Talk:Mongolian script/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Folded script

Moved the start of this discussion from Talk:Mongolian writing systems, where this talk page previously redirected to. --Latebird 01:03, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

There may be only one online reference, but it contains an actual picture of the script from Choijilsüren, D. Mongolin Khuuchin Bichgiin Tsagaan Tolgoi Zov Bichih Dürem. edited by Kh. Luvsanbadlan, G. Nasanbuyan & J. Amgalan. Ulaghanbaghatur Khota, Mongolian People's Republic: Academy of Science Publisher, 1978 (no ISBN) Mlewan 23:33, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't doubt that the Mongolian script has been written in rectangular designs. That was the case with many scripts, and quite typical for seals of the time and area. What I'm not certain about is whether the term "folded script" is established terminology, and whether it's specific to this script. I've found some references for "nine folded script", as a similar design variant of the Phagspa script or even Chinese characters. It's quite possible that "folded" is just an adjective in that context, and not the name of one single script. --Latebird 00:17, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

To be honest, I do not think "Folded script" is a mainstream English expression for a concept that is widely known in English. However, from the references it seems fairly clear that one in Mongolia considers it specific enough to have a word for it. It would have been good to be able to provide a Mongolian term, but failing that, "folded" works for me. Mlewan 06:01, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

The main problem is, we don't have access to the original source (unless you do?), but only a non-scholarly interpretation of it. This is too uncertain for me to keep that paragraph. I should have cross checked more carefully before writing it in the first place. --Latebird 09:57, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Using better search terms I found more sources ([1], [2], [3]) who use "folded" (or to the extreme, "nine folded") as an adjective applicable to any script, and not as a name for just one of them. --Latebird 10:36, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

OK. I googled for 蒙 (Mongol) and 九叠 (jiudie/nine folded) and found no particularly good leads in Chinese. Even if the script term exists in Mongolian, I suspect it is unlikely anyone will miss it, if we leave it out. Mlewan 17:57, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

This writing style is used on Mongolian banknotes, right next to the portraits of Sükhbaatar/Genghis Khan, so I think it would be worth mentioning. But only if we can find out the correct term. Yaan 11:35, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

The Cyrillic for this is эвхмэл бичиг/evxmel bičig, c.f. [4]. --Pachooey 16:30, 12 September 2011

Great example! I think "folded" is the correct term, just that it can be applied to any script and not just this one. Think of it as a font style instead of a seperate script. --Latebird 12:26, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

But maybe 'folded' is just an ad-hoc translation of the Chinese term? 'Nine-folded' sounds somewhat suspicious. In any case, the mongolian term seems to be 'bar bichig', where bar means something like printing plate.Yaan 22:14, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I still think we're hunting a phantom here. At least the online oracle has never heard of "бар бичиг". That's probably what is normally translated as "Seal script style" (seal = stamp ~ printing plate). In either case, it's not a seperate script, but just a style (something like this). Besides 9-folded, other amounts of folding have also been used. babelstone has a nice table with examples for the Phagspa script. --Latebird 22:53, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

google doesn' know everything ;) - but I don't know either. Anyway, I fully agree it's just a writing style and not a separate script, but I still think it's worth mentioning since Phags-pa seems to be also known as seal or square script (mong. dörvöljin bichig). Something like "The rectangular writing style somewhat popular today, found for example on the Tögrög banknotes, is just a variant of the classic script, not of the actual square (Phags-pa) script" Yaan 23:20, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Agree, it's just a writing style. The word "folded" (as adj.) seems to refer to the writing style, rather than to a separate script. It's worth to mention this style because it's widely used on logos, etc,. But not as a separate page but within the page for the classic Mongolian script. (though Choijilsüren, D. Mongolin Khuuchin Bichgiin Tsagaan Tolgoi Zov Bichih Dürem. shows it as a separate script parallelly with Soyombo and Quadratic. That's perhaps layout mistake in the book.)

Gantuya Eng 25 July 2007

Created by?

Could anyone give a reference on Tatar-Tonga about creating the script? --Dolugen 04:38, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

It's from the Omniglot link (which may or may not be reliable). --Latebird 07:47, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Isn't Tatatunga more usual version of his name?

Gantuya Eng. 25 July 2007

The form "Tatatunga" seems to be strangely popular with sites in Czech language. I see "tatar-tonga" more often in scholarly sources, though. A discussion of some variants is included here (although it's a forum, the text reproduces scientific material). --Latebird 12:06, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Thak you for te information. Gantuya Eng

This and other parts of this page need to be re-written. Firstly, the reference to 'Tatar-Tonga' having created the script needs to be removed. There are a number of theories as to how Mongolian came to be written with the Uighur script among which the 'Tatar-Tonga' hypothesis cannot be accepted as fact. His story comes up in Mergen Gegen's Altan Tobči (Chimeddorj/Möngkebuyan, Altan Tobči, öbür mongγol-un soyol-un keblel-ün qoriy-a, Kökeqota, 1998, pp.60-61) and the Yuan Shi, (Sung Lien et al., Yuan shih, Peking, 1976, 124, p.3048). In the former he is listed as Tattongγa and in the latter as Ta-Ta-Tong-A. The encounter is registered as happening in the 'Year of the Blue Mouse' (1204), and while both sources state that he taught the Mongolians how to write Uighur, neither state that he created or even adapted Uighur-script for use with Mongolian. The reconstruction of his name, whatever it may have originally been, is in question. Can anyone provide an explanation for why Tatar-Tonga as opposed to Tata-Tonga?

Other theories abound, one states that the Tibetan monk Gungaajaltsan did the initial work for the alphabet and later changes were introduced by the famous Choiji Odser (coming from the jirüken-ü tolta-yin tayilburi), in which the legend states that Gungaajaltsan saw a Mongolian lady carrying a hide-tanning rod bearing saw-tooth shaped indentations upon which inspiration he created the ačuγ/sidü and niruγu - the basis of the Mongolian script (Kara, Books of the Mongolian Nomads, Indiana University, Bloomington, 2005, pp.25-26). The Secret History mentions writing for the first time in the "(Red) Tiger Year" (SH§203) in which Genghis Khan commands Shigi Qutuqu to write down his legal rulings (in consultation with him) and that once written these rulings would be permanent and binding for future generations, but does not make any mention of Tata Tonga. In addition, a number of scholars have argued that the Mongols and the Uighurs borrowed the Sogdian script at around the same time (a view held by Vladimirtsov, Ramstedt and Rinchin among others). Emyrpugh 03:52, 19 December 2008

Scouting in Mongolia

Can someone render Belen Bol (Be Prepared), the Scout Motto, into this Mongolian script? Thanks! Chris 03:25, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure it sounds like that in Mongolian? "Belen bol" or "Become prepared" will look like this: бэлэн бол. But it sounds strange. The traditional children's motto was Хэзээд бэлхэн "Hezeed belhen" ("(I am) ready forever") like the Russian children's motto Всегда готов "Vsegda gotov". Gantuya eng 03:44, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

As far as I am aware. Scouts and Pioneers use distinctly different mottoes, though there is a relationship there. Thank you so much for your help! Chris 04:07, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I have scouted the website of the Mongolian scouts at http://www.owc.org.mn/scout/membermn.htm Their motto is Хэзээд бэлхэн "Hezeed belhen" ("(I am) ready forever"). Gantuya eng 04:36, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you again, this is great and much needed! Chris 08:17, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

final 'k'

The Mongol bichig schoolbook I have at home (from Outer Mongolia and the 1980s) lists no final 'k'. while this article does. Is this just another case of differing opinions, or did the authors of this schoolbook get it wrong? Yaan (talk) 11:52, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Reconstruction and transcription may be totally different matters. The transcription letter k probably was *kh (aspirated k), the letter g probably *k. However, plosives in Old Mongolian are an extremely complicated and controverse issue that I don't wanna dive into now. But when transcribing, we can simply adhere to an existing convention, and the transcription convention adapted by wikipedia at the time being (that is rather identical to the philological convention) says that there is no word-final letter k and q. If we want to TRANSCRIBE the name of the Mongolian noble where I made the comment from the UIGURO-MONGOLIAN script (which is only one of several scipts used for Mongolian transmitted to us, and not the one with the most precise phonological clues for reconstruction), it would definitely have to stay as it is in the title of the article, with gh in second position.

I've fixed the table somewhat in this respect. But I think I unwisely deleted word-final n and y at a previous occasion. It's the same as with gh: they exist when followed by a detached a or e. Could you deal with that issue? G Purevdorj 12:43, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I will try, maybe tomorrow (or once you tell me what the letters should look like). But I don't seem to be able to find what I have in mind here, so this may be a bit more complicated. Btw. I was also wondering about one of those medial t's. Are they all correct? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yaan (talk • contribs) 14:05, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Kind of. The first two t/d's are two forms of one and the same t. You won't find both within one text. These two t/d's are used before vowels. The third one is only d, never t, and it is used before consonants. So is the word-final letter. It would be appropriate to separate the last two fields in the table. However, this simple table won't enable anyone to cope with transcribing Mongolian. If you are interested, have a lool at [[5]]. I would sometimes use somewhat different conventions and even they forgot one issue, but this document is fairly complete. But probably we can't be that precise here. G Purevdorj 14:27, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Writing direction

Most other vertical writing systems are written right to left, but the medieval Uyghur alphabet and its descendants—the Mongolian, the Oirat Clear, the Manchu, and the Buryat alphabets—proceed from left to right. This is because the Uyghurs rotated their script 90 degrees counterclockwise to emulate the Chinese writing system.

Not the clearest of explanations. Does this mean that Uyghur was initially written horizontally from right to left? Geira (talk) 21:27, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not that sure about the explanation, but it is indeed the case that the Sogdian script as the precessor of the Uygur script was written as you say. Look at two examples [[6]], [[7]]. Then a tiny example of turned Sogdian: [[8]]. For the next stage, here some Uygur writing: [[9]]. And at the end, it became good old Middle Mongolian: [[10]]. If you can read this, you'll be able to read many of the letters of the earlier scipts as well! G Purevdorj 23:48, 18 March 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by G Purevdorj (talk • contribs)

I'm pretty sure it means that the rotation happened when the Sogdian script was adapted by the Uyghurs. But it would indeed be nice to have a good source for that. --Latebird (talk) 06:07, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

What I found most confusing is the comparison with the Chinese script. Twice when I've read it I'm thinking "hold on, this must be wrong since Chinese was written vertically right-left", and it takes some thinking to figure out what is actually meant by "emulating" here. Perhaps it would be better to say they preferred to write vertically like the Chinese did.Geira (talk) 10:07, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Is that better? kwami (talk) 11:51, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Ambiguity chin'

„It's relatively rare that this leads to actual ambiguity, because the requirements of vowel harmony and syllable sequence usually determine the right choice.” Now, either this statement itself or its reason is wrong. Of course, actual ambiguities ARE rare, but the reason for this is that there are few words with exactly the same orthography. If we dive below word-level orthography knowledge, the statement is very wrong. The wikipedia slogan alone contains seven ambiguities, and the first 49 linguistic words of the first modern-orthography book that I could grab contain 54 unrelated ambiguities, on the word-level, however, only one word was ambigue. G Purevdorj (talk) 21:12, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid I can't quite follow your explanation. Why was only one word ambiguous in your example, even though you could identify "54 unrelated ambiguities"? Did those all occur in that one word? --Latebird (talk) 08:21, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

No, of course not. I'll give concrete examples: the word usually transcribed as "ügei" has three other principially possible readings: ögei, ükei and ökei. However, none of these three words occurs or has any meaning, for that matter. So, on a lexical level, the word written as "ügei" is not ambiguous. In my above counting, "ügei" accounts for two unrelated ambiguities and no word (a related ambiguity would be ma/eyima/eyilaju: if a instead of e in the first syllable, then also in the second). An ambiguity above the letter-level would be the word togh/tugh/dugh 'onom. tick tack/flag/1. check (when the bishop attacks the king) 2. quiet'. This ambiguity can only be resolved on the text level, as all four words with their three different pronunciations are written the same. G Purevdorj (talk) 10:48, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, that makes it clearer. (Funny though, how to my untrained ears, many Mongolian words sound the same, even if they are written differently... But that's another topic.) --Latebird (talk) 12:00, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

image

I don't think the image is really bilingual. If I am not mistaken, the Mongolian script reads "Ken De Jii", which is a mere transcription of the Chinese name f KFC. This seems about as Mongolian as "байришэ моторэнвэркэ" would be. Yaan (talk) 12:06, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

The Mongols know KFC only through the Chinese and so use the same name. The sign is bilingual because the Mongolians also call it by that name - in speech and in writing. The meaning of 'KFC' (Kentucky Fried Chicken) is not present in the Chinese '肯德基' ken-de-ji, which is just a 'catchy' title for the restaurant chain in China. You could of course find better examples, ones of signs on government buildings, for instance, or road signs. I'll look through my photos and see if there's anything more suitable. Emyrpugh 04:09, 19 December 2008

The characters

The section on 'The Characters' is incomplete. The final forms need to be added for y, p, f and ḳ. It could also do with the addition of those characters that are specifically used in Inner Mongolia, the ř and the 'zh' and 'ch'. The alternate form for final 'b' also needs to be added. Emyrpugh (talk) 04:09, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

ɣ or γ ?

Wouldn't it be better to use the latin gamma for that "other g"? All books I have seen use a gamma with loop, and it also looks much less Y-like. Yaan 15:46, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

It would be better. The scientific convention is <ɣ> or sometimes <ġ>. G Purevdorj 20:30, 30 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by G Purevdorj (talk • contribs)

This is not correct - the <ɣ> is a modified form of the Greek <γ> 'gamma' and is used in IPA notation to represent a voiced velar fricative. Standard Transliteration of Mongolian (Vladimirtsov-Poppe-Mostaert-Cleaves) uses a straight Greek gamma <γ> and not the IPA symbol now seen on Wikipedia pages featuring Mongolian transliterations. Most of the books I have on Mongolian use only <γ> - for example Poppe's Grammar of Written Mongolian (Wiesbaden, 1954) and anything by Gronbech, Cleaves and the other Mongolists mentioned above. A simple Google search shows that 'mongɣol' (IPA symbol) generates less than 100 results whereas 'mongγol' (Greek gamma) returns over 5,000 results. This confusion may have arisen due to the y-like appearance of the Greek letter gamma on most web browsers. In any case, standard Mongolian transliteration uses gamma and not the modified IPA form and on this basis I will begin to change all present occurrences to their correct form. Emyrpugh 02:22, 16 December 2008

And then anybody on WP will read y instead of gamma. The problem is that the greek gamma on WP looks much more y-like than it probably does in your books. I, btw, get only about 169 unique google hits for greek gamma [11] vs. 39 for for IPA gamma [12]. Still a clear lead, but not quite as clear as yours. In any case, I really do think you should keep the optical aspect in mind. Yaan (talk) 18:38, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Try these instead: gamma [13], IPA symbol [14] - as stated above, my search results are based on just the words 'mongγol' and 'mongɣol'. The problem is that the font we are both using to view Wikipedia makes the Greek gamma look slightly y-ish - do remember though that not everyone allows web pages to automatically dictate font choice and not every Wikipedia page looks the same on every platform. It seems rather illogical to favour an erroneous form of transliteration based simply on a font issue. The Greek gamma, despite its appearance in certain fonts, is the correct letter for the transliteration of the Mongolian script; the equivalent letter in Cyrillic (also listed in this article) is simply an uppercase version of the Greek gamma (which now has the corresponding lowercase equivalent right next to it instead of an unrelated, though graphically similar, IPA symbol). Whether or not some people misread this as a 'y' is irrelevant, just as my misreading of letters used to transliterate languages I know nothing about is my problem and mine alone. Emyrpugh 10:12, 16 December 2008

While it is correct that font issues shouldn't dictate transcription issues, all that bean counting on Google looks very much like original research. Do we have any sources explicitly stating that "The Greek gamma ... is the correct letter for the transliteration of the Mongolian script [to Latin]"? --Latebird (talk) 09:38, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

You're assuming there is a "correct" transcription. Daniels & Bright uses Greek gamma, and that would seem to be traditional. However, that's a typographic issue: Greek typeface is easy to come by, and most printers have it handy. I think legibility is a perfectly good reason to chose an orthographic convention. If IE and FF out of the box do not distinguish Greek gamma from <y>, then IMO that's a strong argument for avoiding that character online, just as if most printers lack IPA typeface, that's a strong argument in favor of Greek gamma in print. We use sans-serif font as the default online, as it's more legible on a computer screen. Books use serif font as the default, because that's more legible in print. The legibility problem is between sans-serif Greek gamma and sans-serif <y>, so this is a consideration that did not affect the establishment of the print convention. kwami (talk) 10:09, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Re. greek or latin gamma, I admit I have not come across any capitalized Latin gammas in any books, only Greek ones (as in Alan Γoa). There is, however, yet another alternative with some tradition: Using 'gh' instead of gamma and 'kh' instead of q. This does not run into any typographic issues, and it may also be more accessible for the general reader. Another minor benefit might be that people won't wonder about Ulanqab vs. Ulaɣanqada. On the other hand, it might be somewhat less "scientific". Re. the google search, a lot of hits at google are just copies of other pages, so trying to display higher pages (say, 911 to 920) leads to a message that some results were omitted because they were just copies of results already displayed. In your case for greek gamma (http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&newwindow=1&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Ade%3Aofficial&q=%22mong%CE%B3ol%22&btnG=Suche&meta=), I cannot display any results beyond page 16. The "-wikipedia" is for excluding wikipedia-derived pages, as they will obviously skew the results - in favour of the latin gamma, not the greek one.

Yaan (talk) 19:18, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

The use of 'gh' has always been a compromise, usually when people were unable to correctly format a Greek gamma for whatever reason. The most accurate or scientific way to represent the transliteration of the Mongolian script is via the Greek letter gamma. I don't understand your point about Ulanqab vs. Ulaɣanqada. The rouge 'q' in 'Ulanqab' is actually a 'č' in standard transliteration, but certain people in Inner Mongolia, under Chinese influence have begun to transcribe this sound according to the conventions of Hanyu Pinyin where 'q' has a sound very similar to the 'ch' in Church. Similarly, there is also a tendency to write an 'x' for 'š' - a sound like the 'sh' in shop; again, under the influence of Hanyu Pinyin. This is especially prevalent in text messaging in Inner Mongolia and is very different to the Khalkha norms of writing a 'h/x/kh' for 'q', a 'ch' for 'č' and a 'sh' for 'š'. These are really problems of transcription and not ones of transliteration. Emyrpugh 05:12, 17 December 2008

I said that better pinyin compatibility was only a minor benefit. I think you are understating the significance of those pinyin-like transscriptions, though: They seem to be actually pretty official, used on maps, on the input system for Windows vista's mongolian fonts etc.

I also tend to think gh is more common in not strictly specialist works, say, stuff like Heissig's Ein Volk sucht seine Geschichte. Yaan (talk) 19:10, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

The Chinese 'transcribe' the Mongolian names according to a system consonant with Pinyin. I was not understating the use of Pinyin sounds in transcriptions, but rather asking you what this has to do with transliterating Mongolian script. Transcription and transliteration are two very different concepts. You are right about the prevalence of 'gh' in non-specialist works, but what you are seeing in such cases are transcriptions and not transliterations. It is common practice not to burden the non-specialist with Greek gammas and carons. They are totally redundant in transcriptions, which aim to represent, in as simple a manner as possible, the sound of the Mongolian name or word in question. Let us be clear here that we are not concerned with transcriptions. If you look at other Wikipedia pages that deal with the writing systems of other languages what you see is the name of the language in the script itself, followed by its transliteration and not a transcription of how the word sounds. It is irrelevant whether or not your average Wikipedia reader can discern how to pronounce these transliterations or if they are in danger of mispronouncing them due to their lack of knowledge of that particular language. Take Tibetan, for instance - how on earth will someone who has never studied the language know the correct pronunciation of bkra-shis-bde-legs? The chances are that they will not be able to guess the pronunciation and in all likelihood they will not even care - but to the student of Tibetan or Mongolian a standard transliteration is of the utmost importance. Emyrpugh 01:09, 19 December 2008

Internet Explorer and Firefox do distinguish between Greek gamma (γ) and <y>. The 'y' has a small tail flowing to the left whereas the Greek gamma does not. In any case, the two are encoded differently and herein lies the problem of using the IPA symbol in place of the gamma - in that if someone were to search the web for, say, a Mongolian word or book title based on a Wikipedia entry utilizing the IPA letter, they would not find it without first replacing the IPA letters with Greek gammas as the vast majority of online sources (some of which are bibliographies, library catalogs and so forth) stick to the standard system. The 'bean counting' on Google, far from being original research, simply illustrates the problems users will encounter when copying transliterated Mongolian on Wikipedia into a search engine in terms of how many results they will find.

I can quote an endless number of books in which the Greek gamma is used in transliterating Mongolian, but no specific reference on the lines of "The Greek gamma ... is the correct letter for the transliteration of the Mongolian script to Latin". But there is a good reason for this; a Latin 'c' with a caron <č> is also used in this system as most of the letters of the English alphabet - but you would be hard pushed to find any specific reference stating that "the Latin letter 'b' is the correct letter for transliteration of Mongolian script as is the Latin letter 'c' with a caron" and so on. These letters are mapped to elements of the Mongolian script as per Poppe's Grammar (reference above). There is no reason to be so explicit in defining these letters as readers are expected to know that the 'b' is a Latin 'b', the 'č' is a Latin 'c' with a caron and that the gamma is a Greek gamma. Would it not be rather patronizing to define every letter in a transliteration system as being specifically Latin or Greek letters? The only thing approaching an explicit reference to the use of 'gamma' (if the vast numbers of gammas used in all major works on Written Mongolian are not proof enough) is the title of a review from the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 22, (Dec., 1959), pp. 274-278 in JSTOR where the JSTOR catalog title, presumably due to technical difficulties associated with displaying the gamma, explicitly states that the gamma in 'mingγan' is actually a gamma, thus 'ming(gamma)an' [15]. You may have to click on 'Show Full Citation' to see this. If you look at the preview of the review, you will also see the Greek letter gamma used in the title of Heissig's book.

I am not assuming that there is a correct system for 'transcription', but I am asserting that there is a correct system of 'transliteration'. All of the major works of Western scholarship on Written/Traditional Mongolian employ the Greek gamma. Now, that's quite a body of work - Vladimirtsov, Poppe, Mostaert, Cleaves, Lessing, Serruys, Heissig, Ligeti, Fletcher, Bawden, Grønbech, Krueger, Kara, Elverskog, Atwood, Kollmar-Paulenz and countless others besides. There's also the issue that what we are discussing here is the use of gamma in transliteration of Mongolian script. IPA symbols have no place in transliteration schemes; only in transcriptions of sound. We are not concerned with the way the words sound, but rather the way in which they are written. It makes no sense to use an IPA symbol here for the following reasons. Firstly, use of the IPA symbol in question might foster bad habits among students of Mongolian script. Secondly, any potential misreading as a 'y' will only occur with those readers who have very little or no knowledge at all of Written Mongolian - those who do will be in no danger of misreading it. Lastly, using anything but a gamma will result in a huge disparity between Wikipedia and the rest of the internet. Consider this - a lowercase 'l' and an uppercase 'I' have exactly the same form in the font commonly used to display Wikipedia pages. There is no graphic difference whatsoever between these forms - they are identical (unlike sans-serif gamma and sans-serif y, which have a perceptible difference). The lowercase 'l' and an uppercase 'I' will be confusing to those who do not have a basic grasp of English. How does someone who does not speak English tell if 'I' is pronounced as an 'i' or as an 'l'? Of course, everyone who knows but a little English will be able to produce the correct reading of a word like 'Illegitimate' despite the first three letters being graphically identical. The encoding is different and that, in the end, is what counts and this does not mean that we should begin replacing one of these letters with an IPA symbol just to get around a Wikipedia font issue or to ease confusion on the part of people who do not know how to read English. Emyrpugh 04:42, 17 December 2008

I think the problem is that a lot of wp readers actually do have very little or no knowledge at all of Written Mongolian (in traditional script). Yaan (talk) 19:10, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

It is irrelevant. Most of them probably have no use for it anyway, but that's beside the point. The point is that the standard transliteration should be present and there should be no deviation from that system. Emyrpugh 01:09, 19 December 2008

Dead end. I originally didn't intend to contribute to this discussion again, but I reconsidered it. It's certainly NOT irrelevant what the great majority of readers will or won't understand. Anyway, I don't understand why so much energy is spilled over so tiny a matter. I cannot believe that the Mongolian script article (and several other articles for that matter) don't contain other substantial shortcomings or even mistakes where your knowledge could be put to far better use. The actual transcription symbol is NOT an axiom, little depends on it. G Purevdorj (talk) 21:14, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

This is not a tiny matter - it is a matter of great importance. All of the major work on the Mongolian script or on books written in it use one and the same letter. What was initially just a brief note to inform everyone that I would be changing the IPA symbol to gamma has mushroomed into this. Your original assertion that use of the IPA symbol is more scientific than use of a gamma was wrong and needed to be addressed. There are other substantial shortcomings with this and other pages dealing with the Mongolian language and I am making a point of addressing these one by one, starting with those that are easiest to fix - like issues of correct transliteration. It is extremely important that the transliterations be accurate and consistent so as to preserve the integrity of this and other Mongolian-related articles. Nobody expects the average Wikipedia reader to have a knowledge of the Mongolian script or the Mongolian language. Therefore we do not have to modify the transliteration of the Mongolian script to suit them - even if some people think a sans serif gamma has some graphic resemblance to a sans serif 'y'. When you say that this is a trifling matter upon which little depends you are again in error. For better or worse people do put a lot of faith in Wikipedia and do quote from it on other websites and in essays and so forth. Therefore the correct representation of Mongolian Script both online and on paper according to the principles laid down by the vast majority of Mongolists is crucial. Wikipedia articles should not foster bad habits and undermine these principles. A seriously more pressing issue is that of lowercase 'l' and uppercase 'I' in their sans serif forms. As a quick test I took the following line from the page on the 'Mongolian Language' and asked someone with no knowledge of Mongolian to read it. The sentence is as follows: "<Bi üünijg olbol čamd ögnö> I it-accusative find-conditional_converbal_suffix you-dative give-future" - they mistook the 'I' to be a bar '|' or other separation character and skipped it altogether. Of course, if you know anything about Mongolian you will recognize the presence of 'bi' and then know the 'I' is not a bar '|', but if you don't know anything about Mongolian there are no guarantees you will even recognize this as a being a word - and this is an example not of transliteration (which no-one expects the average reader to know) but of the actual English language (!) This is far more ambiguous than the matter we are discussing in which the two disputed letters actually do have different shapes. No-one would suggest changing this just to avoid confusion now would they? Emyrpugh 16:24, 19 December 2008

I made the aforementioned statement as my first statement on that matter altogether (because of the considerably different graphic impression in the computer version) and later revised it somewhere else as this discussion spanned over several talk pages. And I just changed the useless ambiguity in the example sentence you mentioned: it is better to have "bid" - "we". I could go on arguing that gamma is gamma, but there's another point that might better serve the issue: I always used γ when quoting literature for reasons of fonts and ease of availability. Then, any gamma is disallowed in article titles , and thus it doesn't surface there in either version. Therefore, γ seems to be more frequent on Wikipedia anyway, and your last edits can simply be taken as a unification even within Wikipedia. Time to leave this issue. G Purevdorj (talk) 09:42, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Allow me to continue to be an annoyance here... ;) One of the reasons why I have to insist on further clarification, is that both transliteration and transcription usually have the purpose to represent one writing system in a different one, in our case the Mongolian script in the Latin script. I'm not aware of any other case where this resulted in using characters from a third writing system (here the Greec script). No matter whether "right or wrong", this unusual situation requires special care.

There are two use cases:

• For examples and tables in articles about linguistic topics, Wikipedia uses scientific transliteration. This is formally standardized for many languages and writing systems, but apparently not for the Mongolian script. If I understand the previous discussions correctly, the informal standard is to use the system introduced by Poppe. This is not a question of correct vs. incorrect, but just about following an agreed on convention (I know I used the term "correct" myself above, "standardized" would have been more to the point). The practical question here is: Does Poppe provide a table in his book that we can take as a reference? Does he specify a greek gamma, or did the typesetter just use something that happens to look like one in the chosen typeface? The point is, once we have a reference, we can ignore everyting else (including google results) and just run with that, eg. by adding something like the following to WP:MON:

In articles about linguistic topics, text originating in the traditional script will be transliterated according to the system by Poppe(et al?) as given in the table in Mongolian script.

• With the way Wikipedia uses transcription in page titles and non-linguistic articles, mixing in Greek letters turns out to be against guidelines and inappropriate (a precedent has already been set by moving Alan Γoa to Alan Goa). In practise, this will most often happen with names of people and places. For those cases, we need a spelling without non-latin characters that the average Wikipedia user can easily read and remember. If we're lucky, then there is a prediominant spelling present in English language sources. For other cases, we need to figure out a different solution.

Since we're in a linguistic topic right here, I suggest we first find a solution for those. Once that is settled, we can look at the other cases. --Latebird (talk) 23:26, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Finding a prescriptive ref may be difficult. But mixed script is not at all uncommon, and not confined to Mongol, though it does seem to be characteristic of Iranian scripts and their derivatives. (Semitic scripts tend to be transliterated g-acute where Iranian has gamma.) For example, in Parthian and Sogdian you get fricatives β, γ, δ, and θ. You also see γ in Orkhon, γ and δ in Uyghur, γ and χ in Manchu. kwami (talk) 03:33, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

As pointed out above, using 'gh' instead of 'gamma' and 'kh' instead of 'q' is not so uncommon. Some examples are the various Khutughtu, Khubilai Khan etc. No idea how common mixing them (Qutughtu) would be, though. Yaan (talk) 16:07, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

This is going around in circles now. Firstly, Latebird, you state the following: "With the way Wikipedia uses transcription in page titles and non-linguistic articles, mixing in Greek letters turns out to be against guidelines and inappropriate (a precedent has already been set by moving Alan Γoa to Alan Goa). In practise, this will most often happen with names of people and places. For those cases, we need a spelling without non-latin characters that the average Wikipedia user can easily read and remember. If we're lucky, then there is a prediominant spelling present in English language sources. For other cases, we need to figure out a different solution." You and Wikipedia are one hundred percent correct in this respect, mixing Greek letters or IPA symbols in page titles is absolutely inappropriate. However, your comment about 'scientific transliterations' being inappropriate in 'non-linguistic' articles is somewhat misleading. Look at any article about a person or place whose original name is not written in a Latin script and what you will see is the name of that person or place in the common English spelling (if such a spelling exists - failing that, a transcription of the name) and then in brackets after it you will get the original script form (or several depending on the language concerned) followed by its 'scientific transliteration' and sometimes even IPA notation also. The norm on Wikipedia is to include 'scientific transliteration' in such cases regardless of whether or not the article deals with a linguistic topic. The rest of the article, of course, will use whatever form was given in the heading, be that a commonly accepted English spelling or a transcription.

I'm all for using 'kh' and 'gh' in transcriptions as several people have suggested, and totally opposed to using exotic characters in page and article titles, but not in scientific transliteration, which is what this whole debate is about although we keep getting sucked back into the 'transcription' question and that is a separate discussion. Any English speaker wishing to take up the study of Mongolian is going to end up using at least one of the following sources, all of which use 'gamma' - Lessing's dictionary, Poppe's 'Grammar of Written Mongolian' or Gronbech and Krueger's 'An Introduction to Classical (Literary' Mongolian'. There's also a problem here in that there's no way (under the present circumstances) to render Mongolian for display on Wikipedia as a font. Under such circumstances it is desirable to have a transliteration of the Mongolian script (for the sake of completeness) instead and it is best to stick to the system that is in most widespread use - hence, gamma. Again, just to be absolutely clear, that's the use of transliteration in 'brackets' after the first mention of the the person or place name outside of the actual article title - once on a page, the rest in transcription.

Poppe himself mentions in his memoirs that this character is specifically a Greek 'gamma' - Reminiscences, Nicholas Poppe, Western Washington University, 1982, p.204. There are other texts with specific references to this being a Greek 'gamma' that I can provide for you if this reference is not enough. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Emyrpugh (talk • contribs) 18:19, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Script Components and Punctuation Marks

What is the consensus on adding a table for the Script Components - i.e. the individual strokes that are used to compose the actual letters of the Mongolian script. It's a lot of work and will fill quite a large table so I want to make absolutely sure no-one will object before I upload anything. Also, how about a table on the punctuation marks commonly used in Mongolian script (both historically and at present)? Emyrpugh 12:09, 20 December 2008

I think the stroke sequences are rather straightforward in Mongolian script (other than eg. with Chinese characters), so I'm not sure if a lot of work is justified to add them. If the table gets very big in relation to the rest of the article, then it may also be relevant that we shouldn't turn this into an instruction manual on how to write the script. The punctuation marks should definitively be added, though, numbers are also still missing. --Latebird (talk) 19:23, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I also think punctuation marks and numbers would be a good addition, also that they would be more important than stroke order. Did you mean to give the actual stroke order for each character, or some more general rules like done here? Yaan (talk) 16:18, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

What I'm referring to has nothing to do with 'stroke order' or creating an instruction manual. The word 'stroke' is here a translation of 'jirulγ-a'. Mongolian has a set of basic 'jirulγ-a' that are combined in different orders to create letters. In terms of strokes, a Mongolian back-vowel 'o' in initial position is composed of two 'jirulγ-a' - a 'titim' and a 'gedesü'. Similarly, a final 'm' is a combination of 'gejige' and 'baγ-a orkiča'. These are the 'script components'. Emyrpugh 00:40, 23 December 2008

I see. I was not sure whether you were going to add a table on how each letter can be constructed out of these components. Maybe a bit confused by latebird's comment. I think a table of zurlagas would be a very useful addition, too. Yaan (talk) 11:43, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for clarifying. In that case, it would indeed be interesting to present a list of the possible strokes (how many are there?). Listing the composition of each individual character might be a bit too much, though, a small number of typical examples should be enough..

I think 5 - 10? Composition is really quite straightforward, maybe with exceptions of dots and the 'ever' (that 'l'-stroke). Even there there might be differences between individual writers. Yaan (talk) 14:23, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I have proposed merging the recently created article on Uyghurjin script with this article on the basis that they are not distinct scripts, but just chronological variants of the same script, with some orthographic differences. Almost all scripts with a long history make orthographic reforms from time to time, but that does not make the pre-reform and post-reforms versions of the script different scripts. I believe that the general scholarly consensus is that Uyghurjin script is not a distinct and separate script from the classical Mongolian script. Note that the Uyghurjin script page has no references to support this classification, and appears to reflect the personal opinion of User:虞海. Furthermore, it makes more sense to discuss orthographic differences between early Mongolian and later Mongolian on this page than on separate pages. BabelStone (talk) 11:48, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

1. Quoted:"Therer's no sharp difference between any two script, if the latter script is derived from the first. There's midbody between Oracle bone script and Seal script, between Bronze script and Seal script, between Large Seal script and Small Seal script, between Seal script and Clerical script. Will you say what I use to write Chinese is Oracle bone script? --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) (talk) 11:49, 24 June 2009 (UTC)"--虞海 (Yú Hǎi) (talk) 12:00, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
2. Uyghurjin sometimes refers to an font, too. espc. used in Seal. --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) (talk) 12:00, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
3. In Wikipedia, even a font has an article: Ujain script and Umê script. --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) (talk) 12:06, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

It is probably better to merge these two articles, but 虞海's idea that the word (and concept) Uighurjin might be included more clearly into "Mongolian script" has its merits. The use of terminology differs. Michael Weiers and his doctorants will use Uighurjin bicig and Mongol bicig as synonymous. Some Mongolian scholars I met in Mongolia used Uighurjin bicig only to refer to the first version of the Mongolian script. (There are even some notable differences within, though. The stele of Yisüngge pretty much resembles xylographs from the 18th century, while this does not hold for much of the Turfan material.) I'm not quoting anything here, just retelling from memory. G Purevdorj (talk) 12:25, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Merge - There is no additional information in the forked out article, so it can simply be turned into a redirect again without loss. I agree with Purevdorj that a section about nomenclature in this article here would be helpful. --Latebird (talk) 23:47, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I need a separate page not because it's large enough to write an separate article. What I wanted to do is let people know there is a precursur or variant called Uyghurjin. I do also agree to merge them if there're some introduction about Uyghurjin in Mongolian script and "fam7=Uighurjin" kept. --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) (talk) 10:47, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

To justify an extra page, you need information that isn't already presented appropriately elsewhere. As has been noted, the classification and naming of a seperate precursor is disputed between sources. This means we can't just add "Uighurjin" to the family hierarchy as if it were established fact. But we need to explain that some Mongolian language sources use the term to describe an early version of the Mongolian script (do we have English language sources doing the same?). In fact, the article already describes that early version, we just need to add the term "Uighurjin". That's really all the concrete information you have given us so far. As a sidenote, you may want to check out WP:OTHERSTUFF. --Latebird (talk) 21:20, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Your're right, and I've been doing that since I know there was a script called Uighurjin. --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) (talk) 10:10, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

You haven't shown that the topic is sufficiently distinct from the one covered in this article here. On top of that, the article text you wrote never mentioned that there are relevant sources who use the same name in different ways. Presenting conflicting views on an issue is important in order to maintain the neutral point of view of Wikipedia. --Latebird (talk) 12:07, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

In this edit I have tried to add the relevant information to the article. I'm sure that other people will be able to add more detail (specific schools/sources, etc.). --Latebird (talk) 21:37, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Dear 虞海 I find it very disturbing when you say I need an extra page. Wikipedia is not about what individual editors need or want, but about presenting accurate, unbiased and verifiable information. Looking at your talk page and edit history I get the feeling that you do not fully subscribe to the basic principles of Wikipedia, and try to push your personal point of view regardless of whether it reflects general scholarly consensus or not. In order to have Uyghurjin recognised on Wikipedia as a separate script from Mongolian there must be evidence that reputable sources treat Uyghurjin and Mongolian as different scripts. But you have not provided a single reference to support this new classification of yours, and so it cannot be accepted.

I might also add that it was very irresponsible of you to add Uyghurjin into the script family hierarchy on this page without considering the implications of other pages such as Manchu alphabet and Clear script which belong to the same family tree as Mongolian. BabelStone (talk) 22:27, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Stating "I need an article" does never mean one need something him or herself. On the contrary, that's a signa that the write think Wikipedia (or the reader) need an article, and that does not violate basic principles of Wikipedia. For example, today you write an article monkey, but why? It's because you think people should know there's a kind of animals called monkey, which is similar to humans (if not so - suppose you'll say - then you don't think people need it but you wrote it, that's no difference to deliberately bring spam that nobody NEED to read in Wikipedia), and then you can say "I need an article monkey so I wrote it". Here, nobody will think you need that article youself because if you need that article youself you won't write it in Wikipedia, intead you'll write it in your personal diary. So when an editor say he need an article he or she means he or she think the reader need that article, and thinking an article significant enough to the readers is the only reason why we contribute in Wikipedia - if nobody needs an encyclopedia, there won't be Wikipedia at all. --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) (talk) 10:10, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

We only see the words you write, and not what you secretly think about them. If you write "I need", then you make people think that you're following your personal interest. If you can document that a topic is notable enough to justify an article according to Wikipedia policies, then it's better to just show us the necessary sources. Btw.: Please don't interrupt other people's talk page statements by inserting your own in the middle, because that makes it very hard to follow the discussion. Please also don't use fancy formatting like horizontal lines to seperate your posts. For more details, see the Wikipedia talk page policy. --Latebird (talk) 12:13, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your remind "don't interrupt". Does that means, I can only insert my comment if the one who I reply signed his name tiwce and then I can insert my comment before his second sign? --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) (talk) 07:38, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I've already said: nobody will think you need that article youself because if you need that article youself you won't write it in Wikipedia, intead you'll write it in your personal diary. So it's of no ambiguity. --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) (talk) 07:38, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I didn't put Uyghurjin into the articles Todo script and Manchu script because it's still disputed of the rank of Uyghurjin. I wanted to put it into an independent article for long. When I was searching Chinese articles I found Uyghurjin has 3 meaning - a script between Old Uyghur and Hudum, Hudum used in a seal (like Seal script of Phags-pa and Seal script of Chinese) and Hudam's alternative name.

• The first time I found the name Huihu shi Menggu Wen is when using Menksoft Mongolian IME. Typing several Uyghurjin word, I found it similar to Hudam. So the first response is "is it a font of Hudum?" But later I found that the IME had provided several font of standard Hudum, including a handwriting - Hawang. So there must be some reason that they provided it in a separate function. The most possible result is that there's no direct bijection between Uyghurjin and Hudum. But such supposition will only be a guess, so I seek for articles about Uyghurjin, and found the 3 explains listed before. And the former 2 explains are possibly one - script used in Seal is often script in the past.
• Chating with Mongols about that... --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) (talk) 10:11, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Still little info. They know something about that, but not much. --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) (talk) 07:38, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Most of what you mention here is original research, and not acceptable to Wikipedia without support by reliable published sources. To create an article in the English language Wikipedia, you also need to show that the title you chose is the commonly established term in English language sources. We're not writing the Mongolian or Chinese Wikipedia here, after all. --Latebird (talk) 12:15, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps I conldn't find reliable source. You can delete that article now. But I keep the right to rewrite it if I find reliable source and cite it. --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) (talk) 07:38, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Also, it's not a issue of "which language does the term belongs to", it's a problem of "is it an independent article", if it is, we should loan words if there's no English term. --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) (talk) 07:38, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I think the situation for Mongolian is very similar to that for Manchu. In the Manchu alphabet article we read:

In 1599 the Manchu leader Nurhaci decided to convert the Mongolian alphabet to make it suitable for the Manchu people. ... The resulting script was known as tongki fuka akū hergen ("script without dots and circles"). In 1632, Dahai added diacritical marks to clear up a lot of the ambiguity present in the original Mongolian script; for instance, a leading k, g, and h are distinguished by the placement of no diacritical mark, a dot, and a circle respectively. This revision created the Standard script, known as tongki fuka sindaha hergen ("script with dots and circles").

Thus the early form of Manchu script was more similar to Mongolian, and orthographic reforms were made to the script to make it more suitable for use in writing Manchu. These two varieties of Manchu have different names but both are considered to be a single script, with a single Wikipedia article and a single level in the script family tree. I do not see any difference between Manchu and Mongolian in this respect -- Uyghurjin is just a stage in the development of the Mongolian script, not a separate script. BabelStone (talk) 22:42, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Wait a minute, do you mean that there'll never been such article called Sibe script or Daur script or both? I strongly oppose. --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) (talk) 10:10, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

To create such articles, you would need to demonstrate that a) those terms are the established names in English language literature, and b) that the topics are notable enough to justify seperate articles. As you know by now, both questions can only be answered by reliable and independent published sources. --Latebird (talk) 15:54, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

It's not a issue of "which language does the term belongs to", it's a problem of "is it an independent article", if it is, we should loan words if there's no English term. Wikipedia has that example. --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) (talk) 07:38, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Sibe = Manchu. And unless the Daurs change their habits in using script, no. G Purevdorj (talk) 20:03, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Do you think Man'yōgana is an independent writing system? The case here is similar. --虞海 (Yú Hǎi) (talk) 07:38, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Man'yogana are a writing system all right (as would hold for Sino-Mongolian, which is more consistent than Man'yogana), but they aren't a script. But according to Tsumagari (in Janhunen (ed.) (2003), see pages 129-130), the Daur don't make use of a writing system that is peculiar to Daur (although such a writing system has been deviced), but write either in Chinese or Mongolian script (in the latter case with possible regional inferences). So I don't think your comparandum is appropriate. G Purevdorj (talk) 08:01, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

As another example, this text was written around two thousand years ago, which makes it more than twice as old as the Uyghur/Mongolian/Manchu scripts. Despite very obvious and substantial differences, it is still considered the same latin script as the one we use today to hold this discussion here. --Latebird (talk) 20:19, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, if 虞海 won't provide any references in support of Uyghurjin as a separate script, I will try finding some references that support a single Mongolian writing system. To start with this is what Language policy in the People's Republic of China by Minglang Zhou and Hongkai Sun has to say:

The current Mongol writing system, which has developed from the Old Uygur script, has changed a lot through several hundred years' development, with block letters, artistsic letters, and hand-written letters of all font sizes. The current Mongolian writing system is also called the traditional or Hudum Mongolian writing system, in contrast to competing systems adopted in history. For example, the writing system based on Phags pa created in the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) is called the new Mongolian writing system. Oirat speakers created the Todu or Clear system, leading to the naming of the traditional Mongolian system as Hudum or Obscure system.

The current Mongolian script can be traced back to the ancient Phoenicia writing system. It is believed that the current script developed from the Phoenicia script, to the Aramaic script, to Brahmi script, to the Sogdian script, to the Old Uygur script, and finally to the Mongol script (Yilinsite, 1987). ... Through more than one thousand years of development, this writing system has been perfected and its letters asthetically enriched.

No suggestion here that Uyghurjin and Hudum Mongolian are different scripts, but rather that the Mongolian script has a long history during which time various changes have taken place. BabelStone (talk) 12:01, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Looking for examples of Uyghurjin in English usage I found The history and the life of Chinggis Khan by Urgunge Onon, which notes that "The History [Tobchi'an] was written in the Uighuro-Mongol (Uighurjin Mongol) script by Mongol scholars." The author calls the Mongol script of the time "Uighurjin Mongol" because that is what it was — it would be anachronistic to call 13th century Mongolian writing Hudum Mongol as that term was not invented until centuries later to distinguish it from the Todo script. So we have two terms, "Uyghurjin" to refer to the Mongolian during the early period, and "Hudum" for the same Uighuro-Mongol script as it is written nowadays. To my mind this is just a matter of terminology, not of different scripts. BabelStone (talk) 12:14, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

As for the part about anachronism: does Onon say so or is it your interpretation? Else, I wouldn't say that you can simply derive this interpretation from the text you quoted. G Purevdorj (talk) 15:17, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Mongol script proposal

People might be interested to leave comments and feedback at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Mongolian)#Mongol script proposal. More opinions and ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 10:20, 12 July 2010 (UTC)