Symane

Middle Chinese

Can you do a Swadesh list for Middle Chinese (Tang) as well? 24.29.228.33 05:34, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Gan

You recently added a "Gan" translation to Asia. This does not seem to be a language. If it is, please add a definition at Gan. SemperBlotto 08:26, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Welcome :)

Hi. Welcome to Wiktionary. I noticed you added a Mandarin definition for Gan. In the future could you please adhere to the proper formatting? Check out How to Create a Basic Chinese Entry for more information. If you have any questions don't hesitate to leave a message on my talk page (in English or Chinese). Cheers. Tooironic 12:38, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Chinese languages

On English Wiktionary, it is our policy to nest the Chinese languages together. —Stephen 02:13, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Wiktionary is not like Wikipedia, here not every policy and convention has been committed to writing. It should be, of course, but no one has done it (the reason for this is that English Wikipedia has about 2000 active admins, while we have only about 15...we don’t have the manpower to do it). Nevertheless, it has been the policy here for over six years, at least. You were told "no technical enforcement" (whatever that means) by a single individual who is not involved in this aspect of Wiktionary. It is our policy and it would require a discussion and a community vote to change it. In any case, you don’t own any of the work you do here. Once you save your work, it is open to any of the other editors to change it as needed, including correcting it, deleting it, moving it, reformatting it.

Do you think nesting implies that these languages are really only dialects? The reason we use nesting has nothing whatsoever to do with that. English Wikitionary is for the use of native English-speakers of America, GB, Canada, NZ, and Australia. We consider how our people think of and use these terms.

For example, Navajo is very closely related to the other Apachean languages, but we don’t nest Navajo under Apache because our people do not expect that. We look up Navajo under Navajo. But we do nest Chiricahua Apache, Western Apache, Lipan Apache, and Mescalero Apache under Apache. For Sorbian, we do not think to look under Upper or Lower, we look for Sorbian, so Sorbian should be nested. We don’t look up Silesian German under Silesian, but under German, so it gets nested. The only reason the Germanic and some other languages are sometimes not nested is because we have so few entries in those languages, so, having little manpower, have not done a lot about it. When Americans look up Chinese Cantonese or Chinese Hakka, we look under Chinese, not under Hakka, Wu, Min Nan, or Gan. Both Modern and Ancient Greek are nested under Greek. There is no consideration made for how closely or distantly related two languages are, but only how our people look them up. Uyghur is also a language spoken in China, but it is not nested under Chinese, since we look that up under Uyghur, not Chinese. Czech and Slovak are mutually comprehensible, and little more than dialects of one another, and until recently were spoken in the same country...however, our people never thought to look up Slovak under Czech, and therefore Slovak does not nest.

I hope this explains our policies better for you. —Stephen 18:50, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi. User Tooironic has described our translation conventions for Mandarin here User:Tooironic/Chinese_translation, if you are still looking for the written policy. We had votes and many discussions on the matter. Please follow our rules. --Anatoli 07:41, 19 June 2010 (UTC)