Talk:Chang-chia-k'ou

Showing simplified for all Chinese terms

@Geographyinitiative We generally want to show the simplified form. The first example using traditional isn't proof for simplified not being tied to the English term. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 04:11, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm talking etymology, you're talking "tied to". I'm talking about the origin of the term- the etymology. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 04:13, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: The etymology is from the Mandarin word, which can be written in traditional or simplified; it's just like /ˈkə.lɚ/ can be spelt as color or colour. I don't see how the evidence shows that this word comes through the traditional characters rather than the simplified. The orthography in the source language had no effect on the borrowing of the word into English. We show both traditional and simplified because they are equivalent ways of writing the same etymon. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 04:21, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

The etymology is from the Mandarin word and is shown to predate the existence of the character 张. Etymology is not "what did they match it up to later". Etymology is "where'd it come from?" --Geographyinitiative (talk) 04:23, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: Okay, sorry for missing that detail, but that doesn't mean we have to not show the simplified version. It's general practice for us to show both traditional and simplified when possible, even if it's anachronistic. For example, when citing classical Chinese texts, we show the simplified version as well. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 04:28, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

You want to created admittedly anachronistic etymologies? My god people, this really is 1984. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 04:29, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Truly we have reached the peak of mass surveillance and authoritarianism. It's time to torch it down. —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 04:33, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

also Talk:預備 —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 04:33, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: We just want to make it accessible to people who are more familiar with one orthography over the other. We're not just writing 张家口; we're writing both 張家口 and 张家口. @Suzukaze-c:, thanks... I was thinking about that (and it reminded me of Hongthay, who I kinda miss...) — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 04:37, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Technically, the hanzi form has no impact on the borrowing either, only the Wade-Giles form. For sanity, we have a standard presentation for Chinese, which is "traditional/simplified (pinyin)". —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 04:41, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

For the sake of and in the memory of all those who wanted to add Wade-Giles forms but were blocked, I hereby concede to these demands. I will from now on add characters that are not related to the etymology of the words I am adding to the etymology. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 05:00, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Parallel Situation I would like to present what I see as an inconsistency in Wiktionary policy vis-a-vis including simplified characters where they were not involved in the creation of a given word/character. On the 聵／聩 (kuì) page under the glyph origin, we give 耳 and 貴 as the semantic and phonetic. Under the theory adopted in the discussion here about the etymology of Chang-chia-k'ou, it was propounded that "We generally want to show the simplified form." Under that logic, it seems inconsistent not to show 贵 in the glyph origin of 聵 even though the character 聵 dates to the period before the creation of 贵. It doesn't technically matter whether Wiktionary goes one way or the other with respect to including simplified characters in glyph origin sections, but it does seem to be an inconsistency since we seem to know for sure from the example presented that Chang-chia-k'ou was in existence before 张 had been created. I still prefer sticking to keeping only those things that generated a word/character in the etymology/glyph origin, but this opinion is not favored and I follow the prevailing policies as I understand them. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:17, 16 February 2021 (UTC) (modified)

@Geographyinitiative: In my opinion there's no issue of inconsistency here. Glyph origins concern the graph, and the traditional character 聵 is the subject of the discussion, so we use traditional characters in the section. On the other hand, borrowing between languages does not concern orthography, so we can display both traditional and simplified forms. Right now we are using Shinjitai as the default script of Japanese on the site. This doesn't mean all borrowings involving Japanese happened post-1945. RcAlex36 (talk) 16:29, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. Here's my view on what you have said. As we agree, since the glyph origin of 聵 did not involve 贵, Wiktionary very rationally don't include 贵 in the glyph origin of 聵. We would both say that the word 'Chang-chia-k'ou' existed before the character 张 did. Next we know: "the etymology of a word means its origin and development throughout history".[1] Wiktionary including the 张 character when describing the origin of the word 'Chang-chia-k'ou' is bending the meaning of the word 'etymology' in the pursuit of maximizing usefulness of the etymology section to the Wiktionary readers under the "We generally want to show the simplified form" rationale. It is a dangerous compromise with the principles of a real etymology for English language words. English language loan words are from the actual forms of the foreign language terms that they are from and are not from any other terms or forms of terms later created in that foreign language. That is to say, the 'origin' part of the etymology section of an English language loan word from Chinese characters should hypothetically be able to have been written at the time the actual word was created by that creator, with correction for English grammar and spelling changes since that date. cf. Keelung, which was plainly already in existence as an English language loan word before the Ching empire changed the name to "基隆", hence it is inappropriate to include 基隆 in the etymology (at least where we are describing the actual origin of the word Keelung). In my view, the etymology section is absolutely not the place to provide all the possible parallel translation terms in Chinese characters for 'Chang-chia-k'ou’ but is instead the place to tell readers where this English language loan word came from. Although "we can display" material not relevant to the etymology of a word, it should not be done since this is an etymology section, not a translation section. I had to make the compromise here (above discussion) so that we could get Wade-Giles derived terms on the board, but it's an unmitigated travesty. Thanks for your time and consideration. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:55, 16 February 2021 (UTC)