Module talk:Lang-zh

Module:Lang-zh is indefinitely protected from editing as it is a heavily used or highly visible module. Substantial changes should first be proposed and discussed here on this page. If the proposal is uncontroversial or has been discussed and is supported by consensus, editors may use {{edit template-protected}} to notify an administrator or template editor to make the requested edit.

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On 7 May 2026, it was proposed that this page be moved from Module:Lang-zh to Module:Chinese. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

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Hi all! Could we please add Yale romanization of Mandarin to the template? Given that this is the English-language wikipedia, and the set of spelling/pronunciation rules used by Yale romanization of Mandarin is the closest to English's own spelling/pronunciation rules, it would be helpful if Yale romanization of Mandarin could be added to the template. In many cases, this would be helpful for native English speakers to pronounce Chinese words even if they haven't learnt any system of romaization of Mandarin before, as the system of Yale romanization of Mandarin was designed to be intuitive for English speakers. Many thanks! – 星球统领 (talk) 23:36, 11 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

@星球统领: The current consensus is that pinyin is the default romanisation of Mandarin, and other systems are only to be used in special cases; see MOS:PINYIN. Freelance Intellectual (talk) 15:35, 12 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

It isn't this template's objective to require any particular transliteration - that is left to the MOS:PINYIN to decide. The template was designed to support common transliterations that may be required in an article, but it is not exhaustive. For less commonly used transliterations, alternative markup methods exist, such as Template:Transliteration and Template:Langx. Rincewind42 (talk) 13:14, 13 February 2026 (UTC)Reply

This is a request to add Pe̍h-ūe-jī (Teochew Church Romanisation) to the template. I have recently adding a lot of romanisations for people on singapore related articles and many have teochew names so it is quite frustrating to keep having to type " ; Pe̍h-ūe-jī: " for every single case of teochew usage. Warpswitch (talk) 21:51, 28 March 2026 (UTC)Reply

Now that Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Superscripts and subscripts is a guideline, it's clear that we should use Unicode superscripts for WG tones. Dingolover6969 (talk) 15:15, 5 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

The test case page included this, in case anyone is interested:

* {{Lang-zh|s=中国|t=中國|p=zhōngguó|l='Middle Kingdom, Central Kingdom; Central State|tr=China|j=Gwong2 zau1|cy=Gwóngjàu|first=t,j|labels=no|out=tr}}—{{strongbad|''doesn't handle self-inserted single-quotes''}}

I am changing it to be a copy of the sandbox case, instead:

* {{Lang-zh|s=中国|t=中國|p=zhōngguó|l='Middle Kingdom, Central Kingdom; Central State|tr=China|j=Gwong2 zau1|cy=Gwóngjàu|first=t,j|labels=no|out=tr}} Dingolover6969 (talk) 00:09, 2 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

It is requested that an edit be made to the template-protected module at Module:Lang-zh. (edit · history · last · links · sandbox · edit sandbox · sandbox history · sandbox last edit · sandbox diff · transclusion count · protection log) This template must be followed by a complete and specific description of the request, so that an editor unfamiliar with the subject matter could complete the requested edit immediately. Edit requests to template-protected pages should only be used for edits that are either uncontroversial or supported by consensus. If the proposed edit might be controversial, discuss it on the protected page's talk page before using this template. Consider making changes first to the module's sandbox before submitting an edit request. To request that a page be protected or unprotected, make a protection request. When the request has been completed or denied, please add the |answered=yes parameter to deactivate the template.

Change

val = val:gsub("(%d)", "<sup>%1</sup>"):gsub("(%d)</sup>%*<sup>(%d)", "%1*%2"):gsub("<sup><sup>([%d%*]+)</sup></sup>", "<sup>%1</sup>")

to

val = val:gsub("0", "⁰"):gsub("1", "¹"):gsub("2", "²"):gsub("3", "³"):gsub("4", "⁴"):gsub("5", "⁵"):gsub("6", "⁶"):gsub("7", "⁷"):gsub("8", "⁸"):gsub("9", "⁹")

Remarks:

• I am not aware of any more elegant way to do this in lua.
• I checked and lua %d means [0-9], or so the documentation implies. I also experimented with this in a lua sandbox online and found the same.
• As we no longer use sup tags, this change drops some complicated sup tag handling from this line. Undoubtedly, this means some pages that erroneously use sup tags in {{zh}} will now be rendered with a superscript ² (^²) until they are fixed. It would be trivial to fix/mask this in the template, using a line val = val:gsub("<sup>([%d%*]+)</sup>", "%1") -- remove redundant html sups. But I'm not sure it's valuable to do so. If it is valuable, maybe it should also be done to jyutping, to remove any numbers that are superscripted erroneously? I defer this change to later.
  • I'm not really sure why the old code includes %* — which is an escaped (ergo: regular) asterisk in lua regex — the way it does. Why would the * be used like this? That's not even in Sidney Lau romanisation, which does use an asterisk. The testcases are not illuminating... wish someone had left a comment here. It seems to have been added without explanation, in the context of Wade-Giles, by User:Jc86035. Anyway, assuming normal asterisks are alright, the new code will still work... for whatever that's for...
    • Perhaps we should add a tracking category for zhs that use an asterisk, to see if we can find them?
• In Sidney Lau romanisation, the * is an asterisk and the 0-like symbol is a ° (a "small circle"), so no special handling of these are needed. (In contrast, the 0-like character in the code above is a unicode superscript 0. I'm not aware of any system that uses a 0 tone marker, but we are prepared 🫡.)
• No LLMs used (except to list out the 0-9 superscript digits) — I'm just like this. Dingolover6969 (talk) 00:39, 2 August 2026 (UTC)Reply