Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2012 January 1

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January 1

Official side of North Korean power transfer

As I read of Kim Jong-un taking power over this thing and that thing and the other thing in North Korea, I'm left with one question — officially, who's putting him in charge of these things? I note from his article that the Politburo (or whatever they call it) is the body that made him the supreme military commander, but I've not yet seen anything about the body or individual who's officially responsible for awarding him his many other titles. Politics of North Korea and Government of North Korea don't say anything, while Death and funeral of Kim Jong-il speaks of the president having confirmed that he's the leader; however, this seems to be more of agreement with what's already been officially decided by someone else, and I'm not sure who this "president" is, since President Grandpa doesn't make many public statements these days. Nyttend (talk) 05:30, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, we don't exactly know how these things work. Outsiders have to gauge who's in charge from the Korean Central News Agency and North Korean media. Presumably, the decision, to the extent there was one, would be made by some combination of the Politboro of the Workers' Party of Korea, the cabinet and the presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly. In reality, I'm sure Kim Jong-Il made it clear before he died that his son would succeed him, and all of official Pyongyang just accepted it. The term "Supreme Leader," which the North Korean media called Kim Jong Un, is not in the country's constitution. His father, in addition to being "Dear Leader," was the chairman of the country's defense commission, a position theoretically is elected by the assembly or its presidium. Kim Jong Il was also general secretary of the party, and we can guess that at some time Kim Jong Un will also be elected to that position by the party's central committee or Politboro. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 06:15, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for the lack of clarity — I was purely interested in the formalities; the actual workings I figured were murky enough that we couldn't understand them, so I was looking only at the "all of official Pyongyang". In particular, I didn't realise that there was no official position of Dear Leader or Supreme Leader; thanks for pointing out the methods of succeeding to the defence and party chairs. I didn't know but that they might have a party congress (if they still have such a thing, now that Junche has replaced communism) for the formal election of a general secretary. Nyttend (talk) 16:19, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Hindi & Punjabi Names for Mount Everest

What are the Hindi and Punjabi names for Mount Everest? 99.245.83.28 (talk) 16:42, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

The Hindi Wikipedia article is at hi:एवरेस्ट पर्वत, which is simply a transliteration of the English name. Shimgray | talk | 17:13, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I want to know the romanization pronunication of the Hindi and Punjabi names for Mount Everest. 99.245.83.28 (talk) 17:23, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

There isn't a Hindi name for Mount Everest. The mountain isn't (practically) visible from anywhere that Hindi is natively spoken. So Hindi speakers just call it "Mount Everest". 84.93.149.224 (talk) 17:52, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

What did they call it before it was named "Mount Everest"? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 18:46, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps "that big mountain in that foreign country", or "Peak XV", or "Holy Mother" (all in Hindi, of course!), or a Hindi pronunciation of ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ ? Can anyone help with Punjabi? Dbfirs 21:25, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Part of the problem with Everest is that it had several local names by people in different regions (probably none Hindi, though). See Mount_Everest#Naming. There probably just weren't very many Hindi speakers prior to 1865 who would have had an opportunity to call it something. Hindi speakers in Darjeeling might have called it the local Nepali name, Deodhunga, although it's unclear from the source how common this name really was in the region. Buddy431 (talk) 23:39, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

There's really no reason why it would ever have been discussed in Hindi then. It wasn't at all a famous mountain, it's not of any great cultural or religious significance, it's not really visible (that is it's not discernible from a general jumble of peaks) until you're pretty close to it, and it wasn't obvious to anyone that it was especially tall. It's not near a trade route or anywhere of any economic value. And it's between two countries that have always been difficult to travel in, and that banned foreigners altogether for hundreds of years. The fondness for cataloguing, and then climbing, distant and horribly unpleasant mountains is mostly a western import. So the few Hindi speakers who came upon it would have been in the area for trade, and there's no reason for them to be dreaming up Hindi names for rather un-noteworthy mountains in what was a distant (by travel-time) and very alien land. There's no more sense in there being a Hindi name for Everest than there being a Navajo name for Aldershot. 91.125.171.9 (talk) 00:04, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

You can look up wikipedian's who speak different languages. I'll browse through Category:User pa and leave some notes to a few editors who look active. Buddy431 (talk)

Thanks for messaging me Buddy431 -

• Different Hindi-speaking areas use different names for it. In Uttarakhand, for example, it is called by the same name as Nepali, which is सगरमाथा (sagarmāthā, meaning the forehead of the sky). Sometimes people also pronounce it as सागरमाथा (sāgarmāthā, which means forehead of the ocean). In places like Haryana, people just call it एवरेस्ट पर्वत (Evrest Parvat, /ɛvrɛsʈ pərvət̪/, meaning everest peak). Prior to the Chinese closure of Tibet, the northern Hindi speaking areas used to get wool, precious stones, musk and other items from Tibet and export salt and iron through the Himalayas. So those areas actually had a lot of exposure and transit to Tibet (infact there are Hindi-speaking people who are partially ethnic Tibetans, e.g. Bachendri Pal - see a pic here - she's famous in India). Also, Tibet was and is a major pilgrim site for northern Hindus (see Lake Manasarovar). They are neighboring areas, so not like Navajos and Aldershot :)
• Punjabi speakers do not call it by the Sagarmatha name. It is ਮਾਉੰਟ ਏਵਰੇਸਟ (Mount Evrest, people just say this without being aware of the meaning of the word 'mount') or, like some Hindi speakers, either ਏਵਰੇਸਟ ਪਰਵਤ (Evrest Parvat - please note the schwa skipping after the 'v' in Hindi and Punjabi) or 'ਏਵਰੇਸਟ ਪਰਬਤ' (Evrest Parbat). Punjabi has two scripts. What I just wrote was the Gurmukhi script on which the Punjabi/ਪੰਜਾਬੀ/pa wikipedia is based. In Shahmukhi (on which the Punjabi/ur/pnb wikipedia is based), it is written as ur (Mount Evrest) or ur (Evrest Parbat, /ɛvrɛsʈ pərbət̪/).

Hope that helps! --Hunnjazal (talk) 00:29, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Excellent information. The gist I get is that the mountain was well-known only to locals, hence it has several local names that approximate to "Holy Mother". The "Sagarmatha" name is a recent invention created for political reasons. It's interesting that some languages transliterate it as "Mount Everest", which is essentially gibberish in the local language. Kind of like when Americans used to call the famous Japanese peak "Mount Fujiyama", which is kind of like saying "Mount Fuji Mountain". A situation similar to Everest is the remote and dangerous K2, which lacked a local name and was pretty much unknown until the British survey. Since then, transliteration of "K2" into local languages has effectively become its local name. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:37, 2 January 2012 (UTC)