Wiktionary:About Chinese

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  and the language code zh unless they natively use a non-Chinese script.

Key points

 * The various varieties of Chinese are subsumed under the header  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.
 * Terms are defined in relation to.
 * Senses limited to the literary language, certain dialects or certain regions should be marked accordingly using label (, in definitions) and qualifier (, elsewhere) tags.
 * For example, uses  and  uses  to show that these terms are mainly used in Taiwan and exclusively Cantonese, respectively.

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

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 and.

Some useful Chinese-specific templates include and.

Variants and simplified forms use to redirect to the standard traditional form.

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

Basic headers for single characters

 * Glyph origin
 * Describes how the character obtained its current shape. Templates used include and.
 * A character is not always of Chinese origin; see 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 box; see documentation for details and  for an example.)
 * Note that Old Chinese and Middle Chinese have been subsumed under "Chinese", so indicating that 🇨🇬 is inherited from 🇨🇬 or 🇨🇬 is redundant. However, indicating that a character is derived from a different character is fine, such as with (from 🇨🇬).
 * It is preferred that an entry is split by etymology per Old Chinese and Middle Chinese ancestor.


 * Pronunciation
 * Hosts ; 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 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.

Basic headers for words

 * Glyph origin
 * This is usually not needed unless it is convenient to discuss it together (like, ).


 * Etymology
 * Etymologies for words may show change of pronunciations or spellings, and (change in meaning). However, it is not necessary to duplicate any content from . For simple figurative or idiomatic meaning, the lit parameter of  may be used to show the literal meaning.


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


 * Definitions
 * Definitions for words should be defined using specific part of speech headers, and appropriate headword template. For noun entries, use to indicate classifiers for each sense and categorize the entry by classifiers; classifiers in the headword template is deprecated.

Other templates

 * : found either at the top of an entry or under an Etymology header. See documentation for details.
 * can be used to mark definitions as being obsolete in Modern Standard Chinese (but not necessarily other modern Chinese lects; see for an example).

Headword-line templates

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

About specific lects
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.

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

Chinese characters
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 About Chinese characters for discussion of its format.

Help from the community
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 . 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 . 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.

Translations into Chinese lects
* Chinese: * Chinese: * Chinese:
 * All translations into Chinese lects must be grouped under . Subdialects can be sub-nested. Regional variations can be flagged with.
 * Hokkien: 雪文, 茶塊 ...
 * Mandarin: 肥皂
 * 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.
 * Mandarin: 心理學, 心理学
 * If a translation is both simplified and traditional, only one translation is given.
 * Mandarin: 三明治

Current tasks

 * About Chinese/tasks

Other Chinese aids

 * Category:Chinese language
 * Category:Chinese templates

Selected previous discussions

 * Votes/pl-2014-04/Unified Chinese and Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2014-04/Unified Chinese
 * Votes/pl-2014-04/Unified Chinese and Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2014-04/Unified Chinese
 * Votes/pl-2014-04/Unified Chinese and Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2014-04/Unified Chinese
 * Votes/pl-2014-04/Unified Chinese and Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2014-04/Unified Chinese
 * Votes/pl-2014-04/Unified Chinese and Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2014-04/Unified Chinese
 * Votes/pl-2014-04/Unified Chinese and Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2014-04/Unified Chinese