Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 October 20

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October 20

Aladdin

Aladdin was most likely Arab. Why he is mentioned as Chinese in Wikipedia? --The Avengers (talk) 17:12, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

For the reasons already explained at great length in the article. ‑ iridescent 17:23, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

(ec)Who says he was "most likely Arab"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:24, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

It is part of Arabian Nights and the Aladdin from Disney movie and the Disney TV series is not Chinese. --The Avengers (talk) 17:33, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Disney changes a lot of things for its films and shows. So, why not the ethnicity of a character? Dismas|^(talk) 17:37, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Are you (the OP) actually reading the articles before you criticise them? As (correctly) stated in the leads of both Aladdin and Arabian Nights, Aladdin is not a part of the original Arabian Nights, but was added by the (French) Antoine Galland in his 18th-century translation. How Disney chooses to represent things has no particular relevance to reality (there is no record of any romantic connection between John Smith and Pocahontas in reality, for instance). ‑ iridescent 18:05, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

She probably didn't have a raccoon best friend, either. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:16, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Next you'll be telling me there's no evidence for a talking wolf ever being appointed Sheriff of Nottingham… ‑ iridescent 21:28, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

No, but at least that's relatively credible (and less falsifiable). Wolves are pack animals, raccoons are generally solitary, and when they do cohabit, it's with their own gender. At best, Meeko and Pocahontas only hooked up for a couple of magical nights in the early springs, and there's no evidence Thomas Rolfe had a tail or any littermates. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:19, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Thomas Wolfe, on the other hand, had many tales. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:24, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

• If I were addressing a remark to the OP and not to some other participant, I'd use only one indent. But that's just me. —Tamfang (talk) 08:17, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

No, not just you, Tamfang. That is what is commonly referred to as "the rule" (albeit one more often honoured in the breach than the observance around here). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:22, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Also, Persians are not Arabs. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:20, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Lots of Muslims are named Aladdin. I don't know Whether he was an Arab, Persian, Turkmenistanian , Uzbekistani, Mongolian, but he could least likely be a Chinese. Then Aladdin would have a Chinese name like Chang, Zhang. This is fiction and no one knows from where the story originated from. Till now China, Hong Kong didn't make movies or TV shows showing Aladdin as a Chinese hero. If Aladdin was Chinese then Hong Kong would have made a movie about Aladdin played by a Chinese actor as they make movies and TV series about Journey to the West. The Avengers (talk) 01:02, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

It's quite clear you aren't interested in reading the Wikipedia article OR the source material used to write it, both of which discuss in detail the history and provenance of the story in question. If you aren't interested in doing so, please carry on your debate elsewhere. This isn't the place to assert your opinion and engage in arguments with others.--Jayron32 03:08, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

No one is forced to answer my questions or argue with me. Anyone who feels my questions as baseless, are free to ignore my comments. I am not editing the main article or making unsourced edit. And quoting the article____ "The story is set in China, and Aladdin is Chinese.[5] However, most of the people in the story are Muslims; there is a Jewish merchant who buys Aladdin's wares (and incidentally cheats him), but there is no mention of Buddhists or Confucians. Some commentators believe that this suggests that the story might be set in Turkestan (encompassing Central Asia and the modern Chinese province of Xinjiang).[6] This speculation depends on a knowledge of China that the teller of a folk tale (as opposed to a geographic expert) might well not possess,"______ — Preceding unsigned comment added by The Avengers (talk • contribs) 05:20, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Since you quoted that part, does that mean you understand now that it makes sense that Aladdin was Chinese because that's what the story says he was? And the reason he had a name you may not associate as being Chinese is probably because the teller of the story, may not have even know what sort of names would be Chinese. And in any case, may not have cared since the story tellers primary motivation was likely to tell a story their audience would understand and enjoy, not to tell a story some random person hundreds of years later would consider accurately set?

Note that no one said the story originated from China. If you read our article, it definitely never says that. In fact, it implies it could be Arabic, although we don't really know where it came from since we don't have good historic sources.

A story teller doesn't of course have to set their stories in their current locale, they can set them in any locales they know about. In the modern internet world, if I want to set my stories in Norway (to give a random example), I may give my characters names like Anne, Inger and Karl [1], rather than Zhang Chang or Aladdin. But if I were composing my story hundreds of years ago as a perhaps somewhat educated but likely non-expert on cultural geographical matters, things may be different.

Since the records of this story are slim, we don't really know what the original setting for the story was. It's easily possible it wasn't even originally set in China with a local character but this was changed by some later retellers for various reasons like that one mentioned in our article about China being the Far East. But what we do know is the oldest versions we have appear to be set in China.

In a similar fashion, I could write a story set in India (with my character being Indian), and at the last minute decide to set in in Norway (with my character being Norwegian), change a few place names, and hope no one notices. Regardless of whether they do, my story is still set in Norway with a Norwegian character, even if many of the details may fit better with my original composition of it being in India. Some random person on the RD saying my character isn't Norwegian isn't going to change the fact that my character is Norwegian, because I explicitly said it was in the story in a clear cut manner (rather than coming from an unreliable narrator for example).

BTW, I take it you also understand that Journey to the West is largely irrelevant as a comparison, because it's a classical Chinese novel so therefore something HK film makers are liable to be interested in. While Aladdin is set in China, but of unknown origins (probably not Chinese) and has characters many Chinese audiences may be less likely to identify with, so may not be something that HK filmmakers will be intrisicly interested in, even if it happens to be set in China.

Nil Einne (talk) 14:50, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Also, Muslims are not Arabs. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:07, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Apparently, Disney Aladdin is from Agrabah, which is is a wing of Hollywood's fabricated Ayrabland. So he's Californian. At least he was back in 1992, when The Los Angeles Times (and the liberal media empire, in general) concerned itself with goofy archaic notions like magnetic tape. Not quite clear if any of this still applies since the September 2001 agreement. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:05, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

What is the second most widely used calendar in the world?

Obviously the most common calendar is the Gregorian , but what is next most common? Either in the sense of number of people for whom it is the primary calendar of their lives (ruling out many purely-religious or traditional calendars), or number of people who use the calendar at all (thus including those ones). ± Lenoxus (" *** ")

I'm pretty sure that every major government, society, and education system in the world uses the Gregorian calendar for common use almost exclusively, so the list of peoples that do not use the Gregorian calendar in common usage would be miniscule and mostly consist of small, isolated cultures. It's pretty damned close to as universal as you can get, insofar as I suspect the number of people using it is within significant figures of the population of the entire world. As far as calendars which are at least in partial use around the world (for religious or cultural purposes, rather than official or common usage), my suspicion is the two most common are the traditional Chinese calendar and the Islamic calendar (Hijri or AH calendar), given the number of Islamic people and the number of Chinese people are both well north of a billion. --Jayron32 19:45, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I take part of that back. It seems that the Solar Hijri calendar is the official calendar of both Iran and Afghanistan. --Jayron32 19:48, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Also found that the Thai solar calendar is in official use, but it is merely the Gregorian Calendar which has been phase-shifted 543 years, so it's based off of the Gregorian calendar, and uses the same months and days, but has a different year. --Jayron32 19:50, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I suspect in terms of actual day-to-day usage, as opposed to religious and traditional use, the Ethiopian calendar is up there as well. To the best of my knowledge, the only country not already mentioned where the Gregorian calendar is not in official use is North Korea, although the months of the Juche calendar are identical to those of the Gregorian calendar so DPRK dates are always just Gregorian date minus 1911 years. ‑ iridescent 19:51, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Similarly to the Juche and Thai Solar Calendars, the Minguo calendar is in use in Taiwan, and is just the Gregorian calendar with a different year number. --Jayron32 19:53, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

And apparently the Indian national calendar is the official calendar of India, though in practice the Gregorian Calendar seems to more widespread for every day use. - Lindert (talk) 20:00, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Japan also has its own year-numbering scheme for the Gregorian calendar. -- BenRG (talk) 05:18, 21 October 2015 (UTC)