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

At 22:54 17.4.2000 -0400, Kenji Schwarz wrote:

> > 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.)
>
>The story of his life :)  When did you know him?  I met him a few times
>not long before he died, in Seattle.
I got it only second-hand, I'm afraid, from a pupil of Ramstedt who had met
Poppe several times.   It was also he who told me that the folks developing
the Cyrillic Mongolian did so under pain of death.  Meeting a person who
had met both these two on a regular basis was awesome enough to me! :)


> > >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!
>
>There were some gaps, but there were translators' schools at the Korean
>court teaching Mongol as well as Chinese at least up to the early 1600s.
>I don't remember the details of the institutional history, but if I
>understood things correctly, Mongolian was being taught in Korea in the
>14th century according to Yuan standards, which implies 'Phags-pa script -
>in addition, I think there are contemporary references to it in Korean
>literature or histories.  I'll ask around here and see if anyone can cite
>some details/references.
What mostly baffles me is that they did it at all, and why!

> > 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!
>
>That's interesting -- I never knew this before.  But then, after being one
>of the few and foolish to get an undergraduate degree in Sanskrit, I've
>tried to avoid dealing with it again, outside its original habitat :)
Heh!  I more or less abandoned it for Tibetan, then got swamped in the
Iranian stuff.  Any Eastern mangling of Sanskrit is triflish compared to
the mangling Middle Iranian scribes subjected their own language to with
the help of the Aramaic origin of their script.
         One of my unfinished projects is an alphabetical index to the
Mahavyutpatti which I hope I'll finish some day...

> > 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.
>
>Sure, send it along!  It's not like I'm any sort of expert with this, but
>a second or third pair of eyes might help.
OK.  I'll try to get time ASAP.

>Kenji
>
>ObConlang: Uh...
Sanskrit is a conlang! :-)




/BP

 B.Philip Jonsson
mailto:bpj@netg.se
mailto:melroch@my-deja.com
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