Wiktionary:About Chinese

	This is a Wiktionary policy, guideline or common practices page. This is a draft proposal. It is unofficial, and it is unknown whether it is widely accepted by Wiktionary editors.
	Policies – Entries: CFI - EL - NORM - NPOV - QUOTE - REDIR - DELETE. Languages: LT - AXX. Others: BLOCK - BOTS - VOTES.

The Chinese or Sinitic language family includes a number of related lects which have very similar written forms, but different grammar, vocabulary and especially pronunciation. On Wiktionary, these lects are treated under the header ==Chinese== and the language code zh unless they natively use a non-Chinese script.

• The various varieties of Chinese are subsumed under the header ==Chinese== and the language code zh (vote).

  The exception is when the variety of Chinese natively uses a non-Chinese script, e.g. Dungan. The layout of these entries is currently undecided.

• A Traditional Chinese form of a Chinese word, usually the most commonly used Traditional Chinese form, is chosen as the lemma (vote).

  All other forms of exactly the same word should soft-redirect to the lemma form using {{zh-see}}.

• Terms are defined in relation to Modern Standard Written Chinese.

  Senses limited to the literary language, certain dialects or certain regions should be marked accordingly using label ({{lb}}, in definitions) and qualifier ({{q}}, elsewhere) tags.

  For example, 簡訊 / 简讯 (jiǎnxùn) uses {{lb|zh|chiefly|Taiwan}} and 煠熟狗頭 / 煠熟狗头 uses {{lb|zh|Cantonese}} to show that these terms are mainly used in Taiwan and exclusively Cantonese, respectively.

Chinese entries should follow format guidelines in Entry layout. 朋友 is a good example of how Chinese entries should ideally be formatted.

{{zh-new}} can be used to accelerate creation of entries.

Unless the entry is of a variant or simplified spelling, templates that are almost always obligatory are {{zh-forms}} and {{zh-pron}}.

Some useful Chinese-specific templates include {{zh-l}} and {{zh-x}}.

Variants and simplified forms use {{zh-see}} to redirect to the standard traditional form.

干 is a good example of how Chinese character entries should ideally be formatted.

Glyph origin

Describes how the character obtained its current shape. Templates used include {{Han etym}} and {{Han compound}}.

A character is not always of Chinese origin; see 乭 (shí) for an example of what to do in this case.

Etymology

Describes the origin of the character's pronunciation(s). (Or, used to host a {{zh-see}} box; see documentation for details and 干 for an example.)

Note that Old Chinese and Middle Chinese have been subsumed under "Chinese", so indicating that Mandarin 黑 (hēi) is inherited from Old Chinese 黑 (*hmlɯːɡ /⁠*hmlɯːɡ⁠/) or Middle Chinese 黑 (xok) is redundant. However, indicating that a character is derived from a different character is fine, such as with 佑 (yòu) (from Old Chinese 右).

It is preferred that an entry is split by etymology per Old Chinese and Middle Chinese ancestor.

Pronunciation

Hosts {{zh-pron}}; see documentation for details.

The |cat= parameter is responsible for sorting entries into categories such as Category:Chinese verbs, Category:Mandarin nouns, and Category:Cantonese chengyu and should be filled out when reasonable.

Definitions

Hosts definitions. Rationale for using a "Definitions" header instead of "Noun", "Verb", or other more specific part of speech headers can be found here.

The {{head|zh|hanzi}} template is found directly under this header as the headword template. It has little practical value but is currently part of the standard Wiktionary entry format.

Glyph origin

This is usually not needed unless it is convenient to discuss it together (like 彳亍 (chìchù), 旮旯 (gālá)).

Etymology

Etymologies for words may show change of pronunciations or spellings, and semantic change (change in meaning). However, it is not necessary to duplicate any content from {{zh-forms}}. For simple figurative or idiomatic meaning, the |lit= parameter of {{zh-forms}} may be used to show the literal meaning.

Pronunciation

This section is the same as the one for single character entries.

Part of speech headers

Definitions for words are hosted under specific part of speech headers (e.g., "Noun", "Verb", etc.). The headword template {{head|zh}} is used for all parts of speech except verbs. Verbs use the special headword template {{zh-verb}}, which allows specification of the type of verbal compounds; the symbol ⫽ is used in the headword to indicate where separable verbs (離合詞 / 离合词 (líhécí)) can separate. For noun entries, use {{zh-mw}} to indicate classifiers for each sense and categorize the entry by classifiers; classifiers in the headword template is deprecated.

This section describes labels for use with {{lb}}. For example, to label a term as obsolete in Standard Chinese (but possibly preserved in fossilized expressions or other varieties), use {{lb|zh|obs-std}}. The following labels are available with their explanations:

obs-std

Obsolete sense in Standard Chinese; may be preserved in fossilized compounds and expressions or other varieties of Chinese. (This classifies the term into Category:Chinese terms with obsolete senses.)

hist-dict

This form or sense is per the record found in one or more historical dictionaries. It does not necessarily have citations. (This classifies the term into Category:Chinese terms with obsolete senses.)

hist-nonstd

This form or sense is recorded in one or more historical dictionaries as a nonstandard ("vulgar") character (俗字 (súzì)).

no-solo

This sense is obsolete in Standard Chinese when the character stands alone. It may be preserved in compounds and idiomatic expressions. (This classifies the term into Category:Chinese terms with obsolete senses.)

• {{zh-forms}}: found either at the top of an entry or under an Etymology header. See documentation for details.

• Wiktionary previously had several headword-line templates specifically for Chinese, but all have been deprecated except for {{zh-verb}}, used for marking morphological structure. In most cases, you can simply use {{head}}.

This section lists all Chinese dialects supported and proposed to be supported. Dialect names in italics are currently not supported (in to-do list); other content in italics is tentative and needs further discussion.

In general, categories should be sorted by radical–stroke sortkeys produced by Module:Hani-sortkey.

Chinese characters should not be conflated with Chinese words or morphemes. General information about the characters themselves belong in the Translingual section, which appears before all other sections. See Wiktionary:About Chinese characters for discussion of its format.

Sometimes, we know there is a problem, but don’t know what to do to correct the problem. If you should find a Chinese entry with a problem that you do not know how to correct, there are several ways to approach the situation.

1. Mark the page with {{attention}}. This template adds the entry to a cleanup category, where another user can then find and correct the problem. It helps if you include comments explaining what the problem is or why you think the page needs attention.
2. Raise the issue on Wiktionary talk:About Chinese. Note that this approach is primarily for issues of style, formatting, categorization, and not for specifics of content.
3. Mark the page with {{rfc}}. This is a more general cleanup tag, and it allows the user to include reasons or concerns as an argument in the template. Be sure to also add an entry to WT:RFC concerning the word so that other editors will be made aware of the problem.

• All translations into Chinese lects must be grouped under * Chinese. Subdialects can be sub-nested. Regional variations can be flagged with {{qualifier}}.

* Chinese:
*: Hokkien: {{t|nan-hbl|雪文|tr=sat-bûn}} {{qualifier|Zhangzhou}}, {{t|nan-hbl|茶塊|tr=tê-kóe}} {{qualifier|Quanzhou}} ...

• Mandarin: 肥皂 (féizào)

• The traditional precedes the simplified version if they are different and the transliteration is provided with the simplified version. All Chinese varieties need both traditional and simplified forms.

* Chinese:
*: Mandarin: {{t|cmn|心理學}}, {{t|cmn|心理学|tr=xīnlǐxué}}

• If a translation is both simplified and traditional, only one translation is given.

* Chinese:
*: Mandarin: {{t|cmn|三明治|tr=sānmíngzhì}}

• Wiktionary:About Chinese/tasks

• Category:Chinese language
• Category:Chinese templates

• Wiktionary:Beer parlour archive/July 06 § Min Nan
• Wiktionary:Beer parlour archive/2007/April § Amoy
• Wiktionary:Beer parlour archive/2007/April § Headings for 漢語, 閩南話, 粵語 etc.
• Wiktionary:Beer parlour archive/2009/May § Recurring problem with Chinese vs. Mandarin
• Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2011/January § Renaming "Mandarin" headings to "Chinese"
• Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2014-04/Unified Chinese and Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2014-04/Unified Chinese