Talk:Buryat language

Numerals

Classical Mongolian numerals seem wrong to me, at least according to Groenbech-Krueger.

Macrolanguage

"Macrolanguage" is the term used by ISO 639-3 to describe Buryat, so it is the correct "technical" term used when referring to that standard. (Taivo (talk) 07:49, 5 October 2008 (UTC))

I would hold that average readers don't understand the term "macrolanguage" without looking into ISO 639-3. If she has sufficient linguistic knowledge, she might consider it intuitive for "varieties" such as Chinese, Arabic or Quechua. But as we can't expect them to do so, it isn't useful to name this quite special terminology in the first place. Buryat is usually conceived of as a language, sometimes as one of the three major dialects of Mongolian, and you don't address this customary understanding by referring to technical terms that belong to one classificational scheme. (And I must say I'm getting less and less confident into this scheme for Mongolic. Taking "Mongolian" (that I know far better than Buryat) as another macrolanguage and dividing it into "Halh Mongolian" and "Peripheral Mongolian" might be politically feasible, but it is rubbish from a linguistical viewpoint. No one considers Sönid as a member of some Khalkha variety, but in an internal classification of Mongolian proper, it must be understood as belonging into the same group. Chakhar, then, is nearer to Khalkha than to Khorchin, so a binary classification should group it accordingly.) G Purevdorj (talk) 10:48, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I really don't have any agenda here to use "macrolanguage". I think that the ISO is sometimes a bit too finely honed when it comes to naming "languages" and that this is a case in point. (Taivo (talk) 17:21, 5 October 2008 (UTC))

Stress, intonation

I removed the section about stress from Buryat language again, leaving the notice in place that it is the same as in Khalka. Duplicating such information verbatim is not a good idea (maintenance nightmare). It also made the article look extremely unbalanced, because no other formal information is present there yet. --Latebird (talk) 12:16, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

This makes little sense to me. The articles are not synced. What could the nightmare be? The information wont be verbatim because the data differs. Unbalanced = delete? Does that mean that I shouldve deleted the Mongolian article because it doesn't mention stress or syllable structure or ethnography of communication or countless other things? I dont understand the reasoning. – ishwar  (speak) 21:27, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

The text said (and still says) that it is the same in both cases. If this is so, then spelling out the same stuff twice means that any time the two copies get out of sync, one of them ends up being incorrect (that's the maintenance problem). Now you say (contradicting what you wrote in the article) that the data actually differs. Can you make up your mind please? Your comparison of the "unbalancedness" also doesn't make sense. I didn't delete the article, after all, and some minor elements missing among many is clearly not the same as only elaborating on one single characteristic.

But then, looking at the further discussion over there, it seems that your contribution contradicts other information in the article. Until that debate is settled, the discussion here is rather moot. --Latebird (talk) 17:07, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

There's no contradiction or mind making. They are different languages so the data is necessarily different as they have different words. But, the stress assignment algorithm is the same. It's the same with hundreds of languages with penultimate stress: the data differs, but the stress placement is the same.

Right, balancing unbalancedness via deletion doesnt make sense. The more appropriate remedy is addition of content.

Stress is not minor anymore than vowels. A linguistic description needs both segmental and prosodic components to be an adequate (=balanced) description. (Incidentally, wikipedia is most unbalanced in this respect.)

Whatever editorial problems that exist due to multiple analyses of Mongolian has little to do with Buryat.

There's no longer any syncing so you can relax now. – ishwar  (speak) 01:34, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, in this case most of the words happen to be the same... In fact, those two languages/dialects are so similar that it would seem much more interesting to highlight the differences than to just list examples. Btw.: Doesn't Wikipedia explain the definition of terms like "penultimate stress" somewhere? I would expect that in or near Stress (linguistics) (which should probably also get linked in a section related to the topic), which unfortunately just passes over most of the terminology. --Latebird (talk) 11:15, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm coming from the perspective that each language-dialect-grammar has its own beauty. The examples are to support the analysis and hopefully to clarify (as prose without examples can be less comprehensible). (Actually, it would be preferable to have more, but that's all there was in the source I read.) Any differences can be explained.

The Stress article is in bad shape. I've been thinking about adding to it, but it comes down to motivation & time. Penultimate stress, iambic/trochaic feet, etc. should all be explained in that article.

I was just going to do a fly-by cut&paste here, but you're forcing me to be more constructive.... – ishwar  (speak) 23:59, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Xada

According to two dictionaries I consulted, the word xada in (Russian) Buryat does indeed primarily mean "mountain" instead of "rock, cliff" (as would be the case in Khalkha, Kalmyk etc.). However, as the person who recently changed this word might have been knowledgable about another variety of Buryat, I'd suggest that s/he name her source. Alternatively, s/he could also discuss the matter in Buryat. While I doubt that it is appropriate to change the label, the matter itself is quite interesting. G Purevdorj (talk) 08:48, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Redirects

Dear 虞海! Excuse that I am very impatient tonight (for reasons entirely unrelated to Wikipedia), but I generally dislike it when people undo my redirects or renamings with any previous discussion. You might imagine that I had some reason to do so and so first try to discuss that reason before reverting.

There is very little linguistic evidence (or even data that could be used for such an argument) to argue that Russia Buriat and China Buriat are in any way "languages". They do not appear to be from a dialectological point of view, and I don't know any claims to this effect. The Ethnologue does not cite its literature in a transparent way and is therefore not transparent in a way that reliable sources are. You apparently went on to claim that Bargu Buriat is a standard in any meaningful way on the disambiguation page for Standard Mongolian. But the standard of Mongolian as spoken in China is the central dialect, i.e. not the eastern Buriat or western Oirat dialect. (This is stated and sourced on Mongolian language.) The Chinese educational authorities also enforce this. (Look at Oirat language for literature that confirms that claim.) So how do you arrive at such claims? G Purevdorj (talk) 23:13, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Remember the article Kalmyk language, Moldovan language and Dungan language? All these article has little linguistic notability, but are standarlized language in certain region:

Kalmyk language has little linguistic evidence because it's simply Torgut-Dorbet Oirat with Russian loan-words;

Dungan language has little linguistic evidence because it's simply Zhongyuan Mandarin with Russian loan-words;

Now will you merge Kalmyk into Torgut dialect and Dungan language into Zhongyuan Mandarin? Certainly not, for the same reason China Buriat, Mongolian Buriat, and Russia Buriat should be kept - they are by no means separate languages, but de facto different language standardlization though not officially declared. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 11:14, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I think we have two crucial issues here. The one is being an official standard. If so, we name them language irrespective of whether they factually are or not. I completely agree with you that Kalmyk from a linguistic point of view need not be differentiated from other Oirat varieties on more than a dialectal basis, at max. The same seems to hold for Dungan: it is Mandarin Chinese, but with a particular standard in the Soviet union. The need to classify all language articles as language or dialect or something is somehow inconvenient, though. No matter how you do it, it contributes little additional information and will always offend someone. But if there is a solution to this problem, I suppose it would be delanguifying Kalmyk and Dungan rather than calling close-to-identical Buriat varities different languages. G Purevdorj (talk) 11:35, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

1. If you can delanguifying Kalmyk and Dungan, it would be pretty ok to me to built China Buriat, Mongolian Buriat, and Russia Buriat into redirects. But currently they'ra not.
2. IMHO, when we call something a language, we don't really mean it is a separate language. For example, when we say Engrish language, we don't mean to say Engrish is linguistically different to English. Usually, when there's systematic linguistical difference, we say dialect (e.g. Torgut dialect, Khori dialect, Min Chinese, etc.); when there's only standarlization issue, however, we say language (e.g. Kalmyk, China Buriat, Dungan, etc.). Anyway, when there're no strong arguments, the three Buriat-related article should be kept what they were like.

––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 12:05, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

See at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Central Asia/Mongolia work group#X dialect to X Mongolian! G Purevdorj (talk) 15:39, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Note that if Kalmyk Oirat is acceptable, China Buriat is also acceptable. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 13:54, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

No, the point in moving "Kalmyk" away from "language" is to change the approach how Mongolic standard languages are treated on WP. There is no point in creating articles like China Buriat that have no significance (as a standard or as regionally particular dialects) whatsoever. G Purevdorj (talk) 14:50, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Vagindra script

Not ideal sources but the information checks out

http://books.google.com/books?id=Z5umNthHltQC&pg=PA293#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=5JN83EDDLl4C&pg=PA645#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=BoWGituXr8MC&pg=PA79#v=onepage&q&f=false

Someone with more knowledge should create an article on this vagindra script.

I found the Russian article on vagindra script at ru:Вагиндра. Also here at Agvan_Dorzhiev#Vagindra_script.

http://www.buryatia.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=My_eGallery&file=index&do=showpic&pid=3523&orderby=dateD

Rajmaan (talk) 16:11, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Buryat language material in German - M. Alexander Castrén's Versuch einer burjätischen sprachlehre, nebst kurzem wörterverzeichniss (1857)

M. Alexander Castrén's Versuch einer burjätischen sprachlehre, nebst kurzem wörterverzeichniss (1857)

https://archive.org/details/malexandercastr00schigoog

https://archive.org/details/malexandercastr02castgoog

Rajmaan (talk) 19:32, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Buriat, Russia Genesis Translation (1836)

Buriat, Russia Genesis Translation (1836)

https://archive.org/details/rosettaproject_bxr_gen-1

Rajmaan (talk) 00:14, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Poor sourcing for grammar

I don't know who added the citation for the grammar, but I'm pretty sure we aren't supposed to use premium services as a source. If someone with more knowledge can come in and fix that, that would be great. Densc (talk) 04:55, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Endangered language

https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/cess2021/p/10687

https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/troubled-state-buryat-language-today

I do not know the subject to describe the problem myself.Xx236 (talk) 12:19, 29 June 2022 (UTC)