Talk:Cantonese (disambiguation)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Canton dialect which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RFC bot 16:30, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

(Discussion closed) kwami (talk) 23:45, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Cantonese which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 13:03, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 7 July 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus. To quote from the discussion below: "The article boundaries between 'Cantonese', 'Standard Cantonese', 'Yue Chinese', 'Cantonese people', and 'Guangdong people' seem to be flawed attempts at drawing lines in the linguistic jumble that crosses two language families." There were a lot of assertions in the move request below, including in the proposal itself: "cantonese is equally commonly used for either the people or the language". Other unsourced assertions (both for and against) include: "So it's not 'equally commonly used'"; "Bavarians are just referring to people who speak the language"; "someone from Cantonese speaking areas of China would answer 'I am Chinese', not 'I am Cantonese'"; and far more. There were frightfully few citations for these. Actually, not even one. Do some research and propose this again in a few months if the research backs up your assertions. If this move is re-proposed with sources backing up its claims, and the opposers do not step up their research game to match, this article will certainly be moved as proposed. Until and unless that happens, I don't think we're going to see any movement on this article. (non-admin closure) Red Slash 18:04, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

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• Cantonese (disambiguation) → Cantonese
• Cantonese → Cantonese language / ?

– cantonese is equally commonly used for either the people or the language, like Vietnamese, Japanese, Taiwanese, Beijingese, Portuguese, or Manchurian, German, French, Thai. -- RZuo (talk) 22:29, 7 July 2021 (UTC)--RZuo (talk) 09:06, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

• Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 03:30, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose, this case is different from others. Cantonese people are just referring to people who speak the language. The language is indeed the primary topic. The people is less notable, it is uncommon to define a person to be "Cantonese" like others listed above. Sun8908 _Talk 08:59, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

for Zulu, Zulu people are just referring to people who speak the language.

for Swahili, Swahili people are just referring to people who speak the language.

for Sorbian, Sorbs are just referring to people who speak the language.

for Basque, Basques are just referring to people who speak the language.

for Lao, Lao people are just referring to people who speak the language.

for Bavarian, Bavarians are just referring to people who speak the language.

and so on and so forth...--RZuo (talk) 10:50, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

• Comment I can't make up my mind on this. The article boundaries between "Cantonese", "Standard Cantonese", "Yue Chinese", "Cantonese people", and "Guangdong people" seem to be flawed attempts at drawing lines in the linguistic jumble that crosses two language families. I think the current arrangement is reasonable when compared to other sociolinguistic labels that don't neatly correspond to national identities e.g. Shanghainese, Flemish, but I don't feel strongly about this particular set of article titles. Deryck C. 09:11, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose moving to "Cantonese language", which would be taking a side on the question of whether Cantonese is a language. (Most Cantonese speakers probably wouldn't call it a language, but rather a variety of the Chinese language.) We could instead move it to Cantonese Chinese, just as we have Hakka Chinese, Wu Chinese, Yue Chinese, etc. For comparison, our article at Shanghainese is about the language, while the people are at Shanghainese people —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 15:03, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
  • That discussion was had at Talk:Cantonese#Requested_move_15_August_2020 and I'd rather we didn't reopen it here... Deryck C. 14:19, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
• oppose. The initial argument is flawed, as while e.g. you might refer to someone as "Japanese" or "Thai" you would not normally refer to them as "Cantonese". Someone from 广州 would almost certainly answer "Chinese" if asked where they are from. So it's not 'equally commonly used'. Meanwhile if asked what you speak, if you speak 广东话, you will almost always answer "Cantonese", never "Cantonese language". As already noted whether it's a language or dialect is contentious, so moving it to Cantonese language will just lead to further attempts to move it. For all these reasons "Cantonese" is the best place for the article on the language.2A00:23C8:4588:B01:135:74BF:CBCC:2EAC (talk) 04:39, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

this IP's anecdotal hypothesis, that Cantonese people are not referred to as Cantonese, is baseless. Cantonese people reside in not only Canton City but also the entire province and other regions like Hong Kong, Malaysia and Canada. in addition to the language and the people, the word "Cantonese" actually has a third ambiguous meaning--a citizen from Canton City zh:廣州人. this argument only adds on to the need to disambiguate.

Zulu people are an Nguni ethnic group. neither Zulu nor Nguni have a nation-state, but that does not change the fact that they are Zulu or Nguni people.

Swahili people are a Bantu ethnic group.

Lao people are a Tai ethnic group.

none of these facts prevent the subgroups being identified by their distinct identities.

other examples within east asia: Beijingese, Manchurian...

all of these words that could denote both the people and the language in east asia should be moved to make sure they are clearly isambiguated. a claim that some articles like Shanghaiese exist in their current state has no merit and cannot justify why they should not be disambiguated in the same way as other such words.--RZuo (talk) 09:06, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

I did not write that it is not used at all for the people. I just pointed out that its use is not comparable to national demonyms such as "Thai", "Japanese". Again, if I asked someone "where are you from?" they might answer "I am Thai", or "I am Japanese" but someone from Cantonese speaking areas of China would answer "I am Chinese", not "I am Cantonese". If they wanted to be more specific they would do so geographically – e.g. "I am from Guangzhou" (我是广州人), or HK (我是香港人), etc.. 2A00:23C8:4588:B01:C1BD:D7A2:C08:3D64 (talk) 21:08, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Beijingese, Manchurian, Zulu, Nguni, Swahili, Sorbian, Tai... none of these are national demonyms. all of these have fewer population than Cantonese.

cantonese dont just reside in china.

if anecdotes could be anyway useful, no cantonese i've met would use the pinyin exonym. -- RZuo (talk) 22:13, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

• Support Johnnytest5 (talk) 10:38, 11 July 2021 (UTC)Johnnytest5
• Oppose per Mx. Granger and WP:COMMONNAME. Leotext (talk) 15:33, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. The language is easily the primary topic in English-language sources. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:51, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.