Talk:Cookie

This is English used in Chinese texts, not Chinese. Wyang (talk) 09:02, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

I think it should count as it's the main word used in Chinese contexts to convey the concept of "HTTP cookie". IMO it's no different from Koreans using 쿠키; Chinese just doesn't have a phonetic script that can be exploited to absorb foreign words, so the original English spelling is used instead. —suzukaze (t・c) 09:15, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

There is a difference. Koreans recognise 쿠키 as Korean, not English, and Korean dictionaries include this. Chinese do not consider "Cookie" to be Chinese, and such words will never be considered native to enter dictionaries. There is simply no Chinese word for "cookie", like how there is no English equivalent of many Chinese terms. The Chinese translation at cookie should read “no equivalent exists; English cookie is used instead”. Incorporating English words happens often; just because a foreign word is inserted unchanged into a Chinese text does not make it suddenly Chinese. This is code-switching. It is the same as how any English word can be incorporated into a Hong Konger's speech; such words should be labelled as "Hong Kong English", and if separate pronunciations or senses exist, they should be listed under "English", with a "Hong Kong" qualifier. For previous such discussions, see for example Talk:Москва, Talk:Thames河. Wyang (talk) 09:35, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

After thinking about it, this is my opinion:

• "Thames-he" is lazy since there is a well-accepted Chinese translation available
• "Moskva" is jocular/"look at me I'll use Russian for the heck of it"
• "Cookie" is used in all earnest, not because "English is cool" or some nonsense; the Chinese translations are not popular (possibly even prescriptivist/the result of language purism, although honestly I haven't looked into it deeply). As such, it may be part of the Chinese lexicon even if speakers do not consider it so (as part of Wiktionary's descriptivism):
  • Is "sofutowea""ソフトウェア" Japanese or English?
  • Is "tamagoyaki" English or Japanese?
  • If "ㄎㄨㄜㄍㄍㄧ" became an accepted spelling in some alternate universe, is it a Chinese word now? If so, and the pronunciation is largely identical, why? Just because it isn't in the white man's letters anymore?

—suzukaze (t・c) 19:10, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

The examples of Thames-he and Moskva are used to show not all words found in the supposedly Chinese or English speech are eligible for inclusion in the respective language, regardless of Wiktionary's descriptive policies. Code-switching happens all the time in the place where I live, and the English words that are used in Chinese speech or text can range from words with common Chinese equivalents, to words with valid Chinese equivalents, and to words with no Chinese equivalents at all. e.g. One may say "你有沒有appointment？", "For god's sake, 怎麼還有meeting", or "我在George Street", "在city新買的Mac怎麼樣", "把Chrome的cookies清一下，然後安裝一個plug-in", "這是Bill". The English words used are treated as English words mixed into Chinese speech for convenience; some have Chinese equivalents and some do not. sofutowea and "ㄎㄨㄜㄍㄍㄧ" are not words in any languages; they are phonetic notations. tamagoyaki is English. Wyang (talk) 20:31, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Why is "tamagoyaki" English but "Cookie" not Chinese? And as I noted, ㄎㄨㄜㄍㄍㄧ is theoretical (intended to be a parallel to Japanese using クッキー and Korean using 쿠키).

To express myself most clearly (hopefully), without any more theoreticals:

• I think there should be a distinction made between
  • casual or playful codeswitching
    • such as your examples
  • using English out of actual lack of an accepted translation *and/or* using English so often it's been nativized and adopted into an entire region's normal lexicon (i.e. borrowed)
    • i.e. there is no difference between Japanese people using "バンド" and Hong Kongers using "band"
    • w:es:Hardcore punk

—suzukaze (t・c) 06:10, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Tamagoyaki is English, since it is written in the Latin alphabet, as opposed to the Japanese script (cf. deleted Москва) and is perceived as nativised (included in dictionaries, can be inflected, etc.). I don't think "using English out of actual lack of an accepted translation" is the same as "nativised and adopted into the normal lexicon". Lots of computer terminology are untranslated, such as Windows, Mac OS X, Chrome, cookie, Photoshop, QuickTime, Javascript. They are not nativised as they are perceived by native speakers to be English words mixed into Chinese due to lack of translation (e.g. the Zhihu link I showed before). Wyang (talk) 07:51, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

To be honest I originally separated "lack of a translation" and "borrowing"... I combined them because when I thought about it the lines are kind of blurred; "Cookie 的用途" does not follow English pluralization rules but "可使用 cookies 作多個用途" does. —suzukaze (t・c) 08:20, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Some more evidence of the usage of 'cookie' in Chinese: in the Traditional Chinese version of CCleaner Free v.5.38.6357, there is a list of parameters that get cleaned with each sweep under every browser you install. The first parameter that gets swept is '網際網路快取', the second is '網際網路紀錄' and the third is 'Cookies'. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 05:28, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

It means nothing here. This issue was already discussed on Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2017/September#Modern Greek terms spelt with Latin characters. This is English, not Chinese. Ask any Chinese person if words like "Cookie", "Mac", "plug-in" are English or Chinese, and you will see how out-of-touch Wiktionary is from common sense and native speakers' perception of their own language. Just wait till more native speakers complain about things like this and use these pages as examples of absurdity on Wiktionary. There are tens of thousands of missing basic entries in Chinese and we are wasting our efforts on things like this that instead make us more of a laughing stock by native speakers?! Wyang (talk) 07:53, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

The Chinese world has had 20 years to make a "Chinese" word for "Cookie". It is not "Chinese", but it is the word used to express the concept of "HTTP cookie" in a Chinese text or conversation and is arguably part of the Chinese lexicon. God knows why 小甜餅／小甜饼 (xiǎotiánbǐng) or some weird sinified form like 拷貝／拷贝 (kǎobèi) never caught on. —Suzukaze-c◆◆ 18:36, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

If it is not considered by native speakers as Chinese, it makes no sense for us to say it is their language. It only makes a fool of ourselves. Whether there is a Chinese word is not a reason- there are thousands of name reactions in organic chemistry that the Chinese academia is happy with using without fully translating. And it's a common, if not the default, practice in Chinese the more academic you go. There may be a Chinese word for 'cookie' in the future, there may not. Wyang (talk) 23:09, 13 April 2018 (UTC)