Talk:Khitan language

Derivation from Uygur
There is really no evidence that the Kitan small script is derived from the Uygur script. It is possible (and even likely) that it was inspired by the Uygur script and/or the runiform Turkic script, but it was not "derived" from the Uygur script. -Andrew

Also, in fact, a fair number of Kitan graphemes have been deciphered, and there is a decent-sized corpus of words that have been reconstructed with relative accuracy. Therefore, it is better to say that the Kitan scripts have only been partially deciphered, although, surely, much work remains to be done. Nevertheless, we must give credit to all the scholars who have initiated the decipherment process, and who have opened up the door (if only a small crack) to the world of the Kitan language. -Andrew

We should probably mention that Diela was a Kitan prince, and not just a "scholar".

Script and sources
Could someone add visual examples (ideally with transcriptions) of the two scripts? And if the scripts have indeed only been partially deciphered, could someone actually say so on the page? (As an extra, could someone add something to talk about what sort of documents survive and the sort of numbers they exist in? Is the History of Liao the only source of the large script, or is it in a separate Chinese transcription?) JESL2 (talk) 18:47, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Recent edits
Sain baina uu Yastanovog! If you could fix all these issues, the article would probably reach start class. G Purevdorj (talk) 17:47, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
 * First, just as a sidequestion, may I ask whether you are Mongolian or at least speak it?
 * Second, while your work is quite enumerative, not really summarizing, it is definitely improving the article. But at least a longer introduction to the primary sources section would be in place. You also have two subsections titled "Epitaphs" - that is one too much.
 * Third, translations for vocabulary would be in place.
 * Fourth, the source section is not in good order: Cf. Franke. In Sinor ed., 1990, p. 407, and note. 6; Liu, Fengzhu 1992, p. 1; Janhunen 1996, p. 143 - none of these sources is actually given with complete bibliographical information.

The Kitan Language and Script By Daniel Kane
http://books.google.com/books?id=BnsZjpIa-cYC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Rajmaan (talk) 19:52, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Qianlong's views
During the Qianlong Emperor's reign, he set up a project to revise and edit the History of Liao, History of Jin, and the History of Yuan. He personally took issue with the Chinese character transcriptions of the Khitan, Jurchen, and Mongol names, saying they were sloppily done and did not represent the accurate phonetic transcription in the original languages (and this may have actually been true since these histories were hastily compiled).

钦定辽金元三史语解

欽定遼金元三史國語解 (Qinding Liao Jin Yuan Sanshi guoyijie)

http://ourartnet.com/Siku_02/0296/0296_054_069/0296_054_069.htm

http://art.tze.cn/Refbook/entry.aspx?bi=m.20080915-m300-w011-009&ei=5EE15FC2740914DFDE9E887E7E6A7CD8669A732173A3607F52921588B6965C7AC7F89ED2CA1DFF6E&p=4&cult=TW&Token=06A4C402C4236D555807796F5BE65253

http://mall.cnki.net/Reference/ref_readerItem.aspx?bid=R201001028&recid=R2010010280000425

He set out to correct the Chinese transcriptions by returning to the source languages. He matched up Jurchen with Manchu, Mongolian with Mongolian (no name change there), and Khitan with something I can't remember. It was either something like the Daur language or the Solons (Evenki language).

http://www.lsjyshi.cn/pdf/gyj.pdf

http://www.bianjiang.cass.cn/news/705515.htm

http://www.zsbeike.com/cd/41495720.html

http://www.historychina.net/wszl/xlxh/2005-07-13/28325.shtml

I remember reading an English language source on this but I can't find it now.

Rajmaan (talk) 06:15, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Bias?
Article seems to be an attempt to prove that this language is related to Mongolic, and even posits that Serbi-Mongolic very much exists rather than being as-of-now speculative — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.196.13.132 (talk) 16:12, 22 January 2022 (UTC)