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Buffalo...?

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Kiwifilm 06:05, 11 June 2006 (UTC) I removed the reference to buffalo and changing..[reply]

Around the monastry some of the last free roaming buffaloes in Hong Kong can be seen.

to

Around the monastry some of the last free roaming feral cattle in Hong Kong can be seen, being the descendents of the cattle released after the closure of the dairy farm.

and shifted this para to after the reference to the dairy farm.

I hike in this area frequently and have yet to see any buffalo, but free roaming dairy cows and the occassional bull are to be seen.

Romanization

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As per WP:NCZH, place names should generally be in pinyin. Hong Kong place names are an exception, but Hebei (Hopeh), Xuanhua (Hsüanhua) etc, are not. If anyone has questions or objections, please, let's discuss. SilverStar54 (talk) 22:50, 19 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Addendum: Historical articles are not an exception to Wikipedia's policy on Chinese romanization. Even if English sources from the time use Wade-Giles and/or postal romanization, what matters is the romanization used in reliable modern sources. Sometimes, modern sources do continue to use the old romanization, but that is not the case for place names. Please stop reverting edits without a discussion, but I welcome a discussion on this talk page. SilverStar54 (talk) 17:20, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well done SilverStar. Remind you that there should have been no exception to Xianggang or Aomen. They aren't even counties. They only are remote corners of two of our thousands of counties. No exception should be given to Sun Zhongshan too. 183.178.23.126 (talk) 11:52, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
183.178.23.126: I think you misinterpreted what I was saying. To be clear, Wikipedia uses pinyin in most circumstances, but there are exceptions where the majority of modern, reliable, English-language sources do otherwise. No one disputes that Xianggang and Aomen are not countries, but that isn't relevant here. Turkey's official English name is the Republic of Türkiye, but unless or until general usage changes to reflect that, Wikipedia will continue using the name Turkey (but the article on Turkey will note what the official name is). On the other hand, if general English usage were to change to calling Hong Kong "Xianggang", then this and other articles would and should change to reflect that change. At the moment, though, that's not the case.
Why? Because Wikipedia prioritizes accessibility and readability over being *technically* correct. Most English-language readers won't recognize names like "Xianggang" or "Aomen", at least not in 2023. Moreover, what is and isn't technically correct is disputed; for example, Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong might object to using a romanization of the Mandarin-language name, even if its official. Does making a romanization "official" make it more correct? SilverStar54 (talk) 20:20, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No one disputes that Xianggang and Aomen are not countries, Then many "scholarly sources" have been wrong. 182.239.77.128 (talk) 13:23, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Once more, I am raising this issue. If I don't see any discussion I'm going to seek a third opinion to resolve this dispute. As of this writing, the article references place names from the early 1900s as "<Wade-Giles> (now <pinyin>"). This does not follow WP:NCZH for several reasons:

  • Wikipedia follows the conventions of modern, reliable sources. The only scholarly source referenced by this article (and [the large majority of other academic sources) use pinyin to romanize place names, whether historical or not.
  • If an article quotes/overwhelming relies on sources that use non-pinyin romanizations, it can sometimes be appropriate to add clarifying asides such as "...Hebei (Hopeh)" or "...Hebei (then romanized as Hopeh)", etc. However, as noted, this article's only scholarly source (and most of its other sources) use pinyin romanization. Including asides is therefore unnecessary, although not exactly wrong. What is wrong is to use the old romanizations and place the pinyin in parentheses, especially when its done in a way that suggests the name of the place was changed.

As I explained above, I oppose changing all Chinese-language names to pinyin, I only want to change those for which pinyin is the standard English-language romanization. SilverStar54 (talk) 10:22, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"As per WP:NCZH, place names should generally be in pinyin."; "Sometimes, modern sources continue to use the old romanization, but that is not the case for place names.". This is apparent not the case. Look at Peking University, Kweichow Moutai, Tsingtao Beer, Canton Fair, Szechwan sauce, Treaty of Nanking, just to name a few. Meanwhile you have certainly misinterpreted the consensus from Talk:Nanjing Massacre/Archive 10, which focussed almost entirely on the common names of the event in modern sources. There's no conclusion on whether Pinyin should generally prevail for toponyms. 182.239.77.128 (talk) 13:23, 21 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Tsingtao, Peking, Nanking, etc. are still used in most reliable sources today only when they make up part of a name that is famous in English, not to refer to the place itself. For example, in the article on Peking University, the University is described is being located in Beijing, not Peking. As the article's lead goes on to explain, "Peking" continues to be used as part of the university's name but has been superceded by the pinyin in other cases. Historical articles should (and usually do) use pinyin romanizations of place names even if the title of the article contains an older romanization of that place name. If Our Lady of Joy Abbey was well-known in English sources as "The Monastery of Lan Tao" (or something similar), Wikipedia would refer to it with that name, but still describe its location as on Lantau Island.
I brought up the discussion on the Nanjing Massacre page to point out that the same line of reasoning applies to historical articles as to modern ones regarding the use of Chinese romanization. That is, Wikipedia follows the lead of modern English sources. My main argument is that the vast majority of modern, English-language, reliable sources use pinyin to romanize historical place names, with the caveats discussed. SilverStar54 (talk) 04:54, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Such kind of minor name changes does not appear only in Chinese topics but other topics as well. There are topics like Sieges of Danzig, Battle of Danzig Bay, Taihoku Air Strike, Pusan Perimeter, Kievan Rus', and so on and so forth. Topics about 18th or 19th century Kolkata would in the text refer to the city as Calcutta as well, so as Mumbai/Bombay, or as Kiev for the time when Kyiv was part of the Russian empire and as a Soviet republic. Wikipedia follows the lead of modern English sources. The fact that Pinyin has become the so-called UN standard for topics about the People's Republic is not an excuse to take a revisionist approach and to ignore how works published in the English language have dealt with these topics and other topics that have gone through somewhat similar paths of spelling changes. We also have to bear in mind that undue weight should not be given to resources available on the internet. We need to have a balanced view with printed publications in mind too. 182.239.77.142 (talk) 14:47, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Are you disputing that the vast majority of reputable, published English sources today use pinyin for historical Chinese place names? I will again point you to the Google Ngram for Hebei/Hopeh as an example showing this is not the case. Take any example you'd like. Also, Ngram only includes published books, not random web sources. There aren't graphs of usage in Chinese history books specifically, but take a quick glance at the Google book results for, say, Republican-era China, and you'll see that the clear majority of sources published in the last 40 years use pinyin. My experience doing research on this period backs this up as well.
Or are you saying that it doesn't matter that pinyin is now standard for sources on this topic, because other spellings were used by English sources in the past? That's a very arbitrary way to make styling decisions, and is contrary to Wikipedia's clear policy.
Danzig/Gdansk and Kiev/Kyiv are not analogous to this situation, since the alternative names of the city are not different romanizations of the same name, but rather romanizations of the name as rendered in two different languages. This only applies to a small number of old romanizations of Chinese place names, such as Guangzhou/Canton and Xiamen/Amoy, and in these cases, the alternate romanization is still considered acceptable in historical contexts. But to be clear, this is in part because this is the approach taken by most modern scholars. Likewise, Taihoku is not an obsolete romanization of "Taipei", it was the official Japanese name of the city during it's colonial period. Moreover, "Taihoku Air Strike" is a specific event, not a place name in itself. Wikipedia's Korean naming conventions are the same as for Chinese, ie, articles should use modern romanization unless there's a scholarly consensus to do otherwise. I haven't done research on the Battle of the Pusan Perimeter, but either a) English sources on Korean history have reached a consensus that "Pusan" should be used for this time period or b) this article needs to be updated to be in line with Wikipedia's policy. I could go on, but hopefully you understand my point. SilverStar54 (talk) 18:22, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I should mention that this issue was discussed in Wikiproject History recently. SilverStar54 (talk) 22:55, 18 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A notice for users who have been involved in this thread: a discussion on whether to make the use of pinyin in historical articles an explicit policy is ongoing at WT:MOSCHINA#Suggested new section - historical articles. Please participate if you want to make your voice heard. SilverStar54 (talk) 20:17, 29 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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