Category talk:Min Nan language

Min Nan Format

Hi,

I would like to propose that the Min Nan entry be of this format.

==Min Nan==
===Chinese Character===
* [[(the Chinese Character)]]
====Alternative forms==== (if there's one)
====(Part of Speech Ex. Noun)====
# (meaning)
[[Category:Min Nan]]

• Min Nan with Heading 1
• Chinese Character as Heading 2
• The rest as Heading 3

Since in Min Nan, There is the possibility of many Chinese Character that matches one Min Nan (Romanization).

example is ūi, which has many Chinese Characters that will match it such as 位,為,胃. That is why I think it best that under Heading 2 (Chinese Characters), other details be put.

What do you think? -- Hiòng-êng 14:35, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

• I'm glad that someone else is finally paying more attention to the Min Nan pages. I have been trying to develop a consistent look and feel for words in the Chinese language family. We have a unique challenge with Chinese languages in that there are multiple writing systems and romanizations to deal with. Please take a look at the entries for lâng and Bân-lâm-gú. I'm curious to know your opinion as to the layout.

A-cai 22:52, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I love the zh-forms :) My only problem would be in cases where one Min Nan word has many parts of speech and/or Chinese Characters. Yes, I saw the lâng entry, but I'm not sure if this address the problem. I'm willing to use your format though, so that uniformity here at en.wikt be established for Min Nan words. Tell me how you think to resolve the multiple parts of speech and/or Chinese Characters, I would love to know your ideas here. -- Hiòng-êng 14:38, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

• • I know what you mean about variation. It also exists in Mandarin, but is especially a problem with Min Nan. I'm still looking for a clean way to deal with the multiple parts of speech and variety. I think what we have for now is not bad. One problem that I have encountered is with Min Nan entries that also appear in Mandarin and Cantonese. It gets really ugly when you try to put in example sentences. For example, take a look at 兄弟 and hiaⁿ-tī. For hiaⁿ-tī, not much of a problem. But for 兄弟, you have to account for many other languages and dialects. All of a sudden, a simple example sentence is not so simple! I have not thought of a way around this yet. I think templates can help in some circumstances, as long as they are relatively easy to use. If you think of something, please let me know.

A-cai 15:14, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

headword

What is a headword? -- Hiòng-êng 14:35, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

• I have linked you to the definition.

A-cai 22:54, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Modification of headers

• The prestige dialect of Min Nan is widely considered to be Amoy (Xiamen dialect). Therefore, I originally thought it no problem to label entries as Min Nan. However, this may become problematic if we ever want to create separate entries for other Min Nan dialects. The most likely scenario would be Teochew, since there are a large number of Teochew speakers living in Western countries. Teochew is part of the Min Nan language family as well, but is only 50.4% mutually intelligible with Amoy.[1] Since, Amoy is a well established name for the language/dialect spoken in Quanzhou, Xiamen, Zhangzhou, Taiwan (known there as Taiwanese), and Southeast Asia (known there as Hokkien), it seems like the best choice. The language code can still remain as nan. If we ever need to create a separate language code for Teochew, we can do something like nan-CN-44 (per ISO 3166-2). -- A-cai 03:11, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

• Based on a this discussion in Beer parlour, they Amoy entries will retain an L2 heading of Min Nan for the time being. If at some point in the future, the ISO 639 codes assign Amoy a separate code, we can revisit the issue of changing the L2 to something more appropriate. -- A-cai 13:37, 10 April 2007 (UTC)