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Now an official guideline

I've been bold, remaned the page to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Mongolian), and declared it an official guideline. Let's hope it will be as useful as it is intended to be! --Latebird 09:15, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

"-ый" and "-ий"

The guidelines specify that, unlike with Russian, there are no special cases for "-ый" and "-ий". Does Mongolian even have these endings? Are they typical for adjectives as well? I am just curious. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:25, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I can't think of an example with -ый, but the "long i" -ий is quite common. I'm not sure about adjectives. --Latebird 12:35, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I was just wondering if it made sense to even include these exceptions if Mongolian did not have similar situations.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:44, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Page moves

Now that the guideine is in place, we'll have to move quite a few articles. The easiest way ist probably a step-by-step approach:

  1. Most renames as such will be straightforward, so let's do those first.
  2. Changing the name in the article text should be done at the same time.
  3. Fixing all links is a greater task, and will probably happen continuously over some length of time. When touching an article/section anyway, fixing links at the same time is natural. There are also some robots fixing links to redirects automatically. Whether it's worth the effort to edit an article just for the links is up to anyone.

Caveats:

  • Obviously, we can only determine the correct transcription if the cyrillic original is known. Be careful not to fall for Russian spellings, which in some cases are much more popular eg. on Google. Unfortunately the special char list below the editing field doesn't list the Mongolian Ө and Ү yet. I'll see if I can get this changed.
  • some names are subject to other discussions, eg. about using English or Mongolian names (let alone Mongolian grammar). Let's wait with those until the respective discussions are finished. Examples are:
  • Some names are blocked by existing redirects. DO NOT move pages by copy-and-paste in those cases, because that would be a GFDL violation (the editing history gets lost). I suggest we collect a list of all blocked names, and then submit them all together to Wikipedia:Requested moves for an admin to handle. It's probably ok to copy-and-paste disambig pages, because those are too trivial for copyright protection.
  • Please remember that (with the exception of proper names) only the first word in a title should be capitalized (Orkhon river instead of Orkhon River etc.). Many current titles have incorrect capitalization, which should be fixed in the same process. Added: Apparently, this is handled differently for certain geographic designators like "Mountain" or "River", which seem to be considered part of the proper name.

Happy renaming! --Latebird 12:39, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

river vs. River

Actually, Orkhon River (with capital "R") is correct. The word "River" is capitalized per naming conventions of rivers.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:56, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

The WikiProject Rivers is in conflict with the general naming conventions there, and I don't think their suggestion (it's nothing more) is a good idea. In contrast to that, the Wikipedia:Naming conventions are an official guideline, and they quite explicitly require to lowercase second and subsequent words in titles. In most situations, I don't see any justification to override that rule just for rivers, especially for foreign language names where the "River" part clearly isn't part of the proper name. I'm quite surprised that in at least two years, this non-standard "suggestion" has not triggered any bigger controversy. To be honest, I don't understand why rivers need "naming conventions" that are different from other geographical objects. --Latebird 17:41, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I, frankly, don't care if they are named with a capital or small "r"; I simply wanted to bring this to your attention. Whether the WikiProject's guidelines are in conflict with general guidelines or not, the undeniable fact is that the overwhelming majority of articles about rivers in Wikipedia are named with a capital "R" (see, for example Category:Rivers of Afghanistan, Category:Rivers of Italy, Category:Rivers of Russia, Category:Rivers of California, or, for that matter, just about any subcategory in Category:Rivers by country). What I am trying to say is that you might want to bring this to the WP:RIVER participants before you start moving anything on a large scale. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:07, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Looks like this was already discussed back in 2005 here. From what I understand, "River" (capitalized) is used for consistency.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:22, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems like many geographical features like "Mountain", "River", etc. are considered part of the proper name, and thus uppercased. Maybe this is obvious to a native english speaker, but it wasn't to me (in German, nouns are always in uppercase, so the question never comes up). --Latebird 19:33, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

List of blocked moves

Please add any obstructed move targets that you find here:

People

I've added a section about how people are normally named. This doesn't change anything but simply documents established practise (both in Mongolia and in WP). --Latebird 10:15, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Latebird!

Dieser Kommentar gehört nicht wirklich hierher, aber ich weiß nicht, ob du Professor "Munkh-Amgalan" auf deiner Watchlist hast. Aber wenn du den Artikel schon überarbeitest, hättest du doch mal auf die Umschrift achten können. Der Name ist zwar nicht unproblematisch, weil in "Yumjiriin" das "Yu" als "Yü" realisiert wird (sonst müsste er "Yumjiryn" heißen), aber wenn wir eine einheitliche Umschrift für Kyrillisch Ю wollen, mag das so angemessen sein. Dann könntest du das im Text noch anpassen. Aber kein Problemfall ist, dass es nicht "Munkh-Amgalan" heißen sollte, sondern "Mönkh-Amgalan". Ich weiß aber nicht, wie man den Namen (und möglicherweise Verlinkungen dahin) eines Artikels ändert und möchte das also vertrauensvoll dir überlassen.

Liebe Grüße G Purevdorj 14:59, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Der Artikel braucht noch mehr Arbeit, da bin ich nur ganz schnell und grob drübergegangen. Zur Ю-Frage gleich noch mehr. --Latebird 16:29, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Aimag, Sum, and Düüreg titles

As I mentioned before, there has been some discussion about Aimag/Aimags/Aimguud, Sum/Sums/Sumuud Düreeg/Düreegs/Düüreguud, etc. This has led to the titles Aimag, Aimags of Mongolia, Sum (subnational entity), Sums of Mongolia, and Düüreg.

The question now is what to do with the individual aimag articles. In the (distant) past they have had names like aymag, Prefecture, and Province. As I understand, the root of the word Aimag (tribe) is not semantically equivalent to either prefecture or province (even if it technically plays the same role today).

I'd therefore prefer the form Arkhangai Aimag etc. There are quite a few precedents for this approach (eg. arrondissements, departments, cantons, woredas, fraziones, barangays, voivodeships, oblasts, okrugs, krais, comarcas, etc.). Is the upper case Aimag correct (part of the proper name) here?

I'm actually thinking of using Chingeltei Düüreg etc. in Ulan Bator as well. For the Sums, speciying Bulgan, Arkhangai seems most appropriate when there are duplicate names, or Bulgan (city) when it is the aimag capital.

Does this all make any sense? Or am I missing anything fundamental? --Latebird 12:48, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I wonder if "provinces", "districts", etc. wouldn't make more sense though. It's the English Wikipedia, after all. With Russia, for example, we use "oblasts", "krais", and "okrugs" because the translations ("provinces", "territories", and "areas") are not entirely accurate and conflict with other concepts. Where there is no significant conflict, translation is used ("raions", for example, are translated as "districts"; see, for example, Giaginsky District). Now, I don't know what would work best for Mongolia, but this is at least something to consider.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:27, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Ezhiki: why bother anyone with Mongolian words if the English expressions are as suitable? Of course, the concept of the word "aimag" is not identical to either "prefecture" or "province". Its most common meaning is "tribe" or "class (of things)", but if we think of the four Qalq-a aimags, all with their own Qan leader that was subordinate to the Manchu, "prefecture" very much sums it up. Of course, the problem is somewhat more complex; for a first taste of it I would advise you to read http://www.indiana.edu/~easc/resources/working_paper/noframe_5b.htm. But the translation of virtually any word is a simplification ("shiree" is not only "table", but also "throne", and these were not two concepts as distinct as the two English ones), and as the contemporary administrative structure of the Mongolian state is not very special to and crafted by this country's population, it would be a mistake to try to grap the slightest connotations. Go with "prefecture" (aimag)and "district" (sum)!
As for the upper case letters: as most Mongolian words have some meaning of their own, it is often appropriate to disambiguate proper names and lexical items. I might meet someone at Darkhan "khot", or even at some smithy's shop. Furthermore, one might introduce oneself as a citizen of German ulsyn Hessen aimgiin Wiesbaden khot. So I'd advise not to use capital letters here. G Purevdorj 21:39, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Regarding the capital letters in designations, I believe they are used for the same reason why the word "river" is capitalized in the river titles. Surely the situation with Mongolia can't be unique, yet I am not aware of non-capitalized designations being used for any other country. You might want to consider that.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:56, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

This looks like a toss-up between "use english names" vs. "use common names".

I've now checked with Google, and found that, on average, "aimag/aymag" is used roughly three times as much as "province" (results vary a lot by aimag and spelling, eg. "bulgan aimag" is used ten times as often as "bulgan province"). As to be expected, the slant in english language sources from Mongolia is even stronger. So there's clearly no danger that we would "bother" anyone by using the Mongolian terms, as those are commonly used. Most readers will likely search for the mongolian terms anyway, so there's no point in hiding them somewhere in the running text. Btw.: "Prefecture" is almost never used.

Mongolia is a somewhat unusual case because it has no colonial history, so there simply are no established or even official western terms. The Mongolian designator actually seems to be part of the proper name as well. In conversation, a Mongolian would rarely say just "Arkhangai", but rather "Arkhangai Aimag". All the same, I won't fight very hard about this. I'm just trying to get a well informed decision, and then we'll run with whatever it is. --Latebird 16:04, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I would go for using aimag and sum, but "duureg" is really a translation of "raion", which is translated to English as "district" as someone pointed out. Some time ago those "duuregs" were called "raions". Temur 20:42, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I assume that the word "raion" was introduced by the Russians. Apparently the Mongolians weren't happy with that (and as the originally french translation for "district", it's probably not appropriate for us either). Do you know when the switch happened? That would be interesting information for the article Düüreg. --Latebird 12:54, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Just a side note, would anyone be interested in adding information about Mongolian raions to the raion article? Of course, as Latebird said, we need to first figure out when the switch occured...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:39, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
I am pretty sure the switch happened around 1980-90s, during the "perestroika" or after the fall of Soviet Union. I do not know the exact date.Temur 19:04, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Since I can't see a clear-cut result of this discussion, and before it falls completely dormant, I went for the "minimally invasive" change. I fixed the transcription for all the aimags, but left the existing "Province" designator in place. If anyone thinks that Aimags of Mongolia, Sums of Mongolia, or Düüreg should be adapted to that, feel free to continue the debate. --Latebird 11:52, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Ю and vowel harmony

It seems that the diphtong Ю can represent both yu or yü, depending on vowel harmony. The obvious case is if a real у or ү follows in the same word. I'm not sure about the rules if only other vowels follow. Interestingly ,the question came up with Yumjiriin Munkh-Amgalan, where only the neutral и and й follow... Does anyone know exactly what is supposed to happen in all those situations? Should we keep the simple rule we have now, or is it necessary to introduce a special case here? --Latebird 16:46, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that the same question may also affect Ё, with a possible need to distinguish between Yo and Yö. An example would be the Yosönbulag Sum, which in its current spelling looks like it violates the vowel harmony. --Latebird 18:41, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I would like to clarify something, if I may, hopefully addressing some of the points above along the way. Currently, WP:MON provides a list of clauses where WP:MON is different from the BGN/PCGN conventions for Mongolian Cyrillic. I actually went ahead and compared the BGN/PCGN conventions with what WP:MON currently states:
  1. Ё (ё) becomes Yo (yo). This is precisely what BGN/PCGN uses. This clause can safely be removed.
  2. Ю (ю) becomes Yu (yu). BGN/PCGN conventions state that in monosyllables, the character ю is romanized yu or yü depending on pronunciation; in polysyllables, it is romanized yu when followed by a, o, or u, but yü when followed by i, e, ö, or ü. You might want to adopt this clause as well, or, if you go with something else (or leave WP:MON unchanged), mention it in the "Differences to BGN/PCGN" section of WP:MON.
I don't know if this helps much (like I said, I don't know Mongolian), but at least this is something that caught my eye. Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:10, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Your first point is my error. Apparently I looked at the wrong line in the table when writing that. The entry should read "Е (е) becomes Ye (ye)" (BGN/PCGN has yö). Maybe you're correct about the second point, and I simplified too much in that case. I'll try to get more information about the issue, and wait for more input here as well. Fortunately, I don't think that the problem will come up very often, so it's not urgent to decide anything. --Latebird 20:29, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

ий as a case suffix after any consonant but velar g aren’t neutral, but front vowel indicators. “neutral и” is somewhat of a simplification. Svantesson et al. (2005: 110): “Old Mongolian *i … is ignored by vowel harmony … If a word of this type does not contain a velar or uvular, the vowel harmony class can be determined if the suffix contains e/a or a velar/uvular. … Words which contain no other vowel than *i can be either front or back. … Unlike the case in Old Mongolian, Halh words with i as the only vowel always take non-pharyngeal [“front”] suffixes”. But while I could imagine a word contravening the rule Ëzhiki gives if ю is followed by i. It would have to be the rare case of a synchronically three-syllabic root morpheme. I am not aware of an actual example, and it is quite possible that such a case doesn’t exist. In the case of Yümjiriin, the rule applies, and contrary to what I wrote above, the main indicator probably was the first и.

Ё? Always “yo”. Yosönbulag sounds to me like “nine springs”, Есөнбулаг. Word-initial Cyrillic “E” in words that aren’t recent loans is always followed by ө/өө or үү. In the first case, it is “yö”, but I don’t know if it should be “ye” in the second case or “yö” as well. Maybe Ëzhiki could again quote WP:MON on that. G Purevdorj 21:01, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks like I just keep confusing myself between Е and Ё. That should really be Yesönbulag according to our cuurent rules, so I slipped up with my recent rename... The grammar book I recently got tells me that Е is always front and Ё is always back. In other words, we don't need to worry about them in this context. But the Ю can really switch between back and front, so in that case we need to decide whether we care enough about vowel harmony to adapt to that. --Latebird 23:55, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

IMO, writing Ю always as "yu" does not pose any problem, because just as how you read cyrillic, the reader can guess the pronunciation by the other vowels, and there is not much difference between "u" and "ü" for short vowels. Temur 07:22, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
I guess I agree with Tömör. I only hope that I will never have to write something like "ireegüi yuü?" :-). G Purevdorj 17:27, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
You could easily write long vowels explicitly, since there is the second vowel you can copy from, e.g., "yuü" could be "yüü" assuming this word exists :-). Temur 20:18, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
A strange assumption to make indeed; Google has only about 4700 hits for "юү энэ". (Of course, linguistically speaking, it is no word, but a clitic :-).) But I don't think it would be a good idea to state such a rule; there are about two not very productive roots in the entire Khalkh vocabulary that begin with юү (see yüütgel, yüüden). While theoretically possible, such a case does not even seem to exist for e+ö, at least not in the initial syllable. G Purevdorj 22:48, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


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