Talk:Chinese man

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Chinese man

WTF? ---> Tooironic (talk) 10:31, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Because of Chineseman and WT:COALMINE, -sche (talk • contribs) is testing how far COALMINE can be pushed. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:48, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Delete - I have adjusted the definition of (deprecated template usage) Chineseman. SemperBlotto (talk) 10:51, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Keep: WT:COALMINE says "Unidiomatic terms made up of multiple words [are held] to officially meet WT:CFI when significantly more common than a single word spelling that already meets CFI." Therefore, Chinese man meets CFI, because Chineseman is attested (and Chinese man is more common). Deleting Chinese man would directly violate voted-upon policy. - -sche (discuss) 19:38, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

PS, I corrected the def; as proved by citations, a Chinese man need not be from China. - -sche (discuss) 21:18, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Policy be damned, delete this evident foolishness created IMO in bad faith. Equinox ◑ 01:20, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

In addition to the policy reasons for keeping this: some nationalities and ethnicities which end in "man" are single words (Englishman, Frenchman, Dutchman), others are double (Swedish man not *Swedishman); the fact that this is attested as both is interesting, and I conclude that the single-word form may have been influenced by "Chinaman" as much as by the word "Englishman" which frequently co-occurs with it. (Many of the books I found "Chineseman" and "Chinesemen" in used "Englishman" near it.) I was surprised to find that "Chineseman" met CFI, but immediately thought of that possible influence (of "Chinaman"), and have worked that into the etymology. It is as if people, not longer using "Chinaman" due to its offensiveness, still kept the idea that the nationality was a "single word", like the others I listed (Englishman, etc). I created "Chinese man" (multiple-word spelling) because the vote on "coalmine", which is now part of CFI, mandates such an action — at least, numerous of the voters in that vote commented that they supported "coal mine" because they knew it would be misleading to have only "coalmine" (implying it was the common term). - -sche (discuss) 01:54, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Depends, if Chineseman is simply a typo for Chinese man, then it wouldn't meet CFI (not a word in any language) and then Chinese man wouldn't either. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:14, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

It also depends on whether they are actually the same (cf. black bird vs. blackbird). If Chineseman is a correction of Chinaman, then all the instances where it's merely Chinese + man are, IMO, a different term. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:08, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

It is easy enough to see whether any single instance of Chineseman occurs on the same page or adjoining pages with Chinese man and to inspect the page image for scannos. I can't think of any other basis for throwing out the citations. Can anyone? DCDuring TALK 13:51, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and I specifically checked to be sure "Chineseman" was used consistently throughout the books I cited; it was; the books which used its plural even used "Chinesemen". It is, as Ruakh notes, quite literary, a spelling intentionally used by numerous unrelated authors consistently throughout their numerous books. Cheers, - -sche (discuss) 20:10, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for the unclear wording: "it's" was meant to refer to Chinese man, not to Chineseman. In other words, if you take out all the cases where Chinese man is truly SOP and thus presumably not the same as Chineseman (assuming that to be a modification of Chinaman), it may not be more common than Chineseman- if there are any cites left Chuck Entz (talk) 23:48, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

"[A]ll the cases where Chinese man is truly SOP" are the cases where it is "the same as Chineseman": both mean "man who is Chinese". Note that "Chinaman" also means "man who is Chinese". (Our current definition reading "person who is Chinese", but I would be quite surprised if it refers to a woman any more often than any of the other terms do, or than "man" in general does.) COALMINE exists specifically to mandate that "Chinese man" be kept despite being SOP. - -sche (discuss) 00:00, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Strong keep [[Chineseman]], ergo, keep [[Chinese man]] per COALMINE. If this were Wikipedia, I'd wonder if creating entries just to show up COALMINE's ridiculousness would constitute POINT-ing; but COALMINE is inherently a wikilawyerly doctrine — its very purpose is to supersede our usual rules, to disregard our informed opinions, to brook no common sense. So wikilawyering is the only way it can be applied. Also: Chinese man, quite frankly, does not seem like an extreme case, since (1) the use of Chineseman is actually quite literate (not just a Usenet abomination); (2) we've had an entry for white man for five and a half years now; and (3) the entry can be justified by a "useful translations" argument of the sort of that some editors seem to be fond of, since many languages that use natural gender in their noun system — including at least French, Spanish, and Hebrew — have a specific word for "Chinese male" or "male Chinese person". —Ruakh_TALK 15:38, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Do Chineseman and Chinese man have the same pronunciation? If not, I don't think coalmine should apply. That would be like saying we should have Dutch man because of Dutchman. DAVilla 18:24, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

COALMINE applies only when the multiple-word spelling is more common than the single-word spelling: thus, we don't have "English man" or "Dutch man" (50 000 GBC hits), because "Englishman" and "Dutchman" (1.5 million GBC hits) are more common. - -sche (discuss) 19:59, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

I think the point DAVilla shows is very important here. If Chineseman and Chinese man have different pronunciations, then they are not the same word. This then means that COALMINE does not apply, because it applies only to differing spellings, not different pronunciations in addition to those spellings. For the same reason, giveaway is not an alternate spelling of give away. —CodeCat 20:06, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

FWIW, I pronounce "coalmine" and "coal mine" differently (using different syllable stress), and I pronounce "girlygirl" and "girly girl" differently, and likewise many other compounds vs multiple-word terms. AFAICT, the argument ad pronunciation was not thought of at the time girlygirl and other such terms were RFDed, so the RFDs on girlygirl and other previously-kept entries should be reopened, if this new argument holds sway. - -sche (discuss) 20:15, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Could you give me an example sentence using "coal mine" for which the syllable stress would be different from that of coalmine? I could rationalize a different stress pattern for certain speakers, but I don't see why that wouldn't apply to both spellings.

On the other hand, I can imagine pronouncing "girly girl" in two ways depending on intent, one of which coincides with the treatment of girlygirl as a single block. For instance, "she's a pretty girlygirly" means she's beautiful and feminine, while "she's a pretty girly girl" is ambiguous, where the other reading just mean means she's very feminine. DAVilla 02:46, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

@DAVilla and CodeCat, after e/c: That's an interesting idea, but we have a general practice of treating variant spellings as just one kind of "alternative form", and certainly it's possible for two forms of the same word to have different pronunciations (either with the same spelling, as with schedule, or with different spellings as well, as with aluminum/aluminium). And the rationale at WT:COALMINE certainly applies to such cases. Also, while I suppose we could say that COALMINE doesn't apply unless someone can prove either that "Chineseman" is attested with the pronunciation of "Chinese man", or that "Chinese man" is significantly more common even with the pronunciation of "Chineseman" — that's basically equivalent to dismantling COALMINE. Because no one can ever prove such a thing, with any of these terms. —Ruakh_TALK 20:27, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

My original point- though I mangled it badly- was that it's possible that most or all of the instances of Chinese man aren't really the same term as Chineseman. That is to say, you have a noun modified by an adjective (Chinese man) vs. a compound noun (Chineseman). I'm not sure how to test for the difference, but I think that's why so many of us have problems with applying WT:COALMINE here. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:03, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

girly girl (see Talk:girly girl) is much more clearly an adjective + noun (whereas Chinese can be an adjective or a noun), and was kept because of the compound girlygirl — because really, can they be analysed as anything other than alternative forms of one another? Hence... - -sche (discuss) 00:13, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

I am ambivalent about the term in question, but I do find the motives behind creating entries like this very unpleasant. We should be framing our CFI to crystallise the valid reasons people see for adding terms to Wiktionary; we should not be creating spurious entries purely to find the reductio ad absurdum of existing policy. Ƿidsiþ 15:57, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

If we are going to vote to approve a mechanistic rule that suspend judgment in order to advance an inclusionist PoV, we cannot be too shocked when the rule is applied, with judgment suspended, to include entries. The orthography rule was only one of the many suggestive pieces of evidence in the Pawley laundry list of criteria for idiomaticity. If the rule needs to be applied with judgment, then what is the point of having it? To give it a leg up on other criteria? Is it really superior to the other rules in its discriminatory power? DCDuring TALK 16:37, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Delete, per Equinox. --Hekaheka (talk) 20:15, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Good faith is important. I could add an awful lot of shit through loopholes if I decided to cause trouble. There is a vast difference between using a rule to keep dubious existing entries and abusing it to add junk to sway a vote (even though I'm on that side of the vote myself). Equinox ◑ 20:28, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm fixed on delete per the distinction between Dutchman and Dutch man. DAVilla 02:49, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Delete there's 6 trillion of them, you don't need 6 trillion entries for chinaman, especially when other sops are deleted.Lucifer (talk) 06:44, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

• Delete. I see no point in allowing an overly pedantic interpretation of WT:COALMINE to override common sense. —Angr 06:52, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

• The point of COALMINE is that it overrides any discussion: rather than discussing the merits of any multiple-word spelling that is more common than an attested single word, COALMINE says we must simply keep the multiple-word term. I proposed overturning the rule precisely so that common sense could guide us again in deciding whether or not to keep or delete terms. But you're proposing to ignore policy without changing it. That's dangerous: Wiktionary functions in a relatively orderly fashion because we regular contributors form policies and follow them, updating them as necessary. If contributors are free to ignore any policies they want to, where are we? And newcomers are able to join our community by familiarising themselves with our policies: but if they familiarise themselves with our policies only to learn we don't follow our policies, especially policies are concise and unambiguous as this one, where are they? - -sche (discuss) 07:07, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

(Sigh.) Keep per -sche.​—msh210℠ (talk) 21:43, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

deleted. DAVilla makes an excellent point here - there's a semantic difference between Chinese man and Chineseman. The former is simply any man who's Chinese (from what I know), the latter however specifically refers to a person of Chinese ethnicity. Because they don't have the same meanings, COALMINE cannot apply. -- Liliana • 04:59, 12 June 2012 (UTC)