File talk:Map-Sinophone World.png

Another discussion on highlighting world-language maps

@Moalli and Kwamikagami: Since this map was brought up at the discussion for the Spanish map, here we go. :)

• Kyrgyzstan: We really shouldn't be highlighting this. Firstly, this is for Dungan. Dungan language speakers don't usually think of their language as a form of Chinese, and in fact most of them could not even understand Gansu and Shaanxi Mandarin back in the 1970s per doi:10.1080/02549948.1977.11745054. (Only the scholars could.) Admittedly it is quite a bit easier the other way round: if you write Dungan in Chinese characters, I often understand most of it (and I'm not even coming from Gansu and Shaanxi Mandarin but just standard Mandarin). This is mostly because Dungan preserves some archaicisms that are passively understood even if not actively used, and no doubt this sort of thinking was behind the colouring. But secondly, the Dungan only make up 1% of the population of Kyrgyzstan in the first place. If we used 1% as a threshold, we'd have to colour the entire world as Anglophone, and this is not useful.
• Myanmar: Correctly not coloured as a whole (it's a roughly 3% minority that mostly doesn't actually speak Chinese), but en:Wa State should be shaded (there Chinese is the de facto official language), and probably also en:Kokang (where the Chinese are the majority and, at least according to Wikipedia, actually speak Chinese).
• Vietnam: The Hoa are less than 1% of the Vietnamese population (and mostly concentrated in Ho Chi Minh City apparently), and according to the infobox on en:Hoa people, the Chinese languages they spoke are marked as "historical". Probably shouldn't be highlighted at all.
• Philippines: It shouldn't be highlighted: they're about 1.8% of the population, and the majority don't even use any variety of Chinese as the home language (although at least most still understand).
• North Korea: although there are Chinese communities near the border, I doubt the number is significant enough to show (though understandably this is a bit hard to verify).

The rest seem fine. In Singapore, Chinese is obviously a native language (it's official); in Malaysia, there is a complete Chinese education system and they form about 22.8% of the population; in Brunei, they are still about 10%.

Please, feel free to offer comments and corrections. :D Double sharp (留言) 03:42, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

There's also the problem of what "Chinese" means. Is it the language, or the language family?

I gave it a shot. Ethn. says that Chinese in N.Korea is "scattered throughout country" and "unestablished", so I removed the spot by the border. Kwamikagami (留言) 03:59, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Thank you!

For Indonesia it is more complicated: in Java most of the ethnic Chinese don't speak Chinese, but elsewhere they do, and in some cases they are definitely enough to mention (e.g. according to the WP articles, in en:Medan the Chinese are over 10% and speak Chinese languages; in en:Pontianak the Chinese are just under 30%; in en:Bagansiapiapi they are the majority). So I suppose Indonesia deserves some squares, but it'd take some time to get a full picture. Double sharp (留言) 07:35, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Looks good Kwamikagami! Thanks for your work on all of these and Double sharp for the references! Now, I would be hesitant once again with the squares because that's going to be a bit dangerous like the previous French and current German maps. If we definitely can provide reference of significant minority usage in a concentrated area, by all means we should include it. If that's the case, I would suggest a square on Ho Chi Minh City given that one can definitely still get by in Cantonese in the Cholon (Chinatown) neighborhood and vicinity. Apparently, some schools catering to the ethnic Chinese population still teach it and native Vietnamese doing business with merchants based in Cholon often learn the language, which was quite a surprise to learn. [1] (I'll try to see if there's a source in English as well).

I don't know about the inclusion of Brunei. While the population may be large, are Chinese languages taught in schools or is there media in Chinese? I'm not familiar enough to know though. - Moalli (留言) 06:54, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, if those Indonesian cities deserve squares, then Ho Chi Minh City probably should (here the Chinese minority rises above 5%).

As for Brunei, there are Chinese schools established by the Chinese community. Apparently even non-Chinese students sometimes enrol in them and learn Chinese as a third language (as they have a reputation for quality). en:Languages of Brunei also states with a reference that the Chinese minority of Brunei still speaks Chinese. So I'd be inclined to leave it in. Double sharp (留言) 07:51, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

@Moalli: forgot to ping you, sorry. Double sharp (留言) 15:22, 21 August 2023 (UTC)