Talk:Pakhoi

Mandarin Pinyin in the Etymology of a Cantonese-derived Term

@LlywelynII, thank you for your work here. I want to let you know that I object to this diff (except for the addition of the alternative forms, which I'm assuming will meet Wiktionary:Attestation. Thank you for adding those alternative forms.). (1) I consider the change to the image caption as a mistake since English language terms derived from Chinese languages sometimes use hyphenation, as your alternative forms section acknowledges. I urge sticking with the form that can be visually observed in the image. (2) The etymology of this Cantonese-derived term is not connected with the Mandarin pronunciation, therefore it has as much place in the etymology here as the Vietnamese, Korean, or Japanese pronunciation. No other Cantonese-derived English language term's etymology (on Wiktionary) is written this way. (See Category:English terms derived from Cantonese)
Please let me know what you think of these criticisms. Thanks again for your time and effort and thanks for your perspective. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:49, 8 May 2023 (UTC) (Modified)

@Geographyinitiative: Thanks. I'd say all the politeness is unnecessary since I know you're one of the good ones, but sure I guess it's the politeness that underlines that point.

To start with the most obvious point, the earlier caption was completely wrong and the current caption is completely right. It's not transcribing the text on the image, which is PAK-HOI anyway and not Pak-Hoi or Pak-hoi. It's providing the separate information about what the picture is. If the image were at the namespace Pak-Hoi and especially if the common English name of the place were Pak-Hoi, then the caption should read Pak-Hoi. Neither of those things are true. The English name of the place is more often Pakhoi and this namespace is Pakhoi. The caption should say Pakhoi and, if someone really wanted to add an AI-helpful transcription of what the specific text on the image is, the place to do that would be in a note on the image at its entry at Wikimedia Commons. (Here is a recent example of what I'm talking about. The notes on the image can read yᵉ to literally and exactly transcribe what's there, but the transcript should just read ye and a caption on Wikipedia should only use ye in a quote or the in running text describing the image in modern English. Here, the caption is running text and not a quote on a page named Pakhoi.)

The etymology, eh, it's the same as all the other etymologies. Plenty of people who don't understand what they're talking about want to consider 漢字 to be "Mandarin" or "Cantonese" instead of Chinese that has various pronunciations in different dialects. I prefer to reflect what's actually going on: From [romanization] of the [dialect] pronunciation of [Chinese with the tonal pinyin beside it if different]. YMMV.

Some people who do understand what they're talking about and got to Wiktionary before I did established a 'standard' that our Chinese pronunciation template never capitalizes or hyphenates any Cantonese at all ever. The pronunciation template formats this name as bak1 hoi2 even though it's only ever a proper name. I personally think that's nonsense: Just because many native Chinese can be chabuduo about a kind of formatting that doesn't exist in their own native language doesn't mean that capitalization isn't useful in romanizations or isn't frequently used by many people who do get the idea. The pinyin/jyutping over characters to teach Chinese kids to read them isn't the same system they actually use for formally transcribing names in important matters. I haven't looked but I highly doubt anyone in the HK government before or after the handover ever wrote about living in hoeng gong even though that's what our editors have left up at our Hong Kong entry for no especially good reason. See also this discussion by UPenn's sinologists on the topic in relation to a street sign. YMMV.

Now, whether that means it better becomes Pak-hoi or Pak-Hoi or Pak Hoi... sure, that's just up in the air and a judgment call. It's all a mess and people have used all of them. I liked the hyphenated form here for the single name but the formal systems may have rules that prefer to use Vietnamese style se pa rate words for e ve ry syl la ble. More likely, there are competing systems with some political overhang. In any case, this was my own preference and you're welcome to standardize it as needed.

Side note: I just saw that they finally added Wade–Giles to the template. If that was you, great job! It's still fairly unhelpful in that (a) it uses ugly standard numbers with a superscript format around them instead of actual superscript numbers, which (b) means that when you copy/paste them you just end up with eyesores like Pei3-hai3, and—more importantly—(c) it uses tone numbers at all, which means that Google and everyone else searching for what "random old Wade–Giles name" means now won't be able to find anything by searching Wiktionary. No one outside of the T'oung Pao editorial board ever actually wrote Wade names with the tone numbers and we shouldn't either. Of course, there's no way that will ever process past the sumpsimians who control the templates and I appreciate the small victory that it's there at all.

Jiayou~ and here's hoping similar progress can eventually be made on the general etymology formatting and the Cantonese romanizations.

 — LlywelynII 06:26, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

...it has as much place in the etymology here as the Vietnamese, Korean, or Japanese pronunciation...

You know that's just hyperbole and isn't remotely true. It's a local pronunciation of a Chinese name, not anything that developed separately and uniquely within Cantonese. (Compare all the Arabic Spanish picked up but Italian didn't. There may be special Bai Yue or Vietnamese loanwords in Cantonese, but this name isn't any of that.)

Considering Mandarin to be the default Chinese is just descriptivist to me and including it (as described above) just seems helpful for understanding the Chinese characters and how Cantonese differs from that, but you can protest against it, sure. That's a political act on your part, though, and nothing about the etymology of the word, the status of the languages in use, or helpfulness to the readers. A compromise that leaves the information—and doesn't involve the accurate but extremely difficult task of looking up Middle and Old Chinese forms in previous millennia's palace dialects—would be to just list Mandarin pronunciations as cognates like you would on Spanish and Italian entries. That seems overly complex and inelegant, but—yeah—some people feel very strongly about the politics involved. — LlywelynII 06:41, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

@LlywelynII Politeness A sincere thank you to you for your comments. I want to help create a friendly atmosphere for everyone to participate in Wiktionary. I want to be especially polite to you because 1) you are interested in areas that I work in and worked on them before I did, 2) you have significantly different opinions from me about some of the work and they are informed, intelligent opinions that I might need to hold. You have changed my mind at times. I have also 3) seen other people in Wiktionary treat you rather rudely (from my view) and ultimately this is a volunteer for-fun enterprise and I want to encourage you to come back and maintain your positions, to bring vitality to the work done here. Further, 4) I have a history- note that I was banned on Wikipedia long, long ago for a super-long comment discussion- nowadays I try to keep my comments to a limit of four in any thread and 150 words max or 500 max if absolutely needed. I bet this comment will be long, but I think you will appreciate it.

PAK-HOI "PAK-HOI" could legitimately represent either Pak-hoi or Pak-Hoi or perhaps some other similar form like Pak-Hoï. Also, is there some diacritic mark above the "I" in the first stamp? I think the stamps are in French, not English. The image may not be a good subject for the English language section of the entry. In writing 'Pak-Hoi', I was following the name of the image, as uploaded on Wikimedia Commons, and the description. I think I used Google Translate to talk with Olybrius (a French speaker) about this very image here: [1]. Would you be able to feel that maybe the caption should read "PAK-HOI" instead of Pakhoi/Pak-hoi/Pak-Hoi/etc? I don't know if the hyphenated form or unhyphenated form (with whichever capitalization scheme) truly represents French usage at the time. I want Wiktionary to be very sensitive to these minor differences, and, to me, conflating English's 'Pakhoi' with all the possibilities behind a French 'PAK-HOI' is to run roughshod over the majesty and wonder of the chaos in romanized toponyms of China-related geography. (My ultimate goal for Wiktionary is to chase down all these words (like all those mentioned at Talk:Pyongyang) and make Wiktionary the authoritative, descriptivist source for this complex and misunderstood wing of the English language via maximum sensitivity to what forms the sources are using- see my homepage User:Geographyinitiative Goals section.)

Default Chinese I would ask you to reconsider this mode of thinking. I ask you this: Is it because Standard Mandarin is now an official and widespread language in the PRC and the ROC, that the etymology of an English langauge loan word not at all derived from Standard Mandarin must/should/ought now include Mandarin's Pinyin? Another way: What did Mandarin have to do with this English langauge loan word when this word was created/used in the 19th century? cf. Protection of the varieties of Chinese (I'm at my 500 word limit.) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:19, 16 May 2023 (UTC) (Modified)

@Geographyinitiative

I

No, I completely get it. You might end up just changing it or even getting a project-wide consensus to never let anyone do entries like this. You're being extremely civil talking it through like this and it's appreciated.

II

Again, my point was this etymology isn't straight English from Cantonese the way it might be in something derived from French that never existed in Greek or Latin. This is English from some romanization of Cantonese pronunciation of period-current Chinese or (presumably) Middle and Old Chinese the way our entries read for things derived from French that do come from Greek and Latin. I get that you would never include modern Greek as a straight gloss of the ancient Greek, let alone the Italian as a straight gloss of the Latin. I get that you could handle the Mandarin version of the name in same way: present it as a cognate word.

In the end, that analogy breaks down. The Cantonese isn't sui generis; it's typically a dialectical pronunciation of a set Chinese form; the Chinese itself is written in characters; and like it/lump it Hanyu Pinyin based on the Mandarin pronunciation is the default way to transcribe those characters—not the Cantonese form and not necessarily a direct etymon of the Cantonese form either—into the Latin alphabet. Yes, a more politically neutral form (and what we do for ancient Greek) is to transcribe the ancient forms of the characters—but those are uncertain and reconstructed for Middle and Old Chinese with limited word lists and, afaik, the universal default (elsewhere if not here) is to present pinyin transcriptions of Chinese characters and then link to more information for people who want to opt between Baxter/Whatshisface or Tade Ming/Zishi Shenme.

And I know some people have a very visceral political opposition to that standardization in this context at this moment in time. Hell, similar feelings kept pinyin out of use for decades despite plainly being far superior to Wade and Taiwan's homebrews.

So, yeah, to me the etymology should always definitely be X romanization of the Y pronunciation of Chinese Z for clarity.

You're reasonably arguing that there shouldn't be any gloss on that Z besides the Y form of it. I'm saying the Y form belongs with the Y part of the etymology and that it's standard and more helpful to readers that the Chinese characters get their own gloss, either standard Mandarin or (if available) the period form when it probably entered the Y dialect. That's the idea anyway. Fair enough to disagree.

III

As for the caption, like I said. It's running text. It's not a transcription. If the main form of the name in English is Pakhoi, the caption should say it's a stamp from Pakhoi. End of. The place to directly transcribe text for an image is in the notes at Wikicommons.

IV

But, hey, I'm not an expert in all things Pakhoi. If the entry is wrong and "Pak-hoi", "Pak-Hoi", or "Pak Hoi" actually are the more common English form, (b) then, sure, change the caption to read that too. But (a) first move the main entry to that more common form of the word and change Pakhoi to a {{synonym of}} or {{alternative form of}} or {{alternative spelling of}} entry to show that to others.

...and if the entry is right then the running text in the caption should use Pakhoi and not the one on the old French colonial stamp. Other stamps of the time have English captions that they came from Chad (not "Tchad") and French West Africa (not "Afrique Occidentale Francaise" which is technically wrong even in French).

You can clearly see those are correct (I assume) and the only reason I think it's hard for you to see it here is the suspicion of my intentions created by the Mandarin gloss on the Chinese characters... but Pak-Hoi isn't any more or less "Cantonese" than Pakhoi, so I still don't really understand what the hangup is. Was it not the Postal Map form of the name or sth? Is there some other system you prefer for romanized Cantonese that you want to make consistent across the project even when it's less common for a particular name? If it's just worry about 'looking weird'? Eh, sure, change the image. To me, though, it's completely appropriate to show readers that the 19th century was utterly inconsistent with names... but we should still be consistent in our text.

V

And sorry about your bad luck earlier. Onward and upward. — LlywelynII 04:21, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

@LlywelynII, Geographyinitiative:

"Considering Mandarin to be the default Chinese is just descriptivist to me and including it (as described above) just seems helpful for understanding the Chinese characters and how Cantonese differs from that, but you can protest against it, sure." Strong oppose: The Mandarin pronunciation has nothing to do with "Pakhoi" at all. Wpi (talk) 05:22, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

PS1: We (we meaning the editing community of Cantonese) never capitalise proper nouns in jyutping. Jyutping is only a pronunciation guide, not some deliberate scheme that is originally designed to replace Chinese characters like Pinyin by trying to mimic the capitalisation rules of European languages.

PS2: technically speaking the Cantonese pronunciation on Wiktionary is of Standard Cantonese, i.e. that of Guangzhou and Hong Kong. I would assume the local pronunciation in Pakhoi itself may be slightly different, but since Standard Cantonese was a lingua franca of the region back then, I think it's safe to assume that the etymon is Standard Cantonese, even not so it is a much more logical choice. – Wpi (talk) 05:29, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

PS3: There is a Pak Hoi Street in Hong Kong, presumably named after this city. It's obvious that there's Cantonese-ness with the name "Pakhoi".

PS4: "To me, though, it's completely appropriate to show readers that the 19th century was utterly inconsistent with names... but we should still be consistent in our text." It is still a total mess in modern-day Hong Kong; the only consistency we need is indicating the etymology properly and consistently. – Wpi (talk) 05:35, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

PS5: LlywelynII, please, if you are lacking in knowledge in the Chinese language, then may I kindly ask you to refrain from editing related entries. You're just propagating errors here and there. - Wpi (talk) 05:39, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

PS6: I'm not entirely sure if it's Postal Romanization. There were many competing romanisations at the time, which is why I usually don't indicate which romanisation. Ia'm fine with it if there are sources saying it's Postal Romanization.

PS7: Llywelynll you're failing to distinguish between romanisation as a means of letting the readers/laypeople know how to read a particular name, and romanisation as an academic/standardised method of indicating the pronunciation of a word. We're treater the former as an English entry since it is subject to Anglicisation (e.g. Beijing, Hong Kong, Pakhoi), and the latter as a Mandarin/Cantonese/whatever entry since it's a (linguistic) romanisation that only serves as a system of indicating the pronunciation, (e.g. Běijīng, hoeng1 gong2). The two are related but should be treated separatedly.

Sorry for the heavily fragmented reply. This is what you get when you've just woke up, but I hope you get my points. – Wpi (talk) 06:01, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I care about you two editors, so I want to reach out and make sure to warn against edit warring or anything. The etymology here is less important than the 99 percent of other work we all do. It's an interesting issue to think about calmly, but no need to revert stuff. Just make sure to be careful and friendly.

PAK-HOI I don't know if PAK-HOI was a standard postal romanization for the French, but apparently it was official enough in 1903 and 1906 that it appeared on stamps! This is not some barbaric internet poster writing PAK-HOI in a thread, these are stamps from the Third French Republic in 1903 & 1906. That has got some weight to it! PAK-HOI was standard enough for the French post office, seemingly!
But assume for the moment that Pakhoi is the "standard" form or what have you, at least for English, and maybe even in 1903 and 1906 when these French stamps were made. Now, why does that mean Wiktionary can't use the other "non-standard" form that appears in the image in the caption? Putting the "non-standard" form in the caption highlights the diversity of modes in which this word and its close variants appears. It seems to close down or shut down that beauty and diversity to say: "No- the caption must use the entry title name." It's elevating a faux-standard above the reality of what we see in the image. There's a harshness to using Pakhoi instead of what appears in the image that demands conformity to a standard, what I would think of as prescriptivist type thinking. That's not what these diversely spelled words need. They need our sensitivity and care.
Further, by writing "PAK-HOI" or similar, I'm describing what's in the image in a "descriptivist" modality. It is a truth-telling and revolutionary act (speaking truth to power) in this age (2023) to just describe what is in the image without gloss or interference. We are demanded to ignore, minimize and overlook these words and their variants, but yet here I am out here, letting people know about them, against the unspoken rule that these words should be cast out (if that were even possible) via willful denial and minimization. (No accusation against individuals, just against the trends!) Yes, these words happened!!!!!! It's REAL! I'm saying: "Here's this ugly, despised form of the word in all its gory hyphenation, and that's just the way it is, because that's what we literally can see that it is with our eyes." That unpleasantness and uncomfortableness is exactly the good result. Instead of the security blanket of an alleged standard, really a faux-standard, the reader is given warning: "here be dragons".

The Cantonese isn't sui generis: I think that this is the crux of the issue here. I wonder: would Mandarin not be sui generis either? Should the entry for Beihai read: "X romanization of the Y pronunciation of Chinese Z" ? Like this: "The atonal Hanyu Pinyin romaniz/sation of Běihǎi, the Mandarin pronunciation of Chinese 北海 (Běihǎi)." --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:25, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

The image of the stamps belongs to Pak-Hoi or Pak-hoi, whichever is attestable, if you really want to include it, but not here. I've told you before to not mix up the hypenated forms.

While Cantonese isn't sui generis (unless I'm understanding the Latin word incorrectly, in which case please correct me), Wiktionary treats it as a separate entity from Mandarin (but both are subsumed under Chinese), which is why I don't think we should include Mandarin here. GI, your proposed etymolgy is technically correct and very precise, but that's a total abhorrentation in terms of etymology and is unnecessarily mouthful. – Wpi (talk) 14:34, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I bascially agree with Wpi's statements here, including the one immediately above. I'm going to make this my fourth and final comment here; I don't plan to modify the entry's etymology or the image's caption with respect to the areas I discussed. I don't plan to discuss the issues here any further, as they do kind of get into navel gazing. Thanks to both of you for your time and efforts. I will be okay with whatever the ultimate results are because I'm really not an expert anyway. This is just a hobby. Thanks! --Geographyinitiative (talk) 15:09, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

As above, there's nothing wrong with leaving the stamp here. It was only an issue with the caption. — LlywelynII 01:43, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

We're discussing how Wiktionary should treat the entries, so arguing "it's separate because we treat it separately which is why we should keep it separate" is just going in circles. No one ever at any point said the Mandarin pronunciation led to Pakhoi. It was a gloss on the usual romanization of Chinese 北海, as explained at great length.

Similarly, we're talking about romanization, which is why treating Jyutping as solely a pronunciation guide is unhelpful. Use IPA for pronunciation. The romanization should be something able to be used in other scripts to talk about the thing. It's based on pronunciation, sure, but it gets capitalized in running text. Cf. the already linked UPenn discussion or just consider the difference between pinyin used as ruby script for Chinese children and actual proper pinyin rules used (e.g.) in writing the names Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping (not zhou en lai, deng xiao ping, or xi jin ping). Jackie Chan's Cantonese name is Sing Lung, not sing lung. Similarly with place names like the one actually under discussion here.

Given how much everyone pretended not to see or hear anything the last time Knightwho abused their power, no, you aren't likely to actually be punished just for nonsensically insulting me instead of addressing the actual arguments in good faith. It's still a terrible habit and will get you in actual trouble if/when you extend it to other editors. — LlywelynII 01:22, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

1a. You're confounding Mandarin and Chinese, where the former is not related to Cantonese directly and the latter is a macrolanguage encompassing all of the Sinitic languages. The way you're proposing it is like saying "Borrowed from English borough, which is also known as Proto-Germanic *burgz and pronounced in German Burg."

1b. We're treating them separately because linguistically they're separate. If you want to challenge this fact, you may argue that on WT:BP.

2a. Capitalisation is not allowed in jyutping, a fact established by consensus. Again, if you want to change it, WT:BP is your friend.

2b. jyutping is useful even as a pronunciation guide, as it indicates which pronounciation are used and how the pronounciation sounds approximately. In fact, jyutping resembles IPA relatively closely. As an example, 番禺 (Panyu, also a place name) is pronounced as pun1 jyu4, but the uninitiated may use the more common pronunciation of 番 faan1 instead; indicating the jyutping in the etymology section helps clear up such confusion.

2c. The example in the UPenn discussion is inconsistent in itself and only one instance. It does not prove anything.

2d. Pinyin and jyutping are two different, separate systems, you're blurring the differences and trying to compare apples to oranges here. The former allows capitalisation, is in popular non-specialized usage, while the latter is not.

2e. When the jyutping is subject to capitalisation, a rule in European languages, it should also be subject to anglicisation and be stripped of the tone markings, as well as hypenation. Bak1-hoi2 is a horrendous rendition of a haphazard anglicisation attempt. I would accept Bak-hoi or bak1 hoi2, but the latter is a coherent system in itself and provides much more information to the reader.

2f. Jackie Chan's Cantonese name is 成龍 (pronounced sing4 lung4), and not Sing Lung or sing lung, the latter two is nowhere to be seen on the Wikipedia page Jackie Chan.

3a. I don't see where did I insulted you nonsensically, except for asking you to leave the Chinese-related entries alone if you're not familiar with the subject. This hypothesis is supported by your edits on entries such as 四九.

3b. Pinging @Theknightwho who may want to read this conversation since they're mentioned above and was claimed to be "[abusing] their power".

– Wpi (talk) 05:06, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

@Wpi I wouldn’t bother wasting your time trying to argue with @LlywelynII, who seems to be literally incapable of ever backing down, even when the evidence is overwhelmingly against them. They’re a user who has consistently tried to bully other users when they don’t like the current consensus, which is precisely what they are trying to do to you now.

For what it’s worth, we obviously don’t put the Mandarin here, because modern Mandarin has nothing to do with the derivation. If English borrows from Ukrainian, we wouldn’t give this kind of prominence to the equivalent Russian either. It’s quite clearly an ignorant failure to understand that Cantonese is a separate language in its own right. Theknightwho (talk) 05:52, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

And again with the personal attacks and mischaracterization.

It's clear that they don't have a problem with the attacks on me but, keeping it up, you're going to keep making it clearer how inappopriate your attitude is for a mod and what a disservice you're doing to the project. — LlywelynII 23:43, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

@LlywelynII I mischaracterised nothing; you’re just proving my point. Demanding politeness after making rude comments is absurd, to say the least. Theknightwho (talk) 23:45, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

The opposite. Inter alia, there are several pages of discussion above, presumably unread, clearly discussing that Cantonese is a language and that the Mandarin was never used as the derivation. "Bullying" is obviously a failure to wp:agf but you're well aware of that; you could at least point out examples to support the continuing personal attacks. (Presumably your edit just now is about my response to you. You already know the background for it. I don't expect you to change your opinion of your behavior but it was wrong then and continues to be inappropriate, most of all for an admin.)

No idea why you feel the need to continue but, if and when you do, the entire project is better served by focusing more on the discussion and the arguments instead of the repeated and fairly vicious ad hominem attacks. — LlywelynII 23:55, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

@LlywelynII I made an argument, which you ignored.

If you don’t like the fact I’m calling you a bully, then I would suggest you stop acting like a bully. It’s not inappropriate of me to point that out; you just don’t like it because you don’t want to confront the idea that it might be true. Enough. Theknightwho (talk) 00:04, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

... Except there was no bullying and you either didn't make an argument or your argument ignored issues already discussed at length, unhelpful even without the continuing personal attacks.

I quite agree. Enough. You by yourself are making it unpleasant to be here and—whether you're able to see it or not—I am helpful to the project. Beyond which, at an admin, you should be holding yourself to a higher standard than whatever personal bias this is. If you do have helpful arguments to make, though, yeah, of course add those. — LlywelynII 03:21, 27 May 2023 (UTC)