User talk:Justinrleung/Archive 18

id versus cy

Hey- I saw your edit at 國不堪貳 and I wanted to confirm with you-- what is the difference is between an idiom and a chengyu for the purposes of Wiktionary? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 10:00, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: Idiom is the cover term for various figures of speech, including chengyu, xiehouyu and other things. Chengyu is specifically those that are typically (but not necessarily) made up of four characters. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 15:54, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

There is some kind of tenuous boundary between four character idiomatic statements that aren't chengyu and four character statements that are. Based on what you are saying here, I may adjust my understanding to 'four character (sometimes more) idioms found in modern dictionaries and written in Classical Chinese are chengyu'. My previous understanding was that 'four character (sometimes more) idioms found in modern dictionaries that can't be understood without reference to a famous story from Chinese lore are chengyu'. I am not really committed to any particular definition, but as I understand it, there is an ongoing and unwieldy dispute about this issue among Chinese people. I think the definition I am proposing is more consistent with what you are asking for here and makes more sense to me than my original understanding. Let me know if any of this makes sense to you, or where you would depart from the way I am understanding it. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 03:35, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: Yeah, I think it's good to have a slightly looser definition than your original understanding. Your new definition is pretty good. As a quick and dirty rule, I generally just Google the idiom with 成語 beside it, and if the results generally show chengyu dictionaries, I would say it's a chengyu. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 03:39, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Tones pages

I have made some new changes on the Mandarin Chinese tone pages (上聲, etc) that I think are useful to the readers of Wiktionary, but they are pretty unique as edits so I can't be sure they have been written in the most Wiktionary-appropriate manner. There may be some special templates or something that would be more suitable to achieve the aim that I was wanting to reach, and I would like to invite your review on those edits. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 04:37, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: I've made some changes. Let me know what you think. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 09:57, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Hakka

I just recently got MacIver's dictionary [1] Could you tell me how current system different from this one? --Octahedron80 (talk) 04:48, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

@Octahedron80: MacIver's dictionary isn't the same dialect as the one in our Hakka module. The dictionary doesn't tell us which dialect it's based on, so it's hard to tell which dialect it actually corresponds to in modern times. It's probably some dialect spoken in Guangdong. The module only supports Sixian dialect in PFS and Meixian dialect in Guangdong romanization. While I know some correspondences between MacIver's system and the Sixian system, MacIver's dictionary should not be used as a source for PFS because there are always exceptions. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 04:55, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

(@Octahedron80 if you want to look through old dictionaries for words, wikisource has some teochew books ;) ;) ;) —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 05:03, 13 January 2020 (UTC))

莫嫌袂歹

Sorry that I accidentally pressed the "Enter" button before finishing typing my edit summary. 莫嫌袂歹 (pronounced something like mai-hiam-buay-pai) is a fairly common expression in Singapore. 莫嫌 on its own just means "Don't hate". The dog2 (talk) 18:07, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

@The dog2: So the whole thing means the same thing as 袂歹? Could you give an example of how it's used? — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 18:09, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it can basically be used in the same the same scenario as 袂歹. An example would be if someone asks me how the food at a particular restaurant is, and I can answer with the expression "莫嫌袂歹". This will mean that while it's not fantastic, it is OK and not horrible either. It just sounds a little more elegant. Adding 莫嫌 to the beginning just adds the implication of "If you're not deliberately trying to hate it". The dog2 (talk) 18:31, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

@The dog2: Is it possible that it's just two words (莫嫌 + 袂歹)? Also, it seems like 莫嫌袂歹 is slightly less good and more reluctant than 袂歹. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 19:08, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

That may well be the case. I am not a professional linguist, so there may be some subtleties I am not picking up on, but in everyday conversation I and my friends will typically use "袂歹" and "莫嫌袂歹" interchangeably, with "莫嫌袂歹" perhaps just adding a bit more emphasis. It may have originated as just two words, but if you treat them as two words instead of one single expression, the grammatically correct way to say it will be "莫嫌就袂歹". What is certain though that it is quite a uniquely Hokkien expression; if you do a direct translation to Mandarin or Cantonese, it just doesn't come off as elegantly.

As a side note, when I talked to friends from Penang and used "莫嫌袂歹", they had no problem understanding me, but would sometimes jokingly ask me "愛嫌呢？". The dog2 (talk) 20:42, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

@The dog2: Alright, thanks! This clears things up. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 21:12, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

error when auto-generating pinyin entries

Hi Justin. I am getting the following error when auto-generating pinyin entries: "An error occurred while generating the entry: Lua error in Module:accel at line 604: Please enter a language code in the parameter "lang"." Do you know what's going on here? ---> Tooironic (talk) 18:53, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

• @Atitarev Would you be able to help with this, Anatoli? ---> Tooironic (talk) 11:25, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

  @Tooironic: Sorry for the late reply. I don't know the answer to this myself. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 17:09, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

  @Tooironic: I don't know either sorry, Carl. Pls raise it on WT:GP. Last edits on Module:accel were by User:Surjection and User:Benwing2 but I don't know if they affected this. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:27, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

@Tooironic, Atitarev @Tooironic, can you point me to a specific page where this error occurs? Put an example in a user page if necessary. I'll take a look. Benwing2 (talk) 02:35, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

@Benwing2: You can use any Chinese Mandarin entry where pinyin is undefined as e.g. 站赤 (zhànchì) and pinyin appears in green (zhànchì)) (if your acceleration is enabled). --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:41, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

@Atitarev I changed the error message to show what the offending language code is, and it's "cmn-Latn-pinyin", which is set on line 885 of Module:cmn-pron. This is not a Wiktionary language code, hence the error. I think the problem is that "cmn-Latn-pinyin" (whatever that is) is a valid value for the "lang" param of an HTML <span>, but the accelerator code overloads the "lang" param to contain a Wiktionary language code. Is it absolutely necessary to specify lang="cmn-Latn-pinyin"? Try without it, or with lang="cmn". If it's absolutely necessary, I could hack the accel code to recognize something like accel-lang="cmn" and only fall back to lang="cmn" if accel-lang isn't given. Benwing2 (talk) 03:51, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

@Wikifresc ([2]) ? —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 03:55, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Thank you for finding out. I don't want to make changes myself but it seems we need to revert/fix what User:Wikifresc has introduced. Thank you, Suzukaze-c. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:08, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi all, the -Latn-pinyin part helps browsers treat it properly for text-to-speech or font settings and the like. My change aimed to be consistent with w:Template:Lang-zh that uses lang="zh-Latn-pinyin" Wikifresc (talk) 11:19, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

@Benwing2 Hi. If you're capable of fixing it, please do. If you require changing it to use "cmn", please do. @Wikifresc Thank you for responding. With modules and templates, you have to be careful, since changes may break something, please discuss changes in WT:GP, for example. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 21:15, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

To be honest, I would probably make a similar edit without second thoughts. Unforeseen (unforeseeable?) consquences. —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 04:37, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

@Suzukaze-c: You may be right. I have now replaced the codes back in Module:cmn-pron but it's still not working --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:46, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

• Thank you everyone for your efforts. I have tried again, but have been met with the error message: "Lua error in Module:languages at line 453: Please enter a language code in the parameter "lang". The value "cmn-Latn-pinyin" is not valid." ---> Tooironic (talk) 22:29, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

  @Tooironic: Try making a topic in WT:GP. Users like User:Benwing2 or User:Erutuon might be able to help but I don't know. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:46, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

  Will do. Thanks. ---> Tooironic (talk) 04:48, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

  Don't forget that changing the module doesn't change the entries that transclude it directly. I believe this is the type of edit that the system will propagate to all the transclusions... eventually. It may require null edits to hurry the process along. Of course, a bot would come in handy to do that, so maybe it isn't a bad idea posting to WT:GP after all.Chuck Entz (talk) 05:06, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Chinese 搖頭／摇头 (yáotóu) and 摇头 (yáotóu)

Hello,

maybe you could review these terms as to whether they could be sums of parts. HeliosX (talk) 00:53, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

@HeliosX: No, I don't think they are. It's not any old shaking, but shaking left and right in disapproval, rejection, etc. (as in sense 1 for the English entry). — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 02:25, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Module error at 叻

Could you fix this? As far as I can tell, it seems to be a side effect of this edit, but I could be wrong. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:14, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz: Thanks for letting me know, Fixed. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 22:10, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

"Lua error: not enough memory" issue

Sometimes, "Lua error: not enough memory" appears in lower sections of entries of Chinese characters (e.g. 人 (rén) at the time of writing). What is the cause of this error and how do we solve it? Thanks. RcAlex36 (talk) 06:20, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

@RcAlex36: It's an ongoing issue where the templates using Lua are taking up too much memory, more the maximum allotted memory for a page. I don't know if we have a solution for this yet. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 06:36, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

sg Hokkien entry 我

I noticed that you had cited 新加坡閩南話詞典 as providing gua2 for a sg pronunciation of 我 , would you be willing to send me a link to this dictionary? I think it will be a useful resource. I do want to note that (at least in Taiwan,) Singaporeans are very well-known for their pronunciation as oa2, this has actually spread to some speakers outside of Singapore and it is seen as a frequent indicator of a Singaporean. Would you happen to know if the "gua2" pronunciation is starting to take hold there, as well, or if this is limited to smaller segments of the population? Moonlight Shroud (talk) 03:21, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

@Moonlight Shroud: I think góa is the traditional/conservative pronunciation across the Hokkien world. The óa pronunciation is the newer form that is possibly becoming quite widespread because of two factors: (1) deletion of g as a common process, probably due to Mandarin's lack of such a phoneme (main reason in Taiwan and Mainland) and (2) influence from Teochew (main reason in Singapore and Malaysia). The óa pronunciation is definitely not restricted to Singapore (anymore). However, for the purposes of the dictionary, I think we should only record Singapore and Malaysia as having óa because góa to óa is pretty predictable in other varieties since essentially all g are deleted (e.g. ún for gún "we" or oē-í for oē-gí "words").

As for 新加坡閩南話詞典, I could send you an email on how you can access it if you turn on your email settings. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 03:33, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: Email settings have been fixed, thank you kindly Moonlight Shroud (talk) 03:41, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Singaporean Cantonese

Hey, I was just wondering if we should add an entry for Singaporean Cantonese. It's for the most part very similar to Kuala Lumpur, so the Kuala Lumpur entry may be sufficient to cover it. In addition, it is only the 3rd most spoken dialect after Hokkien and Teochew, and it's a dying language, so I'm not sure if it would be worth the effort. The dog2 (talk) 18:58, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

@The dog2: I definitely think we should if we have the resources. If you speak it yourself or know people who speak it, it'd be great to include. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 19:23, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

I know some expressions, but unfortunately, I didn't learn my Cantonese from home but from watching Cantonese TV programmes from Hong Kong and Guangzhou. I can contribute those few terms that I know. My parents know how to speak Singaporean Cantonese though because they grew up with Cantonese neighbours, so I can ask them whenever they come to visit me. An example of what I know is that the world for "police station" in Singaporean Cantonese is the same as in Kuala Lumpur. The dog2 (talk) 20:19, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

@The dog2: Yeah, I think that'd be fine. I've added it as "Singapore-C". — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 20:33, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

鐳 in Hong Kong

Just wanting to ask, have you actually heard anyone from Hong Kong using "鐳" to mean "money"? In Malaysia and Singapore, the way you would ask a shopkeeper "How much?" in Cantonese when you are going to pay is "幾鐳?", and Cantonese-speaking friends and relatives have told me that when they first visited Hong Kong, people didn't understand them when they used that expression. As you probably already know, the correct way to ask "How much?" in Hong Kong would be "幾錢?", and my Cantonese-speaking friends and relatives had to learn that to be understood. The dog2 (talk) 02:02, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

@The dog2: It's mostly restricted to something like 佢好多鐳㗎 or 有冇鐳啊 for humorous effect. It's not necessarily widespread, but not entirely unknown to Hongkongers. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 03:55, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

生意vs買賣

I don't think the two are equivalent. Based on my understanding, 生意 can refer to any kind of business, while 買賣 refers to the trade of physical goods. The dog2 (talk) 04:42, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

@The dog2: I think that (or something similar) is the understanding of most southerners (including myself), but it seems to be equivalent in northern varieties. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 05:26, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm a southerner too, so maybe that's why that's my understanding is as such. The dog2 (talk) 05:36, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Character display

Sorry to bother you but my computer cannot display some of those rare characters such as 𫢗, as in "𫢗時" for when in Teochew? Do you know what font I need to display it properly? The dog2 (talk) 17:56, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

@The dog2: You can try this one out. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 18:36, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

That works. Thanks. The dog2 (talk) 18:46, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

主 in Taishanese

Yallo, I'd like to make sure if the Taishanese rhyme for 主 is either zi2, or zei2, or both. --Apisite (talk) 17:26, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Whether or not I'm incorrect when I added zi2, I'll leave syllables with either i or ei to you or anyone else with Dang Jun's book, the Taishan Fangyan Zidian. --Apisite (talk) 17:29, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

@Apisite: It's zi2. Xiaoxuetang also makes this distinction pretty clear. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 19:14, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

和 in Taishanese

In Taishanese, is the syllable 和 simply vo1 as Xiaoxuetang says, or vo3 as others do, or both? --Apisite (talk) 07:35, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

@Apisite: Both, but for different contexts, of course. There are actually two pages for 和 on Xiaoxuetang. The first page you land on is 18723, which gives the pronunciation vo1 for 和麵 (as noted in the 備註 column). You can click on 6692, which will give you vo3 as in 和氣. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 00:40, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Dungan terms missing in dictionaries

Hi,

Many Dungan terms are compeltely missing from the two dicationaries I have access to but you seem to have a way to find those in the large dialectal dictionary. In particular, common terms like "bicycle", "taxi" are not there. Could you please check if you can find them?

The term автобус (avtobus, “bus”) written as 阿夫道古斯 (in Module:zh/data/dial-syn/公共汽車) is simply a phonetic respelling of the word using Chinese characters, IMO. The character "古" is odd here. It's "bu", not "gu". I doubt it's even pronounced that way or similar in Dungan. Dungans probably can handle a pronunciation, which is close to Russian, Kyrgyz, etc. It does have tones, though (I-III-I) but our module can't handle words, which have non-standard Dungan syllables. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:47, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

@Atitarev: It's not so much a dictionary, but a descriptive grammar on Dungan called 东干语调查研究. For "bus", it tells me that it's 阿夫道古斯 without giving a pronunciation or Dungan spelling (or at least I can't find it). For "taxi", it's given as 塔克西 on one page, but it's given as 塔可西 on another page (here with the Dungan spelling такси and the IPA /tʰa²⁴ kʰə ɕi⁴⁴/). For "bicycle", it's given as 騎的車子 (SoP in Mandarin if you'd ask me), spelt as one word in Dungan чидичәзы and pronounced as /tɕʰi²⁴ ti tʂʰə²⁴⁻¹² tsz̩²⁴/. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 00:56, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the response. Interesting that there no hits for чидичәзы (čidičəzɨ) at all, not even in plain Google searches. I will add these terms as translations. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 21:18, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

call 電話

Hey there. Just so you know, I remember some taxi drivers saying it this way when I visited Hong Kong some years back. The dog2 (talk) 05:54, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

@The dog2: How exactly was it used? I don't find it grammatical/idiomatic. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 06:03, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't classify it as idiomatic, but I remember that when they told me that I should make a phone call for something, they said "你call電話". And I also know from Hong Kong dramas that it's common for people to say "我call你" instead of "我打電話畀你". The dog2 (talk) 06:18, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

@The dog2: I've personally never heard of "call電話", and google:"call電話" doesn't give hits support this. I'd only find "call我個電話" or something like that grammatical. google:"你call電話" gives some hits, mostly Mandarin, though (surprisingly). I've also removed "call" because it's equivalent to "打電話給" rather than "打電話". — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 06:36, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Penang Hokkien

Just so you know, there is some sort of an online dictionary for Penang Hokkien ([3]). It's not from a government or academic source so I don't know how reliable it is, but I just thought you might want to know it exists in case you want to use it as a resource. The dog2 (talk) 22:14, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

@The dog2: Haha, that's my main source. Thanks for letting me know anyway! — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 23:30, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

zh-dial guidelines

You seem to be mentioning a lot of things in your edit summaries. Maybe they should be written down. —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 07:01, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

@Suzukaze-c: True. Thanks for the suggestion. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 07:09, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

@Suzukaze-c: Okay, I've added some things to the documentation of {{zh-dial}}. Let me know if you think anything else should be added. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 19:01, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

User:Apisite/Taishanese Chinese

I created a user-page for Taishanese, so I won't have to clutter your talk-page, at least not very much. --Apisite (talk) 03:16, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

@Apisite: Alright, thanks for letting me know. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 05:09, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

You're welcome. Is the list for Taishanese on your watchlist? I created another list for Hainanese as well. --Apisite (talk) 04:43, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

@Apisite: Yes, both are on my watchlist now. For Hainanese, I don't think we'll be using that romanization. It doesn't seem too widespread, and I'm not sure how well it corresponds with contemporary Hainanese. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 05:19, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: I wonder, then, how much have you found out about the Hainanese Transliteration Scheme, especially but not limited to the tones? --Apisite (talk) 06:25, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps an updated version of Hainan Romanized is in order? --Apisite (talk) 06:18, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

@Apisite: I do have some sources on the Hainanese Transliteration Scheme. I've worked on a module for it. I still haven't figured out tone sandhi for Wenchang dialect though, and we might also want to use this system for the Haikou dialect. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 15:22, 12 March 2020 (UTC)