Talk:Standard Chinese/Archive 3

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Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Tone sandhi

Tone sandhi rule 1 doesn't look quite right to me. The 2nd syllable should retain a full 3rd tone, shouldn't it? --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 22:48, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for not responding sooner. See my response below. -- A-cai (talk) 13:39, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

There is no discussion of Tone 2 sandhi on this page. Do a Google search and you will see there is such a thing as Tone 2 sandhi. There are many academic papers on it. It is quite wrong to claim that 3 third tones in a row are realised as 223. Take 展览馆. This is realised as 213. 333 becomes 223, but owing to Tone 2 sandhi the middle tone becomes a 1: 213. I think this 223 nonsense is the reason why most foreigners get a bad accent in Chinese. Look up Tone 2 Sandhi for the explanation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.172.242.29 (talk) 09:44, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

At present, the tone sandhi section in the English Wikipedia article is entirely based on the equivalent section in the Mandarin Wikipedia article (zh:現代標準漢語#变调). If you wish to make such arguments, it might be better to discuss the matter on Mandarin Wikipedia first. Once the issue is decided on Mandarin Wikipedia, we can make necessary adjustments, if needed. In other words, I think it might be wise to defer to Mandarin Wikipedia for this particular subject. -- A-cai (talk) 13:35, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

The realization of "h"

Can anyone provide sources that state "h" is prnounced as /x/? In my experience as a native speaker, although it is indeed sometimes pronounced as something similar to /x/ (even going as far as to /χ/ or /ʁ/ in emphatic speech), it seems to me that in relaxed speech it's often realized as /h/. There also seems to be a difference according to the following vowel; it's ostensibly more /x/ before "uo" as in 或, and less so before "ai" as in 孩. These are merely my personal reflections, so I'm intent to know if there are any reliable sources about this subject. 石川 (talk) 15:17, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

[x] is often used as a catchall for 'strong h', so it wouldn't surprise me if h were not actually velar. I don't recall ever hearing anyone pronounce it as a velar. kwami (talk) 18:58, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Here is one source: [1]. -- A-cai (talk) 04:41, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

That's the kind of source that copies off others. What we need is an actual description of the sounds, not just the IPA. kwami (talk) 06:56, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure that you're going to find what you need online. Here is a printed source: The Pinyin Chinese-English Dictionary, page 960 (ISBN 0471867969). -- A-cai (talk) 11:25, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Varieties of standard Mandarin

Varieties of standard Mandarin is still a bit of an issue. And I think there are people who can't agree on what makes "standard" Mandarin.

1. Is Mandarin both spoken and written the same in PRC and Taiwan? Ignoring the simplified/traditional script? I mean 1) Pronunciation of CHI, SHI, ZHI, 2) use of "Erisation" 3) Difference in tones of some syllables 4) Vocabulary - is there a dictionary combining, showing 2 varieties of Beijing or Taipei Mandarin? E.g. 光盘 / 光碟 - CD, 新西兰 / 纽西兰 - New Zealand

2. In the South of China erisation is not popular and is not considered standard. They prefer to say 那里 where a Beijinger would say 那儿. Erisation is now included in HSK tests but is still frowned upon in the South, Hong Kong or in Taiwan. --Atitarev (talk) 01:26, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I do think that the intention of this article is to describe a 'common' usage of Mandarin, downplaying between regional differences. As stated in the article: Actual reproduction varies widely among speakers, as everyone (including national leaders) inadvertently introduces elements of his/her own native dialect. By contrast, television and radio announcers are chosen for their pronunciation accuracy and "neutral" accent. Also, there is a section called 'accents', and even an article called Taiwanese Mandarin.

That being said, it is inevitable that the description more or less fits the Beijing situation better, since according to the article, standard Mandarin is based on Beijing dialects. It seems to me that it would be more suitable to explain in the beginning of the article the existence of regional differences and to have links to related articles, similar to the way English phonology is presented. 石川 (talk) 09:39, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks fro referring me to that page, it answers my question. I admit, I haven't put too much research into my question. I don't want to exaggertae the differences either but if they are described, it's easier for learners, speakers and whoever deals with the language.

--Atitarev (talk) 03:30, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Simplified/Traditional 2

A previous discussion above, "Simplified/Traditional" (2006), asked "why not both traditional and simplified characters?" That query was dismissed with a "but that's a character thing and this is about the spoken language".

Recently someone added a "Common phrases" section, which I can't help but like. It makes the topic more 'real' for the reader. But that table had characters. In the version up until very recently, under the column 'Mandarin', it had simplified characters only.

Andrew Eng has added a traditional characters column to the table, which I like also. I like being able to compare trad/simp, while having both reinforces the idea that the spoken language stays the same.

The only thing I didn't like was trying to see which characters were really different between the two columns. I read the help pages (painful) and found the columns could be combined when there were no differences. (see the first 5 entries - 3 have combined columns showing the characters are the same)

So... I like having the table. I like having both trad/simp characters. I'm hoping neither of these changes is controversial.

I'm just wondering what people think about combined columns, as demonstrated by the test version. (I've restored the article to Andrew Eng's version). Shenme (talk) 06:24, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

You could reorganize the rows so that phrases which have the same Traditional/Simplified characters are placed first, then the rows with different Traditional/Simplified characters. I think this would make the section more readable. Andrew Eng (talk) 00:02, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Questions on phonology

In the list at the beginning of the finals section, there are [o] appearing in [ou]/[iou] and [ɤ] appearing only in [ɤ], but in the full table further belowe, it shows [ɤʊ]/[iɤʊ] instead of [ou]/[iou]. Similarly [əŋ]/[uəŋ] is replaced by [ɤŋ]/[uɤŋ] in the table. Which transcription is more commonly accepted, and what are the references?

Also, [œ] probably shoudn't be included in the list since it's described below as only an alternative representation. If we were to include that, we'd have to put in [ɯʌ] too, and that would be too regional in my opinion.

Lastly, it'd be nice if some brief explanation was made on where [ya] appears: for people who aren't familiar with erhua, that can be totally perplexing.

Another question I have in mind is at the R finals section. It says: "In a small number of words, such as 二 "two", 耳 "ear", etc. All of these words are pronounced as [ɑɚ] with no initial consonant." But is it really realized as [ɑɚ], instead of just [ɚ]? Keith Galveston (talk) 03:11, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I was wondering about these things too, especially since the IPA is not consistent across related articles like the ones on the romanisation systems. DAF (talk) 12:24, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

The IPA definitely needs to be cleaned up. We can cover narrow phonetic details in a table, but most of the article should probably use a broader if not phonemic transcription.

I've never heard 二, 耳 pronounced [ɚ]. Maybe just me. kwami (talk) 08:40, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Allophone for i after before nasals?

I thought I read that Mandarin has the allophone [ɪ] for -in and -ing? Anyone know? Azalea pomp (talk) 07:45, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Dialect map and Taiwan

Does the map accurately reflect the situation in Taiwan? Isn't "Guoyu" almost dominating in Taiwan. --Atitarev (talk) 01:17, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but that maps shows the dominate native regional language and it is not a Guānhuà/Běifānghuà dialect map unlike northern China their native language is Guānhuà/Běifānghuà only that map actually is not even suppose to be in this article, since this article is a dialect of Guānhuà/Běifānghuà. — ■~∀SÐFﾑｻ~■ =] ^{Babashi? antenna?} 22:57, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Infobox Template

I removed the improperly filled Language Template from this article. First, this is not a language separate from Mandarin language. Second, if someone feels strongly that an infobox is appropriate here, then at least fill it in properly--the ISO 639-3 code does NOT refer to Standard Mandarin, but to Mandarin as a whole; the number of speakers found in most references does NOT refer to Standard Mandarin, but to Mandarin as a whole; etc. You must clearly distinguish between the numbers that you find in reference works that always refer to Mandarin as a whole and the restricted information that will be useful for this article. Third, this is not anyone's native language; the language infoboxes are for use with native languages, not with "invented/standardized" versions of languages that are used only in a literary context and are learned as second languages only. (Taivo (talk) 02:56, 10 November 2008 (UTC))

Page move

Please do not move this page without prior thorough discussion and consensus. Thank you for this consideration. Badagnani (talk) 18:07, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Erhua

I know there's a lot of emotions and resentments towards 儿-endings in Putonghua from some people including native speakers. This feature perhaps shouldn't be imposed and it's better not to overdo.

It should be clearly stated that Erhua (儿化) is part of the Standard Mandarin in PRC and failure to pronounce it may cause problems for teachers seeking official qualifications. Worth noting that there are lists of words where it SHOULD be pronounced and where it SHOULDN'T. This is followed by TV anchors, textbook recordings. It's also part of standard Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) tests.

Would be great if someone could add a source and a list of words, I don't have them handy. Anatoli (talk) 03:37, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Standard Spoken Chinese

I changed Standard Spoken Chinese to Standard Chinese, as the former is not really used. Besides, "Standard Chinese" may refer to both spoken and written Standard Mandarin. --Anatoli (talk) 21:05, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Musical nature of Four Tones

I added one sentence at the end of the tones part.

Also one external link to be added: http://www.foreigners-in-china.com/learn-to-speak-chinese.html 93.107.12.244 (talk) 09:44, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

The "ki-" sequence

These phenomenons are caled 尖团.--刻意(Kèyì) 07:38, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Need help with tone

Hello, can you please tell if the second syllable of 芝麻糊 (Black sesame soup) should be second or fifth tone? Badagnani (talk) 20:07, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

According to Wenlin's data, which is largely based on John DeFrancis's ABC Dictionary, "1006 麻 [má] hemp; (芝麻 zhīma) sesame; 麻烦 máfan bother [mā]" and "芝/脂麻 zhīma* n. ①sesame ②sesame seed | ¹jiǎn le ∼, diū le xīguā penny wise and dollar foolish, 6.1 average occurrences per million characters of text. pre-ABC: 芝麻 zhīma n. sesame". Therefore it looks like 麻 is neutral tone when in the context of "sesame". Silas S. Brown (talk) 08:45, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Foreigners "usually learn Chinese in Beijing"

Do they? There are many foreigners in Beijing learning Chinese, but actually foreign students are found all over the country, and most foreign students are not in Beijing."At Beijing" in the article - what does that mean? Djwebb1969 (talk) 12:02, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

The best place to learn Standard Mandarin is in Chengde, Hebei. There, the native language is essentially a carbon copy of standardized Mandarin Chinese, but also lacks the severe erhua sounds of Beijing dialect. Foreigners will find it easiest to learn Mandarin there because the local variety spoken by everyone is remarkably free of any regional characteristics. Colipon+(T) 03:55, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Mandarin and English

If Mandarin is just a "lingua franca" for half of the Chinese population, then we can say the same about English, which is a "lingua franca" in Europe for almost half of the European population, consequence of decades of American Military Protectorate under NATO, something similar to India.--81.36.211.200 (talk) 21:03, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I would say that is basically correct. Having lived in Europe and China I could attest that some Dutch people in fact speak English a lot better than a Shanghainese person can speak Mandarin. I would not necessarily make the same comparison to India, though, as the government is rather confused about whether Hindi or English should be the national language. Colipon+(Talk) 21:10, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

erhua

I tagged this as dubious:

Standard Mandarin also uses a rhotic consonant, /ɻ/. This usage is a unique feature of Standard Mandarin; other dialects lack this sound.

I think we mean Beijing dialect; SM is not a dialect, but a register, and in any case non-standard Beijing dialect has even more erhua than SM. kwami (talk) 12:37, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree the Beijing dialect has much more "erhua" sounds. As part of "standard" Mandarin, 'erhua' is undoubtedly present on mainland China but not in Taiwan. Just watch Xinwen Lianbo. Erhua is definitely used. Colipon+(Talk) 15:03, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I understand that it's used, just not unique. The quote might belong in Beijing dialect; are there other dialects of Mandarin which also have erhua? kwami (talk) 21:32, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Alveolar approximant

Why is the alveolar approximant represented with the character <l> instead of <ɹ>? Wisapi (talk) 16:05, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Because it's lateral. Mandarin doesn't make any lateral/central contrasts with its approximants so there's only one row needed. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 19:51, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Common Phrases

It would be great if literal translations, currently only given for 1, for the multi-character expressions were added as a separate last column. 72.228.150.44 (talk) 01:41, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Claims that Mandarin phonology originate from Manchu need a source.

It is a historical fact that much of China was ruled by the Manchu Qing dynasty, but it is more debatable how much influence the Manchu language (from a different language family) had on the phonological or lexical development of Mandarin as compared to other Sinitic languages. Most of what is standard about Modern Standard Chinese phonology develops quite consistently from Middle Chinese phonology attested in rhyme tables and other sources. Any claim that Mandarin phonology resembles or develops from the phonology of Manchu, a non-cognate language to Mandarin, needs to be sourced before being put in article text. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 03:51, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Modern Standard Chinese is a standard title for the language--it is already referenced in the article.

I'll repost the edit that changes "Standard Chinese" in lead sentence to "Modern Standard Chinese," as that is more correct according to sources already cited in the article text. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 11:31, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I see the former lede sentence that mentioned the English-language term "Modern Standard Chinese" (by far the most standard designation for this language in English) has disappeared, so I will replace that now. That is well confirmed by sources already cited in the article, and by a Google search. 祝平安 -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 03:02, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Example of alternate bolded terms in article lede sentence, which should happen here too.

See Intelligence quotient as one example of many articles on Wikipedia where there is more than one bolded term in the lede sentence of an article. That is routine when there is more than one term that refers to the same subject, and is consistent with the Wikipedia Manual of Style. For this article, which I note matches a Chinese-language article 現代標準漢語 on Chinese-language Wikipedia, one term that belongs in the lede sentence is the most standard English name for the language that this article is about, namely Modern Standard Chinese. I understand why this is controversial—everything about defining the standard for this language and designating a name for this language is controversial—but there isn't any serious doubt about what the most commonplace name for this language is in English, and this is English-language Wikipedia, so at the very least the lede sentence should make clear that the article titled Standard Mandarin (currently a rather odd term in English for the subject of the article) refers to the language called by English speakers "Modern Standard Chinese" if they are aware of current linguistic usage. I will allow discussion to proceed here before making the edit to the article. 學而時習之,不亦悅呼? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 22:27, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

As noted in a previous section, and here, one term for the language that this article is about in English is Modern Standard Chinese, so I will add that term to the article lede sentence to make clear to readers what they are reading about. See the interwiki link to the Chinese-language version of this article for one example of that term in another language. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 14:23, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

"See Intelligence quotient as one example of many articles on Wikipedia where there is more than one bolded term in the lede sentence of an article." The other bolded term for Intelligence Quotient is "IQ", the abbreviation of the term, while what you are adding is not "SM", the abbreviation for Standard Mandarin (which is unnecessary too, because it is not a commonly recognized term SM).--TheLeopard (talk) 22:20, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

"Standard Mandarin" is the most commonly known term for this in the English language, I think it is well established here, thus it is the article's title. While other names, such as Putonghua, Guoyu, Huayu, and Modern Standard Chinese, all should be mentioned within the article, but in the appropriate section please, because there are several alternative titles. If you inserted Modern Standard Chinese, by theory you'll need to insert all of these titles to the lead, which makes it incredibly unnecessary. In the Wikipedia:Manual of Style, nowhere did it state that an article is encouraged to include many titles in the beginning, but just stated "significant alternative names for the topic should be mentioned in the article", which Putonghua, Guoyu, Huayu, are all significant titles and are more commonly known and used than Standard Modern Chinese.

Further, Wikipedia:Lead_section#Alternative_names specifically stated "Alternatively, if there are more than two alternative names, these names can be moved to and explained in a "Names" or "Etymology" section." Thus there is a separate section for them.--TheLeopard (talk) 22:20, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi, TheLeopard, you wrote, "'Standard Mandarin'" is the most commonly known term for this in the English language" but actually, in contrast to "Mandarin" (which Wikipedia treats as a broader term, for good reason), the term "Modern Standard Chinese" is more commonly known in English than "Standard Mandarin," as I checked by Googling before beginning discussion of this issue. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 22:29, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

It is a common linguistic term, not arguing with that. Not saying it shouldn't be emphasized either. However since there is a separate "naming section" for all the other common titles, I don't think it is necessary to single it out in the first paragraph by itself. See Standard Mandarin isn't singled out in the Names section, thus it would be kind of redundant to single out Standard Modern Chinese in the lead.--TheLeopard (talk) 22:38, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

(ec) As a procedural question here, how would we establish what term is the most commonly used term in English to name the language the article is about? What would a Google search show? What would the titles of articles in other edited encyclopedias show? What do standard reference books that are reliable sources about linguistics or geopolitics show? I'm certainly very agreeable to going to the sources to make sure about issues of this kind. And since this article is part of the WikiProject Languages, perhaps there are editors affiliated with the project who can help. My concern is that the term that now gets sole mention in the lede is by far not the common term for the language, and thus the rule you kindly cited would suggest a title change for the article, in the absence of an alternate term in the lede. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 22:51, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

There are several procedures. Google is not the best. Using Google Books to find the title of books is better. You can also do searches of new sources, although with language names this isn't as productive as with placenames. Encyclopedias are another good source to demonstrate common English usage. --Taivo (talk) 17:03, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Has anyone checked any English-language reference sources for the English name of this language?

As I asked in the talk page section immediately above, what do reliable sources say about the name of this language in English? I seem to be getting the same result from multiple sources, but I invite all of you to give me a reality check to make sure we are relying on the best sources here. What do other encyclopedias, guidebooks to world languages, Google searches, and various other sources say about the English designation for the language that this article is about? (I see there was talk page discussion quite a while ago about what to name this article, and I will review that and the article edit history as I ponder this issue further. I will also be checking published reference books.) -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 13:17, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Here's what I found in my personal library:

• Modern Standard Chinese/Standard Chinese/Chinese

S. Robert Ramsey, 1987, The Languages of China, Princeton

Charles N. Li & Sandra A. Thompson, 1987, "Chinese," The World's Major Languages, ed. Bernard Comrie, Oxford, pp. 811-833.

George L. Campbell, 1995, Concise Compendium of the World's Languages, Routledge

William Bright, 1992, International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Oxford

James A. Matisoff, 2003, Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman, University of California Press

San Duanmu, 2007, The Phonology of Standard Chinese, 2nd ed, Oxford

Daniel Kane, 2006, The Chinese Language, Its History and Current Usage, Tuttle Publishing

Yip Po-Ching & Don Rimmington, 1997, Chinese: An Essential Grammar, Routledge

Jerry Norman, 1988, Chinese, Cambridge

• Putonghua

Graham Thurgood & Randy J. LaPolla, ed., 2003, The Sino-Tibetan Languages, Routledge

• Standard Mandarin/Mandarin

Cliff Goddard, 2005, The Languages of East and Southeast Asia, Oxford (he often puts "Modern Standard Chinese" in parentheses behind "Mandarin Chinese" especially at the beginning of each section)

Hilary Chappell, ed., 2001, Sinitic Grammar: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives, Oxford

It seems clear that "Chinese/Standard Chinese" is overwhelmingly the preferred term in English usage. I'm a linguist who doesn't specialize in Asia, so the things I found in my personal library are likely to be the most common volumes out there on the topic and illustrative of usage among linguists. I've seen hundreds of "Chinese-English" dictionaries, but never one labelled "Mandarin-English", even though they are all dictionaries of the standard language. This is really a no-brainer. The standard language of China is most commonly known in English as "Chinese". By Wikipedia policy enshrined in WP:NCON, the title of this article should be "Standard Chinese". --Taivo (talk) 16:50, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Taivo, I really appreciate you checking professional references. What I noticed by a general Google search is that "Modern Standard Chinese" (searched for as a phrase) predominates greatly in English on the Web over "Standard Mandarin" (also searched for as a phrase. That alerted me that there might be an issue of searchability here. The Wikipedia policy on article titles generally prefers the common English term for the article subject, especially if that also matches the usage of standard reference works. I appreciate you checking references for all of us. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 16:58, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

There is a trick to doing Google and Google Books searches. If a page says "Mandarin, also known as Chinese" or "Chinese, also known as Mandarin", then it will appear in both searches. You should restrict your searches so you search for pages that say "Standard Chinese" and not "Standard Mandarin" and vice versa. That will give you more accurate numbers. --Taivo (talk) 17:07, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Taivo, for the reminder about the tip for doing Google searches. And thank you too for the discussion of this issue (naming this article in English) that you joined in on over on the WikiProject Languages discussion page. I will have occasion later today to go over to the library of my state's flagship research university, which has an extensive collection of reference books on language and linguistics, and of course many general and specialized encyclopedias. After I have checked what those published sources say, I will report back here. I also found another project page—maybe it would be called an essay talk page—with discussion of the vexing issue of how to name different Sinitic languages. I don't want to rush to a decision here, so I encourage other Wikipedians to mention sources that they know and considerations of Wikipedia policy and reader-friendliness that might bear on how this article should be named. Thanks for sharing your thoughtful comments. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 16:08, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Based on the information provided by Taivo above, "Standard Chinese" is the title that is preferred by these sources and linguists when referring to this language/topic. Need the Names section be modified to note that?--TheLeopard (talk) 10:25, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

By WP:NCON the article should also be moved to Modern Standard Chinese (or similar) to reflect the most common English usage. --Taivo (talk) 14:40, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. I found some more sources (I visited the reference section of two libraries yesterday) confirming the name "Modern Standard Chinese" as the, er, standard English name for the language described in this article. The article already does a good job of reflecting how Modern Standard Chinese relates to other forms of Mandarin Chinese and how that language group relates to other forms of Spoken Chinese. Many thanks to the earlier editors who so carefully sourced and edited those articles. There is another place here on Wikipedia, the talk page on naming conventions for Chinese, where it would be a courtesy to other editors to raise this issue before renaming this article. I have just opened a new section there to make absolutely sure all interested editors have a chance to mention sources and discuss the sources before any change is made here. Thanks to all of you for your participation in this discussion. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 15:01, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Just checking in to say that I appreciate everyone's participation in this discussion. I was busy elsewhere on Wikipedia recently, so I didn't call for a wrap-up, but does anyone object, now that the sources have been cited, to changing the name of this article to "Modern Standard Chinese," which would be parallel to the Chinese name of the corresponding Chinese Wikipedia article and in agreement with the majority of the English-language reference books on the subject? I can make the change, with appropriate redirects and very light rewriting of the article lede, if that matches the consensus here. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 20:09, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

No consensus are made to move the article "Standard Mandarin" to "Modern Standard Chinese" on the discussion. And definitely not enough editors' inputs, and none from editors of WikiProject China. Many of the sources listed (and stated by User:Taivo as well) equally mentions "Standard Chinese" as the common name used by these authors. Ethnologue listed "Standard Chinese" on its page [2] as a common name, along with Mandarin, Putonghua, Guoyu, etc. So wouldn't "Standard Chinese" be the title? Anyhow, I think there should be major consensus if this article needs to be moved, as it can change many things on China related articles on English Wikipedia.--TheLeopard (talk) 00:58, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for everyone's participation here. I see another editor has pointed out in another place where discussion is occurring that the usual Wikipedia location—dare I say the standard location?— for discussing retitling (moving) an article is on that article's talk page, right here where this discussion is occurring. As always, I am trying to keep focused like a laser beam on two issues: what are the facts about the English language, for the English-language version of Wikipedia, and what are the facts about Wikipedia policies and guidelines, for upholding Wikipedia policy during edits of Wikipedia. It's always a friendly, pleasant discussion to keep in mind what the guiding principles are here as we reach understanding of other editors' proposals. 三人行，必有我師焉。-- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 23:39, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

The straw poll at WP:Naming conventions (Chinese) in currently 7:6 opposed, though not all of the arguments are rational: "Oppose. We are here to speak English", for example. — kwami (talk) 23:43, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I added my vote for "move". And you're right Kwami, some of the reasons for opposing the move are absolutely uninterpretable. --Taivo (talk) 03:27, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

ELL citations

I did an electronic search of the 12,000-page Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition (2006). This is a nice source because it contains thousands of articles written by different linguists, all respected in their fields. The string "Standard Chinese" occurred in several of these articles. The string "Standard Mandarin" did not occur at all. Rather, it appears that what we call "Standard Mandarin" is simply "Mandarin Chinese", with what we call "Mandarin Chinese" (the northern lect) being an extension of that primary meaning. The hits are the following, with the articles numbered:

• "Modern Standard Chinese"

(1) author: Y Gu, article: "Chinese"

(2) C Meierkord, "Lingua Francas as Second Languages"

• "Standard Chinese"

(3) M Bender, "China: Scripts, Non-Chinese"

(4) S Duanmu, "Chinese (Mandarin): Phonology"

• "Standard Chinese; modern standard Chinese" (two phrasings used)

(5) K Bolton & ASL Lam, "Applied Linguistics in China"

• "Standard Chinese (Mandarin Chinese)"

(6) R Wiese, "Phonology: Overview"

• "Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin Chinese)"

(7) W Bisang, "Southeast Asia as a Linguistic Area"

• "(Modern) Standard Mandarin (Chinese)"

(no matches)

Some of these sources also use "Putonghua", "Putonghua", "putonghua", "putonghua". Although common in other articles as well, the fact that it is commonly italicized suggests that it is often not seen as assimilated English.

Duanmu (#4), in explaining his choice of terminology, says, "Standard Chinese (also called Mandarin Chinese) is a member of the northern [Mandarin] family; it is based on the pronunciation of he Beijing dialect. There are, therefore, two meanings of the term Mandarin Chinese, one referring to the northern dialect family and one referring to the standard dialect. To avoid the ambiguity, I use Standard Chinese (SC) for the latter meaning."

— kwami (talk) 23:43, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

The lede of Mandarin Chinese ends with a long paragraph explaining that "Mandarin" for the northern dialect area is not actually common usage. Mandarin is the common English name for the Chinese national language, and is in accordance with the original Chinese term "guanhua" for the predecessor of today's Putonghua, Guoyu, Huayu. Mandarin Chinese needs to be under a name which refers to the dialect group and area. Standard Mandarin is neither popular usage nor standard academic usage. --JWB (talk) 00:17, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

What would you suggest for Beifanghua in English? I can't think of any other widespread term apart from "Mandarin". Again, from ELL2, we have,

• "Beifanghua ('northern speech') (known as Mandarin in English)"; 'Mandarin' is used throughout the article [China: Language Situation]
• 'Mandarin' [Chinese]
• "northern family (also called the Mandarin family) ... There are, therefore, two meanings of the term Mandarin Chinese" [Chinese (Mandarin): Phonology]

So, while it would seem that the primary meaning of "Mandarin" is the standard dialect, "Mandarin" is also the primary name of the northern language which includes that dialect. So if Common Name is taken to mean the primary use of a name, then putonghua should be called Mandarin; if, however, Common Name is taken to mean the primary name for a topic, then beifanghua should be called Mandarin, and we'd need to come up with a different name for putonghua, such as Standard Chinese. — kwami (talk) 00:31, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I would translate beifanghua straightforwardly as Northern Chinese. Currently Northern Chinese and Beifanghua are redirects to Mandarin Chinese. --JWB (talk) 15:44, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

(Copying this over from the discussion at WT:CHINESE; could we please decide on one centralized location to keep this discussion?)

kwami's is a good point. "Mandarin" and "Mandarin Chinese" are often used to refer specifically to 普通话　putonghua, but don't work as article titles because those terms are already being used for 官话 guanhua, all the Mandarin dialects that are subsumed by the Mandarin "language", of which putonghua is just one variety. So I guess that's how this article eventually ended up at "Standard Mandarin", a term which few people use in other contexts (since they don't usually need to disambiguate like we do, and can just use "Mandarin"), and is basically just a literal explanation of what putonghua is (the standardized dialect of Mandarin). So there is an argument against "Standard Mandarin": it's not in common use and seems to have been more or less created to fit the needs of Wikipedia.

On the other hand, the argument against "Standard Chinese" (not necessarily for "Standard Mandarin"), as far as I can tell, is that it unintentionally implies that "Chinese" is a language and this is the standard dialect of it, thereby obscuring the fact that Chinese is actually a group of languages, Mandarin is a group of dialects, and what people speak on CCTV (and what foreigners learn in class) is just one dialect from that group. Kwami and others are correct, though, that most non-linguists wanting to know about this will just look for "Chinese", because that is what this dialect is known as in almost all non-specialized contexts.

So in short, we are discussing two naming options which both, for some reason or another, are not perfect. Are there any alternate options that can be considered (for example, using Mandarin Chinese (language) and Mandarin Chinese (language group) or something, and making Mandarin Chinese itself a disambiguation page explaining the difference between 官话／北方话 and 普通话)? Based on the massive Yue/Cantonese dispute this year, it seems this is a more widespread problem and may require some more general shuffling around. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:49, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

On a side note, isn't 官话, originally at least, just the court language of Beijing, of which 普通话 is the modern incarnation, rather than 北方话?

The problem with the (language) and (language group) tags is the POV dispute over whether Chinese is a language or a language family. If it weren't for that, we'd just have "Mandarin language", "Cantonese language", etc.

Yes, I can understand how "Standard Chinese" implies that Chinese is a single language. That's because sociolinguistically it *is* a single language; otherwise it wouldn't have a standard! I'm sympathetic to the view that Yue, Wu, Min Nan, etc. are all separate languages, and that's generally my POV, but the fact remains that Mandarin is the de facto standard language for all Han Chinese, and is by necessity used as a standard even by those Cantonese and Taiwanese speakers who promote their own speech as separate languages. If China, or even Taiwan, ever accepts other lects as official/standard languages: say that Mandarin is the provincial language of much of the north, with Shanghainese, Cantonese, Hakka, Minbei and Minnan official in their respective provinces, as we see in India, then calling Mandarin "Standard Chinese" would no longer be appropriate. Currently, however, it *is* standard Chinese in both countries. — kwami (talk) 20:09, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

"Mandarin is the de facto standard language all Han Chinese" is true if you are using "Mandarin" to refer to the specific dialect. The issue here, of course, is that "Mandarin" can also refer to a family of dialects (and part of the reason there's so much disagreement is probably that we're all using the term in different ways). In this sense, one particular variety of Mandarin is the de facto standard. You can notice this when you talk about, for example, beijinghua (another dialect of Mandarin which is nevertheless not "Standard Mandarin", although the standard is originally based on it), or when you try to explain to someone that the Mandarin spoken in Taiwan is slightly different than putonghua (and not the same thing as Taiwanese, which is another language entirely). The issue seems to be that we are all looking at the article from different perspectives (putonghua vs. other Mandarin dialects, or putonghua vs. other Chinese languages [fangyan])...which is why I think perhaps no title will ever be 100% right and careful disambiguation may be the best solution. rʨanaɢ (talk) 20:56, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

"Mandarin is the de facto standard language all Han Chinese" is true if you are using "Mandarin" to refer to the specific dialect. : Yes, that's how I was using it, in the original narrow sense. Some of the opposition to the move, however, as in the current discussion with Liu Tao on the other page, is that Mandarin (narrow sense) is not the standard of all Han Chinese, but only the standard of beifanghua, and that there is no standard language for the Han Chinese, only Standard Mandarin for beifanghua, Cantonese for Yue, etc. I think that argument is probably demonstrably false. As for your point, yes, the term "Mandarin" is ambiguous. However, if this article were moved to 'Standard Chinese', that would solve the ambiguity (apart from the classical language, so we could word it 'Modern Standard Chinese'). That would leave "Mandarin Chinese" as an ambiguous title still, but that is a separate issue, which IMO is adequately handled by the hatnote. (Though at least one editor disagrees.) — kwami (talk) 22:14, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Is this discussion going to result in a change? Or is it just going to be stymied? --Taivo (talk) 22:43, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Signature to stop this being archived while move discussion continues. Dpmuk (talk) 14:39, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Sources supporting "Modern Standard Chinese" as common English name for this article

I (WeijiBaikeBianji) just copied over this entire section from the Naming Conventions: Chinese talk page to this article talk page. The information is helpful. The words below come from the Wikipedians who signed the paragraphs. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 04:05, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I have culled these sources from the various places that they have occurred in the discussion:

(Items in Taivo's personal library)
Modern Standard Chinese/Standard Chinese/Chinese

• S. Robert Ramsey, 1987, The Languages of China, Princeton
• Charles N. Li & Sandra A. Thompson, 1987, "Chinese," The World's Major Languages, ed. Bernard Comrie, Oxford, pp. 811-833.
• George L. Campbell, 1995, Concise Compendium of the World's Languages, Routledge
• William Bright, 1992, International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Oxford
• James A. Matisoff, 2003, Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman, University of California Press
• San Duanmu, 2007, The Phonology of Standard Chinese, 2nd ed, Oxford
• Daniel Kane, 2006, The Chinese Language, Its History and Current Usage, Tuttle Publishing
• Yip Po-Ching & Don Rimmington, 1997, Chinese: An Essential Grammar, Routledge
• Jerry Norman, 1988, Chinese, Cambridge
• Boping Yuan & Sally K. Church, ed., 2000, Oxford Starter Chinese Dictionary, Oxford

Putonghua

• Graham Thurgood & Randy J. LaPolla, ed., 2003, The Sino-Tibetan Languages, Routledge

Standard Mandarin/Mandarin

• Cliff Goddard, 2005, The Languages of East and Southeast Asia, Oxford (he often puts "Modern Standard Chinese" in parentheses behind "Mandarin Chinese" especially at the beginning of each section)
• Hilary Chappell, ed., 2001, Sinitic Grammar: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives, Oxford

ELL citations I [kwami] did an electronic search of the 12,000-page Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition (2006). This is a nice source because it contains thousands of articles written by different linguists, all respected in their fields. The string "Standard Chinese" occurred in several of these articles. The string "Standard Mandarin" did not occur at all. Rather, it appears that what we call "Standard Mandarin" is simply "Mandarin Chinese", with what we call "Mandarin Chinese" (the northern lect) being an extension of that primary meaning. The hits are the following, with the articles numbered:

• "Modern Standard Chinese"

(1) author: Y Gu, article: "Chinese"

(2) C Meierkord, "Lingua Francas as Second Languages"

• "Standard Chinese"

(3) M Bender, "China: Scripts, Non-Chinese"

(4) S Duanmu, "Chinese (Mandarin): Phonology"

• "Standard Chinese; modern standard Chinese" (two phrasings used)

(5) K Bolton & ASL Lam, "Applied Linguistics in China"

• "Standard Chinese (Mandarin Chinese)"

(6) R Wiese, "Phonology: Overview"

• "Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin Chinese)"

(7) W Bisang, "Southeast Asia as a Linguistic Area"

• "(Modern) Standard Mandarin (Chinese)"

(no matches)

Some of these sources also use "Putonghua", "Putonghua", "putonghua", "putonghua". Although common in other articles as well, the fact that it is commonly italicized suggests that it is often not seen as assimilated English.

Duanmu (#4), in explaining his choice of terminology, says, "Standard Chinese (also called Mandarin Chinese) is a member of the northern [Mandarin] family; it is based on the pronunciation of he Beijing dialect. There are, therefore, two meanings of the term Mandarin Chinese, one referring to the northern dialect family and one referring to the standard dialect. To avoid the ambiguity, I use Standard Chinese (SC) for the latter meaning."

(Items gathered by Weiji)

• Cheng, Linsun; Bagg, Mary, eds. (2009). Berkshire encyclopedia of China : modern and historic views of the world's newest and oldest global power. Vol. 3. Great Barrington (MA): Berkshire Pub. Group. p. 1385. ISBN 978-0-97701594-8. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Brown, E. K.; Anderson, Anne, eds. (2006). Encyclopedia of language & linguistics. Vol. 2 (2nd ed.). Oxford: Elsevier. p. 345. ISBN 0-08044358-3. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Frawley, William; Bright, William, eds. (2003). International encyclopedia of linguistics. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 316. ISBN 0-19-513977-1. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Campbell, George L., ed. (2000). Compendium of the world's languages. Vol. 1 (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. pp. 374–379. ISBN 0=41520296-5. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  

--Taivo (talk) 03:20, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Usage in News Media

• New York Times, searched over last year: Chinese language 401 results; Mandarin language, 64 results. --Taivo (talk) 03:37, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
• The Times (of London), searched last 30 days: Chinese language, 22 results; Mandarin language, 9 results. --Taivo (talk) 03:37, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
• Sydney Morning Herald, entire site: Chinese language, 1033 results; Mandarin language, 138 results. --Taivo (talk) 03:37, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Google Scholar, Google Books (English searches)

• Citations between 2000-2010: Chinese language, 815,000 results; Mandarin language, 21,300 results. --Taivo (talk) 03:37, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
• Standard Chinese, 982,000 results; Standard Mandarin, 66,900 results. --Taivo (talk) 19:52, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Google searches (on Chinese terms)

An exact phrase search on the Chinese term equivalent to "Modern Standard Chinese" (現代標準漢語)[3] yields about 285,000 results, while an exact phrase search on the Chinese term equivalent to "Standard Mandarin" (標準官話) yields an order of magnitude fewer, about 3,910 results.[4] Several of the results make clear that the term 現代標準漢語 is much more characteristic of persons—of whatever ethnic or national origin—who are familiar with linguistic scholarship.

Interwiki links to other Wikipedia language versions

Other Wikipedians in other languages have had to face the issue of how to title an article about the current officially promoted standard language of China and other places, on the one hand, and the broad dialect group in the north (and southwest) of China of which that language is one example. I didn't even bring up this issue until I checked Chinese-language Wikipedia and discovered that it has for a long time titled the article corresponding to the article under discussion as "現代標準漢語,"[5] that is as "Modern Standard Chinese." By contrast, the Chinese version of Wikipedia also has an article "官話"[6] that corresponds to English Wikipedia's article Mandarin Chinese (they interwiki link to each other). Swedish and Turkish Wikipedia similarly make a distinction between two articles, one about "Standard Chinese" and one about "Mandarin." Icelandic, Indonesian, Japanese, and Russian Wikipedia make a similar distinction of having an article on the standard national language and a different article on the Mandarin dialect group, but call the standard language Putonghua after the name most often used in the P.R.C.

The German version of Wikipedia is the second largest in the world. It doesn't distinguish two different articles as Chinese Wikipedia and English Wikipedia do. It has one article that is interwiki linked from both of those articles, titled "Hochchinesisch,"[7] which points out that "Hochchinesisch" can also be called "Mandarin" in German. (The term "Hochchinesisch" is a rough German equivalent to "Standard Chinese.") Similarly, the Esperanto version of Wikipedia has one article interwiki linked from both of the two articles maintained in other languages, with the title "Norma ĉina lingvo."[8]

Most other versions of Wikipedia gain much of their content by translation from English Wikipedia, and so far follow whatever titles and article distinctions English Wikipedia has. English Wikipedia, of course, ultimately has to be written in English (no matter what subject the article is about) and follow English usage. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 00:05, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Summary of Sources

• There is no evidence that "Standard Mandarin" is a more common English term than "(Modern) (Standard) Chinese". The evidence gathered in accordance with WP:NCON's guidelines is conclusive. --Taivo (talk) 03:39, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

the sources are comparing Chinese and/or one of its sub-parts in the context of learning a foreign language. it is not to be wondered what your sources would say. ---何献龙4993 (talk) 20:53, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

No, the majority of the book sources I have cited are not in the context of learning a foreign language, but are either 1) linguistic reference works on the language, or 2) detailed scholarly analyses of the language. --Taivo (talk) 22:18, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

• In addition, there is no evidence in any of these sources that I have found that indicates a difference between "Modern Standard Chinese" and "Standard Mandarin". In all sources they are treated as synonymous. Therefore, if "Standard Mandarin" and "Modern Standard Chinese" are synonymous, then by the dictates of WP:NCON the most common English name must be used as the article title. --Taivo (talk) 19:54, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Taivo, when you searched the NY Times using a search query of Mandarin language having alot less results, it reveals how "beginner" the move is. Mandarin is not even a full language by itself. To search for "Mandarin language" is a complete disregard that it is only a dialect. This source counting trick has failed too many times in the past. Benjwong (talk) 04:26, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

And actually mandarin had 213 results, more than 50% of chinese language. Benjwong (talk) 04:29, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the comparison between 'Chinese language' and 'Mandarin language' is not valid, because the latter is not a normal phrase in English. However, the comparison with 'Mandarin' is also not valid, because most often people just say 'Chinese'. 'Standard Chinese' outnumbers 'Standard Mandarin' 2:1, including statements like "In all other primary and secondary education, standard Chinese, as Mandarin is now called, is the language of instruction". — kwami (talk) 06:59, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

We all know that searches are delicate things and need to be carefully evaluated. You cannot search for "Chinese" alone because that will yield "Chinese history", "Chinese Tiger", etc. that are irrelevant to the issue of language. Same goes for just using "Mandarin". Therefore, using "language" will yield a better set of results that are generally constrained to a linguistic context. I realize that it's not perfect, of course. However, my searches were not for "Mandarin language" (and "Chinese language") with quotes around it (thus yielding only those articles with "Mandarin language" as an exact phrase), but without quotes (thus yielding articles that contained both the words "Mandarin" and "language", but not necessarily together). Thus, the results are not so unnatural as you imply and yielded a general picture of the relative frequency of each of the terms in a linguistic context. If these searches were the only evidence then, of course, they would be problematic and would need further refinement. But they are just supplements to the evidence already presented and thus are icing on the cake rather than the cake itself. --Taivo (talk) 07:11, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

In light of these searches conducted above. Modern Standard Chinese would be a academic construct which is used in a academic context. Standard Mandarin may have fewer results depending on your search criteria. But I just did a search on Mandarin Chinese on google and that yielded more results in the general search and also using google books. The books which were on teaching used "Mandarin Chinese" to describe Standard Mandarin. Hence Standard Mandarin sounds more distinct that just Modern Standard Chinese as we all know Chinese is a variety of language and Mandarin became the official variety called Putonghua or Guoyu in (TW) and huayu in South east Asia. One has to put it in everyday context? would one ask someone "do you speak Modern Standard Chinese? or ask do you speak Standard Mandarin? and gauge their response and see. My guess is they will refer it to mandarin. Just a thought.Visik (talk) 09:15, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you'd ask either one. I'd just say "Do you speak Mandarin?". — kwami (talk) 09:55, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Exactly, that is what I would ask as well... Visik (talk) 05:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

But the average English speaker wouldn't even say, "Do you speak Mandarin?"--they would say "Do you speak Chinese?" Visik didn't say anything about how he/she constrained his/her Google searches, so I don't believe them. I believe that Visik conducted Google searches, but I don't think he/she did them in any useful way that restricts the searches to just the items we wanted. Most English speakers would not say, "I speak Modern Standard Chinese", they would say, "I speak Chinese", without any modifiers. --Taivo (talk) 11:26, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Taivo, the search on term {mandarin chinese) is based on this: [9]. About 303,000 results (0.39 seconds). From google. (note the Mandarin Chinese article here is on the guanhua. All encompassing term for mandarin.

For standard mandarin, [10] it came to About 68,300 results (0.47 seconds). and for

Modern Standard Mandarin [11] it comes to About 279,000 results (0.43 seconds).

Ok to exact word searches on google books.
For "mandarin chinese" [12] About 55,200 results (0.38 seconds)

For "modern standard chinese" [13] About 3,140 results (0.36 seconds)

For "standard mandarin" [14] About 5,420 results (0.40 seconds)

In reference to asking a question on mandarin. Exactly. You would not ask anyone "do you speak modern standard Chinese?" as this is an academic term and sounds kinda weird, same with standard mandarin as well. Oh, I see you are referring to learners of Mandarin who would probably respond with the answer as Chinese or Mandarin Chinese...

I was thinking of the question in the context of the everyday Chinese person or someone who is familiar with Chinese. They would probably reply with the answer, yes they speak Chinese or Mandarin.

Tavio, I'm not sure where you want to lead this discussion, is this about trying to move standard mandarin to Modern Standard Chinese? or you want this to term to be expanded and covered more rather than a one liner in the top section of the article? As I see it Standard Mandarin fits the WP:COMMONNAME although its more descriptive and recognisable for readers. Visik (talk) 04:09, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, "Standard Mandarin" does not fit the criteria of WP:COMMONNAME and if you look above in this discussion, you will see plenty of evidence that "(Modern) (Standard) Chinese" is the most common term in English for this language. The evidence is conclusive and it's not even close. You looked for every variation of "mandarin" in your searches, but you avoided the most logical choice--"Chinese" (without Modern or Standard), so your evidence is quite skewed. There has already been plenty of evidence presented proving that "Chinese" is the most common term in English. This article should be moved to "Modern Standard Chinese" according to WP:COMMONNAME. The opinion of everyday Chinese people don't matter in the English Wikipedia. Only the most common term in English matters here. You need to read the entire page of evidence here. --Taivo (talk) 04:26, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Whoa, WP:AGF. You didn't mentioned anything about doing a search on the term "Chinese" in the earlier post. I was responding to your query about my results. I can do a result on Chinese... But the point is you are using WP:UNDUE to the weight to some academic construction which is in fact more skewered. whoa, I find it breathtaking you could say something about excluding what everyday Chinese people use to identify their language. Anyway thats you call. Let me remind you official government sources use "Standard Mandarin". [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20].

Doing a search on gov.cn sites using google yielded no results for "modern standard chinese"[21]

I beg to differ on your interpretation of WP:COMMONNAME for Standard Mandarin. The sources you have used are academic and not used by official government sources at all. How can you claim this is the world view? Visik (talk) 05:04, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

The CIA world factbook uses standard Chinese or Mandarin. [22] Next thing your going to say, exclude all the government sources... [23]

FYI: I did a search on google books using the term "Chinese" [24]. About 10,800,000 results (0.41 seconds) Too broad, not even useful at all. Visik (talk) 05:12, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I did assume good faith, I never said otherwise. But you misunderstand WP:NCON. WP:NCON specifically says that common English usage prevails. You have filled your evidence locker with Chinese sources--irrelevant for the English Wikipedia--, official U.S. government sources--only one piece of evidence and not a major one--, and Google searches focused mainly on "Mandarin" and restricting your Chinese search overly much. The evidence that was adduced above in favor of renaming this article "Modern Standard Chinese" included 1) a variety of academic sources dealing specifically with the language that nearly universally called the language "(Modern) (Standard) Chinese"; 2) news media sources that overwhelmingly used "Chinese"; 3) encyclopedic sources that prinicipally use "(Modern) (Standard) Chinese"; 4) Google Books searches for "Chinese language" and "Mandarin language" that overwhelmingly favor "Chinese language" (using "language" in addition to the language name restricts the search quite well as described above). Your evidence for using "Mandarin" is very weak, restricted to one type of evidence, and ignores the range of sources required by WP:NCON. Common English usage prevails, but your evidence doesn't focus on common English usage--only on governmental usage and Chinese sources. Your Google searches were not properly done because 1) they were for a variety of "Mandarin" forms ("Mandarin", "Standard Mandarin", etc.), but only one "Chinese" form ("Modern Standard Chinese") and 2) no attempt was made to restrict the searches to pages relevant only to language. The evidence for "(Modern) (Standard) Chinese" being the most common English term is, indeed, very strong, nearly to the point of being overwhelming. --Taivo (talk) 06:26, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

The World Factbook is a prominent publication; it is the official American document on foreign entities, and as a U.S. government source in public domain, it's been widely used by the general public and officials. It is far more well-known and noted than most sources, thus I disagree with "not a major one" statement above.--TheLeopard (talk) 04:26, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Of course the World Factbook is an important source, but it is only one source, not the full range of sources required by the official Wikipedia policy of WP:NCON. Wikipedia policy does not follow any government's official policy, it only follows common English usage. Common English usage is not determined by one source, no matter what its provenance. It is determined by a variety of pieces of evidence described at WP:NCON. Those pieces of evidence include usage in a variety of academic works, usage in news media, usage in both general and specialist encyclopedias, etc.--not just official usage by any government or governmental agency. The arguments for "Standard Mandarin" have failed to provide adequate evidence for common English usage according to the guidelines of WP:NCON. On the other hand, the arguments for titling this article "Modern Standard Chinese" are overwhelming in the strength of the evidence provided for common English usage per WP:NCON. --Taivo (talk) 06:13, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I am a native speaker of English with formal training going back to 1975 in the Chinese language, sinology, and linguistics, and with subsequent employment experience in research and practice in those fields. I've lived among native speakers of Chinese in their country for years on more than one occasion. When I first encountered this article, which has much good content, I was puzzled by its odd title, because that is not a typical English name for the language described (and, I might add, described well) in the article. For a while before I became a Wikipedian, it appears that the first sentence of the lede paragraph of the article included "Modern Standard Chinese" as the (indubitably correct) English term for the language described in the article, although the article title was Standard Mandarin, an odd term in English. (The term "Standard Mandarin" is characteristic mostly of persons who learn English as a second language after first learning one or another language of China.) It was my attempt to restore the term "Modern Standard Chinese" to the lede, only after checking the title of the Chinese-language article about the same language on Chinese Wikipedia, that prompted much of the discussion here. I assume everyone here gets up in the morning with good faith and attempts to edit Wikipedia to make it a better online encyclopedia. But I have asked over and over and over for reliable reference sources used for the issue of what names languages have that show that "Standard Mandarin" is so much as a standard term in English (not to mention a more preferred term to "Modern Standard Chinese") and I have yet to see any such reference source cited here. I deeply understand the feelings and passions that are aroused by the issue of naming languages in the Chinese-speaking world, but I note for the record that the editors of Chinese Wikipedia don't seem to be offended by the title 現代標準漢語 for the matching article in that version of Wikipedia. And I'm sure that no editor here who advocates following the practice of native speakers of English or of English-language reference books by subject-matter experts (and doing that is Wikipedia policy) is intending any offense. I think it is helpful for users of an online English-language encyclopedia to adopt the vocabulary used for the subject in common English usage and reliable sources on the subject, that's all. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 04:46, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Signature to stop this being archived while move discussion continues. Dpmuk (talk) 14:39, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Kuoyu

Although "Kuoyu" redirects here, the term is not actually mentioned anywhere in the article. Perhaps that could be rectified? I suppose it is just a variant spelling of "Guoyu"? 86.186.35.223 (talk) 03:12, 26 September 2010 (UTC).

Yes, that is a (rarely used) variant spelling. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 04:15, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I was going to change the text to read "... in Taiwan as Guoyu (less commonly spelled Kuoyu) ...", but the context in which I encountered the term "Kuoyu" (which annoyingly I cannot now locate) did not have any connection with Taiwan. It was an English-language academic text about mainland China and Hong Kong written in the 1960s, I think. Therefore I am not very sure how to handle this and would rather an expert made the necessary change to the article. 86.184.25.102 (talk) 12:58, 26 September 2010 (UTC).

Think there must a incorrect redirection. Guoyu is a disambiguation page for Taiwanese Mandarin and Standard Mandarin. If Kuoyu is the same term as Guoyu in a different romanisation flavor, it should redirect to guoyu. --Visik (talk) 04:27, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. 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 move request was: move to Standard Chinese. Although some initial opposition to "Standard Modern Chinese", after careful consideration there appears consensus for "Standard Chinese" as the WP:COMMONNAME. HXL49's reservations about the "Standard" not being part of the Common Name is fair enough, but "Chinese language" is also the Common Name for the family and using "Standard" is a fairly obvious and non-controversial means of disambiguation. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 00:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

---

Standard Mandarin → Standard Chinese — The most common English name for this language is "Modern Standard Chinese"; this move thus conforms with the dictates of WP:NCON. Taivo (talk) 19:17, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

[editing proposed name to remove "Modern" per comments below, including Taivo's. — kwami (talk) 20:23, 5 December 2010 (UTC)]

[agreed. --Taivo (talk) 21:29, 5 December 2010 (UTC)]

• Support. See the comprehensive evidence compiled here. It has been conclusively demonstrated that the most common English name for this language is "Modern Standard Chinese", so according to the dictates of WP:NCON, this article should be moved to that title. --Taivo (talk) 19:18, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I ask why you propose this move now instead of in late September, when the last naming discussion occurred? --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 16:07, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Because I kept waiting for someone else to propose the move and they never did. I got tired of waiting. Do you have a problem with it? --Taivo (talk) 16:54, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I consider it rather redundant as the discussions back in late August were for a move. You should not think that the status consensus can change within a few months on matters like this. As TheLeopard objectively pointed out during that discussion, a strong consensus needs to be instituted. This is a major change we are talking about here. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 00:43, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

The discussions back in August were just discussions, no request for move was made at that time. The problem right here is that the opposition is providing no evidence whatsoever that "Standard Chinese" is not the most common English usage. They are just opposing because they don't like it as far as I can tell. They are offering no evidence. --Taivo (talk) 01:50, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Then as Benlisquare points out, you really are wasting our time, whether by intention or no. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 03:29, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

• Support I had opposed this before further review of the lit, and wouldn't mind calling it simply "Mandarin", but Standard Chinese beats out Standard Mandarin, which is a tautology. Though, why 'Modern'? The previous standard we call simply Classical Chinese, so IMO there's no need disambiguate further than 'Standard Chinese'. — kwami (talk) 22:59, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I have no objections to "Standard Chinese". --Taivo (talk) 00:56, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Okay. That would parallel Standard Hindi AKA Modern Standard Hindi. (We do have Modern Standard Arabic, but 'Standard Arabic' is more ambiguous in that case.) — kwami (talk) 01:22, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I think the "Modern" is in the term for reasons much like those pertaining to Arabic. Anyway, the sources I've found show a strong predominance for using the term "Modern Standard Chinese" as the name for the language described in this article, in English. As I pointed out during earlier discussion of this issue, the interwiki link over to the Chinese version of this article leads to an article titled " 現代標準漢語 ," which is simply the Chinese way of saying "Modern Standard Chinese." So the term is already familiar to Chinese-reading users of Wikipedia. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 05:18, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I have no preference either way with or without "Modern". My preference is to replace "Mandarin" with "Chinese" in order to properly reflect English-language usage and to conform with WP:NCON. If you support, please mark it. Thanks. --Taivo (talk) 05:51, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

@WeijiBaikeBianji. the ZH-wiki term is only a compromise between the mainland, HK/Macau, TW, and Singapore/Malaysia terms. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 16:07, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

@Kwami, that's because Classical Chinese is a strictly written standard. Standard Mandarin is a spoken standard. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 16:07, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

You cannot prove that. English usage is quite clear and unequivocal that "Standard Chinese" is the most common term for both the written and spoken standards. Textbooks and reference works in English on Chinese use "Chinese" completely synonymously for both written and spoken forms. --Taivo (talk) 16:54, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

you were not completely addressing the Classical Chinese issue here. I withdraw my previous responses to Taivo's 16:54 (UTC) comment, and thus ask Taivo to do the same. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 00:40, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Actually, Classical Chinese was not strictly a written standard, despite the strong dichotomy China draws between spoken and written language. When people read Classical Chinese aloud, they may have used the pronunciation of their dialect, but language is more than just phonology, and they used Classical Chinese grammar. Also, the split between MSC as a spoken language and Vernacular Chinese as a written language does not really exist in English, apart from translations from Chinese: "Mandarin", "Standard Chinese", and "Modern Standard Chinese" are generally used to refer to the entire language, spoken and written. The idea of "Vernacular Chinese" as modern standard written Chinese is quite alien. — kwami (talk) 02:17, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

The facts are self-evident. Why not read both articles for more information?

I know that. But the term standardised Chinese speech is vague. I don't care about inferences and what most English speakers think, but according to Naming Conventions (Chinese) we cannot equate Chinese to Mandarin. I shouldn't have to explain why. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 22:18, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

There is no vagueness about "Standard Chinese". It is widely used (by orders of magnitude over "Mandarin" or "Standard Mandarin") and its referent is clear in English. There is no ambiguity. Common Cantonese is called "Cantonese" in English, for example. The "ambiguity" that you worry about is manufactured by those who oppose the term "Standard Chinese" and is not real in any sense of the word. --Taivo (talk) 22:44, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support. An article title of "Modern Standard Chinese" is consistent with reliable sources and with general Engish usage as a designation for the topic of this article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 17:17, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. --Pepsi Lite (talk) 01:23, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

why? a simple "oppose" won't cut it. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 16:07, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose per POV and accuracy concerns (elaborations given below). Some of you need to remember that Chinese does not only specify the spoken varieties. Literally translating the ZH-WIKI equivalent of this article, "Modern Standard Han Language", instead of the way WeijiBaikeBianji does it, one can contest, as has been mentioned above, that Mandarin is not the standard for Han Chinese. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 16:07, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi, HXL49, could you kindly explain that point in a little more detail? Do you have sources that we should all look at as we consider this issue? -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 16:48, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia policies are in place for a reason. You're going to have to prove that this change would "bring harm". I think that is gross hyperbole, if not completely false. --Taivo (talk) 16:54, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Such a move would marginalise the other varieties of spoken Chinese, per naming conventions that we editors have set forth. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 22:18, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

1) There will not be an "erosion of accuracy" since the term is clear enough, 2) This does not "marginalize" the other varieties of spoken Chinese because there is only one standardized form of Chinese. The other forms of Chinese, which might have common forms, are called "Cantonese", etc. in English, not "Chinese". You have still failed to demonstrate that following the policy of WP:NCON would harm Wikipedia. Following your desire for "accuracy" in violation of WP:NCON would lead to ridiculous names like calling the standard language of Croatia and Serbia "Standard Shtokavian" since the standardized forms of Croatian and Serbian are both based on the Shtokavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian. --Taivo (talk) 22:44, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I ask that Taivo withdraw his response to my "harm" fear, because that fear, as any, is subjective. And I ask, though with not as strongly, that he also withdraw all of his responses made to any of my struck out comments. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 00:37, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

@WPEditor. Look at Rjanag's arguments (hence the "as has been mentioned above"). I don't have time to re-iterate them here. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 22:18, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Which discussion are you referencing? Rjanag does not appear anywhere on this talk page; are you talking about this discussion? His arguments don't seem to be as supportive of your position as is advertised. Quigley (talk) 00:00, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I erred. and you are correct, he did not take a position

• Support: to use the most common name, by both common people and linguists as Taivo has thoroughly documented. If the move will break this last corner of internet resistance to the "[marginalisation of] the other varieties of spoken Chinese", which seems to be what the opposing arguments boil down to, that's tragic, but not a concern of Wikipedia. Quigley (talk) 00:00, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose per POV issues. What is considered "standard", and what is considered "Chinese" can vary along definition. Such a title implies that the only correct Chinese is Mandarin, and all other varieties of Chinese are "subinferior pig disgusting, long live the party". inb4 another 90,000 bytes of discussion that exactly mirrors the discussion a few months ago. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 01:27, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

As with all the other opponents you have offered no evidence whatsoever. The usage of "Standard Chinese" as the most common term in English is thoroughly and unequivocally documented in accordance with the guidelines and policy at WP:NCON. You have offered no evidence other than "I don't like it". --Taivo (talk) 01:55, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

that is partially because you believe common name is the damning factor. It is a factor, but you have not sufficient grounds to believe it is the most important. Oh, just because the word "massacre" is used more often in English circles to refer to the June 4th incident, does it mean that that article's title contains the word "massacre"? And please don't deride that as irrelevant.

the other reason for no evidence is because NCON requires statistics. The opposition is *not* contesting what commonplace usage is. You know this, and it appears that you are using "lack of evidence" just to attract the lackadaisical user's or admin's attention. And this is not a criminal case, Taivo.

and I apologise for previously failing to address the evidence issue more clearly. but Taivo, do your part and address what Benlisquare is bringing up, not go to the sideline. If you wish to complain about lack of evidence, it would reflect better on you to make a separate (*'''Comment''') indenting. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 02:21, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:NCON does not require statistics. It requires a range of evidence that conclusively attests common English usage. But every one of the types of evidence that WP:NCON describes supports the fact that "Standard Chinese" is, by an order of magnitude, the most commonly used term for this language. It's not even close. And Benlisquare's point is nothing more than "I don't like it". He has presented no evidence. --Taivo (talk) 14:02, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I misspoke about statistics, which I should not equate to evidence, and could you quit hitting me over the head about what the NCON is?

Again. you interrupt the flow of the discussion by failing to respond to each of my previous arguments. You didn't address whether NCON is the "damning factor" (possibly because anyone can do little but to realise that nothing is damning). --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 14:24, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "whether NCON is the 'damning factor'". If you mean that WP:NCON should be ignored, I disagree with you. Wikipedia policies are in place to present a standard for encyclopedic usage. There has been no compelling evidence presented either here or in the August/September discussion that shows a reason why WP:NCON should be ignored in this case. Indeed, the only evidence presented throughout either of these discussions has been the overwhelming evidence that the article should be moved to "Standard Chinese" based on a preponderence of reliable sources demonstrating the fact, that you do not dispute, that "Standard Chinese" is the most common English term. The only argument that has been made to keep it at "Standard Mandarin" boils down to "I don't like it". That's not a valid argument based on Wikipedia policy. --Taivo (talk) 16:56, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

the word "damning factor" means that it is the only factor being considered here. As I have said before, if you wish to use NCON, you must provide evidence, sometimes statistics (i.e. with the damned Google searches). Not every decision on Wikipedia involves NCON one bit (as you seem to imply), as you can clearly see in this linked discussion. By the definition of a damning factor I gave above, it would be unfair and unlogical for you to believe that I would totally discount it. NCON should be considered for any title, but whether it trumps the other policies (an example being the June Fourth Incident) is a different matter. And I thank you for at last even bothering to respond to this concern. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 17:12, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose as per Benlisquare's comment. Its either Standard Mandarin (first preference) or Standard Chinese. I was initially opposed to Standard Chinese but this seems to be more appropriate term from reading the evidence from google scholar and books. Leave the modern out as this is a academic term used by linguist and not the common name as some have suggested. I'm still not comfortable with Standard Chinese but doing a google search confirms its used by official .gov.cn, .gov.hk, .gov.sg websites as well. --Visik (talk) 04:10, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose for the same reasons I have given repeatedly in previous iterations of this discussion. And, to be honest, I don't think it's productive to start an RM here. Granted, the last discussion ended with no consensus, but I don't see anything new that's been brought to the table, this is just beating a dead horse. The issue is obviously very complicated and is going to require a more complicated solution than just a simple change of title—it's probably going to require some rewriting of portions of articles, judicious disambiguation, etc. An RM is not going to solve the problem. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:31, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Your probably right Rjanag. I think this article naming issue will be in a state of flux just like Yue Chinese article. Whatever the outcome, updates would need to be made to Mandarin Chinese.--Visik (talk) 04:49, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Several opponents have cited Benlisquare's "argument". What argument? His argument consists solely of "I don't like it". And since you all seem to admit that "Standard Chinese" is demonstrably the most common English usage, then what is the problem other than "I don't like it"? WP:NCON is quite clear (and it does not rely solely on statistics, but on a variety of compelling sources). The title of this article should be "Standard Chinese". Rjanag complains about other articles, but this is always the case in Wikipedia--WP:OTHERSTUFF is clear that that argument does not constitute a valid counterargument to WP:NCON. --Taivo (talk) 05:33, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I didn't say anything about other articles above. (If you're referring to something I said in one of the past discussions, maybe, I don't remember everything I said then.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 06:37, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

"It's probably going to require some rewriting of portions of articles, judicious disambiguation, etc." That sounded to me like an argument based on "other stuff". --Taivo (talk) 06:41, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

That's not how I meant for it to sound. More details are probably available in one of my comments in one of the past discussions (I don't have the energy to dig it up right now, and it doesn't help that the discussions got scattered across multiple pages); basically what I'm saying is that both sides in this argument have valid points and we can't just solve it by changing an article title and leaving the rest alone; somewhere we're going to need to write something where we clearly define what we mean (within Wikipedia) by each term, and what the differences between the terms are. rʨanaɢ (talk) 06:52, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like quoting out of context, doesn't it Taivo? Based on the posting of your comment you seemed to be up rather late. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 11:20, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose as the current article already explained the many names for this subject, including the various commonly titles, such as Mandarin, Standard Chinese, Modern Standard Chinese and Modern Standard Mandarin. I don't see the need for a major and polarizing change, especially everything is stated up-front. The listings are pretty comprehensive. Further, several above users has mentioned the term "Standard Chinese", and expressed that it is more appropriate than "Modern Standard Chinese", and User:Visik suggested that it is "used by official .gov.cn, .gov.hk, .gov.sg websites", so the issue of whether to use "Standard Chinese" or "Modern Standard Chinese" is still not clear.--TheLeopard (talk) 10:18, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I stated above that using "Standard Chinese" is probably better than "Modern Standard Chinese"--I have no preference for one form over the other. But the evidence is clear that "Chinese" in this title is preferable over "Mandarin", since that is the term that English usage dictates per WP:NCON. --Taivo (talk) 13:59, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

• Additional comment (hopefully a summary of what I said in past versions of this discussion). The terms "Chinese" and "Mandarin" are both "right" and are both "common", it's just a matter of the perspective from which you're referring to the language. If you're talking about, say, Spanish, French, German, and ____, then you'd be more likely to say Chinese. If you're talking about, say, Wu, Yue, Min, and _____, you'd say Mandarin. That's why this dispute is not gonna be solved just by changing the title of this one article. We need to decide how we are going to treat these various topics (how should they be organized—one article on "Chinese" and the "Chinese languages", one on the Mandarin subgroup, and one on Standard Mandarin? should searches like "Chinese language" redirect to one or another of these, or to a dab page, or what?). A discussion needs to be had, rather than a vote. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:16, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

rʨanaɢ wrote, "If you're talking about, say, Spanish, French, German, and ____, then you'd be more likely to say Chinese." This is surely correct among readers of English Wikipedia with regard to the language that is the topic of this article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 20:56, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and in the other case, 'Mandarin' is more likely to mean Mandarin Chinese. — kwami (talk) 21:02, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

"Mandarin" is actually a far more common title in everyday usage. When most people mentions "Mandarin", they are talking about this "standard" version. American Heritage Dictionary definition "Mandarin: The official national standard spoken language of China, which is based on the principal dialect spoken in and around Beijing." [25]--TheLeopard (talk) 22:58, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Leopard, you are wrong. If you ask English speakers what the official language of China is, 90% of them will say "Chinese". Of course, if you ask "What is Mandarin" as looking the word up in the dictionary will show, they will respond, "It's Chinese". The proof that English speakers use "Chinese" by orders of magnitude over "Mandarin" as the name of the official language of China has been conclusively proven over and over here using reliable sources. Your assertion that "Mandarin" is far more common is completely false. --Taivo (talk) 01:22, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Unless we have polled a vast number of English speakers in the world or have "sources" that shows that, we have no concrete evidence to prove that "90% would say the official language of China is Chinese." Further, many governments publications (i.e. United States Department of State Background Notes) and major encyclopedias list the official language of China as Mandarin.--TheLeopard (talk) 02:25, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Pun on Taivo: 98% of all statistics are instantly fabricated. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 02:34, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

What good is it for 90% of people to call it Chinese, when 95% of the global population is made up of laypeople? Just as if someone called "Europe" a country, I would not hesitate to call them an idiot, I don't think that arguing the 90% is a valid argument at all, since 90% of the population aren't experts in Chinese linguistics. (Kind of irrelevant, but a poll by the Sydney Morning Herald done a few years ago showed that 60% of New Yorkers could not accurately recall the date, location, and casualty figures of the September 11 attacks, which is another reason why I, personally, never trust "the majority" as a proper argument.) -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 07:54, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

We are creating a general encyclopedia accessible to laypeople. Of course this means to dispel and not indulge misconceptions, like you said about September 11. But as Taivo has demonstrated, (Modern) (Standard) Chinese is the name of choice for your vaunted "experts in Chinese linguistics". Quigley (talk) 08:19, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

As Quigley points out, and as is abundantly and conclusively demonstrated with the scholarly sources cited above on this page, scholars unequivocally use "Chinese" to refer to this language. Google Scholar and Google Books hits unequivocally use "Chinese" by at least an order of magnitude over "Mandarin". So far, the opponents to this move have presented zero reliable evidence otherwise. They continue to rely on "I don't like it" as their argument against the move. They have presented no actual evidence in accordance with the dictates of Wikipedia policy. 90% of scholars use "Chinese" and that is proven by the data I provided above. Do I need to repeat the evidence again? Or would you prefer to continue ignoring the evidence? --Taivo (talk) 14:21, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Stop hitting us over the head about it. You have never responded to my concern that NCON is NOT the damning factor here! Do it once more, and I will consider this to be incivility! --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 15:57, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Incivility is if I am rude to you. Asking for evidence for your POV is not rudeness, but is the essence of the Wikipedia dialogue. We don't say things here or make assertions that will stand up to public scrutiny unless we have evidence. That is not incivility. I have also responded to your question about WP:NCON as well. An encyclopedia must have standards in order to fairly and evenly present information to its readers. WP:NCON is the standard that has been established for naming articles. It is the rule by which we name things here. I have thoroughly documented the evidence above that shows common English usage to be "Standard Chinese" and not "Standard Mandarin". I have provided the evidence mandated by WP:NCON in a very clear and understandable format in accordance with WP:NCON. WP:NCON is the standard, it is Wikipedia policy, it is the rule by which we name articles on Wikipedia. If you are unable to accept that, it's not incivility to point it out to you. Wikipedia policy stands whether you like it or not. You have failed to provide one single piece of evidence to show either 1) I have misanalyzed the data, or 2) "Standard Chinese" is not common English usage. Unless you can show either of these, then WP:NCON applies as Wikipedia policy. --Taivo (talk) 20:14, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

I have already admitted what is common English usage; I only contest the correctness of this usage. And deliberately misconstruing my intentions despite the fact that I have already stated them borders on incivility. You yet again fail to respond to my query of whether NCON is the damning factor. So that means you are dodging questions again, because you can't answer them sufficiently. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 20:21, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

How many times do I have to say this? WP:NCON is the policy in Wikipedia. Yes, HXL49, it is the "damning factor" (whatever that actually means). You have asked and asked and asked and I have answered and answered and answered. An encyclopedia requires consistency in presentation, so that's why we have policies. WP:NCON is policy in Wikipedia and you have presented absolutely no evidence to the contrary. The only argument that you and the opponents to this move have made is "We don't like it and we don't like Wikipedia policy". Sorry, but that is neither a valid argument nor a valid reason to abandon Wikipedia policy. --Taivo (talk) 22:11, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

You have never answered more than once whether NCON is explicitly the "damning factor", so I can consider that fourth sentence to be false and to be a lie. I never said I wholly dislike NCON, so how DARE you speak for me and others? I said that it should not be recklessly applied, as in the case of the June Fourth Incident, which, again, you have not yet responded to. Just because it is more commonly called the "Tiananmen Square Massacre", does it mean that that page should be named so? I suggest you brush up on your reading of other people's comments. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 22:33, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Now you are crossing the line into incivility. I have answered your question about WP:NCON several times, but you have clearly ignored my comments about it. Your comment about Tianmen Square is immaterial and not relevant. The issue is solely, 1) "Standard Chinese" is the most common English term (you agree with that), and 2) WP:NCON therefore dictates that the title of this article should conform to common English usage. It's very simple. Since I believe you have read WP:NCON, there's no wiggle room. --Taivo (talk) 22:42, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

It is relevant, considering what could happen if you indiscriminately apply NCON in that case. Then you could cross the POV and accuracy line. deriding it as irrelevant is the same as dodging the question. and "immaterial"? that's extreme propaganda itself, almost as bad as the nonsense the KCNA spews out.

simply false, potentially being deceptive and lying. 1) you have not directly answered my question about NCON being the damning factor more than once. 2) you recognise that I admit "Standard Chinese" is the most common English term and that I said (above) that if NCON were the overriding factor every time, it should be the article title. You are twisting my statements here. 3) the fact that I admitted what common usage is thus makes the "ignoring" on my part irrelevant. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:01, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Tienamin Square is irrelevant because of WP:OTHERSTUFF. Just because that title may be off doesn't affect this article. Based upon the evidence, there is no reason that "Standard Chinese" is inappropriate here. The only time that WP:NCON might not apply here is if the numbers of usage were close between "Standard Chinese" and "Standard Mandarin". Then we would bring other factors to bear in deciding the title of this article. But since "Standard Chinese" is overwhelmingly the most common English usage, WP:NCON applies in a straightforward manner and this article is moved to "Standard Chinese". --Taivo (talk) 00:31, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

After cooling off, I have decided to return, though you will probably get nowhere with this discussion as you did in September. WP:OTHERSTUFF is for deletion discussions, not renaming. I view your application of it as an attempt to brush aside my parallel example, distorting the situation to any observers of this debate. And furthermore, we have the PRC/ROC/China issue; yes, common usage is to (often overwhelmingly) equate China with PRC and vice versa but we have, until reunification occurs, nicely agreed to invoke the name of NPOV. Besides, "The most common usage may not be the correct usage, and a good encyclopaedia prioritises correctness over commonness.". --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:07, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Just because you put something in quotes and highlight it doesn't make it any more than your personal assertion, driven by your own POV in this issue. Wikipedia policy is quite clear--WP:NCON is the determining factor in giving titles to articles by determining most common English usage. --Taivo (talk) 02:35, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

WeijiBaikeBianji, I don't know what you're trying to say. But my point is very simple. If people are contrasting this language with languages from elsewhere in the world, they often call it "Chinese"; if they're contrasting it with other Chinese languages, they often call it "Mandarin". I do not agree that it is "surely" the case that the majority of Wikipedia users belong to one or the other of those groups, and I really doubt that you have statistics either way. rʨanaɢ (talk) 23:13, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support based on usage in Reliable Sources and academia and NOT POLITICS. Outside of the Sinosphere, and to a general English reading audience, Mandarin is Modern Standard Chinese (or just plain Chinese). We make titles based on what readers expect, not to cater to political viewpoints of Wikipedia's editors. The POV complaint is entirely an editors POV within Wikipedia, not based on usage in the outside world. If you take "Chinese 101" at any English language university you will be taught Mandarin, that is overwhelming evidence of what the article title should be. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

The word "modern" is totally biased. Mandarin still uses old terms like 沒有 which has been modernized in other dialects to single words like 冇 a long time ago. And the list is long. If a billion people uses an old computer, does it make their computer more modern. Benjwong (talk) 06:51, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

It's already been generally agreed among the supporters that it should be "Standard Chinese" without the "Modern". --Taivo (talk) 08:34, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose It isn't more standard. And it certainly isn't more modern. Benjwong (talk) 19:12, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

• Support Like other standard languages, in Chinese there is a standard and everyone knows it. It's not only the standard (primarily written form) of all Mandarin dialects, it's the standard across all Chinese dialects, much like how Classical Chinese was the standard form before it was replaced. Nobody would use colloquial dialects in a formal letter. Wyang (talk) 04:56, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
  • First of all, it's not "Chinese dialects"; consensus among linguists is that there are multiple Chinese languages. Furthermore, the fact that someone wouldn't use a "colloquial dialect" (by which I assume you mean 本地话) in a formal letter doesn't mean Mandarin is the standard form of that language, it only means that language has a lower prestige. For comparison: in a place like Senegal, someone would not use Pulaar for writing in school, they would use French; that doesn't mean French is the standard form of Pulaar. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:27, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
    • Whether it be dialects or languages, as long as speakers of A perceive A to be a variety of B and would rather use B in formal situations, then B is the standard form of A. Whether linguists think of them as languages or dialects is irrelevant. Even if A and B belong to the same language and are nearly identical, if speakers of A do not use B in formal situations or recognise A as a different language from B, then B is not a standard. Wyang (talk) 02:18, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

• Comment: Taivo's deriding of the opposition's argument as being virtually "I don't like it" is FALSE. Of course anybody in opposition to the move would not like it, but people have given their reasons, so it is more than a simple emotion. Therefore this derision (whether fabricated or made out of error) effectively brushes aside the opposition (to those observers not reading carefully) and not respond properly to it. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 23:19, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Actually, there have been no reasons whatsoever given for opposing this move based on Wikipedia policy or on evidence that has been presented. There is not one single argument that exceeds the evidentiary standards of "I don't like it". While those supporting the move have repeatedly cited WP:NCON and the weight of evidence is overwhelmingly on "Standard Chinese" as the most common English term, the opposition has neither policy nor evidence to back up its opposition. Indeed, several of the opponents, including HXL49, admit that "Standard Chinese" is the most common English term. They have provided no reasons why WP:NCON should not therefore apply. They have presented no arguments and no evidence, so I have no idea what HXL49 is alluding to. Their arguments are, indeed, no more than "I don't like it". --Taivo (talk) 02:31, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I ask that you withdraw the RIDICULOUS assertion "no arguments". it's being dishonest and I am sure that you are aware of this. that is just short of a personal attack, so I won't bother responding any further until you retract it. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 07:19, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

But what are your arguments? Nothing. Here is Benli's argument (at least I assume it is Benli because he doesn't have the courtesy on the English Wikipedia to use English characters in his name): "Such a title implies that the only correct Chinese is Mandarin, and all other varieties of Chinese are 'subinferior pig disgusting, long live the party'". That's not an argument. That's is just another version of "I don't like it". And yet that is the "argument" that many here have continually cited as, "I agree with Benli". No evidence, just a personal dislike. You have stated that "Standard Chinese" is inaccurate, but have not proven that statement with evidence. Not one of you has shown why WP:NCON should not apply. There's not a single link to Wikipedia policy showing why Wikipedia policy should not apply. You admit that the evidence is overwhelming that "Standard Chinese" is the most common English term. Why aren't your arguments more than "I don't like it?" I see no evidence here. --Taivo (talk) 11:48, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

HXL, there's no need to shout. We all know what both you and Taivo think about this matter, so how about let's just calm down and let other editors have their say. Nothing's going to come out of fighting here, and in any case it doesn't matter who's being "dishonest" or who's misrepresenting one another's arguments, all that matters for developing consensus is the content issues that are brought forth there. Editors can read the discussion and evaluate those issues, we don't need arguments like these. Please let's just all leave off this for now. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:46, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

• Support with or without "Modern". This is what the standard language is called in the overwhelming majority of English-language sources, both lay and academic, and using the term does not denigrate other varieties of Chinese. Kanguole 12:09, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. Colipon+(Talk) 22:41, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

  This is a discussion, not a vote. Please give the reasons for your opposition. Quigley (talk) 22:47, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

• I basically support what User Benlisquare has said above. Colipon+(Talk) 22:54, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

• Summary I find it amazing that there are so few rational arguments opposing the move. Hell, I could come up with a decent opposing argument, I used to oppose it. A few of the oppose votes were against the word "Modern" (The Leopard, Visik), which has now been removed from the proposal. The others mostly reference 李博杰's comment,

What is considered "standard", and what is considered "Chinese" can vary along definition. Such a title implies that the only correct Chinese is Mandarin, and all other varieties of Chinese are "subinferior pig disgusting, long live the party". inb4 another 90,000 bytes of discussion that exactly mirrors the discussion a few months ago

This is nonsense, and thus the opposition statements that rely on it are basically worthless. Why? True, what is considered standard can vary. Ca. 1910 the standard was changed from Classical Chinese to Mandarin, and this is why scholars speak of Modern Standard Chinese, as opposed to Classical Chinese, which was Standard Chinese through the 19th century. So this argument can would only support keeping the "Modern" in the name. However, Standard Chinese does not vary today: there is a single standard, which is used in China, Taiwan, and Singapore with only minor differences. This only implies that other varieties are inferior if you are obsequious enough to believe that only authority confers legitimacy, but that's not the business of WP. And if it did invalidate those varieties, why do we then accept "Modern Standard Chinese" right there in the lede? Doesn't that invalidate them?

What is considered Chinese does not vary, of course. There is absolutely no dispute as to what constitutes the Chinese language / dialect cluster, apart from a few obscure mixed languages such as Wutun. But even for Wutun, or for those Zhuang who believe their language is Chinese rather than Tai, Mandarin is still the standard language. As for "long live the party", which party? The Kuomintang, which made Mandarin the standard in the ROC? The pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, which retained it as the standard? The People's Action Party, which made it the standard in Singapore as well?

Then there's Ben, who says,

It isn't more standard. And it certainly isn't more modern.

Obviously wrong on both counts. Mandarin is the only Chinese standard. Cantonese is partially standardized, but to a lesser degree than Mandarin, and then only for Yue, not for all of Chinese. The move to standardize Minnan in the ROC hasn't even gotten that far. (Actually, there is a second standardized form of Beifanghua, Dungan, but I suspect that this does not underlie opposition to the move.) And MSC is more modern than Classical Chinese, which is what the word "Modern" is meant to disambiguate. In any case, "Modern" has now been removed from the proposal.

So the only potentially valid counter-arguments are those referred to by rʨanaɢ, such as the term MSC varying with Mandarin depending on whether we're contrasting it with other languages or with other Chinese dialects (something which most of us probably accept), and those of HXL, which I can't make sense of. — kwami (talk) 00:15, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

• Support. If Standard Chinese is indeed the most common English name, which the opposers even seem to acknowledge, then rename it per policy. For titles, Wikipedia is meant to reflect common names or what reliable sources largely say. If the name seems unfair or POV, then it's not Wikipedia that's unfair or POV, it's just the way academic zeitgeist is - it's not up to us to 'correct' it. Spellcast (talk) 07:15, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose There isnt any Chinese language in the firtst place so how can it be standard, Mandarin is just one of the many Chinese languages and its known as Mandarin.--Andres rojas22 (talk) 01:25, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

It is not known as "Mandarin" in English. It is known as "Chinese" in English and that has been proven conclusively above with multiple reliable sources. --Taivo (talk) 03:23, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

known ERRONEOUSLY as "Chinese".

• Page Standard Chinese is currently a disambig page. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 12:02, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

If this move request is successful, that can be fixed with hatnote or another disambig page differently labelled. --Taivo (talk) 14:03, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Standard Chinese is Classical Chinese, which has no phonology, since it is a written-only dialect. 65.93.14.29 (talk) 04:40, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

That is factually incorrect. Classical is the standard nowhere. — kwami (talk) 08:46, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I've been waiting ages for this to be closed by some other admin. Disregarding objections based on the inclusion of "Modern", which is no longer the proposal, and votes given without reasons, we have 李博杰, Benjwong, Andres, and 65.93.14.29 making the incorrect claim that Mandarin is not the standard. HXL makes an argument but one with no clear reason that I can discern. After almost two months, the only cogent argument is rʨanaɢ's, who says that "Standard Chinese" is generally used when contrasting with other standard languages, but "Mandarin" is generally used when contrasting with other lects of Chinese. This is probably true, if I can trust my impressions from the lit. However, it isn't actually an argument in favor of keeping the current title, and it runs up against all the arguments for the move: common usage, the oddness of the phrase "Standard Chinese", etc. Since these things are matters of rational debate rather than just tallying up votes, it's clear that the argument is in favor of the move, and I'll go ahead and move it now. — kwami (talk) 09:09, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

The old dab page at that name has been moved to Standard Chinese (disambiguation), to preserve the article history as much as anything. We make it clear in this article that Vernacular Chinese is the written form of the standard, not a separate standard, so a dab page is IMO not really necessary. — kwami (talk) 09:16, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Again. You unilaterally move a page when the discussion has not been closed. And an involved admin cannot close a move discussion.This is against standards of conduct for administrators. enough said.

To make myself clear, I oppose the move primarily based upon the FACT (it's not just "probably true". it is definitely true) that "Standard Chinese" is generally used when contrasting with other standard languages, but "Mandarin" is generally used when contrasting with other varieties of Chinese. If you think the argument is one that is against the move, then it is arguably just as good as one that is an argument in favour of the current title. And sorry for not making myself clearer. Must not allow my emotions and prejudice against another editor to get ahold of me. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 13:18, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

--HXL's Roundtable, and Record 13:18, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Once again, HXL, that is not a valid argument, since in English the distinction is not between "Standard Mandarin" and "Standard Cantonese", but simply between "(Standard) Chinese" and "Cantonese". This has been demonstrated to be the case in English over and over and over again, but you refuse to recognize the reliable sources that have been piled up in support. You have presented zero reliable sources for your position. You simply assert it without evidence. There is no "fact" here, just your unsourced assertion. --Taivo (talk) 13:39, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

even the terrorising Kwami acknowledges that claim. In this case, I could care less about the English usage. We are not here to pander to the needs of the uneducated part of the English-speaking world, which scholars mistakenly base their naming off of. And it's high time you moderate your ridiculous propaganda and clownish antics. Just because I may not have a source does not mean my opinion is null.

and you are silent about my concerns over the correctness of the actions taken (whether an involved admin can claim to close the discussion). Your continued failure to address all of the issues I bring up is a sign of consistent incivility, deception and trickery. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 13:54, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Per WP:NCON, HXL, English usage is the number one concern for how to label articles, not your personal whims. There's no "ridiculous propaganda" here, HXL, only the facts. Wikipedia does not run on personal assertions, but on reliable sources. The reliable sources demonstrate without any ambiguity that common English usage, even among the scholarly community, calls this language "Standard Chinese". There's no incivility here, HXL, only the clear fact that you have no evidence or sources for your assertions, and that your personal whim is to ignore Wikipedia policies as clearly stated in WP:NCON and WP:RS. --Taivo (talk) 14:01, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Apart from HXL's bizarre ranting (moving a page is terrorism?; I never closed the discussion; and of course accusations of bad faith, which is what people stoop to when they know they have no sound basis for their POV), he is now signing up with rʨanaɢ's argument, the only cogent argument to not move. That argument is that both "Mandarin" and "Standard Chinese" are valid names, but that they contrast with different areas. I think that is probably true, though it has not been demonstrated to be true. But it is not an argument to maintain the current title, only an argument that we might want to move it to Mandarin instead, and the choice of "Mandarin" is complicated by the fact that it has more than one meaning, even as a language. So it is a valid argument, just not a good argument for keeping the article where it is now. — kwami (talk) 23:01, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Two possibilities for the move

Since there are two cogent proposals for the move, Taivo's to Standard Chinese and rʨanaɢ's to Mandarin (which what is currently at that location presumably being moved to Mandarin (disambiguation), do we prefer the latter? (If we do prefer the latter, perhaps we should move Mandarin Chinese to Northern Chinese so that the term 'Mandarin' is not overly ambiguous. But that would be another discussion.) — kwami (talk) 23:08, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Standard Chinese. WP:NCON begins with three statements: 1) common English usage prevails, 2) recognizability--the title must be something that the reader will recognize to know that he/she is in the right place, and 3) naturalness--the title must be a term that the average reader will search for. Since "Chinese" is the name that this language carries with the vast majority of English speakers, that name passes muster with all three of these issues at WP:NCON. There has been no evidence presented that a distinction exists between "Mandarin" and "Chinese" as a standard language for English speakers. Indeed, English sources invariably refer to the other common standard dialect as "Cantonese". Look at the language section of any bookstore and you will see "Chinese" for the books on Mandarin and "Cantonese" for the books on that language. This is a clear indication that this article should be at "Standard Chinese", not "Mandarin". --Taivo (talk) 23:26, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Standard Chinese. By the principle of least astonishment, we shouldn't confuse readers by imposing a contrast between Mandarin and other varieties of Chinese when they are not looking for one. Standard Chinese is what sources use, what readers will look for, and therefore what we should use. Quigley (talk) 23:35, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Standard Chinese, per above. "Mandarin" traditionally corresponds to the Chinese term "官话", which using 现代标准汉语 to equate to is overtly inappropriate. And from Chinese Wikipedia: "从1980年代后期起，中国大陆的汉语方言学界的期刊和专著已统一使用“官话”这一称呼，“北方方言”、“北方话”这些词汇事实上已退出学术领域。" - "Since late 1980s, academic journals and monographs on Chinese dialectology in Mainland China have been consistently using the name "官话" (Mandarin); the terms "北方方言" (Northern dialects), "北方话" (Northern speech) have in fact disappeared from the academic field.", which is not unreasonable as "西南官话" (Southwestern Mandarin) is a major branch of Mandarin. Wyang (talk) 23:48, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Standard Chinese. Per Wikipedia guidelines, prefer the term attested in the sources, and avoid confusing the reader. We don't vote here, at least not in disregard of the sources, but look at the sources. What distinguishes the language in the article under discussion here from other languages and other language groups discussed in articles under the oversight of WikiProject China is that the language described in this article is the standard modern language of China (and of all places that attempt to maintain a common standard language with China, e.g., Singapore), so the title "Standard Chinese" aptly distinguishes the topic of this article from the topics of other articles on Wikipedia. As noted in earlier discussion, the Chinese-language article on the same topic is called "现代标准汉语" on Chinese Wikipedia, backing up the plan to move this article to "Standard Chinese" (as is backed up by several other language versions of Wikipedia). -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 22:25, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I think moving this article to "Standard Chinese" needs a clear consensus, which this article lacks. The article has 10 "oppose" to move vs. 8 "support" the article's move.--TheLeopard (talk) 00:25, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Also "Northern Chinese" is just not notable enough, as very few sources uses that term. And most people wouldn't recognize that name. A search of the name "Northern Chinese" at google books [26] and google scholar [27] yields almost no results, as most are describing people and geographic areas (as oppose to Standard Chinese and Standard Mandarin both have many).--TheLeopard (talk) 00:31, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

As for "Northern Chinese", I tend to agree. I was just throwing that out there as a thought.

Discussions of this type, however, are not democratic votes. They depend on the quality of the arguments. No cogent argument has been put forward to keep the article where it is; at best, rʨanaɢ notes that "Mandarin" is just as valid a name, though he didn't actually propose we move it there instead. So what we really have are 8 "support" (or maybe less, if not all of them are cogent) and 2 objections "but 'Mandarin' is also valid". The latter aren't arguments to keep the current name. The 6 false arguments and non-arguments don't count for anything: I mean really, we're going to base a decision on someone who denies the fact that Modern Standard Chinese is the standard language of China? — kwami (talk) 00:49, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Comment: then when [ignorant] readers will be looking for a page called "China", they will end up at our PRC article. And Quigley knows this very well... sigh... And lastly, we are not here solely to suck up to the woeful ignorance of the public that is the US. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 03:28, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Apparently, HXL, you didn't notice that this was the English Wikipedia. Common English usage rules here, not your personal, completely unsourced, POV. --Taivo (talk) 05:13, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I agree with HXL. I think we should ignore arguments which only demonstrate the ignorance of the writer. This includes most of the arguments opposing the move, all but one of which are disconnected from reality. But if HXL did not want to waste time, he would not have edit warred over the page move, since the argument clearly favors the move. — kwami (talk) 05:18, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Taivo, you, nor anyone else, are NOT the person to decide what my perceptions are and manipulate them in your favour. And don't try to make it seem as if it is only my "POV", because it isn't. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 05:30, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

So far, HXL, you have offered zero evidence that your opinion is based on any facts whatsoever. Therefore they are just your personal POV. And Kwami is right, we must ignore all the opinions above which are based solely on the ignorance of the writer, which means that all but one of the informed arguments favors the move and HXL has wasted our time edit warring over the page move.

--Taivo (talk) 06:10, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

And you have wasted our time by not formally proposing a move back in August. Enough with your blatant hypocrisy. A move is not be conducted when the RM discussion has not been closed, and it is certainly not be closed by an involved admin. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 22:31, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

• Comment If we are going by common usage alone, the most common name English speakers use for this language is Chinese, not Standard Chinese. (If someone's parents asked me what I studied in college I would never say "Standard Chinese!") And the most common name they use specifically when contrasting it with other Chinese languages is Mandarin, not Standard Chinese (as far as I can tell...I have not done any counting, but in the discussion above many of the items listed under "Standard Chinese" are actually ones that just use "Chinese". So neither "Standard Chinese" nor "Standard Mandarin" fits the criteria of being the most WP:COMMONNAME; clearly no matter what we choose we are making some sort of informed trade-off between commonness and accuracy. That is not to say that "Standard Mandarin" is a better article title (although I have already expressed my views about that as well), but it does mean I don't think it's necessarily reasonable to move to "Standard Chinese" solely on the basis of its being more common. In dealing with naming for complicated topics like this, Wikipedia articles often have to find some reasonable balance between commonness (which itself can mean different things depending on whether it refers to common usage by random people or common usage by experts on that subject) and accuracy; an example off the top of my head is all the Uyghur-related articles on Wikipedia (numerically, the spellings "Uighur" and perhaps "Uygur" are more commonly used in English materials, but there are other reasons why "Uyghur" was adopted here). rʨanaɢ (talk) 07:11, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
  • Also, as a side note: HXL, please refrain from shouting things in capital, bold, and/or big letters, it doesn't really help the discussion. rʨanaɢ (talk) 07:13, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Rjanag is correct that "Standard" isn't necessarily a part of the most common English term, but, as s/he has stated, the absolute most common name is not always available for one reason or another. But this same argument can be made against "Standard Mandarin"--that "Standard" is not part of the most common usage. That said, based on the first two WP:NCON criteria--recognizability and naturalness, the Wikipedia reader will be looking for "Chinese", not "Mandarin". Seeing "Standard Chinese" will comfort the reader that he/she has arrived at the right place after conducting a search for "Chinese" or "Chinese language". Many of our readers may not recognize "Mandarin" as an alternate name for "Chinese" until they actually arrive here and read the first sentence anyway, so sending someone who searches for "Chinese" to "Mandarin" might be too confusing for many English-speaking readers. --Taivo (talk) 07:53, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, there's the matter of precision. "Chinese" is the most common term, but it's not precise. Often it's good enough: if I say "Chinese is an official language of the UN", of course I mean Standard Chinese, just as if I had mentioned Arabic or French. If disambiguation is necessary, people will establish the topic with (Modern) Standard Chinese, and then abbreviate it as "Chinese" from then on. "Mandarin" is similarly ambiguous, but as Rjanag noted, it is often used for the standard language without any disambiguation. I think this is probably because its original meaning was Standard Chinese, and the broader meaning is the derived one. But "Standard Mandarin" is different: it's not common usage, and is tautologous, like saying "Standard Received Pronunciation". Also, it isn't the standard for Mandarin/Northern Chinese, but just for Chinese, so it is factually incorrect.

Although I think it's preferable to call this Standard Chinese, using the national name just as we do with Standard French etc, I'm not all that opposed to calling it just Mandarin. If we go with Standard Chinese, I think it's worth considering making Mandarin a redirect, with a hatnote to Mandarin Chinese and Mandarin (dab). — kwami (talk) 08:38, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't see how you could make a case for this being the primary topic for "Mandarin", given its much reduced usage for the standard language and its continued use for the dialect group. Kanguole 09:21, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Kwami here. No harm in a redirect from Mandarin to Chinese as Kwami's already changed most of the article's reference from standard mandarin to standard chinese. Its just a harmless redirect.--Visik (talk) 09:35, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Kanguole, the reason I suggested the rd is because it seems the vast majority of the time some article links to "Mandarin", they intend the standard language, not Northern Chinese in general. Of course, I could be wrong, in which case a rd here would not be wise, but that's been my impression. — kwami (talk) 10:32, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Comment: Relying solely on figures on google search and google above is at best provides a little insight, to insist it is the result is the panacea to solve all of this article's problem is misleading and unreliable. As a side note all books in teaching Mandarin or Standard Chinese published are not listed comprehensively in Google. I may add doing a search on Amazon will further this insight.

• Amazon search for standard mandarin - 90 results
• Amazon search for Standard Chinese - 448 Results
• Amazon search for Modern Standard Chinese - 20 Results
• Amazon search for mandarin Chinese - 91,793 Results (excludes this as we already have an article on Mandarin Chinese.

I disagree with the assessment with "zero evidence". Thats assuming it meant there were zero results for standard mandarin. There are results in google search and amazon on Standard Mandarin. But there are more results for Standard Chinese.

To throw a spanner into the works,

• Borders search "standard mandarin" 9 results
• Borders search "standard chinese" 5 results.
• Borders search "modern standard chinese". 2 results

The term Standard Mandarin is used in and out in some academic publications. But in other places around the world, Standard Chinese is way more common which is fair enough. Called it Chinese or Mandarin (Rjanag's option) will be fine as the term standard is largely a descriptive identifier. If Standard Chinese was the end result, this would match up with the chinese wikipedia version (现代标准汉语) plus we must have clear consensus either way. --Visik (talk) 09:28, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Of the 9 results for Borders search "standard mandarin", 7 are reprints of Wikipedia articles. Kanguole 09:45, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

One final note, hopefully when a consensus has been reach which ever way it goes, all its known names should remain in the intro or background sections of the article as it is. Hope this would reduce naming disputes as per WP:NOTBATTLEGROUND to drive a wedge through the good community here. --Visik (talk) 09:32, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Of course! Mandarin and (MS)C are both very very common in English. Others are less so, but that's what an encyclopedia is for. — kwami (talk) 10:32, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, two more days with a request for action and no response at Wikipedia_talk:Requested_moves#Standard_Mandarin_.E2.86.92_Standard_Chinese, plus a complete lack of any argument to keep the name "Standard Mandarin" on this page, so I've moved it back to its COMMONNAME. — kwami (talk) 14:30, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I'll post here what I've just posted at Wikipedia talk:Requested moves. Sorry, but doing the move like that, as an involved admin and in such a way so as to avoid it's easy reversal was, IMO, completely wrong. I've started a thread at AN/I asking for an uninvolved admin to close the RM and asking for a review of your actions. Dpmuk (talk) 15:06, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Standard Mandarin sounds like the better name, as Chinese refers to all the Chinese languages so Standard Chinese isn't quite as clear as to what it is. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:32, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

"Standard Mandarin" is not common English usage and is not what English speakers call the language. "Standard Chinese" is perfectly clear as there is no other "Standard Chinese" to confuse it with. --Taivo (talk) 18:34, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

English speakers probably call it just Mandarin, so you could go with that, but Standard Mandarin makes it clear that its the standard version and not the Beijing dialect. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:42, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

English speakers don't call this "Mandarin" at all commonly, they call it "Chinese" far more commonly. That's the point here--by WP:NCON, this article should be called "Standard Chinese". --Taivo (talk) 21:55, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Anyone who knows anything about China is aware that there are multiple Chinese spoken (but not written) languages and that there is no such spoken language as "Chinese". They also would know that the most important Chinese language is Mandarin. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:46, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

You are correct, Eraserhead, but you fail to mention that this article is not about the varieties of vernacular Chinese, but about the standard language that foreigners learn and call "Chinese". Go to any bookstore in the United States and ask for a book to learn "Mandarin" and the clerk will fail to find any books for you. No, you will go to the language section and find many books to teach you Chinese. Wikipedia policy enshrined in WP:NCON is to use 1) the most common name in English ("Chinese"), 2) the name that readers will most likely identify ("Chinese"), and 3) the name that readers will most like search for ("Chinese"). There are no reasonable arguments for calling this article "Standard Mandarin" and overwhelming evidence supporting "Standard Chinese". --Taivo (talk) 23:36, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Eraserhead, one of the problems is that Mandarin already means the standard language, so "Standard Mandarin" is somewhat bizarre. It's also not terribly COMMON. As for your other point, Chinese is officially a single language, whatever the realities on the ground, and this is the official standard for that language. "Modern Standard Chinese" is correct for the same reason that "Modern Standard Arabic" and "Modern Standard Hindi" are correct: None of the three are really single languages, but they each have a single standard form, apart from Muslims being excluded from Hindi. — kwami (talk) 07:02, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Neither is "Standard" part of the name. Taivo, so it really sounds like the "standard" you want is a fabricated appendage added just for "accuracy". As Rjanag demonstrated above, "Standard" is not part of the common name, as goes for "Cantonese", the dialect of Guangzhou, which is not at "Standard Cantonese", as has been agreed upon at that talk page. Thus we have a parallel here. And WP:OTHERSTUFF is like religion. It is nice to have one, but please don't go around flashing it in public — It's getting extremely irritating.

for the last time, we are not here to appeal to or "comfort" the uneducated populace. By NCON, for the PRC, the most common name in English (China), the name that readers will most likely identify (China), the name that readers will most likely search for (China). Well look what do we have? this is another parallel situation.

Kwami, I agree with your last point. So I would support a move to Mandarin, as "standard" is not part of the common name (neither is it for "Standard" Chinese), but Kanguole brings a valid point. Unless you can prove that this dialect is the prevailing usage for "Mandarin", or if he can prove that 官话 (Mandarin Chinese) bests this dialect, we are at an impasse. --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 21:29, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

HXL, you continue to offer no evidence that your POV is in accordance with Wikipedia policy or reflects common English usage (which is Wikipedia policy). Your "appeal to...the uneducated populace" is exactly what Wikipedia does per WP:NCON. Perhaps you should read WP:NCON sometime. The first two principles stated there involve 1) the article should be titled with a name that the reader will recognize as being the place he/she wants to be; and 2) the article should be titled with a name that the reader will use in searching. English speaking readers will be searching for and will recognize "Chinese". "Mandarin" has no place in that principle since it is a restricted form and in English is used in restricted circumstances. --Taivo (talk) 21:45, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

"Standard" is the dab we use for standard languages: Standard German, Standard French, Standard Arabic, Standard Hindi. Cantonese is not a standard, it is a prestige dialect.

This is not a dialect, it's a standard. The dialect is Beijing dialect. The other standards aren't dialects either.

We're not appealing to ignorance, we're disambiguating topics, just as we need to do with China itself. — kwami (talk) 21:44, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Kwami, you did not understand my point; "Chinese" is appealing to ignorance. "Standard", as you say, is the disambiguation. And you are leading me nowhere with your points. First you argue up there that we could run into problems with the ambiguity of Mandarin, and then you say Mandarin already means this standard.

Neither do you have evidence that "Standard" is part of the common name, Taivo. You yet again dodge every question I pose, instead pulling out NCON. At this point, flashing NCON around is getting to be very annoying, and I am not trying to argue that my "POV" fits NCON. NCON is just as much set in stone as ZH-NC is. It is not permanent and was never intended to be. And you admit it, you are lowering the standards of this encyclopaedia. What's next? Lowering the standards of your university work? Hope you do so, and land yourself out of work! --HXL's Roundtable, and Record 22:26, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

names

Going through Google Scholar & Books, "Standard Mandarin" is not particularly common. The frequency count is about the same as Modern Standard Chinese, but many of those are "standard Mandarin" (that is, Mandarin, which is the standard) or hits for "non-standard Mandarin". Standard Mandarin Chinese and Modern Standard Mandarin are both approx. equally uncommon. So IMO we should lead off with SC and MSC, since the former is merely an abbreviation of the latter and so go together, followed by Mandarin and SM, with the other two in the footnote. Actually, "Modern Mandarin" is just about as common as SM and MSC (about 75% on GScholar, which may be too close to call), and Modern Mandarin Chinese is close to the count of the footnote names.

GScholar counts: SC 5790, SM 1174, MSC 1070, MM 761, SMC 237, MSM 219, MMC 176. Cf. 6860 for Putonghua.

If we can find something supporting rʨanaɢ's impression that SC tends to be used when contrasting non-Chinese languages, and M when contrasting Chinese languages, that would be nice to add to the naming section. Or would that be okay without a ref? — kwami (talk) 21:35, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

On a gut level, I think that Rjanag's point is valid and reflects what I've encountered in the linguistic literature. I don't think we need a ref for it, since it's not likely something that someone would overtly mention--just something a writer would do subconsciously without comment. --Taivo (talk) 22:15, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

My impression too. I'll add it in. — kwami (talk) 22:58, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.