Talk:Xi'an

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[edit] Xi'anese vs. Xi'anish

When a adjective is required for word Xi'an, I think word Xi'anese is much better than Xi'anish, because the suffix -ish has a derogatory meaning. With the suffix -ese, the word Xi'anese can also refer to people lived in Xi'an and language spoken in Xi'an, being much more useful than Xi'anish.

[edit] Apostrophe

Correctly pinyinized, the city's name is Xi'an, but the official pinyinization is Xian (similar to the nonstandard romanization used for Shaanxi, the province whose capital is, ironically, Xian.

--Xiaopo

Is the form 'Xian' ever used with tone marks? Morwen 23:56, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)
The use of ' in pinyin is NOT a tone mark.
Thank-you, but I don't believe anyone said otherwise. Morwen 07:38, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
The ' mark in Xi'an is an indicator to disambiguate this term as a two syllable term, which is written in two Chinese characters. When spelled without the ' mark, xian is one pinyin syllable for one Chinese characters. (See the Chinese characters that have the xian pronunciation here). Therefore, regardless of how many google hits in each of these terms, Xi'an is the correct name, but Xian is an incorrect term, because the readers would incorrectly read it as one syllable. Kowloonese 07:11, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)


On the other hand, http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~chifc/pinyin.html indicates that Xian is the official romanization. It saith:

Use the official irregular Hanyu Pinyin forms 陕西省 Shaanxi Province (the form is intended to avoid confusion with 山西省) and 西安市 Xian City (strictly speaking it should be Xi'an).

. --Xiaopo 02:06, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I looked through that page and it didn't say that Xian was the correct romanization. In fact, it said the opposite - that the apostrophe is required. -Spencer195 17:46, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
In that page, it says "In cases where ambiguity is possible, the apostrophe is used to mark the border between two characters (=syllables). The apostrophe is used to indicate the absence of an initial consonant, where it is otherwise impossible to see where one syllable ends and the next begins. 延安 is Yan'an (not *Yanan), but it is 亚尼 Yani and 鸭暖 Yanuan (both names of townships); 民歌 is minge , while 名额 is ming'e; 暗暗 is an'an. 礼安 is Li'an to distinguish it from 联 lian; but 乐安 is Lean, for *lean does not exist as a syllable in Modern Standard Chinese. 天安门 is Tiananmen and not *Tian'anmen, for *tia does not exist as a syllable in Modern Standard Chinese. Hanyu Pinyin does not use any other ways of marking the boundary between individual characters in a word. *Bei-jing, *Bei-Jing and *BeiJing for Beijing are wrong."
And I am sure that Xi'an is absolutely right, just like two-character word 礼安 is Li'an to distinguish it from one-charachter word 联 (Lian). --Koyn 17:08, 3 May 2004 (UTC)
No official placename ever has tone marks. Same thing in Taiwan, no official placename has tone #. Which is not very good, because unless the place is famous, ever native speakers cannot pronounce them correctly (due to the tone confusion). --Menchi 00:01, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Hmm... we want to use the most common English name, so Xiaopo seems to have it right. Xi'an has 253K google hits, and Xian has 433K. Reverse, however, for the phrases "City of Xian" and "City of Xi'an", though not to the same degree (roughly equal). A tough call what the name should be. Certainly we should have Xiaopo's comments about official vs correct pinyinization at the top. Kahn
I really question your approach of blindly counting the hits of Xian from Google. By using the dictionary entries you get 60+ Chinese characters with the pronounciation of xian. Your 433K hits included 60+ words that may or may not be related to the city of Xi'an. Even the hits of "City of Xian" may or may not be related to the subject of this article. Kowloonese 07:19, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I agree with Kowloonese; your Google search is getting results for Xian that are unrelated to 西安. -Spencer195 17:46, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Check out the title banners of these official sites in the city:

They all use the apostrophe.

Merriam-Webster uses apostrophe as well [1]. As do Columbia Encyclopedia [2] and Encarta [3].


--Menchi 07:50, 1 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I checked out two fairly well-made maps: Collins (London) 1999 and National Geographic 1994. They both use the apostrophe. --Menchi 11:24, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I too believe that this page should be located under Xi'an, not Xian. According to http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~chifc/pinyin.html, the apostrophe is required in order to distinguish it from the romanization of the one syllable words 鲜，先, 险，etc. And I don't believe Xian is a common or official irregular usage for 西安; Most texts that I see use Xi'an; Xian occurs rarely and is simply an error. All dictionaries use Xi'an; in fact, in order to get my Chinese IME to type it correctly, I have to use Xi'an. Therefore, since 3 people want Xi'an and 2 want Xian, and especially since the official municipal website lists Xi'an, I'm going to move this page to Xi'an with a redirect from Xian. -Spencer195 17:46, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

What's wrong with the link Xi'an in my page? Anyone konws? Cheers.--Koyn 16:38, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Database sometimes has lag. It'll be fine within a few days. --Menchi 18:33, 3 May 2004 (UTC)
Try deleting it, saving it, and putting it back again. -Spencer195 21:33, 3 May 2004 (UTC)
Still red, :( --Koyn 22:50, 3 May 2004 (UTC)
I fixed it for you. I hope you don't mind me editing your user page.  :) -Spencer195 23:22, 3 May 2004 (UTC)
It's ok now, cheers!  :) --Koyn 10:08, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Photograph

Can we please have another few photographs that better represent this historic city, in addition to this very modern one? -- Kaihsu 21:39, 2004 Jun 21 (UTC)

I've added a panorama of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda I took while on vacation this summer. Additionally, I was born in Xi'an, it DOES use the apostrophe.--Yan Yin

[edit] History of Xi'an

is already included in History of Xi'an, <-- has also already been copy-edited, merge?

[edit] Daxing

Would it not be better, in the historical context of the city's reconstruction and adoption as the capital of the Sui, to translate Daxing (大兴) as Great Reconstruction or Great Beginning rather than Great Excitement? (Ref - the Sui dynasty entry) Tomtom08 13:00, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

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