Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/May 24, 2025
Wording choice
[edit]@Gog the Mild not that you need the affirmation, but you did a particularly good job condensing the lead here! The one point I can potentially identify is: including the "Unlike letters ..." point but not the "Characters use aspects of shape and pronunciation" one may give readers the wrong-but-traditional conception that characters aren't highly tied to a specific spoken language. What do you think? Remsense ‥ 论 00:31, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- Cheers Remsense. So are you suggesting that 'Unlike letters in alphabets that reflect the sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes, the units of meaning in a language.' be amended? And if so, how.? Gog the Mild (talk) 16:15, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- The last thing I want is to induce headaches by raising the word count significantly. Would something like Unlike letters in alphabets that reflect the sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes—the units of meaning in a language—and may use aspects of both pronunciation and the character's shape. Remsense ‥ 论 16:18, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- No worries, let's get it right. I have included your amendment and trimmed a little elsewhere for 1,022 characters. How does it look now? Gog the Mild (talk) 16:30, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you for your patience! Ideally I would just want to repeat represent but that seems awkward here—as someone with more distance from the subject matter, does the present sentence communicate the idea of the lead sentences adequately clearly to you? Perhaps may utilize aspects instead of may use aspects? Remsense ‥ 论 16:33, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- No worries, let's get it right. I have included your amendment and trimmed a little elsewhere for 1,022 characters. How does it look now? Gog the Mild (talk) 16:30, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- The last thing I want is to induce headaches by raising the word count significantly. Would something like Unlike letters in alphabets that reflect the sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes—the units of meaning in a language—and may use aspects of both pronunciation and the character's shape. Remsense ‥ 论 16:18, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- Definitely not utilise!
- ' ... Chinese characters generally correspond to morphemes—the units of meaning in a language—and may represent aspects of both pronunciation and the character's shape.'? Except "Chinese characters" can't "represent aspects of the character's shape"! I'm confused> Gog the Mild (talk) 16:43, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- This is tough—basically, I just want to make totally clear that many (most!) characters indicate their pronunciation to some extent, and are not merely pictographs like (for example) ☢️ is. This is ideally explained in the step-by-step manner in the article itself, but I don't want to introduce confusion where we don't have space—but I also really want to avoid the classic misconception that characters don't encode sounds of speech at all. Remsense ‥ 论 16:58, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- Unlike letters in alphabets that directly reflect the sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes, the units of meaning in a language. They may do so by encoding aspects of meaning as well as pronunciation. Remsense ‥ 论 17:08, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- Nice. How would you feel about this, which I think keeps the key concepts together in one sentence. (And keeps an eye on character count.) 'Unlike letters in alphabets that directly reflect the sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes—the units of meaning in a language—often encoding aspects of pronunciation as well as meaning.' Gog the Mild (talk) 21:09, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- Gorgeous! Thanks for hammering that out with me. Remsense ‥ 论 21:10, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- Oh, and FWIW, do you know if scheduling Ezra Pound directly previous was intentional? I found it quite serendipitous (in a largely positive way, he's an interesting fellow in the history of the Western encounter with Chinese writing). Remsense ‥ 论 21:28, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- And there was me thinking that no one would ever notice my little private joke. Gog the Mild (talk) 22:07, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- Luckily, I wrote Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei.
Remsense ‥ 论 22:12, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- That definitely needs getting to FA. Gog the Mild (talk) 22:57, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- I just looked at it for the first time in a while, and was thinking the same thing. Remsense ‥ 论 23:42, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- That definitely needs getting to FA. Gog the Mild (talk) 22:57, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- Luckily, I wrote Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei.
- And there was me thinking that no one would ever notice my little private joke. Gog the Mild (talk) 22:07, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- Nice. How would you feel about this, which I think keeps the key concepts together in one sentence. (And keeps an eye on character count.) 'Unlike letters in alphabets that directly reflect the sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes—the units of meaning in a language—often encoding aspects of pronunciation as well as meaning.' Gog the Mild (talk) 21:09, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- Unlike letters in alphabets that directly reflect the sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes, the units of meaning in a language. They may do so by encoding aspects of meaning as well as pronunciation. Remsense ‥ 论 17:08, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
- This is tough—basically, I just want to make totally clear that many (most!) characters indicate their pronunciation to some extent, and are not merely pictographs like (for example) ☢️ is. This is ideally explained in the step-by-step manner in the article itself, but I don't want to introduce confusion where we don't have space—but I also really want to avoid the classic misconception that characters don't encode sounds of speech at all. Remsense ‥ 论 16:58, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
