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New users, please check out some of the other Stack Exchange sites to increase your reputation. – xiaohouzi79 Aug 16 '11 at 2:00

60 Example Questions (7 closed)

active newest votes

up vote 23 down vote

added by Chris W. Rea Jun 19 '10 at 0:29

Why voted as off-topic? This question certainly does pertain to Chinese language, in particular the different romanization methods that have been used over the years to make names Western-friendly. "Peking" was based on the Wade-Giles system, and "Beijing" on the more recent Pinyin. – Chris W. Rea Jun 21 '10 at 1:05

This is a good and relevant question. – Steve Kuo Jun 21 '10 at 16:38

Peking is used long ago, in modern english you should say Beijing. – Xiè Jìléi Aug 17 '10 at 8:06

This is on topic as long as you can still see Peking around, e.g. in Peking Duck. – Geoffrey Zheng Sep 21 '10 at 6:30

up vote 22 down vote

added by Moak Jul 11 '10 at 17:26

up vote 21 down vote

added by zephyr Jun 19 '10 at 1:52

Perfect question. Simple, directed, to the point, and may have multiple answers. – ixtmixilix Jul 31 '10 at 22:02

And what is the measure word for measure words? ;-) – Thilo Oct 19 '10 at 1:07

Questions that can be answered with a Google search are not a good example in my opinion. – Coltin Apr 19 '11 at 19:20

up vote 20 down vote

added by googletorp Jun 17 '10 at 7:32

up vote 20 down vote

added by Chris W. Rea Jun 19 '10 at 0:33

up vote 13 down vote

added by Douglas S. Stones Jun 21 '10 at 1:07

Yes, this is the kind of stuff people need to be asking. – ixtmixilix Jul 31 '10 at 22:03

I think this is way too broad. My wife speaks a dialect and I could write a novel on the differences between one dialect and putonghua. You would also be making some sweeping generalisations if you only picked a few things. – xiaohouzi79 Feb 8 '11 at 2:21

up vote 12 down vote

added by David McDavidson, edited by WikiSpeedia hang-around Apr 17 '11 at 18:18

	This is a question that I can see coming up often. When trying to learn a language it's always great to have an arsenal of online resources at your disposal. – Luser Sep 9 '10 at 17:32
	Likely to come up and tolerated on the site so not clearly off topic, but should not be the focus, so not a good on-topic example. – Caleb Apr 12 '11 at 12:49

up vote 10 down vote

added by Don Kirkby Sep 29 '10 at 20:03

I have this exact same problem! I'd love to hear what the community had to say about this. – Ciaocibai Jan 27 '11 at 22:03

up vote 9 down vote

added by jsk Nov 7 '10 at 16:06

up vote 8 down vote

added by Chris W. Rea Jun 19 '10 at 0:26

I also think it's too basic. You can look this up on wikipedia. – ixtmixilix Jul 31 '10 at 21:52

up vote 7 down vote

added by Edle Nov 21 '10 at 2:50

up vote 6 down vote

added by Master Of Disaster Jun 17 '10 at 8:19

Too basic. Even if it's controversial, you can look it up on wikipedia and read about it there. MO/SO are about people not wasting their time by digging for an answer they may not be able to find on the internet. – ixtmixilix Jul 31 '10 at 21:51

up vote 6 down vote

added by Lars Andren Jun 23 '10 at 3:14

Dead on Otaku! You're learning fast. – Lars Andren Jul 12 '10 at 1:23

I think dialectical Chinese questions are fine. If you haven't been to China, you haven't seen that 99% of Chinese people don't speak xiandai hanyu. What we call 'Mandarin' is something of a misnomer -- there are as many flavors of 'Mandarin' as there are mispronunciations of the word 'shi' or 'chi'... Sichuanese is/isn't a flavor of Mandarin. It's controversial. But there is only one xiandai hanyu, because there is one written standard. Why rule out the dialects? Someone who's in China will find they really need to know something about them. – ixtmixilix Jul 31 '10 at 22:01

I think if you don't allow dictionary type questions for putonghua why allow them for a dialect? Rather than having a 1000 questions asking how do I say this or that in a dialect, have a single question asking 'where can I find an online resource to learn dialect [x]' – xiaohouzi79 Feb 8 '11 at 2:26

up vote 6 down vote

added by Anthony Labarre Jan 9 '11 at 13:13

up vote 5 down vote

added by Chris W. Rea Jun 19 '10 at 0:31

Too localised.. – xiaohouzi79 Feb 8 '11 at 2:27

up vote 5 down vote

added by ixtmixilix Jul 31 '10 at 21:42

	This is the thing I've focused on the most since I started learning Chinese. It would have really helped me to be able to ask this when I started out. I also think it's technical enough to merit an overflow style Q/A format, since some characters have several accepted stroke orders, and every char. that differs in trad./simplified has at least two anyway, which may be vastly different since Taiwanese and HK stroke order differ vastly with regard to certain shapes... so potentially this Q has 5-6 acceptable answers, making it perfect for MO/SO-style formats. – ixtmixilix Jul 31 '10 at 22:11
	Yes, but would you really want the site full of hundreds of questions about stroke order for each character when you only practically need to learn one type of stroke order for every character and this can be learnt with practice. That means an answer to a single character is not going to provide you with any insight in the long run. – xiaohouzi79 Feb 11 '11 at 3:19
	This is the same as asking 1000 different questions about how a particular character looks in each handwriting script. It looks 'cool', but it's not beneficial. – xiaohouzi79 Feb 11 '11 at 3:21

up vote 4 down vote

added by Master Of Disaster Jun 17 '10 at 8:20

This is great, but all Cantonese words have written forms nowadays -- people use them in chat programs and SMS. – ixtmixilix Jul 31 '10 at 22:08

up vote 4 down vote

added by KennyTM Jun 19 '10 at 20:22

closed as off topic by Douglas S. Stones, random, Don Kirkby, Luser, Geoffrey Zheng Sep 21 '10 at 6:34

This question does not relate to the topic of the proposal.
It was closed as part of an automated migration of off-topic to close votes on September 29, 2011.

	— should this site allow "Checking the dictionary" questions? – KennyTM Jun 19 '10 at 20:23
	I wouldn't want it to... perhaps list a bunch of online dictionaries in the FAQ, and point to that (answers will be copy/pasted from dictionaries anyway). However, you can expect to get many of these questions and perhaps it's less complicated just to answer them and move on, then stir up trouble closing questions. – Douglas S. Stones Jun 20 '10 at 23:44
	as far as not too many too trivial vocabulary questions pop up, this is a perfectly valid one. after all, neither wikipedia nor dict.leo.org appear to know this term. – flow Jun 23 '10 at 17:56
	Any decent Chinese dictionary has this, or even just google then translate. If you don't know any Chinese you wouldn't be checking this phrase anyway. – Geoffrey Zheng Sep 21 '10 at 6:37

up vote 4 down vote

added by ixtmixilix Jul 31 '10 at 21:41

What's classical particle? – Geoffrey Zheng Sep 21 '10 at 15:18

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_chinese_grammar – ixtmixilix Sep 27 '10 at 11:20

Thanks. As an engineer I tend to think of things electrons and neutrons when I see "classical particle". – Geoffrey Zheng Sep 27 '10 at 14:14

up vote 4 down vote

added by Mr. Shiny and New 安宇 Jan 7 '11 at 19:57

up vote 4 down vote

added by Anthony Labarre Jan 9 '11 at 13:16

up vote 2 down vote

added by ixtmixilix Jul 31 '10 at 21:48

up vote 2 down vote

added by dusan Oct 24 '10 at 14:25

up vote 2 down vote

added by Edle, edited by WikiSpeedia hang-around Apr 17 '11 at 18:15

up vote 2 down vote

added by Jaime Soto Jan 21 '11 at 20:04

up vote 2 down vote

added by Anthony Labarre Feb 1 '11 at 9:43

up vote 2 down vote

added by stillinbeta Feb 7 '11 at 3:52

up vote 2 down vote

added by Klaus-Martin Scheuer Feb 8 '11 at 11:13

up vote 2 down vote

added by xiaohouzi79 Feb 11 '11 at 2:52

up vote 2 down vote

added by David Grellscheid Feb 24 '11 at 1:01

up vote 1 down vote

added by Don Kirkby Sep 29 '10 at 20:02

I don't quite understand this question. Is it referring to characters that are only used in TW or HK and not in the mainland? If there are lots of them then this is way too broad. Each character has a history and an evolution and its own respective merits. – xiaohouzi79 Feb 8 '11 at 2:16