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Re: Mongolian (was: Re: Fluency Wish-List

From:BP Jonsson <bpj@...>
Date:Monday, April 17, 2000, 18:00
At 11:38 17.4.2000 -0400, Kenji Schwarz wrote:
>On Sat, 15 Apr 2000, BP Jonsson wrote: > > > Have to agree on that one. Possibly the good Lama didn't know it. (Or was > > anti-Chinese!) I'e also read that the linguist involved with Vagintara > > (the name escapes me) made his own attempt at a modernizing the Mongol > > script before devising the Cyrillic to save his neck. Never seen it tho. > >I didn't know about that -- or that the same person who did the Vagintara >script also was responsible for the Cyrillic orthography of Mongol (I had >heard that Poppe and other Soviet scholars came up with it, with >Zhamtsarano (?) or Damdinsuren (?).
The name was Samtsuren -- probably the same person as Zhamtsarano. (I got the info from Poppe, IIRC, and it is only natural if he wanted to downplay his own rôle.)
> > >Well, someday, someone really should adopt it for a conlang -- some little > > >minority nationality in Yunnan/Sichuan that kept some traditions going > > >from the Yuan dynasty? > > > > Boudewijn already has! I like the script, but not the way Mongol is > > rendered into it. > >Really? What language is that? I must have missed it, but I'd love to >hear about it!
Well, check out his page about Charyan script, and you'll see! It's a twist to it...
>given that 15th-ct. Korea was fairly cut off from dealings with the >Chinese court, while it's known to have continued training people in >Mongolian and 'phags-pa script up through the end of the 14th ct. (IIRC).
I didn't know that!
> > have you BTW seen Sanskrit written in Hangyl? That's real weird. If > > Sanskrit in East Asia sounded anything like it ought to -- and > > transcriptions into Kana suggest it did -- then both Chinese and Korean > > sounded very different from now! > >No doubt :) On the other hand, Sanskrit definitely could get pretty >warped as it was adopted into some of those northernmost languages (e.g., >Skt punya -> Mongol buyan)
Or padma -> pE:ma, vajra -> bendzire in demotic Tibetan. Anyway the Koreans seem to be consistently using _m_ for _v_ and _n_ for _l_ and _r_, and the old Hangyl character looking like a Greek Delta for _ñ_, while _mb_ and _nd_ are used for the Sanskrit plain nasals as well as Sanskrit _mb_, _nd_. I know the Chinese rime tables seem to have used a similar rendering, but given the relatively high quality of contemporary documents written in Siddham in both Korea and japan it is really strange!
> > Thing is I got a sadhana print where someone has written in the Sanskrit > > names (I think) of the deities in Mongolian script. There are still some I > > haven't been able to identify. > >Well, if you can get me an image of it, I'd enjoy giving it a try -- I can >also see if Jim Bosson can make any sense out of it, since he's here right >now.
I tried to scan some pages of the book. Since it is already a photocopy of a not-to-good print the results are measly. I can transcribe the Tibetan names and what I think the Mongolian spellings look like, tho. /BP B.Philip Jonsson <mailto:bpj@...>bpj@netg.se <mailto:melroch@...>melroch@my-deja.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~__ Anant' avanaute quettalmar! \ \ __ ____ ____ _____________ ___ __ __ __ / / \ \/___ \\__ \ /___ _____/\ \\__ \\ \ \ \\ \ / / / / / / / \ / /Melroch\ \_/ // / / // / / / / /___/ /_ / /\ \ / /Melarocco\_ // /__/ // /__/ / /_________//_/ \_\/ /Eowine__ / / \___/\_\\___/\_\ I neer Pityancalimeo\ \_____/ /ar/ /_atar Mercasso naan ~~~~~~~~~Cuinondil~~~\_______/~~~\__/~~~Noolendur~~~~~~ || Lenda lenda pellalenda pellatellenda cuivie aiya! || "A coincidence, as we say in Middle-Earth" (JRR Tolkien)