Template talk:zh

Bad title
cmn is Mandarin, zh is Chinese, even if Chinese isn't really a language, DAVilla has broken a lot of things by replacing the entire content with something that's totally wrong. I'm just not sure I can revert to the last good version without breaking as many things. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:50, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

RFM
It's really irritating me to have two templates that display Mandarin and both refer to the same language. I cannot believe that having two parallel topically category systems for exactly the same language (e.g. Category:cmn:Flowers, Category:zh:Flowers). Am not sure what to do about it, change zh back to Chinese seems like a good option, but it should be removed from any Mandarin sections, basically any usage in the main namespace is gonna be wrong, because it will either refer to Mandarin or another Chinese language. It could possibly be used in the category structure, to categorize Category:Mandarin language and the other Chinese language in Category:Chinese language (which exists, despite the fact this template displays Mandarin not Chinese). Mglovesfun (talk) 11:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * We've already deleted the three-letter codes for languages that have an equivalent two-letter code, and I think the same should be done here, but instead by deleting 'zh'. We don't need Category:Chinese language if we already have Category:Sinitic languages. —CodeCat 12:34, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not for keeping zh, I really just want to see what other people think about a possible merge. RFDO might be a better venue because the merge is really a deletion of zh whilst replacing it in all cases with cmn. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:58, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Continued at WT:RFDO... —CodeCat 02:39, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Template:zh
Going by the reasoning that it's undesirable to have two different codes for the same language, I'd like to propose deleting this code. This template was already submitted at WT:RFM but I would prefer it to be deleted outright, so that is the only template for Mandarin. —CodeCat 02:34, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete, same reasons. Having two parallel category trees for Mandarin can only cause confusion and genuine difficulty in finding things. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:26, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I support deletion. However, there are many translation entries that are still using this code e.g encyclopedia. Is there any way to use a bot to clean this up? Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 02:15, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's a really easy replacement to do by bot, but I don't think we need to; both cmn and zh need to point to the zh Wikipedia and Wiktionary, as they exists while cmn.wikipedia.org does not. That does mean I think that needs to be kept, probably as a redirect to . It would be possible to bypass that, but it's not worth adding all that extra code to ; better just to keep the redirect. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:13, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If we have a zh Wikipedia and Wiktionary, wouldn't it make more sense to delete and standardize on ? Seems confusing to use zh everywhere else but cmn here. It would also seem more consistent with deleting All 3-letter language templates that have a 2-letter equivalent . ~ Robin 09:25, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Irritatingly good point. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:52, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * While that's true, the code 'zh' officially stands for 'Chinese' which is a macrolanguage, while 'cmn' stands for 'Mandarin'. So they are not really equivalent. —CodeCat 12:16, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * zh is a convenient code but I think that it will eventually disappear from the project, to be replaced by proper ISO language codes : pronunciation, usage notes, definitions, etc. may differ between languages. This process will take much time. Lmaltier (talk) 20:46, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * And are you sure that all current zh entries are about Mandarin? This should be checked before any action. Lmaltier (talk) 20:48, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * At least in the translations sections other Chinese languages also use at the moment, I guess it's in order to point the transwiki zhwiktionary. Matthias Buchmeier (talk) 10:44, 6 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete or redirect to . (If it is kept, it must be renamed: two codes cannot have the same name, it breaks langrev and other things.) - -sche (discuss) 22:24, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Failed. It still needs to be orphaned though. Can someone with some knowledge of Chinese help with this, maybe with a bot? 22:32, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I've done some spot-checking. The good news is that the vast majority of transclusions seem to be after "Mandarin:" in the translation sections. Another major source is request templates like, and , which are often under a Mandarin L2 header. When they are under Mandarin, then it's easy bot-work. Changing the parameters should clear the decks for the trickier ones.


 * Another- and more problematic- batch is Wikipedia templates. I ran into a fair number of uses of, which seems to require that language code to find zh.wikipedia (I tried replacing the zh with cmn, but it didn't know what to do with it). Then there are the cases of , which are often Mandarin, but not in any way that a bot could tell. The cases where zh is the second parameter should be easily fixable by bot since they should match the L2 header anyway. There are also the "Mandarin terms from" and "terms from Mandarin" categories, but I can fix those by hand- derivcatboiler seems to like cmn just as much as zh for the language code. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:18, 14 October 2012 (UTC)


 * [[Image:Arrowred.png|15px]] Woah, woah, woah! Simply swapping out  for  really doesn't strike me as the best way to go.  I strongly suspect that  was originally intended as a generic "Chinese" marker, i.e. "some version of Chinese that is not necessarily Mandarin and may in fact be an ancient form of the language".  "Mandarin", as I understand it, is specifically the modern Beijing dialect.  As such,  really should be swapped out for  instead, or ideally some more temporally specific lang code such as  or.
 * Case in point: the etymology for now suggests that the term was borrowed into Sanskrit from Mandarin -- which ultimately sounds like science fiction, as that would require time travel.
 * Another: the etymology for likewise suggests a borrowing from modern Mandarin into Old or Early Middle Japanese.  Moreover, the purported "Mandarin" pinyin doesn't match the pinyin given on the linked  page ("chánnà" vs. "chánnuó").
 * I'm afraid that the bots have made a bit of a hash of at least a few entries. Would it be possible to walk back their work, and / or redo this swap using some more-appropriate lang code?  Then again, maybe this is only an issue where  was swapped for  in etymologies -- if so, would it be possible to just undo the bot edits if the swap was in an etym section?  -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 06:39, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
 * If there are etymologies that say Mandarin when they shouldn't, then they should be changed, it's as simple as that... 13:29, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes. My hope is that it would be relatively easy to generate a list of entries where the bots have changed  into  in Etymology sections; otherwise, it's a more complicated issue of trawling through all uses of  and checking if the use is in an etym section...  :)  -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:23, 29 January 2013 (UTC)