Talk:Sinosphere

圈 khuyên

圈 is read in Vietnamese as khuyên, 驅 khu 圓 viên -> uyên 切 thiết. Khuyên is the reading used for 'circle'. Quyển is only used with the meaning 'pen; sty' or the surname. Lachy70 (talk) 20:57, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Nguyễn Tuấn Cường, the director of Institute of Hán-Nôm Studies also comments on the misreading of the character 圈.

Vậy nên các từ khí quyển, sinh quyển đều là đọc nhầm riết thành đúng mà thôi. Lẽ ra là sinh khuyên (shengquan), khí khuyên (qiquan), nhưng giờ ai nói vậy thì là ngớ cmn ngẩn. Ngôn ngữ là ước định tục thành. Còn cái “văn hoá khuyên” là từ mới, cần được đọc đúng từ đầu.

So, it turns out that words like “khí quyển” (atmosphere) and “sinh quyển” (biosphere) are just persistent misreadings that became accepted. Originally, they would have been sinh khuyên (生圈, shengquan) and khí khuyên (氣圈, qiquan), but saying it like that today would make you sound ridiculously out of place. Language is conventional; usage becomes norm. But this new term “văn hoá khuyên” needs to be read correctly from the start. Lachy70 (talk) 21:04, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Too late, there is no comming back. Meigyoku Thmn (💬🧩) 08:19, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

I fell asleep the Qing damage to the Sinosphere should be mentioned.

One of the main reasons that the Sinosphere lost influence was because of the Qing dynasty wich was a manchu dynasty that banned chinese clothing headgear and rituals this alienated the reat of eas asia with Japn veiwing it self as the inheritore of Hua culture while Korea veiwed itself as little China both viewing China as haveing been corrupted and stopped looking to it as a advanced cultureal model. Only Veitnam still respected China wich is why they adoped more Manchu styled clothing with Pipa collars. 2603:8001:8446:6EBB:C2D6:FC5D:EF7E:DA3F (talk) 11:50, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Taiwan and Hong Kong

Should Taiwan and Hong Kong not be included in the list of countries in the first paragraph? Aw1121 (talk) 06:44, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

Mongolia

On 2 May 2026, user @Marugamirica made this edit which states that Mongolia is part of the Sinosphere due to shared East Asian history. No new sources were added to substantiate this claim.

Looking at the Talk page archives and article history, it seems that Mongolia's inclusion in the Sinosphere is a controversial topic. At the very least, I think it would be appropriate to soften the claim with a "might", as has been done with Singapore. Currently, there is no room for ambiguity in the statement despite Mongolia not being included in the article's map of the Sinosphere. Nulfjæs (talk) 13:32, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

I was actually coming here to ask about Mongolia as well. Even aside from the change mentioned above, the article is quite incoherent in this regard, as it presents the Sinosphere as a well-defined area in terms of the map and countries involved in the lead and terminology, yet what the entire rest of the article points at is that the inclusion of Mongolia would make a lot of sense. As a sidenote, wikt:Sinosphere on Wiktionary (that we link in the article) is smart enough to avoid this pitfall with its open-ended definition. Choucas 🐦‍⬛ 22:09, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Looking at the references used in this article, the Sinosphere seems to be a somewhat ill-defined term whose meaning has evolved and is still evolving.

Compare Sinosphere to the article on the other word coined by James Matisoff, Indosphere, or similar terms like Francosphere or Hispanosphere. They seem to be primarily linguistic groupings. The only similar article I can find is Anglosphere, which also describes shared history and cultural values. The Sinosphere article still stands out by not mentioning language at all in the introduction, except to distinguish it from the Sinophone world. (Correction: it does mention the adoption of literary Chinese by states in the Sinosphere.)

I am not enough of an expert on these terms to disentangle Sinophone, Sinosphere, Chinese cultural sphere and Greater China, but I do think the current state of the article and unclear definition leaves it vulnerable to frequent disagreements about which areas should be included. Especially because there are political undertones to the article (see the first paragraph in Sinosphere#Etymology mentioning a Chinese "Sphere of influence"). To me, the article describes a confusing mix of linguistic group, cultural group, and sphere of influence. But I am not sure what to do about it. Nulfjæs (talk) 12:02, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

I completely agree with you. At the end of the day, the article needs a way better defined scope, but that would involve pretty heavy work and editorial discretion as well. One way to go might be to contrast historical sources with high quality recent ones on usage of the term, but I am not knowledgeable enough on the topic to confidently steer things here. I am going to take the liberty of pinging @Generalissima because of the good work she has recently been doing on the China article, in case she has some input to offer about this matter. Choucas 🐦‍⬛ 14:02, 15 July 2026 (UTC)