Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Má (Chinese word)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete‎. No need for a redirect from this specific title. —Ganesha811 (talk) 03:55, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Má (Chinese word)[edit]

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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ma

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Egregious POV fork originating from Wikipedia's fraught relationship with the use–mention distinction. Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and any notable claims in this article should go on an article like history of cannabis. Remsense留 01:51, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Language, Medicine, and China. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 05:34, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, the relevance to the etymology of the English word Marijuana is already dealt with in that article, and that's the only bit that's appropriate to an English encyclopaedia. Elemimele (talk) 14:16, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The word ma is more than just the root of the word marijuana. Ma is also the root of the word hemp, and the word ganja, and even the word cannabis. In German, ma is the root of the word hanf, etc. - The Hammer of Thor (talk) 17:36, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Merge verifiable information, if any, to History of cannabis, or else Redirect. Owen× ☎ 14:34, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm there are 196 mainspace links to the article Má, which redirects to the article under discussion, so any consensus to delete or soft redirect to zh:wikt:麻 would involve a lot of cleanup (which I'm aware is not an argument against those outcomes). I note that this article makes no mention that 麻 is sometimes considered one of the Five Grains.
Leaning Merge into Cannabis in China at the moment, but more looking into is indicated. As per usual, I hope to circle back. Folly Mox (talk) 19:02, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Almost all of those 196 mainspace links come from a single template - Template:Cannabis. So a cleanup, if needed, would be trivial. Owen× ☎ 19:22, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent I was hoping that might be the case and forgot to look into it. Folly Mox (talk) 02:07, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The article Ma is about the word's spread into other countries, around the globe, and so it has very little to do with Cannabis in China. - The Hammer of Thor (talk) 16:21, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The history and etymology of ma is important in English language Wikipedia. Ma is an accepted English word, and it's incorporated into nearly every world language. The article is misnamed "Má (Chinese word)" and it should be moved to Ma (cannabis). - The Hammer of Thor (talk) 16:15, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In what way is this not a dictionary entry? If the content of a passage is the history and etymology of a word in itself, that is what a dictionary does, not Wikipedia.
麻 is the Chinese word for 'cannabis'. It has slightly different bounds and connotations than the English word, because that's the nature of them being different languages. Especially with China, I have comparatively little patience in the mystification people insist on blanketing ordinary vocabulary terms with—while some of them are genuinely bespoke concepts and may require encyclopedia articles, the ordinary word for a type of plant does not even come close to those.
An article like Cannabis in China is titled as it is specifically so that we are not misled to believe it's a totally divergent phenomenon that requires a totally different English term. Why should 麻 have its own article, and not the Chinese word for 'water'? 水 certainly has its own interesting history for an English-language audience. But we don't have that, because it is mostly just the word for 'water', and interesting linguistic history can be covered in a responsible way. Remsense留 16:36, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Word etymologies generally belong in a dictionary, as you say. However, once a particular etymology gains sufficient amount of significant independent coverage to attain standalone notability, it qualifies for an encyclopedic entry. Whether this word has cleared that threshold or not is what we're trying to determine here. Owen× ☎ 16:50, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OwenX, what is an example of a foreign language term where the etymology alone qualifies it for its own encyclopedia article? That is, where the concept the term describes is not what is actually notable.
I can show you dozens of citations regarding the French word blanc, regarding how its etymology is counterintuitively the same as that of the English word 'black', and the various different ways the word appears in culture, French and otherwise. This is interesting, but it's not covered in a Wikipedia article titled Blanc (French word) or Blanc (white). Instead, it's covered in a responsible way that doesn't beckon a new concept mostly out of thin air. Remsense留 16:52, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We have quite a few articles about words and their etymology, both English and foreign, including Simran, Allah, and of course, Fuck. To be clear, like you, I don't think Má should have its own page here. I'm merely pointing out that your claim about foreign word etymologies not belonging on WP isn't based on policy or on practice. Owen× ☎ 17:03, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I will accept the latter two examples, as well as Thou as viable counterexamples. But as far as I can tell, the former is largely about the concept described instead of the word itself, à la Tao. Thank you for these. Remsense留 17:11, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Relisting, I don't see a consensus here yet.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:13, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, let's do a bit of a deeper dive then.
First off, as Elemimele states above, the etymological material is already covered at Marijuana, so that doesn't need a standalone article to host it.
The term ma, used to describe medical marijuana by 2700 BCE... "Medical marijuana" is a legal term with no bearing on early China. 麻 just means hemp: all the bits, not just the flowers of the female plant. Further, the statement is sourced to this: Other sources report that the first known record of marijuana use is in the Book of Drugs, written about 2737 BC by the Chinese Emperor Shen Nung... Shennong (the Divine Farmer) is a myth, and no Chinese writing survives from anywhere within a millennium of the date given in the source. I haven't looked into what the "Book of Drugs" might refer to, but I'm guessing purely on subject matter background knowledge it's not attested pre-Han dynasty.
History and migration of the word ma: unsourced, and given the statement má has been used to describe the hemp plant since before the invention of writing five-thousand years ago, not verifiable.
Ma in poetry and song: Shi Jing mentions using 麻 as a fiber. Ok, this can go in Five Grains or Cannabis in China.
Use of the word ma in other languages: the Japanese word is fully cognate. So what? Journalists used the word (which? 麻 or 大麻?) when discussing cannabis regulations and law publicly (due to prohibition). When? Where? Which scholars and journalists? There's no source cited. And if there is a source for this, why can't it go in History of cannabis or Legal status of cannabis?
Root of Mexican Spanish word marijuana: already at Marijuana (word) § Etymology, as noted above.
Variations: belongs in Cannabis in China.
Overall, there's no need for this article in an encyclopaedia. I'm sympathetic to syncretic articles that can exist so people don't have to chase down bits of information from three different articles, but I don't think this one passes muster. There's a deeply incorrect statement in the brief lead paragraph, unverifiable speculation, and the rest is misfiled. Still feeling Redirect. Folly Mox (talk) 17:58, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify, with my delete I have absolutely nothing against leaving a redirect as per Folly Mox Elemimele (talk) 15:37, 24 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Cannabis in China. First, a note on the history: this has been to AfD before. On 9 May 2019 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ma was closed as "Merge to Cannabis in China and redirect title to MA", and the history of the page was moved to Ma (Chinese word for cannabis) before the merge. (I'm adding a "Previous AfDs for this article" box to this AfD.) On 16 May 2019, User:The Hammer of Thor recreated the article under a new title (Special:Diff/897361195; see comparison).
Anyway, after reviewing where we've ended up, I concur with the opinion that Cannabis in China is the right place for the relevant content, not a separate article. As Cannabis in China#Chinese etymology is already the result of a previous merge, it should not be too drastic to merge again to sync up any desirable post-2019 changes. If you want to merge some bits elsewhere too, that's also fine with me. Adumbrativus (talk) 09:29, 29 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Relisting, to get more feedback on the latest comment and Merge suggestion to a different target article.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:33, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect. As Folly Mox notes, the content in the má article is of poor quality and I see little worth saving. Most importantly Wikipedia is not a dictionary, so this seems pretty cut and dry to me. Retinalsummer (talk) 17:26, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I don't see any reason to maintain a redirect for such an unlikely search term ("ma", fair enough; "Má (Chinese word)", surely not). -- asilvering (talk) 01:45, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete it's just a non-English word; none of the arguments that there is something more to the topic are convincing. Too awkward a title for a redirect. 217.180.228.138 (talk) 01:49, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete — the word itself does not seem to be notable; Wikipedia is not a dictionary. All relevant content seems to be better covered elsewhere (particularly Cannabis in China). I don't think redirection would be particularly useful in this case, per Asilvering. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 03:46, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.