Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 August 13

= August 13 =

can i get hindi edition
hi,

There is a book name is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Writer is Stephen R. Covey.

can i buy a Hindi edition of this book or tell me that how can i understand it better in English edition because i have English edition.

Regards, Ashu —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.227.4.82 (talk) 10:31, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Apparently, there is a Hindi edition per this site. This site may show the title in devanagiri.  Marco polo (talk) 14:20, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

What word did the Chinese of the Medieval period (particularly the 12th c.) use to refer to Europeans?
That is, Europeans as a collective as opposed to individual nationalities. Were they still using their term for "Romans" to refer to Europeans (much like the Muslims of the time used "Franji" even for those who weren't Franks), had they started using the transliterated term "Ōuluóbā zhōu" by that period (even though Europeans were not refering to themselves as such) or did they use an entirely different word, maybe one meaning "westerner" or something along that line? Krys Tamar (talk) 12:33, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't think that the Chinese had a concept of Europe as such or of Europeans. Europeans, along with Central Asians, Persians, and Arabs, would have been considered Xirong or Western Barbarians.  The Chinese apparently did not have a term for Romans as such.  According to this source, the westernmost regions mentioned in Chinese sources from the medieval period were (in Pinyin) Fulin (Byzantium) and Dacin (Syria).  There is no evidence that the medieval Chinese had any specific knowledge about the lands or peoples west of Byzantium.  Marco polo (talk) 14:03, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * They also had "Daqin" to refer to the Roman Empire, and possibly Europeans in general after that (or Christians, at least). Adam Bishop (talk) 14:33, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I guess I mistransliterated Ta Ts'in from the source I cited as Dacin when it should have been Daqin. According to that source, while Daqin has been identified with the Roman Empire by Western scholars in the past, the evidence seems to indicate that it really refers to the Roman province of Syria.  It may have been used to refer by extension to the entire Roman Empire, but what the Chinese knew about Daqin seems to have been true of Syria rather than of Rome or Italy.  So I don't think we can say that the Chinese understood the extent of the Roman empire, much less Europe, or that the term Daqin refers unambiguously to the empire as a whole.  Also, by the medieval period, some Chinese sources refer to Fulin (the Byzantine empire) as equivalent to the ancient Daqin, whereas others distinguish Daqin from Fulin, in which case Daqin refers to Syria. The source that I have cited gives a good overview.   Apparently, the term Daqin was also used to refer to the Assyrian Christian Church in China, but our article Assyrian Church of the East in China indicates that the church no longer had any adherents in China by the 12th century.  It had some adherents in Central Asia, but these were not Europeans.  In any case, I don't think that 12th-century Chinese would have used the term "Daqin ren" (or Daqinese) to refer to Europeans in general, since 1) names such as Daqin and Fulin would have been known only to specialist scholars and 2) these names came mainly from earlier records and even a Chinese scholar familiar with these names would not have been able to identify a contemporary European as an inhabitant of Daqin or Fulin, nor would Chinese have known enough about Christianity to recognize the religion of Europeans as related to that of Assyrian Christians in Central Asia.  Few if any Europeans went to China in the 12th century.  If any did, they would probably be seen as akin to the Arabs, a type of Western Barbarian that would have been recognized in some of China's ports or western frontier posts.  Marco polo (talk) 15:23, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh, sorry, I think I completely missed that you already mentioned Dacin! Adam Bishop (talk) 16:19, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * So, what was Marco Polo described as? (the historical figure, not the WP editor)? Is he an Yidali-ren? Steewi (talk) 23:56, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * There is no Chinese historical record of Marco Polo. We don't know what they called him.  Polo's account suggests that he dealt mainly with the Mongol overlords of China at the time rather than with ordinary Chinese.  The Mongols employed Central Asians from a variety of different ethnic backgrounds, probably including Tajiks or Persians who may have looked similar to an Italian.  Due to their exposure to Central Asia and Eastern Europe, the Mongols were much more familiar than the Chinese with Christians and people of Caucasian appearance.  Polo's account suggests that he spoke a Turkic language that served as something of a lingua franca among the Mongols and their Central Asian subjects, though he probably learned some Mongolian.  To the Chinese, he would have appeared to be just one of the many Western Barbarians that the Mongols brought into the country.  Mongols and Central Asians who got to know him probably learned that he came from a land far to the west, a land that was probably exotic to them.  Who knows how he described his homeland?  At that time, Italians identified much more strongly with their city than with the rather abstract geographical concept of Italy.  We really don't know, but my guess would be that he described his homeland as Venezia or maybe Veneto, or the closest approximation to that name that Turks or Mongols could easily pronounce.  To the Chinese around him, though, I think he was probably just another Xirong.  Marco polo (talk) 01:05, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Äöü(ß)
Why can neither *äöü nor *äöüß be a German word? --88.78.235.96 (talk) 18:56, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Is this a homework question? See German phonology.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  20:20, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

It can if it wants to be. No law against it, as far as I know. And stop asking these questions, you've been doing it for weeks. --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 00:58, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It seems unlikely, as the umlaut a modification of the vowel whereby ä = ae. For the ß that is a double s. So in reponse to your question about why *aeoeue or *aeoeuess, I would suggest that is unlikely to have such a combination of vowels running together. The closest I can come up with is the French grenouilles (where the ll are effectively silent), giving the ou-i-e vowel combination. -- Alexandr Dmitri (Александр Дмитрий) (talk) 03:17, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Well phonologically the  there represents /j/, a consonantal phoneme. Mo-Al (talk) 03:27, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Are there any German words which have two or even three consecutive umlauts? --88.77.252.41 (talk) 06:37, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think German likes vowel hiatus, see German phonology. Mo-Al (talk) 07:39, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Your link says nothing on the subject of hiatus, as far as I can see. It occurs in many words like beenden, beobachten. I can't think of any with umlauts, though. — Emil J. 10:41, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Beenden and beobachten don't have hiatus; there's a glottal stop between those vowels. But there is hiatus in words like Chaos, Museum, and Jenaer. +Angr 10:46, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Quoting from hiatus (linguistics): Hiatus (Latin "yawning") (pronounced /haɪˈeɪtəs/) in linguistics is the separate pronunciation of two adjacent vowels, sometimes with an intervening glottal stop. — Emil J. 12:00, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes well, Wikipedia isn't a reliable source, and the claim is not attributed to any source that is one. +Angr 12:08, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Well asking people on the reference desk doesn't guarantee an answer backed up by a reliable source. But that definitely is the definition of hiatus. Mo-Al (talk) 18:31, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Although actually I'm not sure if hiatus is always defined to include vowels separated by a glottal stop. I remember seeing an example of an application of OT where a glottal stop was inserted to avoid a violation of a markedness constraint against hiatus. If that's the case, then beenden and beobachten don't have hiatus, right? Mo-Al (talk) 18:33, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Right, that's my point: the glottal stop eliminate the hiatus. +Angr 15:26, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Gothic day names
I'm searching for the Gothic form/forms (I don't know if there is only one name for each day or more) of week-day names. --151.51.24.145 (talk) 22:03, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Try this book, which talks about the origins of the Germanic days of the week. Adam Bishop (talk) 01:35, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * And this one...unfortunately a complete list is unattested, but apparently they were borrowed from Greek, rather than Germanic calques of the Latin names like in the west. Adam Bishop (talk) 01:38, 14 August 2009 (UTC)