Category talk:Korean chengyu

RFM discussion: October–December 2023
Specific Proposals:  Move Category:Korean chengyu to either:  Category:Korean four-character idioms or Category:Korean hanja idioms  Similarly move the subcategories of Category:Chengyu by language to their language-appropriate or English-glossed titles 

Rationale: Currently all subcategories of Category:Chengyu by language use the word "chengyu" even though this is a strictly Chinese term for these idioms that have been absorbed into various Asian languages from Classical Chinese. However, many of these languages have a completely different term to refer to these idioms. For example, in Korean the word for this category of idioms is typically. Thus, someone looking for the Korean four-character idioms is not going to search for the Chinese term, which makes the category unfindable. I presume the same for other affected languages.

1a: For Korean specifically, my preference is to move Category:Korean chengyu to Category:Korean four-character idioms (gloss of ), in line with the standard Korean term and also most common way to speak about these Korean phrases in English and thus the most findable variant. I acknowledge, however, that this is not perfectly precise, since it does not reference the shared etymology and because there is a small number of such phrases that are not actually four characters.

1b: Less preferred but not unpalatable is the option to move Category:Korean chengyu to Category:Korean hanja idioms (gloss of, where hanja refers to sinographs in Korean). This acknowledges the Sino etymology and accommodates the non-four-character members; it is also what the Korean Wiktionary uses. However, this is less standard— appears in the Standard Korean Dictionary, whereas does not.

1c: A third option that I do not propose but do acknowledge is using the transliteration of Category:Korean sajaseong'eo or Category:Korean hanjaseong'eo. This would be inconsistent with other subcategories in Category:Korean language that are specifically in English, not transliterated Korean.

2: For other languages, I am much less qualified to propose specific new categories. There is a list of translations on the page for chengyu, but I find that the Korean offerings are not consistent with standard usage, so I would want other languages verified before adopting them.

Koanium (talk) 17:29, 18 October 2023 (UTC)


 * moving of all of the chengyu categories, including Chinese, to Category:LANG four-character idioms. – wpi (talk) 14:37, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
 * @Wpi @Koanium renaming to 'four-character idioms'. Benwing2 (talk) 05:55, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm just seeing this now, and I think there might be some idioms that are considered 成語 but not four characters. I wonder if those would just have to be not considered chengyu then. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 13:50, 1 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Special:Search/incategory:"Chinese four-character idioms" intitle:/...../ -hastemplate:zh-see


 * —Fish bowl (talk) 21:03, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Personally I think "four-character idioms" need only be prototypically four-character in length; compare English blackboard, which isn't always black. Benwing2 (talk) 09:06, 2 November 2023 (UTC)


 * WingerBot (Benwing2) moved cat:Chengyu by language and its subcategories to cat:Four-character idioms by language and cat: four-character idioms on 2023-11-01. &mdash; excarnateSojourner (ta&middot;co) 19:37, 14 December 2023 (UTC)