Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Mongolian)/Archive 03

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arban vs arvan

In case someone is still watching here... Any opinions on this question? --Latebird 14:33, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

In traditional mongolian script "arvan" is written as "arban". I suspect that means some centuries ago it was the pronounciacian of the word. Temur 19:34, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
Interesting, even if surprising. Thanks for the info! --Latebird 22:43, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
Just for the record: In traditional mongolian there is no 'v' or 'w' to be used in proper mongolian words. There is a 'v' which is supposed to be used only in foreign words. Temur 08:27, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Naming conventions for Mongol rulers

People here probably focus on current Mongolian entities, but this is about history stuff. I proposed naming conventions for Mongol rulers at Talk:Yuan Dynasty. If you are interested, please leave your comment. --Nanshu 08:19, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Toponymes naming convention

1. Potential pleonasms if used with English translation (Takhilgat Nuruu mountain, Ongi Gol river, Khongoryn Tal steppe, Tsagaan Els sands):

  • Nuur,
  • Gol,
  • Mörön,
  • Khooloi,
  • Davaa,
  • Khötöl,
  • Bulag,
  • Nuruu,
  • Khöndii,
  • Tal,
  • Govi,
  • Tolgoi,
  • Zoo,
  • Khongor,
  • Ukhaa,
  • Toirom,
  • Els,
  • Khavtsal,
  • Sair,
  • Khyar,
  • Am,
  • Teeg,
  • Zag,
  • Shil,
  • Dörölj,
  • Mankhan,
  • Khamar,
  • Oroi,
  • Rashaan,
  • Chuluu.

2.Would be pleonastic part of toponyme with capital letter? Khalkh gol or Khalkh Gol?

3.Would be pleonastic part of toponyme divided from first name (names), and if so with the hyphen or space? Khalkh gol or Khalkh-gol or Khalkhgol?

4. If pleonastic (Mongolian) parts of toponymes would been omitted or not, standart English translations of that words have been listed in this Naming Convention for WP naming consistency.

5. If toponymes naming rules in this Naming Convention will be determined, would be created Most Common Names list which were established in English language? Bogomolov.PL (talk) 16:38, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

1. It's Khalkhyn gol, not Khalkh gol. And Khalkhyn gol is common enough to use the Mongolian form. Whether gol should be capitalized or not could easily be decided by google search (after filtering out non-Mongolian sites). Analogous cases would, for example, be Bogd Khan uul, or Lop nor (the latter is, of course outside Mongolia).
2. For all other Mongolian rivers, taking (Mongolian nominative form) + "river" is probably the simplest way. The usage of genitive and nominative for Mongolian rivers seems quite arbitrary: It's Orkhon gol, Tuul gol, Onon gol, and probably Shishged gol, but on the other hand Egiin gol, Ideriin gol etc. Sorting out which form is correct in which case seems very very hard without asking the locals, esp. since map makers do not seem to really care either, they simply use either genitives or nominatives throughout their maps.
3. If a half-translated name makes no sense, it should not be translated at all. IMO, this would apply to names like Khar Us nuur, Khatan gol, Dood Tsagaan nuur etc. The latter lends its name to Tsagaannuur sum of Khövsgöl aimag, which might be another point to consider.
4. Aren't there general naming conventions for toponyms? If we look to Category:Lakes of Germany or Category:Islands_of_France, then they don't really seem to be after consistency just for the sake of it. Lake Tegernsee of course needs to be moved ASAP. Yaan (talk) 17:28, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(landforms) Yaan (talk) 17:42, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
The overruling guideline is Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names). Please do NOT rely on retired naming conventions (eg. the ones on toponyms, landforms, etc.). Other than that:
  • If the name itself is some kind of adjective (often, but not always, a color), then the Mongolian toponym is necessary for the whole thing to make sense (eg. "Ulaan Gol", "Tsagaan Nuur"). If this is not the case, then the English toponym should be used (if any).
  • If an entity has an established English name, use that (eg. "Orkhon", "Ider", etc.) In such cases, even the English toponym isn't really necessary in the page title other than for disambiguation purposes.
  • Please try to avoid genitives. In most cases, they are a signal that the name can stand without the toponym (eg. "Khalkhyn Gol" should be "Khalkha River"). The main motivation for this is that English language readers are unlikely to search for Mongolian genitives.
  • If a toponym is included in the title (Mongolian or English), then it is considered "part of the proper name" and must be capitalized (can't find the guideline right now, but it's out there somewhere).
  • It doesn't make sense to create a list of toponyms that may or may not be translated (btw: some of the examples in the list above aren't exactly toponyms).
  • There is no need to define special rules for geographic names in Mongolia. We have too many different guidelines about the topic already.
  • Of course, pleonasms should be avoided (duh, does this really need to be spelled out?). The only dubious title I'm currently aware of is Sangiin Dalai nuur ("stately ocean lake") and I just fixed the text of Delgermörön twice in a row.
--Latebird (talk) 22:36, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Khalkhyn gol is, in my opinion, an established english name. That's why we have an article on Battle at Khalkhyn gol, not Battle at the Khalkha river. For Sangiin Dalai nuur, you probably should consult a map or do a google search - it's the name of the lake, no neoplasm. For Mörön gol, which is of course no neoplasm either, I will try to find a source before reverting again ;-). Glad you haven't found Dalai nuur yet. Yaan (talk) 23:26, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
P.S. I think it might be useful to get some native speakers into the discussion. They might at least be helpful in sorting out when a genitive is needed and when not.Yaan (talk) 23:38, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
I really hope those are not Neoplasms...
But "Mörön Gol" ("River River") is a Pleonasm. If we can document that it is a common name anyway, then we may of course mention it, maybe with a note about its peculiarity.
"Sangiin Dalai Nuur" and "Dalai Nuur" ("Ocean Lake") are at least borderline-pleonasmic, so the same principle applies. However, a Google search (let alone Google maps) is not a valid source, and you know that. Even with printed maps we must be very cautious. Map makers are usually more concerned about geometry than about names that adhere to WP naming conventions. They also happen to disagree a lot between each other. The best source may be maps printed in Mongolia in cyrillic(!) during the last few years.
In online sources, there is no big difference between "Khalkha River" and "Khalkhyn Gol". What do recent printed sources use most? The article Battle of Khalkhin Gol is not a valid argument, because that title was chosen at random back in 2003, before most of the naming conventions even existed (even now it is incorrectly transcribed).
But it's good that this discussion finally ends up here, because that's where it belongs. If anyone is unsure about a specific page title, then this is the place to ask about and discuss the issue. --Latebird (talk) 03:57, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, mabe it's time to find an english word for this eo-asm thing. medeelel.mn uses Sangiin dalai nuur, and my guess is that a google search of Mongolian websites would give you much more hits for Sangiin dalai nuur than for Sangiin dalai. If my 2004 Avto zamyn atlas or the 1988 Khövsgöl aimgiin atlas give the name incorrectly, I will let you know. Dalai nuur might be a bit mor difficult, but I will try anyway. Yaan (talk) 11:25, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
a search at amazon.com seems to yield most results for Khalkhin Gol.Yaan (talk) 15:20, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

It's entirely possible that "Dalai Nuur" is the real name, despite sounding awfully strange. It's just that we need to check out those cases very carefully. As with Google results, amazon.com searches also require careful examination, so that they don't get distorted by eg. half a dozen editions of Lonely Planet or something. It's probably best to have a look at only the most recent books with a scholarly background. In any case, let's open new sections for individual names or groups of similar names. --Latebird (talk) 17:51, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Khalkhin (or Halhin) Gol is wellknown in Russian-to-English transliteration. That is why I used this example to support standart English names list proposal.
Sangiin Dalai nuur is present in this form both at Mongolian and at Soviet maps. Russians use NUUR as part of native Mongolian toponym (hydronym) and add Russian озеро=lake too. Only Khövsgöl lake is out this rule. I think only presence of the simple principle - nuur, gol etc. is native Mongolian toponym part or not - can help avoid possibility of different forms of the same name in WP. The same with spaces, hyphens in the toponyms. I'm preparing massive adding of lakes articles and major part of them does not have established English names. Even now in Lakes of Mongolia category hydronyms are in different forms (with nuur or not, with capitals or not).
I support idea that most correct will be using recent Mongolian maps (in Cyrillic) for transliterations.
Toponyms last parts list I made can help in translating type of geographic feature derived from its Mongolian name. The principle of the last parts list creation was: if two and more toponyms of the same geographic feature have the same last parts this last part is added to the list.Bogomolov.PL (talk) 11:45, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
In regional literature, both Sangiin dalai and Sangiin dalai nuur seem to be used. The 1988 Khovsgol Aimgiin Atlas gives Sangiin Dalai and Khovsgol, but Telmen nuur and Terkhiin Tsagaan Nuur. The 2004 Avto Zamyn Atlas gives Sangiin Dalai nuur. So maybe both forms can be correct, but Sangiin Dalai nuur is at least not wrong. Yaan (talk) 13:51, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Sangiin Dalai is in Gobi too:[1] and the name meaning is lot of water, name of the monastery. It is Sangiin Dalai nuur near Arvaikheer 46°40′07″N, 103°18′09″E. An other one lake with the same name is in the Great Lakes Basin (Uvs aimag) 48°39′50″N, 92°56′45″E (last summer it was dry, I remember it). In Bayankhongor aimag is Sangiin Dalai nuur 46°55′19″N, 97°47′39″E, and in Govi-Altai 47°24′10″N, 94°57′36″E. There is Dalai nuur in Khovd aimag 48°18′38″N, 92°39′03″E.Bogomolov.PL (talk) 14:50, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Some clicking in Category:Lakes of Europe reveals that this is treated quite arbitrarily. Germany, France, Switzerland(!) seem to prefer local names, Italy and Austria have a lot of english names. In Central asia, Kyrgyzstan has more local names, Kazakhstan has more english names. I say use the names given on your Mongolian map. Yaan (talk) 11:49, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Sangiin Dalai nuur is a good example of routine not unique Mongolian toponym. How I have name this lakes in WP? Using Sangiin Dalai Nuur Lake, (Zavkhan)? Or even Sangiin Dalai Nuur Lake, (West Zavkhan) if (it is possible) there are two or more lakes with the same name in the same aimag? Or use sum name? Or use river basin? But Mongolian lakes usually are isolated and so no any basins. Switzerland (I spent a lot of time in it in EPFL, if you know) has French-German versions: Genfr See-Lac Le Mans etc. A lot of languages has own names for Swiss toponyms (Женева in Russian, Genewa in Polish etc.) so it is so strange... Swiss Germans were not happy if I was using French versions of toponyms even from French speaking SW, the French speaking - the same with German toponyms...Bogomolov.PL (talk) 13:40, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
1. It should be Xyz nuur, not Xyz nuur lake.
2. For disambiguation, I propose Xyz nuur if one lake is much more notable than the others. I think this applies for Khar us nuur, maybe also for Khar nuur. In theory this should also apply to Khokh nuur, but I don't think we can convince many people to place a disambiguation link at the top of Qinghai Lake. For the less notable lakes, take Xyz nuur (Abc) where Abc is an aimag name, and if this is still ambigous, Xyz nuur (Def, Abc), where Def is a sum name. If this is still ambigous, we might continue with Xyz nuur (Dir., Def, Abc), where Dir. gives the direction (northern, western, etc.). As for which aimag/sum name to choose if a lake borders multiple aimags/sums, one could take the one with the biggest share of the lake's area, or the longest shoreline, or chose the aimag/sum that causes least ambiguity. Yaan (talk) 14:12, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
So logic of this decision is: Nuur is lake in Mongolian, so like with Lac Le Mans we don't add Lake to the article name.
Xyz nuur in article text and Xyz Nuur in article title?
Most notable lakes - may be some census (area over 100 sq.km?), or I need simply start from larger (area) lakes and only if I meet a namesake add aimag (or more) for a namesake title? Bogomolov.PL (talk) 14:48, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Just in case it is useful: I think "nuur" in "Sangiin Dalai nuur" is added by geographers to clarify that the entity is a lake, not an ocean. But if you talk to a local living near to the lake, they would never say "nuur" after "Sangiin Dalai". I feel that "Dalai" is usually used for lake's name when there is no comparable lakes around. On the other hand, I would say "Murun" in "Murun gol" is really a name of the river, since if you remove this there would be nothing left. Temur (talk) 21:53, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

But what with 48°39′50″N, 92°56′45″E? It has on a distance not more 50 km Khyargas, Airag, Khar-Us and Khar nuur, and this ocean is dry...
Dalai nuur in Khovd aimag 48°18′38″N, 92°39′03″E is between Khar-Us nuur and Khar Nuur and it is definitely the smallest lake in this vicinity. When I was looking for Sangiin Dalai nuur(s) I've noticed a number of monasteries with the name Sangiin Dalai. Is it possible that this name has some religious symbolism?
Mörön on Mongolian maps of Mongolia. Three rivers I've found: Selenge, Delgermörön and Amur and for these rivers Gol was never added.Bogomolov.PL (talk) 06:21, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Mörön is, as Latebird pointed out, a synonym for gol. Or maybe not really a synonym, as it seems to apply only to big rivers. So it's Selenge mörön, not Selenge mörön gol, or Shar mörön, not Shar mörön gol. Mörön gol is, however, another name for Delgermörön. I guess this is the only instance, or one of very few instances, where Mörön and gol can be combined.
As for Dalai and Nuur, I don't think we need to be more clever than Mongolian cartographers. If something goes wrong, I think someone will eventually point it out. As for lakes which are more notable than others, and don't need a location given in brackets, maybe have look at www.medeelel.mn. Yaan (talk) 17:28, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Sometimes you see a distinction made between "Mörön" -> "Stream" and "Gol" -> "River". But then, at least in English you'd be unlikely to find a geographic entity called "Stream River" (or "Ocean Lake", for that matter), because they're close enough in meaning to still count as pleonasms. --Latebird (talk) 18:07, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Here [2] every large river out of Mongolia is called Mörön. May be better is decide that Mörön is synonym of Gol? Bogomolov.PL (talk) 18:10, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

old map

Map no. 15 at http://mongol.tufs.ac.jp/landmaps/ lists Baigal and Khovsgol (Qubsugul?) dalai, and Dalai nuur and Sangiin dalai nuur. It also lists some rivers with a genitive particle (Tesiin gol, Khalkhyn gol), and some without (Chuluut gol). Just FYI. Yaan 10:44, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Genitive suffixes in river names are common. Presence both nominative and genitive forms for the same river that is the problem. Ider gol = Ideriin gol, Khalkh gol = Khalkhin gol. And what will be a choice: latest maps form? With Khalkhin gol - no, you see. With Ider - no.Bogomolov.PL 13:56, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
To me, taking the nominative (without gol) + river would be OK. I.e. Eg river, Tes river, Tamir river, etc. I think I am against partially translating names that only make sense when translated full or not at all. I.e. if talking about China, we should use either Huang He or Yellow river, but never Huang river. I don't know if such problems really exist with Mongolian rivers, though. The genitive-or-not question is still relevant to the articles themselves, though, as we usually do give the Mongolian form of the name. (The Tamir river (Mongolian: Tamiryn gol) is one of Mongolia's most famous rivers, and frequently referred to in songs and poems). For that, I think any Mongolian map that gives some rivers in nominative and others in genitive should be OK. The newer, the better of course, but IMO we can as well use that 1930 map as first reference. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yaan (talk • contribs) 15:32, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Summary/proposal

In order to come to a conclusion, my proposal is the following two sections. I am not really sure which words to capitalize and which not, and I was too lazy to add the cyrillic names for the intro sentence examples. Any opinions? Yaan (talk) 19:24, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

rivers

  • By default, use nominative form of the name + 'river' as page title, i.e. Ider river instead of Ideriin gol. Use redirects for other name variants.
  • If we can establish common usage for a different name variant in English language, use this variant. I.e. Khalkhyn gol or maybe Khalkhin gol instead of Khalkh river. I don't know if there are any further relevant examples.
  • If (nominative form + 'river') does particular injustice to a name, use the common mongolian name. What I mean would be names like Shar mörön (Yellow river) or maybe Mörön gol. I don't know if there are any really relevant examples for such a situation (of the two examples mentioned, one is in China and the other one is just an informal name for Delgermörön)
  • For the Mongolian name given in the intro sentence, try to find the more common form, i.e. genitive (Tesiin gol) or nominative (Tuul gol). If unsure, choose nominative or both. Example: The Tes river (Mongolian: Tesiin gol) is a river in northwestern Mongolia ... etc.

lakes

  • By default, use Mongolian name for the page title and for the intro sentence. Example Uvs nuur (Mongolian: Uvs nuur) is a salt-water lake in northwestern Mongolia. etc.


Why such a systematically different treatment between rivers and lakes? --Latebird (talk) 16:40, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
WP doesn't have a naming conventions for lakes yet but it has one for rivers ;). Actually, I also feel like there are much more names like Khökh nuur, Khar us nuur etc. than like Shar mörön and the like. And lakes do not pose the genitive/nominative problems that the rivers do. Yaan (talk) 18:12, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Classical Mongolian script

I think it's time to find some kind of standardized approach to the classic Mongolian script. Nanshu and Gantuya recently have had a short discussion at Gantuya's talk page, and my two cents are:

Also, I think it would be nice to have much more pictures of the script, instead of unicode. The unicode letters do not seem to display on many computers (like the ones I am using normally), and incorrectly on others (like the one I am using now), for example the "Mongγul Ulus" at the Mongolia page seems to miss the two small dots of the "γ".

There may be some technical issues, though:font and picture size, preferred picture format, script orientation (vertical or turned by 90°?) etc. It would also be nice if we could figure out some efficient way to create pictures of the classical script. There is a Mongol Bichig package for latex, but then the pdf's created by latex would have to converted into another format by photoshop or the like, so it's a lot of work. Windows Vista comes with Mongol Bichig support, but I haven't yet figured out a way to create high-definition pictures of, say, 12(or less)pt. Mongolian words. Yaan (talk) 19:57, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Yep, you're right, we clearly need a standardization for the Mongolian script. The Mongolian script transcription you refer to is the most conventional and probably the easiest. There is still something about the "i" and "y" that is suboptimal, eg it must be <kiib> 'silk tissue' instead of <kyib> and,there are a selected few words (though I can't remember an instance) where the occurance of <y> is not simply determined by context and thus should be differentiated from <yi> as in <ayi>. G Purevdorj 12:02, 13 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by G Purevdorj (talk • contribs)
The romanization in that table (the whole table, actually) was copied from the Chinese article, which again references Nicholas Poppe Grammar of Written Mongolian 3rd ed. University of Washington, 1974. That is probably a decent source, although I don't now how much other authors may differ from it. If nobody else has a better idea, it might be a basis for us to use. The main difficulty I see is that at least in part it acts as a scientific transliteration, while for page titles we normally use less strict but easier to follow transcription systems. Depending on the context, it might be better to use eg. "sh" instead of "š", "ch" instead of "č", and a plain "j" instead of "ǰ". --Latebird (talk) 16:38, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Poppe is very much of a philological transcription, very lax, designed to be easily readable. Nothing comparable with Janhunan 2003 and mild even compared to Ligeti. It's somewhat stricter than Mongolian pinyin, but that has a quite different purpose. As I said, I feel that Poppe has a distinct shortcoming in not differentiating between "j" and "y", and thus it would be problematic to replace "j" by "ǰ" if we ever want to reintroduce this differentiation into our transcription system. Replacing diacritics might even pose problems if we encounter Mongolian text transliterated from Sanskrit or Tibetan, as these exhibit more than the normal Mongolian syllable structure. And who is to read something like "q" or "γ" properly anyway? Thus, I'm against inventing something new. G Purevdorj 16:53, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
So what are you suggesting that we do use? --Latebird (talk) 17:39, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Poppe's grammar in an unaltered form or just with the y/j-adaption. Unaltered diacritics, or indeed j instead of ǰ, but the rest unchanged. Maybe j instead of ǰ and rest unaltered is easiest. G Purevdorj 19:12, 13 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by G Purevdorj (talk • contribs)
(By the way, can anyone tell me why Wikipedia doesn't create a link when I sign?) G Purevdorj 16:54, 13 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by G Purevdorj (talk • contribs)
Most likely you have entered a custom signature in your preferences. If you remove that, then the standard mechanism should work again. --Latebird (talk) 17:39, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

What about the pictures? Thumbs up, thumbs down? I'm willing to (slowly) go ahead with 12pt. text size, vertical orientation and (pixel-oriented!) .png file format, same font as in or maybe using the Win Vista Mn Baiti font, but I'd like to see some kind of "go ahead" first. Yaan (talk) 12:17, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

The font used for the picture is not ideal. The first part of the right stroke used for <m> is somewhat undynamic (in modern books there is sometimes a slight moving upwards before falling), but that's pure aestetics. But if you look at the <r>, its conture is very weak and it looks very much like <v>. If you had another font where this problem doesn't arise, it would be better. Next, I'd like to see how the word <ende> (modern Inner Mongolian spelling, with a longer stroke between <e> and <n>) would be realized. G Purevdorj 20:10, 21 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by G Purevdorj (talk • contribs)
This is what Inner Mongolia AR looks like with the Windows Vista Mongolian Baiti font. Text size is 36pt., I think, and I hope you don't mind the non-transparent background for now: . Ende at 72pt. looks like this: .
For some reason, the unicode fonts seem to work now, or at least I can see the gamma's two small dots where I formerly could not (for example in the intro to the Mongolia article). This probably means we will have a wider choice of fonts. Yaan (talk) 00:43, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
The font is fine now. All pretty standard, including <m> and <r>, and of course that's just what it should be in a lexicon article. However, <ende> still looks like classical Mongolian script. There must be some device to differentiate it from <ada> (like in <ada cidkür>), as the Inner Mongolians now do. Have you tried entering something like <exnde>? G Purevdorj 01:30, 27 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by G Purevdorj (talk • contribs)
what should it look like? A longer line between 'e' and 'n', or an additional stroketo the left between the two? Yaan (talk) 12:20, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
I managed to create this: . Is this what you had in mind? It is a bit of a hack, the 'n' is actually what Unicode calls a Xibe syllabe boundary marker. Yaan (talk) 12:49, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
Exactly! Thus, go ahead! G Purevdorj 13:51, 27 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by G Purevdorj (talk • contribs)
Next problem: i wanted to create a pic for Köke qota, which is in most western sources written as two distinct words. However, the city's official website apparenly prefers to write Kökeqota, see the animation on top of the page. I am now a bit unsure what to do, since obviously one would assume that the official site of the city also displays the city's official name. On the other hand, writing Kökeqota gives a big problem with vowel harmony. Any opinions? Yaan (talk) 21:54, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't know if entering it might cause a problem, but the language itself doesn't really bother about vowel harmony when it comes to compounding; vowel harmony is restricted to derivation. In most cases, both modern Mongolian orthographies are pretty conservative when it comes to this, eg writing хаан хүү instead of хаанхүү, but it is the second writing that reflects language reality. However, names are usually written in one word now, eg Пүрэвдорж "pürbüdorǰi". "kökeqota" is alike. Thus, you certainly should write it in one word. G Purevdorj 22:24, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
Alright. Does it look correct? Yaan (talk) 23:02, 27 January 2008 (UTC) Yes. G Purevdorj 23:08, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Yaan, on Mongolian script you have accidently written <bičiig> instead of <bičig>. G Purevdorj 20:35, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for pointing that out. corrected. Do you have an idea what Hinggan aimag should look like in Mongol script? Yaan (talk) 21:15, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Sources

There are authoritative sources for place names in Inner Mongolia, no need for speculation and original research. Here are two:

  • Hàn-Méng duìzhào Nèi Měnggǔ dìmíng cídiǎn 《汉蒙对照内蒙古地名词典》, Hohhot, Nèi Měnggǔ rénmín chūbǎnshè 内蒙人民出版社 2001, ISBN 7-204-05481-4.
  • Nèi Měnggǔ dìmíng 《内蒙古地名》, Hohhot, Nèi Měnggǔ rénmín chūbǎnshè 内蒙人民出版社 2006, ISBN 7-204-08315-6.

Any other references? --Gregor Kneussel (talk) 01:46, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Sum center official names

Yet another topic: Contrary to what I thought earlier, maybe we should include the official names of sum centers in the sum articles and disambiguation pages after all? A number of (non-mongolian) maps, and also Google Earth in some cases, seem to display these official names instead of those of the sums, and this can easily lead to confusion. For Khövsgöl, there is a sum named Shine-Ider, but Ider is also the official name of the center of Galt sum. Jargalant is the name of a sum, but also the official name of the center of Tömörbulag sum. This would expand the disambiguation pages a bit, but maybe it would also help some confused users now and then. Yaan (talk) 22:54, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

That's not really a naming convention issue, is it? In any case, if we have reliable information about what the "official" name of the sum center is, then of course we should mention it in all the appropriate places. But remember that in Google Earth, only the imagery is reliable. All other info may be user contributed (actually, place names are often extracted from Wikipedia coord tags). --Latebird (talk) 16:46, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 ;) I'm always a bit reminded of this when browsing Google earth in Mongolia. All these Dugans and Örtöös must have been dissolved/destroyed quite some time ago. Happy new year, anyway. Yaan (talk) 18:16, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
To add official names for sum centers (respective bag names in fact) we need official data, as it is with bag division (as of Bayankhongor [3]).Bogomolov.PL (talk) 13:11, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Info header for Mongolian names

A template was just created that can be inserted at the top of articles as an information on which part of the name is the given name and which the patronymic:

This is a Mongolian name; the name "{{{1}}}" is a patronymic, not a family name, and the person should be referred to by his or her given name, "{{{2}}}".

Those types of headers seem to be particularly popular with sportspeople, probably because the audience there has to deal with many countries of origin and may not be able to keep track of all the different conventions.

In our case now, the remaining question is whether to use tThe nominative might be more useful because it offers additional information. On the other hand, it may even add to the confusion, when a reader starts to wonder about why there are two different forms. Any opinions? --Latebird (talk) 05:30, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Kh for [x]

As a linguist, I am wondering why /kh/ is used as a transliteration of Mongolian /x/. It makes more sense orthographically, phonemically, and linguistically to just use /x/. Is there a good reason wikip. feels obliged to use /kh/? If so, then no worries. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alaquwel (talk • contribs) 06:53, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

For an English language audience, the letter "x" represents an entirely different sound (~ "ks"). The only two reasonable alternatives were "h" and "kh". Remember that we're not writing for linguists here, so we're not using a scientific transliteration. Other than that, the specific reasons for most of the choices made can be found in the first archive of this talk page. --Latebird (talk) 07:03, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Kh is used in transliteration and prevents situations when is impossible (if you are not a native Mongolian) distinguish is "sh" a sum of two consonants "s" and "h", or it is common English "sh" with single consonant. This is first.
  • Second. Transliteration used in official use in Mongolia (/Баримт бичиг./ /Монгол кирилл цагаан толгойн үсгүүдийг романчлах/2003) also uses "kh".
  • Third. Real sound of the mongolian "x" in many cases is closer to kh, but far from classical English "h". Bogomolov.PL (talk) 10:38, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, if the transliteration is official use in Mongolian, then I expect it's the best thing to go with. However, having heard a variety of Mongolian dialects, and certainly in Khalkha Mongolian, I have to say that most pronounce /x/ somewhere between that of a palatal fricative /ç/ and a glottal fricative /h/; I've never heard it pronounced anything like a heavily aspirated velar stop /kh/. So, in my defense, I'll have to disagree with your last reason for the transliteration. (Then again, I am not for using the /h/ symbol for this sound, either.) All the same, thanks for your thorough and thoughtful comments.Alaquwel (talk) 06:23, 4 February 2008 (UTC),
It is nice to talk with a linguist, so why it was a surprise with x=>kh? In Russian it is normal transliteration rule, Mongolian cyrillic alphabet comes as Russian one modification. And Mongolian x sounds in different way than English h, you see. Do you remember how талх sounds? Bogomolov.PL (talk) 08:22, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
You have never been to the north of Mongolia, have you? In Erdenet you will hear [kh] (aspirated k) in words with non-pharyngeal vowels. [ç] appers to exist before [i] in words where this [i] existed already before the merger of /i/ and /e/ into /i/. Elsewhere, it’s most often [x]. In pharyngeal words, it’s more likely [χ] (Mongolian /a/ is fairly ín the back). <kh> as transcription for <x> has been conventionalized; the scientific way would be <h> and that’s what most Mongolians use on the net as well. However, we do have this in Buryat, thus it’s problematic either. <kh> is not the worst of choices. Greetings from another linguist and a fan of the Yale-transcription of Korean . G Purevdorj 11:57, 4 February 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by G Purevdorj (talk • contribs)

transcription of the back G, yet again

Which is used for the back G of the Classical Mongolian script, ɣ or γ? And what about capital letters?

I used to use the ɤ (U+0264 LATIN SMALL LETTER RAMS HORN) by mistake. At Babelfisch's suggestion (see Talk:Leagues of Inner Mongolia), I switched to the γ (U+03B3 GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA). Now at Talk:Mongolian script, Yaan and G Purevdorj agreed to use the ɣ (U+0263 LATIN SMALL LETTER GAMMA) instead of the γ.

But what about capital letters? As far as I know, some historians use the Γ (U+0393 GREEK CAPITAL LETTER GAMMA) for proper names in academic papers, but I've never seen the Ɣ (U+0194 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER GAMMA). Maybe linguists never capitalize classical Mongolian transcription. --Nanshu (talk) 01:27, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I just thought the latin gamma was better because one more clearly sees the small loop. i.e. it looks less like 'y' . I did not put any thought into it. But I agree in that I also never saw Ɣ, only Γ. Yaan (talk) 11:08, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
I must make a retreat and I’m sorry for that. When I saw the two symbols provided by Yaan next to each other, I was pretty sure that the Greek gamma in question is never used in any Mongolian transcriptions. That holds true, but only as far as the font is concerned. This time I actually looked into my books, and it’s indeed always a Greek gamma, but cursive or with serifs. It is more common that the stroke going down is not a straight line, but left-leaning. Thus, it doesn’t resemble ү (U-04AF). But there’s rarely a loop in it. Here the authors of my sources:
Poppe, Ozawa: cursive Greek gamma (with serif, no loop)
I Sön gyü and Choimaa, Eerdunmengke, Qasbagana: Greek gamma (with serif, no loop)
Tömörtogoo: Greek and Latin gamma in slightly different contexts
Then to the actual question at hand: as far as I am aware, it is rather uncommon to capitalize any letters when transcribing, if it occurs at all. Anyway, the dictionary of Lessing capitalizes any letter of a headword and there Γ is used. It still might be a good idea to keep the small Latin gamma for wikipedia, as the small Greek one is realized in such an unfortunate way. G Purevdorj 12:24, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for your comments. OK. I switch to the ɣ.
Purevdorj, Ozawa Shigeo used ɢ (U+0262 LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL G) at least in his "A lecture on the grammar of written Mongolian" (in Japanese). But he clarified that it's not a common convention. --Nanshu (talk) 22:13, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the info, I appreciate that. He didn't do so in 中世蒙古語諸形態の研究. G Purevdorj 23:02, 20 February 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by G Purevdorj (talk • contribs)

Trnscription of the γ can be used in an article body, but using signs out of Latin alphabet is not acceptable in article naming ("must be transliterated into characters generally intelligible to literate speakers of English" says Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)).

First: "transliterated" not transcribed Bogomolov.PL (talk) 13:23, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Can you transliterate Chinese? Yaan (talk) 13:36, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
No, because transliteration is a conversion from one alphabet to an other. So it is possible to transliterate (simplify) transcription of Chinese.Bogomolov.PL (talk) 13:49, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Second: generally intelligible

Third: To my opinion it have be technically possible input an article name in "search" field.

These three reasons are making impossible using Greek (or other nonlatin) characters in article naming. Bogomolov.PL (talk) 13:23, 9 April 2008 (UTC)



I just created a small template that uses a greek gamma with serifs for the back g. Please tell me if this looks ok on your computer: Ulaγan.

It works at FireFox Bogomolov.PL (talk) 06:04, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately, this discussion has again spread to various user talk pages... As has been explained further below, using a greek character is not a good idea (and I'm not sure if such a thing like "greek character with serifs" even exists). Mixing different writing systems within words will cause confusion without end. Printed publications sometimes do that for esthetical reasons, but we shouldn't. In the context of Wikipedia, we need to use the semantically correct character. Whether the font on your system (or mine) displays a nice looking glyph for it (or even a correct one) doesn't really matter. Broken and ugly fonts will be fixed eventually. --Latebird (talk) 12:49, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
On my firefox browser it looks not good at all. But at the Apple Safari it was a real beauty! The correct character would be the greek gamma, we only chose the latin one because it is harder to confuse with 'y' on Wikipedia. Yaan (talk) 18:23, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
I still don't quite understand why it should be considered "correct" to use a single greek character within a word otherwise written in latin script. The "harder to confuse" argument again seems to operate on the graphic level, where you need to make guesses about the readers' computing environment which are impossible to verify. --Latebird (talk) 06:45, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Again we are confusing two topics: correct (scientifically) notation of Mongolian and article naming rules. Inside article body is possible use scientific notation, but the way (technical) of visualisation has be as possible simple. Every text (this is a WikiPedia idea) can be copied by every user and be used out of Wiki.
With the article naming position of our Wiki is clear: no nonlatin characters. Amen. Bogomolov.PL (talk) 07:58, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
"Correct" is whatever people outside Wikipedia do, isn't it? If the specialists use a mix of latin and greek letters (and they do) then how can it be incorrect to do the same? Yaan (talk) 16:39, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
It is clear that a lot of things (phonemes notation systems) can not be used in WikiPedia articles naming. Simplified latinization (diacritics are possible, but not welcomed) would be a good choice. Even native Cyrillic Mongolian alphabet is one of the simplifications of the real phonemes, so when we are talking about mongolian text used in Wiki as an article name part, we can use Cyrillic Mongolian alphabet latinization of this text. Inside the article, we can use any appropriate system of transcription to explain phonetics of the mongolian word.

Sorghaghtani Beki

We're currently having a debate on the talkpage of this article, as to what the "most common English spelling" of this medieval monarch's name is. If any editors here have an opinion, we would appreciate further comments at the talkpage.  :) --Elonka 02:57, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

q's and γ's, again

Bogomolov just pointed out that WP:UE dictates that "Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, as with Greek, Chinese or Russian, must be transliterated into characters generally intelligible to literate speakers of English."

I personally think that "gamma" should be familiar enough to anybody who has ever dealt with angles, simple geometry etc., but I see that q may indeed pose a problem - but then, all those Chinese names are written with 'x' and 'q' (Qi Xi) and nobody seems to care at all!

I personally could live with replacing γ with gh and q with kh, but it would be nice to have some kind of consensus first. Yaan (talk) 13:22, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Gamma is a Greek letter and as it is must be transliterated as every Greek letter.Bogomolov.PL (talk) 13:30, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
"Must be transliterated" obviously means "into the latin alphabet", as it wouldn't make sense otherwise. Technically, this leaves us the possibility to use the latin gamma, although I'm not sure yet if that would be a good idea in terms of user friendliness. I guess we finally need to get a conclusion to the two related discussions further above. If someone similarly knowledgeable could confirm/amend Purevdorj's comments above about using Poppe's system, then that would be most helpful. --Latebird (talk) 14:58, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
"Transcription of the γ can be used in an article body, but using signs out of Latin alphabet is not acceptable in article naming". As long as it is confined to the article naming ... An alternative transliteration'd be rather unusual, but it might be feasible to simply replace letters by phonemes: <q>, <k> ~ /k/, <γ>, <g> ~ /g/ (somewhat simplified in the second case if we follow Doerfer/Svantesson et al.). G Purevdorj 15:16, 9 April 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by G Purevdorj (talk • contribs)
O yes, and it was „transcription“, not „transliteration“. Transliteration IS possible since Janhunen developed it, but would lead to complete unintelligibility. Eg vvldvv qvqhvv = Altan qaγan, vudu = odu, vuiilv = üile, vxvdv = ende. The impossibility to “transcribe” Mongolian in a handsome way also becomes clear if we recognize that there is no difference between /o/ and /u/, /ö/ and /ü/, non-initial /a/ and /e/, often /en/ and /a/, syllable-initial /t/ and /d/, in front-vowel words /k/ and /g/ in writing. Anyone willing to bestow this upon an unsuspecting reader? G Purevdorj 15:43, 9 April 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by G Purevdorj (talk • contribs)
That is why we use latinization of Mongolian Cyrillics, but not transcription. We used only two letters out of common English alphabet (with umlauts), but present in character set of other (German) Latin alphabet.Bogomolov.PL (talk) 16:05, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
??? We do use a transcription for the latinization of Cyrillic Mongolian, as I pointed out on the project page. But I don't get the point of your last point. G Purevdorj 10:08, 10 April 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by G Purevdorj (talk • contribs)
Latinization sense is close to the simple replacement of original nonlatin letters with Latin using as possible simple rules. This rules are created using traditional correspondance phoneme - grapheme.Bogomolov.PL (talk) 10:50, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Template

I've created a template for Mongolian and Chinese names (Mongolian-Chinese-box), following the model of a similar template for Tibetan and Chinese (Tibetan-Chinese-box). You can see what it looks like in the article about Chifeng. --Gregor Kneussel (talk) 02:57, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

That may be quite helpful. However, it currently suffers the same problem as the German version, in that the instructions refer to a rather random transcription system from cyrillic. That's exactly why this specific naming convention here exists. Please use it consistently. --Latebird (talk) 06:45, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. Both the English and the German version refer to the ISO 9 transliteration. I've found four differences in what I've originally called "general transcription" in the English version, and I've corrected them to follow the naming convention. If you find any other mistakes, please help to correct them—that's what Wikipedia is about. --Gregor Kneussel (talk) 02:58, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Looks ok now. However, somewhere on this talk page here, there's a discussion on why using Unicode for the traditional Mongolian script is not a good idea (in short: the standard is not fully defined, the workaround in Vista is proprietary). Some people have started to create svg (or png?) files for various names instead. And as Yaan has mentioned on dewiki, it would look nicer to display it as a vertical column (eg. to the right of the others). --Latebird (talk) 06:36, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Agree. Also I think that it may not always be neccessary to display cyrillic and its transliteration as prominently as the traditional script or the Chinese name, and generally also Wade-Giles seems not always terribly relevant (except maybe for cases like Wang-yeh-miao), and in some cases Chinese should come first (certainly in Wuhai, arguably in Chifeng). Working this all out would require some more effort, though. But the idea is alright. In fact, I had a similar one a while ago, the result is Template:Mongol, which can be seen at Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Central Asia/Mongolia work group. Yaan (talk) 17:32, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
How do we know about the IPA eg for Ulaghanqada? Which kind of standard is this supposed to adhere to? Standard Khalkh, Standard Inner Mongolian, Ulaghanqada Mongolian? And then, phonemic or phonetic? Anyway, it's aspirated vs. non-aspirated, so it can't be [d], and /x/ is most likely not realized as a velar but as a uvular here. Of course, it's /x/, but who cares? Anyone unable to declinate the word will fail to find any sense in getting a /d/ for a [t]. And who provides the data for this? UB Khalkh is easy, Svantesson et al., and if anyone actually HAS the studies conducted by Jō, that might help for Standard Inner Mongolian. Rough data on most Inner Mongolian dialects are available, but they wouldn't suffice for phonetic. But yuunii omno: what do we want here? G Purevdorj 22:11, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
What do you suggest? --Gregor Kneussel (talk) 01:16, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Very simple: If you don't have certain knowledge of the IPA (eg. from a reliable source), don't include it. --Latebird (talk) 04:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)