist, just meet CFI? Pinyin entries could be treated like form-of entries are in general. We don't disallow 'goes' when 'go' does not yet exist. —CodeCat 17:51, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

It's a "whenever" ("if"), not an "only when" ("only if"): if we don't have the Hanzi yet, that doesn't preclude someone from adding the pinyin (though if the Hanzi fails RFV or RFD, then the pinyin will presumably be deleted as well). The intent is chiefly that we not require attestation of a specific pinyin representation of a word, so long as it's agreed that the word itself is a CFI-meeting word. —Ruakh_TALK 19:46, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Pinyin syllables

Please indicate whether you think this proposal has any effect on the outcome of Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2009-12/Treatment of toneless pinyin syllables, and on the inclusion of Pinyin syllables generally. My reading of it is that it would not, since the toneless syllable entries already provide minimal information, and all are reflective of the basic characters already present in the dictionary. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:57, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I wasn't sure about that . . . I've now made it much more explicit; the current version indicates that individual syllables are welcome in all romanization systems, but that polysyllabic words should only be in pinyin-with-diacritics-for-tones. —Ruakh_TALK 14:07, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Okay, then I can support this. Cheers! bd2412 T 15:05, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Attestation

I've added "unless attested" since this shouldn't trump our usual rules. DAVilla 05:07, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

I think if we allow some pinyin entries to contain duplicate information but not others, it will just confuse a lot of editors. I think it was ok before. —CodeCat 11:01, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

I've removed it, because that change was completely unrelated to our usual rules. (Unless you think {{alternative spelling of}} is only for unattested alternative spellings?) —Ruakh_TALK 12:31, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Concerns

I was the editor (or one of the editors) who emailed Ruakh. I was not aware of this vote before the emails. From his replies, I think there are some misunderstandings regarding 123abc/engirst's blocks. His blocking is often a result of not just his effort on the Mandarin entries, but also on English entries. He tends to create 'new rules' out of thin air that only applies to his edits and also his unwillingness to cooperate.

Normally in a corporate environment, if a problem is identified, it is presented in meetings and the factors that lead to the problem are temporarily put on hold to avoid furthering the issues associated with the problem. This is not the case with 123abc, his insistence to continue, hence unwillingness to cooperate, doing what he does despite complaints from others has been the major cause of his temporary blocks.

There are several issues with what he does. Defining pinyin entries and giving them pos headers (as a result leading to often inconsistent duplication of character entries) is one of them and categorization (affixes) in pinyin is another. These are different problems that will need to be dealt with in separate votes.

As for giving a brief def, I still disagree with the notion of it, but I am open to its inclusion provided other Mandarin editors such as Tooironic are in support. Jamesjiao → ^{T ◊ C} 04:32, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Romanization

I do dislike the romanization header. What's wrong with noun, verb, adjective and so on? Japanese romaji are allowed to have part of speech header. Similarly, I think that ===Hanzi=== is discouraged, and should ideally be replaced with a part of speech wherever it is found. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:40, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, part of speech is necessary for a learner, especially for a foreign learner. 2.27.73.54 23:38, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I've created {{cmn-pinyin}}, it does including the tra and sim forms; they go in {{cmn-def}}. Basically it just does the headword and category; to avoid redundancy with cmn-def. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:59, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Romanization is fine as a header. Once we start defining parts of speech (which is not as easy as you might think, considering we're effectively forcing Chinese into European ideals of linguistics), we are halfway there to a full entry. 99 per cent of the info should actually go at the hanzi entry; the romanization entry should be kept as simple as possible, with only a brief description for each reading on each line. ---> Tooironic 12:04, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Good, this is a concise template. Engirst 13:36, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Are we ok to allow parts of speech and a brief translation (on the same line)? I'm hesitating but I could go either way. Some people don't want any defintion, according to Dan Polansky but I missed that discussion. Actually, jījí is better than yánlì. Are people who voted for the policy against ANY defintion at all and parts of speech?! --Anatoli 06:07, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

@Tooironic. QUOTE: Once we start defining parts of speech (which is not as easy as you might think, considering we're effectively forcing Chinese into European ideals of linguistics) QUOTE END. If a hanzi entry is created, then there is no other way. Admittedly, Chinese words may fall into different parts of speech or could be used as a part of speech not defined in a dictionary. We MUST define parts of speech. It makes less sense for single hanzi but not for words. If a part of speech is missing (e.g classifiers, exclamative particles) then it could/should be created. --Anatoli 06:15, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Reply to Dan Polansky

Copied from the project page:

1. Oppose Dan Polansky 09:11, 28 August 2011 (UTC) I don't see why Pinyin should be treated differently from Japanese Romaji, for which definitions are customarily included in Wiktionary, as in abunai and hanrei. I understand that this leads to having the content triplicated, as in the triple of abunai (romaji), 危ない (kanji), and あぶない (hiragana), but that seems to be an ecceptable cost for the convenience of the user of the dictionary. A guideline for formatting romaji: Wiktionary:About Japanese#Romaji entries. --Dan Polansky 09:16, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

I see no contradiction here. The plan is to treat hanyu pinyin similarly to romaji (e.g. Yoshihiko) and kana (e.g. よしひこ) (where multiple kanji words exist). All definitions will go into hanzi entries and pinyin will list all matching pinyin (both traditional and simplified). The information in pinyin entry will be limited, this is a bad example: Hànzì, this example looks OK: píngguǒ (I have just removed all info that belongs to the hanzi entry) --Anatoli 00:52, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

In the examples you quoted, there is not much additional info and the declension is in the kanji entry, not in kanji and hiragana, which is good. A major difference between Japanese and Mandarin is that, there is no equivalent of hiragana or katakana, a valid writing script for Japanese. In Japanese あぶない and 危ない may be considered alternatives (but not abunai), in Mandarin 危險／危险 (wēixiǎn) and 危险 (wēixiǎn) are the proper Mandarin forms and "wéixiǎn" is only romanisation. Traditional and simplified entries are kept in synch and doing the same for pinyin is tripling the effort and pinyin (even with tone marks) may have many different hanzi spellings. --Anatoli 01:01, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

I have responded on the main page of the vote, where also Jamesjiao has already responded before me. --Dan Polansky 07:50, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Format for reference

==Mandarin==

===Romanization===
{{cmn-pinyin}}

# {{pinyin reading of|HANZI(|HANZI2)}} [[BRIEF TRANSLATION]](, [[]])
... 

Example 1:

# {{pinyin reading of|百分比}} [[percentage]] <-- if one version exists -->

Example 2:

# {{pinyin reading of|震動|震动}} [[shake]] <-- if both trad. and simpl. version exist -->

--Anatoli 04:16, 10 October 2011 (UTC)