Talk:Mandarin Chinese in the Philippines

This page needs some examples of Philippine Chinese.

On the examples part of this page, there is nothing listed, could a Filipino Chinese speaker add some examples? Greenjerry123 (talk) 22:40, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

The name "Philippine Mandarin" seems gramatically strange.

The name "Philippine Mandarin" sounds strange to any native speaker of English. First and foremost, should the "Philippine"part of the name be "Filipino?" Second, the name of country is not "Philippine," but "Philippines," or more specifically "the Philippines." Some examples of what seems to be correct would be "Malaysian Chinese" or "Singaporean Chinese." One would not call them "Malaysia Chinese," or "Singapore Chinese." So the name "Philippine Chinese" sounds abnormal. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that the name should be "Filipino Chinese." Greenjerry123 (talk) 22:49, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Granted, "Philippine" does mean "Relating to the people or culture of the Philippines," but I do think that "Filipino" would be a better fit to the name. Greenjerry123 (talk) 22:51, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Is this actually a separate variety of Chinese?

@Mlgc1998: It’s not actually apparent to me how this is a separate variety of Mandarin. None of the sources given mention it as a separate variety; they only talk about the education of Mandarin Chinese in the Philippines. The sources mention usage of code-switching and some Tagalog / other vocabulary by some speakers, but not as a feature of another variety of the language. There doesn’t seem to be a separate Ethnologue entry for “Philippine Mandarin” (and the referenced link is dead). This article seeks to be more about “Mandarin Chinese in the Philippines” rather than a separate variety of Mandarin Chinese. We need reliable sources describing it as an actual separate variety. — MarkH21 (talk) 20:11, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

@MarkH21: I'm not sure myself how different it is nor the specifics of the phonology differences, so I've not touched on that section nor expanded on any of its linguistic properties besides its background situation since I don't normally speak it myself, though I was schooled in it for around 12 years from kindergarten to high school and my parents work as Mandarin translators or bpo agents so these days I just hear them sometimes code-switch to Mandarin while speaking Philippine Hokkien, besides the code-switch addition of English and Filipino. I don't know who it is that originally made this article and what their plan was, but I think the one who initially started this page wanted it to start becoming a separate variety of Chinese, especially when Ethnologue has "Chinese, Mandarin" listed under the languages of the Philippines and there are some older traditional chinese filipino schools that used to be handled by Taiwan's ROC Ministry of Education, hence having a lot of Taiwanese Mandarin influence and books, and perhaps this variety may have also wanted to take into account the sometimes awkward or wrong tones and accent of those who were schooled in Mandarin in the Philippines but came out not being very good in it (perhaps kind of like Engrish is to the Japanese). The chinese filipino school I came from taught in simplified chinese and wanted to emulate how schools in Singapore taught Chinese, but I think they might've previously at some point taught traditional chinese too. Years ago, there wasn't a page like this and I was surprised myself that someone made this and if there was really much difference, but I guess the table they made supposedly shows that people here have been taking pronunciations from surrounding different dialects, depending on if they or their school was influenced by mandarin chinese education in China, Taiwan, or Singapore. And, I think this page might've been created at a time when people were promoting how different local foreign languages that were being taught academically were developing in the Philippines like Philippine English, Philippine Spanish because of how people may pronounce, code-switch, or use different words here, so eventually Ethnologue also added these new distinctions as separate dialects. --Mlgc1998 (talk) 04:31, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

This, as well as Philippine Spanish (which formerly redirected to Spanish language in the Philippines) and Philippine Hokkien, both lack reliable sources attesting to it as a separate variety of language. I'll move/merge these articles "Philippine X" to "X in the Philippines" and slightly restructure them as appropriate, while keeping most of the content. Philippine English at least has sources referring to Philippine English as a separate variety of English. — MarkH21 (talk) 20:02, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

@MarkH21: There is actually some evidence for Philippine Hokkien as a distinct variety. 菲律賓咱人話研究, a PhD thesis by 蔡惠名 is a study on the variety. 东南亚华人社区汉语方言概要 by 陈晓锦 also has a section on the variety of Hokkien spoken in Manila. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the latter source. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 21:44, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: To split it off as a separate article, we'll need multiple reliable sources describing it as a distinct variety. If you'd like to dig through those, there may be something worth creating. At the moment though, there isn't enough reliable material to describe the distinctions (the previous material was either unsourced or about the usage of Hokkien in the Philippines in general). — MarkH21 (talk) 21:49, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

@MarkH21: Does that mean there should be two articles, or should I expand the current article? — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 21:58, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: If there's significant enough material from multiple reliable sources, then that merits a separate article. If not, then a section of the existing article at Hokkien in the Philippines should do. You could also start by adding to the existing article and eventually split it off into a separate article when enough material has been accumulated. — MarkH21 (talk) 22:00, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

@MarkH21: I'm surprised this happened under Filipino editors' noses, so I'll make it clear: you should've consulted with the broader community first. That said, I think merging Philippine Spanish to Spanish language in the Philippines should've happened as a separate discussion, one, and two, there is evidence that Philippine Spanish is its own variety of Spanish. Merging the two back together is premature, and should've been done more thoughtfully given that there are still Filipinos who speak Spanish. I don't speak Philippine Spanish per se, but older people do, and I'd argue there's bound to be some academic literature on Philippine Spanish, which obviously would be in Spanish. (As for the Hokkien debate, anecdotal evidence will suggest there are differences; my dad, who speaks Hokkien, has been told that his Hokkien is different from the Hokkien of Xiamen or Taiwan, but whether or not there's academic literature that supports it is a different matter.) --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 08:03, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@Sky Harbor: It was a bold merge based on the lack of reliable sources attesting to it being a separate variety both in the article and in a quick WP:BEFORE search, as well as on the fact that almost the entire article was unsourced.
This does not have to do with editors being Filipino or not. Any assumption about other editors' ethnicities and any implicit requiring the approval of Filipino editors does not belong here.
The fact that some Filipinos still speak Spanish (the merged article is about Spanish speaking Filipinos...) or that your relatives speak Hokkien in some particular way is also not relevant. Only reliable sources are. — MarkH21 (talk) 08:13, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@MarkH21: A "lack of reliable sources" in an article does not mean there are no reliable sources out there, my use of anecdotal talking points notwithstanding. The literature exists regardless. WP:BEFORE searches are hardly reliable as they are, given that you mention they're "quick" and hardly scratch the surface of the topics you're touching, so given that more thorough searching would've yielded at least some useful information that could've been incorporated in the previous existing articles, why didn't you bother doing so? (That said, for the Spanish article, I will find time at WikiConference North America to add additional sources and unmerge the two articles, as there is some useful content particularly in Spanish-language academic literature, but that doesn't excuse the fact that you should've been more thorough with your searching in the first place so that we wouldn't have this discussion to begin with.) --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 08:27, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, there may be reliable sources out there, but that's an independent matter. It was imperative that the original research was removed. Once that is done, the two options are:

• Leave an empty article with nothing to support its existence as a separate variety of Spanish.
• Merge what's salvageable from the article to the existing article on an overarching subject.

For the time being, when there is nothing here to support an independent article, a merge is the best solution. This is independent from an in-depth search for new reliable sources, which is effectively writing a new article on the subject. There is no requirement for me to go beyond removing the reliable sources and look for enough new ones to support a new article.
By all means, add any new sources you may find and recreate the article if there is enough to support it. I'm not against that whatsoever. But a bold merge was more than reasonable. — MarkH21 (talk) 08:43, 7 November 2019 (UTC)