The Cantonese Wikipedia () is the

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...

-language edition of

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

, run by the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best kno ...

. It was started on 25 March 2006.

History

Cantonese, a major variety of the

Chinese language Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the wor ...

originating in

Guangzhou Guangzhou (, ; ; or ; ), also known as Canton () and alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about north-northwest of Hong Kon ...

, is the

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

in the southern provinces of

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

and

Guangxi Guangxi (; ; Chinese postal romanization, alternately romanized as Kwanghsi; ; za, Gvangjsih, italics=yes), officially the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (GZAR), is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the People's Republic ...

, and is one of the official languages of

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

and

Macau Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...

. Cantonese has the most well-developed written form of all Chinese varieties apart from the standard-Mandarin variety and Classical Chinese. With the advent of the computer and standardization of character sets specifically for Cantonese, many printed materials in predominantly Cantonese speaking areas of the world cater to their population using these written Cantonese characters.

Naming

The Cantonese name of Wikipedia was decided in April 2006, following a vote. In a similar manner to the existing

Chinese Wikipedia The Chinese Wikipedia () is the written vernacular Chinese (a form of Mandarin Chinese) edition of Wikipedia. It is run by the Wikimedia Foundation. Started on 11 May 2001, the Chinese Wikipedia currently has articles and registered users, o ...

, the name of Cantonese Wikipedia () means "Wiki Encyclopedia". The Chinese transcription of "Wiki" is composed of two characters: /, whose ancient sense refers to "ropes or webs connecting objects", and alludes to the Internet; and , meaning "foundations of a building", or "fundamental aspects of things in general". The name can be interpreted as "the encyclopedia that connects the fundamental knowledge of humanity". The discussion in 2006 also decided the Cantonese name of the word "Cantonese" in the wiki. The result was "". In a vote from August to September 2013 it was decided that the name be changed to "", which literally means "Cantonese inscription".

ISO code

At the time of establishment, there was no ISO code for Cantonese. Thus, was used as the domain. However, some did not like the idea, as Yue is the Mandarin name of Cantonese. The native name is Yuet. Cantonese preserves

entering tone A checked tone, commonly known by the Chinese calque entering tone, is one of the four syllable types in the phonology of Middle Chinese. Although usually translated as "tone", a checked tone is not a tone in the phonetic sense but rather a syl ...

while Mandarin does not. Some suggested using Cantonese instead, but zh-yue was chosen as the final domain name. The ISO code for Cantonese is . Using the ISO code instead of current domain has been submitted as a proposal to Wikimedia, but as of yet, no action has been taken to implement this change.

Native name

There are various native names of Cantonese, namely Gwóng jàu wá (), Gwóng fú wá (), Gwóng dùng wá () and Yuht yúh (). Cantonese Wikipedians thus use the four names interchangeably, namely , , and . There is no consensus on the native name.

Community

Cantonese flourishes in the southern provinces of

and

, as well as in

and

where it is listed as one of their official languages. Some Cantonese speakers are native to

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

, the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

. Hong Kong owns the largest written Cantonese assets and does not have tight internet censorship. Fittingly, most editors are

Hong Konger Hongkongers (), also known as Hong Kongers, Hong Kongese, Hongkongese, Hong Kong citizens and Hong Kong people, typically refers to residents of the territory of Hong Kong; although may also refer to others who were born and/or raised in the ...

s. Starting from a small community, Cantonese Wikipedians have formed a consensus to follow, by default, the policies, guidelines, and customs of the

English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is, along with the Simple English Wikipedia, one of two English-language editions of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was founded on January 15, 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition, and, as of , has the most arti ...

, wherever they are applicable. This consensus has provided stability and allows Wikipedians to concentrate on content. As of , the Cantonese Wikipedia has edits, articles, and more than registered users, of whom are administrators.

Origin of edits

Origin of readers

Script

There are two different scripts of written Cantonese,

Traditional Chinese A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...

and

Simplified Chinese Simplification, Simplify, or Simplified may refer to: Mathematics Simplification is the process of replacing a mathematical expression by an equivalent one, that is simpler (usually shorter), for example * Simplification of algebraic expressions, ...

. Some Cantonese-specific characters can only be written in Traditional Chinese. Cantonese Wikipedia uses Traditional following Hong Kong and Macau in their traditional usage, because most of the participants came from Hong Kong when Cantonese Wikipedia was founded. But this led to a dissatisfaction among Simplified Chinese users (mainly Cantonese speakers in

). To solve this problem, a

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

converter was created and provided for viewing the content in Simplified Chinese characters. Unlike Chinese Wikipedia (where replacing a form of writing with another in source text is prohibited), if an editor writes a page in Simplified characters, he or she will not receive any warning from administrators, but the text will be manually converted to Traditional characters .

Other Chinese-language Wikipedias

Cantonese is a member of the group of Chinese varieties. Different Wikipedias have been established for different Chinese varieties (see below). The Cantonese Wikipedia is the third largest in this family. *

(based on Standard Chinese) * Classical Chinese Wikipedia *

Min Nan Wikipedia The Southern Min Wikipedia (Pe̍h-ōe-jī: ''Wikipedia Bân-lâm-gú'') or ''Holopedia'' is the Southern Min edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It is the second largest Wikipedia in a variety of Chinese, after Mandarin. Written in Pe̍h ...

* Mindong Wikipedia * Gan Wikipedia * Wu Wikipedia * Hakka Wikipedia

References

* Wikimedia Mail

(December 2004)

(January 2005)

(February 2005)

(September 2005)

External links

*
Cantonese Wikipedia
{{Wikipedias Internet properties established in 2004 Wikipedias by language Chinese online encyclopedias Wikipedias in Sinitic languages