Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 July 29

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July 29

Tais everywhere!

Looking at the names of four Taiwanese cities, Taipei (臺北), Taichung (臺中), Tainan (臺南) and Taitung (臺東), it can be seen that they share the same first character (臺 Tai, as in 臺灣 Taiwan) while the second one indicates their positions in relation to the island of Taiwan (north, center, south and east respectively). What I'm asking is why the "positional" character is the second one and not the first? I'm not a speaker of Chinese but, from what I know about it, I would be expecting a scheme such as: North-Tai, Center-Tai, South-Tai and East-Tai, not the opposite. Can someone explain this situation to me? Are there other examples like this? (I'm erasing this second question because evidently it may sound like I'm asking about any language while I'm talking specifically about Chinese.) Thank you! 79.35.53.87 (talk) 00:06, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Paris-Nord, Paris-Sud, Paris-Est.  --Lambiam 11:59, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Word order is not the same in all languages.DOR (ex-HK) (talk) 20:09, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Chinese has Beijing and Nanjing, but also Hubei and Hunan. Is there a systematic to these differences or is the order free? The translations suggest that direction in the first position indicates an adjective characterising the second part (northern and southern capital), whereas second position represents a direction with respect to the first part (to the north and south of the lake; in the north/south/centre of Taiwan?). I've forgotten too much Chinese... --Wrongfilter (talk) 20:43, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

There's also Hainan and Nanhai. both made up of Nan/南 and Hai/海。 I think it's just names. I have no experience of Taiwan but in China it's common to form Chinese names of two or three characters with little regard for grammatical meaning/word order. I am thinking of personal names and company names, but it surely applies also to place names which will still be being devised today. And who knows, in a hundred or a thousand years maybe a village being named today will be the capital of a future state.--2A04:4A43:901F:FE56:7C29:7255:3786:BFF3 (talk) 06:46, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

From what I understand direction-second is far more common, with Beijing et al. being the exception. Remsense诉 07:52, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Another thought. Chinese is an odd language. It seems to have a long and stable history, with written characters from thousands of years ago easily understood today. Also for most of its history it was expressed in one way, using Classical Chinese which was the main way of writing Chinese up until a hundred years ago or so.

But Chinese changed dramatically over this time. Classical Chinese is very different from modern vernacular Chinese, really a different language. And the spoken language changed even more, changes that have been disguised by the stability of the written forms.

So it's possible word order was different, or far more flexible, when some of the names here were devised. There are examples at Classical Chinese grammar#Core constituent order of this in particular contexts. It's possible therefore that place names that now seem odd were once correct, according to the grammar of earlier versions of Chinese. Then once written down and widely used the names were fixed, so didn't change as grammar changed.--2A04:4A43:90FF:FB2D:B95F:6B63:16FE:9FE3 (talk) 13:10, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

An Egyptian "god of the extended arm"

On pg 2 of Budge's Book of the Dead lexicon, where is the reference? "Au-a", the "god of the extended arm." I'd like to see that page of papyrus. It sounds like a famous Exodus-related phrase. Deuteronomy 4:34 and 5:15 "with a mighty hand and outstretched arm." Temerarius (talk) 03:01, 29 July 2024 (UTC)