Talk:Mongolian language in Inner Mongolia

NPOV

As far as I know, China has never claim such a language. China considers the Chahar-Khalkha-Oirat-Horchin-Harchin, Bargu-Buriat and Oriat the three great dialect groups of Mongolian (sometimes Horchin-Harchin is split), but never claim a language called “Southern Mongolian”or “South Mongolian”. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 05:09, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

"China" does not tend to make any claims about Mongolian varieties spoken outside of China. It is correct that Chinese language policy claims the 3 varieties you mention to be dialect groups. But your claim about Khalkha is wrong. The inclusion of Shilin gol into Chakhar and the failure to mention Khalkha as a variety spoken in Inner Mongolia clearly shows this. To refute this claim, please show me authoritative literature (best by the Language Council of Inner Mongolia) that claims that Khalkha and Chakhar are one and the same dialect group. If you deign to look up Secenbagatur et al. 2005 (which is written by established Inner Mongolian scholars), you can get an overview of the available classifications yourself. Second point: how are these dialect groups of China called? Oirat, Bargu-Buryat and Öbür Monggol. The latter can be translated into English as "South Mongolian". I don't want to revert your move, though. I think "Standard Mongolian (China)" is a more helpful way to name this variety than striving for a more direct translation. But this still leaves you with the challenge to show inhowfar this articles (as it is now) is confusing or biased. Else I would have to remove the tags. G Purevdorj (talk) 18:43, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I actually like your renaming, but would you be so kind as to provide a few sources that (in Chinese, Mongolian or English) use a terminology that really could be translated as Standard Mongolian? If not, I fear we have to undo your renaming. (And yes, while I think of it: could you please get used to the convention that you should FIRST discuss, THEN move? There are two points at Wikipedia:Moving a page#Before moving a page that you should hold in mind. E.g. if you think that the previous naming was partisan (and yours is not), this is reason to believe that your move WILL be controversial.) G Purevdorj (talk) 19:52, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Proposed move

I am really surprised that 虞海 (Yú Hǎi) first made such a magnificent move and then takes a wikibreak. What her/his move has accomplished is a discrepancy between the article content (which describes a proposed dialect grouping) and its name (which describes a standard language). Given that this article is clearly NOT about barimjiya abiya per se, I am the more uncomfortable with this renaming the more I think about it. There is probably no alternative to moving it back, or, as 虞海 pointed out somewhere else, to "Southern Mongolian" instead of "South Mongolian". I actually have to investigate into this before moving, but I guess 虞海 might even have been right here. I will do so next week. But I already write this notification in order to give anybody the chance to defend the current page title. G Purevdorj (talk) 20:29, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

In fact I may take w wikibreak in every case. This time I will try to find a source of “Standard Mongolian”, but before that, please tell me what is the difference between “Standard voice of Mongolian language” and “Standard Mongolian language”, or I'll never know what kinds of citation you need (I failed to get your point). ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 10:53, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

My time online is more severely limited than I thought and this computer even prevents me from logging in. But let's try to get to the point as far as I can understand your question. For there is no "Standard Mongolian" to begin with. There are two words in use. 1. "Barimjiya abiya" ("model sounds" -> "Standard pronunciation"), the standard pronunciation of Mongolian in China as defined by linguists who took the pronunciation of the Shuluun Hoh Banner and did away with all perceived irregularities. 2. Obur monggol ayalgu ("Southern Mongolian" or "Inner Mongolian") which includes every dialect of Mongolian spoken in China which is neither classified as Oirat nor Buryat. (This includes Bargu, which in official classifications is always classified along with Buryat.) While you can say that "Southern Mongolian" is the grammatical standard of Mongolian in China, I am not aware of anybody who used the word "Standard Mongolian" in a terminological way as related to the standard of Mongolian in China. So I wonder if you can come up with any Chinese citations ... G Purevdorj (talk) 01:38, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

If there is no new input into this discussion, I will move to Southern Mongolian and remove the tags. G Purevdorj (talk) 19:36, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

There was no new input, so I now (rather belatedly) moved and removed. I would ask 虞海 who did an unjustified move for the second time to engage in a discussion before moving in the future. Else, in spite of all perceivable good intention, such behaviour has a disruptive effect and causes more work than the other way round. G Purevdorj (talk) 07:11, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I have a comment: since this article is about language, but "Southern Mongolian" (or "Standard Mongolian") is an adjective word which does not necessarily refer to a language (but can be anything related to Southern or Inner Mongolia), so neither is very appealing to me. Maybe Southern or Inner Mongolian language should be the better name? Also, considering the term "Southern Mongolian language" does not seem to be widely used, I personally think "Inner Mongolian language" is perhaps better. Thanks for considering. --64.56.255.19 (talk) 02:20, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Neither term is conventionalized in English. övör may be understood in a geographical sense, cf. Övörkhangai Province. There is also a paper of Höhbaatar on a teminological change from “Dotood” ‘Inner’ to “Övör” [1. ‘lab’ 2.] ‘southern side of a mountain’ ([Abstract]), according to which Inner Mongolia used to be called “Dotood mongol” . Consequently, the translation “Inner Mongolian” is a way to disambiguate the term that Mongolians in modern day China strove to avoid. “Southern Mongolian” is the other possible disambiguation. I am not really concerned whether you add “language” to the article name or not. It gets more clumsy by that, but gets disambiguated in a way. G Purevdorj (talk) 08:08, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry about my failure on having an eye on this article, but what's your exact idea about the name "Southern Mongolian"? At least I didn't find any terms like 内蒙古语 or 南蒙古语 in China, nor did I find any terms like “Obur monggol ayalgu”. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 09:10, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

• There is, terms such as 内蒙古方言 as opposed to Buriat and Oirat, but it's never 内蒙古语 or 南蒙古语 as opposed to Khalkha, since Khalkha in Inner Mongolia is a branch of the 内蒙古方言. The use of “Southern Mongolian language” is offensive (consider, for example, if I call your language “Northern Mongolian language”). ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 09:19, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
• Can I interpret your comment in this way: I should to seek for sources about “Standard grammar of Mongolian language” rather than “Standard voice/pronunciation of Mongolian language”? ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 09:26, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

1. “Northern Mongolian” is Buryat, while my language is „Central Mongolian“. I agree that no source in Chinese or Mongolian would call either of these a “language”, due to two different reasons:

• There is a dialect continuum that is usually recognized by Mongolian scholars.
• The Chinese term 方言 ‘dialect’ is often used in a way very similar to English ‘language’.

At the time being, wikipedia articles on Mongolian assume the category “language” for major dialect groups of Mongolian. This reflects the practice in Europe where, however, a distinction is usually made between Buryat, Oirat and Mongolian (Khalkha and peripheric, i.e. Southern Mongolian). This distinction is not unheard of in the research of Mongolian scholars who, however, would speak about ONE language, three major dialect groups and then the subdivision of the latter dialect group. Concluding this line of thought, I don’t have any objections against not adding a classifying “language” to this article.

2. I suppose you might be aware that 内蒙古方言 IS “Öbür monggol ayalgu”. There is a slight semantic mismatch between 内 and “öbür”, but they are translation equivalents, and officially so.

3. “Southern Mongolian language” would even for a second reason not be a suitable name for this article: given the confusing terminological situation, the reader might feel reminded of “Standard language” (like it is in the article on Kalmyk language which still could do with a good cleaning up, but I might take care of that in the course of learning Russian). Given the current content of this article, it is not about a standard language as such, although some information is provided on this related topic. If you were able to do so (which you are not because you cannot read Mongolian sources), you could write such an article. I actually would like to do so, but there is nobody who will give me two month’s salary for it, so I cannot find the time to come to grips with some intriguing problems that I’d like to understand before touching that hot iron. This article in its current form is about a proposed grouping of dialects.

G Purevdorj (talk) 10:32, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Before I post my reply here, I hope you to answer me 2 questions (plz):

1. Do you consider Oirat and Bargu-Buriat 2 languages, or 2 dialect of Mongolian along with Chakhar-Khalkha?
2. Do you think, to call Khalkha the "Central Mongolian" while Chakhar become the "South Mongolian" or "Peripheral Mongolian" a Mongolia-centered view?
   1. Or furthermore, if you indeed think Khalkha should be "Central" while others must be unimportant, do you think, to call Chakhar the "Central Mongolian" while Khalkha the "Northern Mongolian", Buriat the "Northeastern Mongolian" a China-centered view?

––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 15:42, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

1. Bargu-Buryat is considered a dialect, either of Buryat or (rarely) Southern Mongolian. Oirat in the current framework of wikipedia is considered a language, but you could also call it a major dialect group of Mongolian.

2.1 The area where Mongolian is spoken has Khalkha in its center. In the north of the Khalkha area there is Buryat, in the east and south-east Khorchin, in the south Ordos, in the west Oirat. From this, you can draw descriptive terminology. The Mongolian state indeed happens to be in the center here, so this view is centered on Mongolia. (In the classification I subscribe to myself, “Southern Mongolian” is not used at all because Chakhar and Ordos are linguistically similar to Khalkha, so that I would term the three of these Central Mongolian.) “Peripheral Mongolian” is an unfortunate terminology used in the Ethnologue, the most influential classification of the languages of the world. It might be interpreted in a geographical way, but as Buryat and Oirat have classifications of their own, it can easily acquire derogatory connotations.

2.1 “call Chakhar the "Central Mongolian" while Khalkha the "Northern Mongolian", Buriat the "Northeastern Mongolian" a China-centered view” - has anybody come up with such a view? I would consider it inadequate, yes, unless you look at Mongolic, not Mongolian.

G Purevdorj (talk) 16:56, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry I thought you were a Mongol and asked that question. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 12:36, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Back to the discussion

I think the following things are consensuses:

1. The term “standard pronunciation” (ᠪᠠᠷᠢᠮᠵᠢᠶ᠎ᠠ ᠠᠪᠢᠶ᠎ᠠ) is claimed;
2. The concept “Southern Mongolian language” (ᠥᠪᠦᠷ ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ ᠬᠡᠯᠡ) is never claimed;
3. The concept “Inner Mongolian dialect” (ᠥᠪᠦᠷ ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ ᠠᠶᠠᠯᠭᠣ) is used;

And it's a question

1. whether Khalkha is included in “Inner Mongolian dialect”.
2. whether it form a standard language.

Isn't it? ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 08:59, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

It is rather not the question :-). The term that would include Khalkha would be "Central Mongolian", dividing "Southern Mongolian" into two parts, or "Mongolian proper", occasionally grouping both terms together to the exclusion of Oirat and Buryat. Everyone who claims "Southern Mongolian" intends to exclude Khalkha. "Southern Mongolian" is a proposal for a linguistic grouping, while "barimjaa abia" is a norm within language politics that corresponds to this proposal. "language" is never claimed, that I agree with, it will always be called "nutug-un ayalgu" 'major dialect, dialect group'. The difference between "South" and "Inner" is one of rendering the same Mongolian word into English. "öbür" is not the same as "dotugadu" and it ought to be translated differently (due to the absence of a standard translation in English such as doubtlessly exists for "Inner Mongolia" which is, however, not a translation from Mongolian "öbür monggol", but from Chinese "neimenggu"). G Purevdorj (talk) 17:44, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Reply:

1. Any evidence? Or who claimd "Southern Mongolian" or "Inner Mongolian" and exclude Khalkha from it?
2. south, front, and inner are different render of "öbür", but Chinese resources often use "内蒙古方言", too. (If you want some citation, I may provide.) So inner become the only translation covers both Mongolian and Chinese.

––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 12:32, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

You are being a bit impolite in your wording, but I'll live with it.

• Question 1: Sechenbaatar et al. 2005 as cited in the article. Bayancogtu: Nutug-un ayalgun-u sinjilel. Hohhot 2007, page 282 claims that. Secen et al.: Monggol helen-ü nutug-un ayalgun-u sinjilel. Beijing 1998 claim this (as can immediately be seen from their list of contents). Buu Manliang: Monggol yarian-u kele jüi. Hohhot 2005, page 5 claim this. I could probably provide you with ten more sources, but don't forget to provide your sources first.
• Question 2: for the reasons I mentioned in my last answer to you, "South" is not a feasible translation of "öbür" in this context (which originally refers to the south side of a mountain); if "inner" was meant, "dotugadu" would have been used. I know of the Chinese use (which has the same reference, but not the same meaning), but it is irrelevant: most of the research literature on this topic is written in Mongolian, therefore the term has to be translated from Mongolian as accurate as possible. G Purevdorj (talk) 14:27, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry if you feel uncomfortable with my word.

1. I don't understand Mongolian language, but I'll try to have a look at these reference you gave. And I'll offer some Chinese source which includes Khalkha in Inner Mongolian dialect.
2. The Mongolian of Inner Mongolia is not dotugadu monggol, but obur monggol. So obur monggol ayalgu would be ayalgu of obur monggol, that is, dialects of Inner Mongolia, i.e. Inner Mongolian dialect. Plus, "Inner" is both "内" and "obur" while "Southern" is "obur" only, so why should we use "Southern" rather than "Inner"? If 'Southern Mongolian" is preferable, why don't we use "Front Mongolian"?

––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 12:36, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

2. Well, you do something like that. The word contrasting to Öbür Monggol in modern Mongolian is Aru Monggol, which means north and, by mere extension orientated on the yurt which always has its door to the south side, back (part of). back cannot directly contrast with inner (it would be front and back or inner and outer), but north can contrast to south. You see, while you are using Chinese to disambiguate, I am relying on language-internal reasoning (which would be preferred in linguistics). The Chinese language retains the old imperialist terminology, but in Mongolian dotugadu monggol was changed to öbür monggol. This does not help with the article on South Mongolia, because Inner Mongolia is common English terminology, but the respective language (which has never been claimed to correspond to the Mongolian spoken in Inner Mongolia in a 1:1 relationship, else it could be extended by analogy) is not subject to the same naming constraints. G Purevdorj (talk) 06:53, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Tag

Hi Qingley! You just tagged the article. I agree that the article name is not particularly conventionalized, but I am not aware of any English-language sources that addresses this topic. On the other hand, there is abundant literature in Mongolian, thus notability is not a problem. "Inner Mongolian" is not meant, that would include e.g. Bargu. There is actually a Mongolian (strictly terminological) word to refer to the dialects spoken in Inner Mongolia, namely, övörlögch, for which the translation "Inner Mongolian" would fit. Given that we cannot translate with that word, what other English rendering would you suggest? If there is no productive (and informed) discussion, it seems quite out of proportion to retain a tag that even suggests something like deletion. G Purevdorj (talk) 22:45, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually, at Wikipedia:NEO#NEO it is written: "In a few cases, there will be notable topics which are well-documented in reliable sources, but for which no accepted short-hand term exists. It can be tempting to employ a neologism in such a case. Instead, it is preferable to use a title that is a descriptive phrase in plain English if possible, even if this makes for a somewhat long or awkward title." I do think that this title confirms to this guideline very well - the term is descriptive in a western-northern-eastern-central-southern division of Mongolian dialects. G Purevdorj (talk) 22:54, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes I remember I said I'd like to respect you. But in case you you want some even more descriptive titles, then phrases like "Southern Mongolian direct group" may worth consideration. Thanks. --Chinyin (talk) 02:19, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand your aversion to "Inner Mongolian", since the article prior to my modifications used "Southern Mongolia" rather than "Inner Mongolia" to describe the place formally named the latter. It is understood that the "Inner Mongolian" might not cover all Mongolian dialects spoken in Inner Mongolia, or may cover more than that; names for languages are funny like that. As you know, "Southern Mongolia" is both confusing (because to uninitiated English speakers it seems to refer to southern Mongolia) and aggressive (because it implies that a part of China should be a part of Mongolia). Following Chinyin's suggestions, I think this page should be renamed "Inner Mongolian dialects" or something similar. Shrigley (talk) 22:40, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

"Southern Mongolian", in contrast to "South Mongolian", does not make any geographical claims, and this was an amendment I made earlier. “Inner Mongolian” is confusing with respect to the Mongolian term “övörlögch” (promoted by Batzayaa) that in contrast to “övör mongol ayalgu” refers to all dialects of Inner Mongolia. Similarly, Secenbagatur et al. first divide into “Mongolian as spoken in China” and only then make the subsequent subdivision into Oirat, Övör mongol and Buryat. As such, “Mongolian proper in China” is not that bad descriptively. But, unfortunately, this does not work because Secenbagatur et al. and a subset of the other authors that promote Southern Mongolian as a dialect group would reject the label “Mongolian proper” for the Mongolian dialects spoken in China, while they would include Oirat as spoken in China etc. “Southern Mongolian dialect group” would be ok with me, even though it has the disadvantage of presupposing a dialect group that (for all ends and purposes of a grammarian like me) does not exist. I’m still thinking ... “Southern Mongolian” is much less than an ideal label for this article, but (independent of whether “dialect group” is included or not) it still seems like the lesser evil. G Purevdorj (talk) 00:35, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Broken Mark up

I don't know if anyone else is getting the same problem, but something is breaking upon the markup in my browser (Chrome running on Android 4.4.2) I'm getting large expanses of whitespace in both the article page and here on the talk page, I've looked and I can't find what's doing it, my browser trying to render Mongolian script and failing?--KTo288 (talk) 19:11, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Looks like its a problem with Chrome, tried viewing the page with Firefox, and I'm not getting nthe whitespace problem.--KTo288 (talk) 19:14, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

This article is pseudo science

It is disappointing to find this article on Wikipedia as purporting to present "knowledge". It needs to be heavily rethought.

"Southern Mongolian or Inner Mongolian is a proposed major dialect group within the taxonomy of the Mongolian language."

There is no way that this would stand up to scrutiny. From the standpoint of dialectology, the dialects of Inner Mongolia do not form a natural grouping with regard to each other (the differences are too great) nor with regard to other varieties of Mongolian (with which they share cross-border similarities). The only thing that unites them is that they politically and geographically belong to "Inner Mongolia", which has nothing to do with dialectology and everything to do with politics.

The same article then veers off onto non-dialectological issues like "standard language" and "script", which relate less to natural dialects of language and more to policy differences from other Mongolian-speaking areas. Articles dealing with linguistic issues should not be placing feelings of commonality among Inner Mongolians above the actual scientific study of languages and their dialects.

What Inner Mongolia does have is a standard language, including a standard written language and standard pronunciation, that has been set up in opposition to the standard in Mongolia. This does not, however, make dialects on the ground into a "dialect continuum" of some "Inner Mongolian language".

Possible ways of reorganising this information (and as it stands, it does not add to our "knowledge" as per the aims of Wikipedia; it is simply misinformation) include:

• Mongolian dialects in Inner Mongolia

• Mongolian standard language in China

• Language policies for the Mongolian language in the People's Republic of China

• Features of the Mongolian language in China

The first (Mongolian dialects in Inner Mongolia) would cover the dialects spoken in Inner Mongolia, written on solid dialectological grounds. It would of necessity make reference to the Mongolian dialect area as a whole, including Mongolia, Russia, Xinjiang, Qinghai, etc., which are part of the same dialect continuum.

The second (Mongolian standard language in China) would cover the standard Mongolian language as adopted in China (pronunciation based on Chakhar, traditional Mongolian script, efforts to unify terminology, influence of Chinese, etc.). It might even take note of the varying dialects taken under the umbrella of the standard language. It would not claim that "Khorchin" and "Alxa" are dialects of the same "Inner Mongolian language".

The third is a variation on the second and should probably belong to the same article. It would cover policies adopted for the Mongolian language in China and the history of such policies.

The fourth could deal with issues like vocabulary and language that has become common across Inner Mongolia and that is not shared with Mongolia, influence from Chinese, etc., etc.

These are all separate aspects of the issue that have been bunched into the single pseudoscientific concept that Southern Mongolian or Inner Mongolian is a major dialect group within the taxonomy of the Mongolian language. If they are to be grouped into a single article, a better title might be:

• The Mongolian language in Inner Mongolia (or the Mongolian language in China).

Even if such a title is adopted, the article needs to be heavily rewritten.

103.26.195.60 (talk) 01:39, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Agree that "Mongolian language in Inner Mongolia" is a good name that appears to be very natural for the article. The updated article may discuss the Mongolian dialects in Inner Mongolia in general, the standard dialect, and of course the proposed dialect group can be included and discussed in the article as well, regardless of the status (or validity) of such a proposal. --Wengier (talk) 21:21, 5 September 2023 (UTC)