Talk:Tiananmen

Quebec is to Québec as Tiananmen is to Tian'anmen
In order for my analogy of "Quebec is to Québec as Tiananmen is to Tian'anmen" to hold, for either one or both of the senses (gate and square), uses of 'Tiananmen' must be exceedingly more numerous and authoritative than uses of 'Tian'anmen'. If the two forms were of equal prominence or if 'Tian'anmen' were slightly less common that 'Tiananmen', I would endorse using 'Tian'anmen' as the lemma form. And: Because 'Tiananmen Square' overwhelms internet search engine results, and because of areas of unclear intent or overlapping meaning, it is hard to get a clear picture of the two senses for 'Tiananmen' and 'Tian'anmen'. However, on the basis of the authoritative sources using 'Tiananmen' over 'Tian'anmen', excepting particularly Xinhua News Agency, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, and on the basis of the Google Ngrams to 2019, I hold that 'Tiananmen' is the lemma form and that 'Tian'anmen' is the official form. This result could be overturned for me by some very close analysis, which I welcome 100%, and which I hope to eventually do myself, over the course of time. My decision today is bolstered by the fact that English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons are using 'Tiananmen' and not 'Tian'anmen'. I will also say that I am biased against the use of the syllable-dividing mark/apostrophe from Hanyu Pinyin in English language loan words because, in practice, the syllable dividing mark never distinguishes between two different English language words. That is to say: no English speaker is going to confuse Tiananmen with some other Tiananmen, or Xian with some other Xian (beside the Christian/Xian senses or the 'county'/'Xian' argument), or Changan with some other Changan, or Yanan with some other Yanan. An unusual thing required in a word which provides no value in distinguishing it from some other similar word is a positive burden. The closest example I could find was 'Xinan' and 'Xin'an', and that one minor example is not enough to require the English speaking world to use an extra apostrophe in proper nouns, of which they will have no understanding and which will propogate endless questions and doubts. Indeed, the syllable-dividing mark has even disturbed a settled word like 'Hunan' with the hellish abomination 'Hu'nan'. If you give English speakers this apostrophe, they're gonna get themselves hurt with it. The greatest practical value of the syllable-dividing mark is in helping the reader find the syllabic divide in the word, but that kind of knowledge can be passed orally or via pronunciation guides, as with all other English langauge terms. The project of the use of the syllable-dividing mark in English will inexorably fail. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:16, 17 June 2023 (UTC)