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Ban Zu or Banzu ( Chinese : 班卒 ; pinyin : Bānzú ; Wade–Giles : Pan-tsu ; Malay : Pancur ) was a port settlement believed to have thrived in Singapore during the 14th century. It is proposed to be located on Fort Canning Hill and the area on the north bank of the Singapore River basin between the hill and the sea. It was mentioned by the Chinese traveller Wang Dayuan in his work Daoyi Zhilüe together with Long Ya Men as the two settlements that made up Temasek . It may have been abandoned before 1400 after an attack by either the Siamese or the Majapahit .

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71-569: Ban Zu is likely a Chinese transcription of the Malay word pancur meaning "spring of water". Pancur is a common placename in the region. Fansur (Pansur) in Sumatra was known to the Arabs in the 10th century, and Fansur was also the name of a capital of Johor in the 16th century. A spring used to exist on the west side of Fort Canning Hill, called pancur larangan or "forbidden spring" in Malay, where

142-461: A cache of gold ornaments dating to the mid-14th century was discovered at Fort Canning Hill while the Fort Canning reservoir was being excavated. These include a pair of near-identical flexible armlets, a finger ring inscribed with a bird-like motif, three pairs of circular rings (perhaps earrings), an elliptical ornament, and a jewelled clasp with a disc-and-conch motif. Some of these including

213-415: A curled tongue. The right hand holds aloft to the sky a curved-knife marked with a vajra. The left a blood filled skullcup to the heart, carrying a three-pointed khatvanga staff in the bend of the left elbow. Orange hair, eyebrows and beard flowing upwards, with five dry human heads as a crown and fifty wet, blood dripping, as a necklace. With five bone ornaments and a tiger skin as a lower garment; standing on

284-512: A great litterateur, K'ien-lung did not escape some serious errors. At one time he appointed a learned committee of Chinese, Manchus, Mongols, and Western Mohammedans to revise the foreign names of men and places which occur in the Yüan Records. So unscientific was this work that the K'ien-lung editions of the Liao, Kin, and Yüan histories are practically useless. The title Kalif rendered Ha-li-fu

355-814: A list of Jurchen words phonetically transcribed with Chinese characters. In the History of Yuan , Mongol names were phonetically transcribed in Chinese characters. In the Ming dynasty , the Chinese government's Bureau of Translators ( 四夷馆 Sìyí Guǎn ) and the Bureau of Interpreters ( 会同馆 Huìtóng Guǎn ) published bilingual dictionaries/vocabularies of foreign languages like the Bureau of Translators' multilingual dictionary ( 华夷译语 Huá-Yí yìyǔ , 'Sino-Barbarian Dictionary'), using Chinese characters to phonetically transcribe

426-414: A present)', 松 sōng 'pine; loose, slack', 耸 sǒng 'tower; alarm, attract' etc.), sou (cf. 搜 sōu 'search', 叟 sǒu 'old man', 馊 sōu 'sour, spoiled' and many others) or shou (cf. 收 shōu 'receive, accept', 受 shòu 'receive, accept', 手 shǒu 'hand', 首 shǒu 'head', 兽 shòu 'beast', 瘦 shòu 'thin' and so forth)." Belarus ( lit.  "White Russia")

497-634: A sable skin." By 别失八里 Bie-shi-ba-li in theuncorrupted Yuan shi, Bishbalik is to be understood. The meaning of this name in Turkish, is " Five cities," and the term 五城 Wu-ch'eng, meaning also "Five cities," occurs repeatedly in the Yuan shi, as a synonym of Bie-shi-ba-li. The committee however transformed the name into 巴實伯里 Ba-shi-bo-li, and state that Ba-shi in the language of the Mohammedans means "head" and bo-li "kidneys." The most recent edition of

568-424: A salt creek that would overflow at high water. A fresh water rivulet formed a kind of a moat alongside the wall. Although Wang Dayuan mentioned that Ban Zu was gated, no opening was apparent along this wall according to Crawfurd. Crawfurd also noted the remains of buildings, some of brick foundation, on the west and northern side of Fort Canning Hill. Among these are ruins of a terrace 40 feet (12 m) square near

639-502: A stroke from the similar sounding character 兵 bīng , and at the same time, the two characters look like a net and a paddle. The most general radical for transcription is the mouth radical, which is used to transcribe not only certain foreign terms (such as 咖啡 kāfēi , "coffee"), but also terms for which no Chinese characters exist in non-Mandarin varieties of Chinese (such as in Cantonese ). Such phono-semantic compounds make up

710-786: Is a choice of some 120 characters that have this as a Hanyu Pinyin reading. In the People's Republic of China , the process has been standardized by the Proper Names and Translation Service of the state-run Xinhua News Agency . Xinhua publishes an official reference guide, the Names of the World's Peoples: a Comprehensive Dictionary of Names in Roman-Chinese ( 世界人名翻译大辞典 Shìjiè Rénmíng Fānyì Dà Cídiǎn ), which controls most transcription for official media and publication in mainland China. As

781-604: Is common in four semantic domains: brand names, computer jargon , technological terms and toponyms . Some transcriptions are meant to have, or happen to have, positive connotations: Foreign companies are able to choose representations of their names which serve advertising purposes: Mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia use simplified characters in its transcriptions, while Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau typically use traditional characters . In addition, transcriptions used in Chinese speaking regions sometimes differ from official transcriptions. For example "Hawaii" ( 哈瓦伊 Hāwǎyī )

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852-412: Is poor and grain scarce. The climate is irregular, for there is heavy rain in summer, when it is rather cool. By custom and disposition [the people] are honest. They wear their hair short, with turbans of gold-brocaded satin, and red-oiled cloths [covering] their bodies. They boil sea-water to obtain salt and ferment rice to make spirits called ming chia . They are under a chieftain. Wang reported that

923-592: Is rendered as 夏威夷 Xiàwēiyí in most Chinese-language media while New Zealand ( 新西兰 Xīnxīlán ) is transcribed by Taiwan media as 紐西蘭 Niǔxīlán . In general, mainland China tends to preserve the pronunciation of names deriving from their language of origin while Taiwan often transcribes them according to the English pronunciation. For example, the Russian President Vladimir Putin is known as 普京 Pǔjīng in mainland sources after

994-732: Is the English-into-Chinese transcription table from Xinhua 's Names of the World's Peoples . This table uses the International Phonetic Alphabet for English vowels (rows) and consonants (columns). The characters now employed in standardized transcription tend to have abstract or obscure meanings and have fallen out of use, so that their phonetic use is apparent. Therefore, in many cases, the Chinese names non-Chinese people adopt for themselves are not those that are phonetically equivalent but are instead "adapted" from or "inspired" by (i.e., translations of)

1065-455: Is transcribed in Chinese as 白俄罗斯 Bái'éluósī , with 白 bái ("white") and 俄罗斯 Éluósī ("Russia") preserving the meaning of the original name. Similarly, the common ending -va in Russian female surnames is usually transcribed as 娃 wā , meaning "baby" or "girl", and the corresponding masculine suffix -[o]v is rendered as 夫 fū , meaning "man". In literary translations, Utopia

1136-407: Is written as monosyllabic logograms , and consonant clusters foreign to Chinese must be broken into their constituent sounds (or omitted), despite being thought of as a single unit in their original language. Since there are so many characters to choose from when transcribing a word, a translator can manipulate the transcription to add additional meaning. As an example, for the syllable jī , there

1207-533: The Beatles are known in mainland China as 披頭士 / 披头士 Pītóushì , "the mop-headed", and in Taiwan and Hong Kong, 披頭四 / 披头四 Pītóusì , "the mop-head four", reflecting the chengyu 披頭散髮 / 披头散发 pītóu sànfǎ concerning disheveled hair. They can also reflect subjective opinions or advertising. Esperanto , now known as "the international language" or literally "language of the world" ( 世界語 / 世界语 Shìjièyǔ ),

1278-424: The Chinese minorities , transcription into characters remains very common. Except for a handful of traditional exceptions, most modern transcription in mainland China uses the standardized Mandarin pronunciations exclusively. Modern Han Chinese consists of about 412 syllables in 5 tones, so homophones abound and most non-Han words have multiple possible transcriptions. This is particularly true since Chinese

1349-680: The Daur people were descended from a Khitan clan, changing the Khitan clan name 大賀 Dàhè , found in the History of Liao, to 達呼爾 Dáhū'ěr . The Chinese transcription of the Manchu clan name Niohuru 鈕祜祿 ( Niǔhùlù ) was edited and inserted in place of the Jurchen clan name 女奚烈 ( Nǚxīliè ). "2. A learned committee, consisting of Chinese, Manchus, Mongols, western Mohammedans, etc. was appointed by

1420-721: The Han dynasty after Zhang Qian 's exploration of the Western Regions . The Western Han also saw Liu Xiang 's transcription and translation of the " Song of the Yue Boatman " in his Garden of Stories . Some scholars have tried to use it to reconstruct an original version of the otherwise unrecorded language of the Yangtze's Yue people before their incorporation into the Han . The expansion of Buddhism within China during

1491-783: The Lion Face Dakini or Lion-headed Dakini , is a wisdom dakini of the Dzogchen tradition. She is represented as a fierce dakini with the head of a snow lion . Her mouth is depicted with a roar, symbolizing untamed fury and jubilant laughter. Her roar disperses discursive thoughts. She is naked, symbolizing that she herself is completely free of discursive thought. She is considered to be an emanation or manifestation of Guhyajnana Dakini (the principal Dakini teacher of Padmasambhava in Uddiyana), or of Mandarava (one of his consorts), or of Sangwa Yeshe . She represents

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1562-952: The Nyingma and another in the Sakya school. Although according to the tertön Nyangral Nyima Özer, the Nyingma Simhamukha is based on the Sakya tradition of Bari Lotsawa . According to the terma (in Tibetan: gong ter, 'a treasure of the mind') tradition of the Nyingma school, Senge Dongma is a manifestation of Padmasambhava, a secret spiritual form of Guru Rinpoche specifically for removing spiritual obstacles and negativity. Accomplished practitioners often visualize Padmasambhava as Simhamukha during their meditative practices. According to Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo , The uncommon lineage of

1633-725: The United States embassy in China recommends rendering " Obama " as 欧巴马 Ōubāmǎ , while Xinhua uses 奥巴马 Àobāmǎ . Transcription of foreign terms may date to the earliest surviving written records in China, the Shang oracle bones . As the Huaxia spread from their initial settlements near the confluence of the Wei and Yellow rivers , they were surrounded on all sides by other peoples . The Chinese characters developed to describe them may have originally transcribed local names, such as

1704-542: The later Han and Three Kingdoms period required the transcription of a great many Sanskrit and Pali terms. According to the Song -era scholar Zhou Dunyi , the monk and translator Xuanzang (of Journey to the West fame) handed down guidelines of "Five Kinds of Words Not to Translate" (simplified Chinese: 五种不翻 ; traditional Chinese: 五種不翻 ). He directed that transcription should be used instead of translation when

1775-491: The British Resident John Crawfurd wrote about the ruins in some details. Crawfurd described in 1822 the ancient city as being roughly triangular in shape with a base of around a mile in length. It was bounded to the north by remnants of a wall nearly a mile long, around 16 feet (5 m) wide and about 8–9 feet (3 m) high along present day Stamford Road , the east by the sea, and the west by

1846-401: The Chinese language permits, the K'ien-lung editions of these works have become completely unserviceable for historical and geographical investigations. K'ien-lung was very proud of the happy idea of metamorphosing the ancient proper names, and issued an edict, that in future no Chinese scholar should dare to use the ancient names. After the three histories had been corrupted, K'ien-lung ordered

1917-443: The Chinese of racism, as "Africa" is written as 非洲 Fēizhōu ("negative, wrong continent") in Chinese. Whether these accusations were justified is controversial. Cultural differences and personal preference about negative meaning is subjective. However, some translations are generally held to be inappropriate and are usually not used in today's transcriptions: According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann , phono-semantic matching in Chinese

1988-505: The Kin. Thus in the new editions of the histories of the Liao, Kin and Yüan, all the original proper names without exception disappeared, and were replaced by names of a new invention, which generally have little resemblance to the original. For further particulars, compare my Notes on Chinese Mediaeval Travellers, p. 58, note 1. By this way of corrupting the names of the original historios, which have generally rendered foreign sounds as correctly as

2059-782: The Mandarin pronunciation, Píkǎqiū 皮卡丘 , in the most recent series of Pokémon games, Pokémon Sun and Moon , in order to standardize marketing in the Greater China region. Even though Malaysia had their official transliteration names for ministers and currency unit ( Malaysian Ringgit ), China did not accept those transliterations and proceed to use their own transliterations. For Malay names, transliterations usually uses their pronunciation to transliterate into Chinese characters instead of their appeared romanization (e.g. Xinhua's translation usually transliterate letter by letter instead of following their pronunciation). The table below

2130-572: The Mongolian. Solon, Mongolian, and Manchu speakers were consulted with on the "correct" pronunciations of the names and words and their Chinese transcriptions were accordingly changed. However the Khitan language has now been found by modern linguists to be a Mongolic language and is unrelated to the Solon language. The project was part of the Siku Quanshu. Qianlong also promulgated a theory that

2201-575: The Yangtze and then to many cultures as far south as Vietnam . Interaction with the states of Chu , Wu , and Yue during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods of the later Zhou brings the first certain evidence of transcription: most famously, the word jiāng ( 江 ), originally krong , derives from the Austroasiatic word for "river". Besides proper names, a small number of loanwords also found their way into Chinese during

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2272-570: The Yüan shi (also with corrupted proper names) is dated 1824, but Archimandrite Palladius has noticed that it was only finished about twenty years later. This edition is not difficult of purchase, and I fancy it is the only edition of the Yuan shi found in European libraries. The numerous translations from the "Mongol history," found in Pauthier's M. Polo, have all been made from this corrupted text. At

2343-648: The accomplished female practitioner. As a meditation deity, her main function is averting magical attacks. According to both John Reynolds and John Lash, she is the Indian goddess Pratyangira equivalent with the Egyptian goddess Sekmet . According to the curators of the Himalayan Art Resources , the wisdom Dakini Simhamukha is visualized with a body blue-black in colour, one face, two hands; three eyes, red, round and glaring; bared fangs and

2414-527: The attack for a month until the Siamese left when Javanese envoys happened to pass by. Ban Zu is believed by some scholars to be located on today's Fort Canning Hill and its nearby areas. Ruins of an old city in Singapore were still visible by the early 19th century, but have since been obliterated by the development of Singapore. Stamford Raffles mentioned the lines of the old city and its defences, and

2485-402: The characters 声 shēng "sound" and 纳 nà "receive, accept". 声 shēng is a phonetically imperfect rendering of the English initial syllable. Chinese has a large number of homo/heterotonal homophonous morphemes, which would have been much better phonetically (but not nearly as good semantically) – consider the syllable song (cf. 送 sòng 'deliver, carry, give (as

2556-590: The clasp were lost during the Japanese occupation of Singapore in the Second World War. The remaining ornaments have since been reappraised; the gold armband was recently identified as a singhamukha as opposed to its former identification as a Javanese kala motif and two of the circular ornaments bore Hindu-Buddhist references. Archaeological excavations were conducted on Fort Canning by John Miksic in 1984, later expanded to nearby area bounded by

2627-456: The emperor K'ien-lung to revise the Yüan shi, and especially the foreign names of men, places etc. occurring so frequently in that book. These savants in their reformatory zeal, proceeded on the idea, that all the proper names had been incorrectly rendered in the official documents of the Mongols, and had to be changed. They pronounced the same verdict with respect to the histories of the Liao and

2698-466: The existence of a settlement to the 12th century. The royal centre on Fort Canning Hill may have been abandoned before 1400 after the attacks by either the Siamese or the Majapahit as suggested by historical accounts. Transcription into Chinese characters Transcription into Chinese characters is the use of traditional or simplified Chinese characters to phonetically transcribe

2769-614: The hill, the banks of the Singapore River and the sea, such as the Parliament House Complex , Empress Place and other locations. The excavations confirmed the presence of a thriving settlement and a trade port here during the 14th century. The artefacts found show that Fort Canning Hill was occupied by the elites, with perhaps a royal palace. It was also the location of artisanal workshops where glass may be recycled, as well as religious activities, although it

2840-450: The inner and secret empowerments and activity liturgies of the white, black and varied, is: Dharmakāya Samantabhadra in union, The wisdom ḍākinī Simḥamukhā, The unequalled Guru of Uḍḍiyāna in union, The realized Namkha Sangye Gönpo, The destroyer of illusion, the great Repa Kunga Darpo, The Mantra-holder Tsöndru Senge, From whom my root teacher Chökyi Nyima received the teachings on Siṃhamukhā. The Sakya lineage began with

2911-424: The left leg with the right drawn-up, in the middle of a blazing fire of pristine awareness. According to John Reynolds, Simhamukha is surrounded by her retinue of four Dakinis who resemble herself, except for their body-color and certain attributes: in the east there is the white Buddha Simhamukha who has the magical function of pacifying circumstances and healing, in the south is the yellow Ratna Simhamukha who has

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2982-414: The local produce of Ban Zu were hornbill casques , lakawood of medium quality, and cotton. They traded in silk cloths, iron bars, local cotton prints, red gold, porcelain, and iron utensils. Wang's accounts suggest that the city of Temasek was moated and gated, and that the Siamese attacked the city moat of Temasek with around 70 ships a few years before he visited. The city however successfully resisted

3053-441: The magical function of increasing wealth and prosperity, in the west is the red Padma Simhamukha who has the magical function of enchanting and bringing others under her power, and in the north is the dark green Karma Simhamukha who has the magical function of vanquishing and destroying negative forces. Each of these aspects of Simhamukha have their own mantras and rituals. There are at least two major lineages of transmission, one in

3124-591: The mainland transcription 普京 for Putin , even though its Cantonese pronunciation being Póugīng . In 2016, a controversy arose in Hong Kong when protestors petitioned Nintendo to reverse its decision of converting the Hong Kong names of over 100 Pokémon into the mainland Chinese equivalents of their names, including its most famous character Pikachu . In the first half of 2016, Nintendo announced that it would change Pikachu's name from its original Cantonese name, Béikāchīu 比卡超 , to Pèihkāyāu in favor of fitting

3195-422: The majority of Chinese characters, but new ones coined to communicate foreign words only infrequently reach common use today. Notable exceptions are the Chinese characters for chemical elements , which mostly consist of combining pre-existing characters with the appropriate radicals, such as 气 for gases. Simhamukha In Tibetan Buddhism, Siṃhamukhā (Tib. Senge Dongma ) or Siṃhavaktra , also known as

3266-529: The name however is always given, and the chapters are indicated where the name occurs. This renders the vocabulary very useful for reference, and we may lay aside the fact, that the principal object in view of the learned committee, was the absurd explanation of the meaning of the newly-invented names. I may give a few examples of the sagacity these savants displayed in their etymological commentaries. The city of Derbend (the name means "gate" in Persian), situated on

3337-530: The name implies, the work consists of a dictionary of common names. It also includes transcription tables for names and terms which are not included. The English table is reproduced below ; those for a number of other languages are available on the Chinese Misplaced Pages . The Basic Laws of the Hong Kong ( article ) and Macau ( article ) Special Administrative Regions provide that "Chinese" will be

3408-468: The native Russian pronunciation [ˈputʲɪn] , whereas the name is rendered as 普丁 Pǔdīng in Taiwan. Meanwhile, Hong Kong and Macau transcribe names using Cantonese pronunciations, although this has become less common following their handovers. Cantonese transcriptions are now frequently cribbed from the mainland, even if the transcription's local pronunciation does not match up with the original language. For example, sources in Hong Kong and Macau follow

3479-563: The official languages of those territories, in addition to English and Portuguese, respectively, leaving ambiguous the relative preference for Cantonese and Mandarin . In practice, transcriptions based on both Cantonese and Mandarin pronunciations have been used. In Singapore , transcription standards are established by the Translation Standardisation Committee for the Chinese Media and in 2014

3550-404: The original. See, for instance, the Chinese names of the Hong Kong governors . Very rarely, characters are specially made for the transcribed terms. This was formerly more common: by adding the appropriate semantic radical , existing characters could be used to give a sense of the sound of the new word. 江 , for instance, was formed out of 氵 (the water radical) + 工 , which at the time had

3621-413: The people of Long Ya Men were said to be prone to acts of piracy, the people of Ban Zu were described as honest. This locality is the hill behind Long-ya-men . It resembles a truncated coil. It rises to a hollow summit, [surrounded] by interconnected terraces, so that the people's dwellings encircle it. The soil

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3692-645: The promotion of Kaozheng studies in the philological field, Qianlong decided that the Chinese character transcriptions of names and words of the Khitan language in the History of Liao , the Jurchen language in the History of Jin , and the Mongolian language in the History of Yuan were not phonetically accurate and true to the original pronunciation. The histories were in fact hastily compiled and suffered from inaccurate and inconsistent phonetic transcriptions of

3763-464: The proposed connection between the original " Eastern Yi " people ( 東夷 ) and an Austroasiatic word for "sea". However, the tendency within China was to fit new groups into the existing structure, so that, for example, "Yi" eventually became a word for any " barbarian " and the name " Yue " ( 戉 & 越 ), originally applied to a people northwest of the Shang, was later applied to a people south of

3834-432: The same committee to explain the meanings of the new names; and this gave rise to a new work entitled: 遼金元史語解 Liao kin yüan shi yü kai, or "Explanation of words (proper names) found in the histories of the Liao, Kin and Yüan." In this vocabulary, all the names of men, countries, places, mountains, rivers etc.—of the three histories have been systematically arranged, but according to the new spelling. The original spelling of

3905-632: The same names. He ordered the "Imperial Liao Jin Yuan Three Histories National Language Explanation" ( 欽定遼金元三史國語解 Qīndìng Liáo Jīn Yuán sān shǐ guóyǔjiě ) project to "correct" the Chinese character transcriptions by referring to the contemporaneous descendants of those languages. Qianlong identified the Solon language with the Khitan, the Manchu language with the Jurchen, and the Mongolian language with

3976-477: The sound of terms and names of foreign words to the Chinese language . Transcription is distinct from translation into Chinese whereby the meaning of a foreign word is communicated in Chinese. Since English classes are now standard in most secondary schools , it is increasingly common to see foreign names and terms left in their original form in Chinese texts. However, for mass media and marketing within China and for non-European languages, particularly those of

4047-547: The sound value khong , to approximate the Yue name *Krong . Similarly, the addition of 艹 (the grass radical) produced 茉莉 mòlì to translate the Sanskrit name for jasmine ( malli ) and 衣 (clothes) was added to other characters to permit 袈裟 jiāshā , the Chinese version of Sanskrit kasaya . Another such example is 乒乓 pīngpāng , the Chinese word for ping pong , in which both characters are formed by removing

4118-502: The sounds of Middle Chinese. The transcriptions made during the Tang dynasty are particularly valuable, as the then-popular Tantra sect required its mantras to be rendered very carefully into Chinese characters, since they were thought to lose their efficacy if their exact sounds were not properly uttered. The History of Liao contains a list of Khitan words phonetically transcribed with Chinese characters. The History of Jin contains

4189-575: The time Klaproth and Rémusat wrote, the Yuan shi was unknown in Europe, and it seems, that even the old Catholic missionaries in Peking had not seen it. The old sinologues knew only an extract of the great "Mongol History"." - E. Bretschneider , Notices of the Mediæval Geography and History of Central and Western Asia , pp. 5-6. Marshall Broomhall commented that Though a great soldier and

4260-463: The top of the hill that he took to be a temple, with another terrace almost as big on the northern slope of the hill that local Malays believed to be the tomb of Iskandar Shah (who actually died in Malacca). Crawfurd also mentioned ancient fruit trees cultivated in the gardens, and found pottery fragments and Chinese coins, the earliest of which were dated to the 10th-century Song dynasty . In 1928,

4331-559: The western shore of the Caspian sea, is mentioned in the Yuan shi, as a city of Persia, and the name is written 打耳班 Da-r-ban. The committee changed the name into 都爾本 Du-r-ben, and explain that durben in Mongol means, "four." The name of Bardaa, a city of Armenia, is rendered in the original Yuan shi by 巴耳打阿 Ba-r-da-a. The committee will have the name to be 巴勒塔哈 Ba-le-t'a-ha, and comment that this name in Manchu means "the neck part of

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4402-479: The women of the royal household in old Singapura were said to bathe in. Historical information on Ban Zu comes from the Yuan dynasty work Daoyi Zhilüe written by Wang Dayuan. Ban Zu was described as being located behind on a hill behind Long Ya Men of Temasek. Its relationship with Long Ya Men is uncertain, and the descriptions of the people in Banzu and Long Ya Men are different, including their clothing. While

4473-490: The words are: These ancient transcription into Chinese characters provide clues to the reconstruction of Middle Chinese . In historical Chinese phonology , this information is called duìyīn (simplified Chinese: 对音 ; traditional Chinese: 對音 ; lit. 'corresponding sounds'); in Western Sinology , Baron Alexander von Staël-Holstein was the first to emphasize its importance in reconstructing

4544-673: The words of the foreign languages such as Jurchen , Korean , Japanese , Ryukyuan , Mongolian , Old Uyghur , Vietnamese , Cham , Dai , Thai , Burmese , Khmer , Persian , Tibetan , Malay , Javanese , Acehnese , and Sanskrit . During the Qing dynasty some bilingual Chinese-Manchu dictionaries had the Manchu words phonetically transcribed with Chinese characters. The book 御製增訂清文鑑 ("Imperially-Published Revised and Enlarged mirror of Qing") in Manchu and Chinese, used both Manchu script to transcribe Chinese words and Chinese characters to transcribe Manchu words with fanqie . As part of

4615-457: Was changed by the Committee into Farkha and is explained as being "a village in Manchuria." Transcriptions of English in Chinese characters were used in a book to learn English dating to 1860 in the reign of the Xianfeng Emperor. During the late 19th century, when Western ideas and products flooded China, transcriptions mushroomed. They include not only transcriptions of proper nouns but also those of common nouns for new products. The influence

4686-427: Was famously transcribed by Yan Fu as 烏托邦 / 乌托邦 Wūtuōbāng ("unfounded country") and Pantagruel was written as 龐大固埃 / 庞大固埃 Pángdàgù'āi , from 龐大 / 庞大 ("gigantic") and 固 ("solid", "hefty"). More recently, one translation of World Wide Web is 萬維網 / 万维网 Wànwéi Wǎng , meaning " myriad -dimensional net". Sometimes the transcription reflects chengyu or other Chinese sayings and idioms. For example,

4757-458: Was first introduced to China as 愛斯不難讀 / 爱斯不难读 Àisībùnándú , meaning "[We] love this [because it's] not difficult to read". Given that a Chinese neologism can be a phono-semantic matching (i.e. in accordance with both the meaning and the sound of the foreign lexical item), an "innocent" transcription may be unwittingly interpreted as reflecting the meaning of the original. During the Qing dynasty , some Chinese scholars were unhappy to find China

4828-425: Was located on a continent called 亞細亞 / 亚细亚 Yàxìyà , i.e. Asia , as 亞 / 亚 means "secondary" and 細 / 细 "small", believing that the Europeans were deliberately belittling the East. The ancient Japanese, or the Wa people were upset by their name being represented by the character 倭 wō ("small, short, servile") by the Chinese, and replaced it with 和 hé ("peace, harmony"). Modern Africans have accused

4899-473: Was moved to National Translation Committee (NTC) of the Ministry of Communication and Information. In Malaysia , transcription/translation standards are established by Chinese Language Standardisation Council of Malaysia . Increasingly, other countries are setting their own official standards for Chinese transcription and do not necessarily follow Xinhua's versions, just as Xinhua's version differs from Wade–Giles and other international standards. For example,

4970-433: Was not a major ceremonial center. The entire Fort Canning Hill area therefore may have been once dotted with various buildings of political, religious and commercial significance. In areas near the hill, evidence of commercial activities and metal working have been found. Analyses of Chinese porcelain found indicate occupation of the site from the late 13th to mid-15th century, while evidence of earthenware manufacture may date

5041-474: Was particularly marked in dialects near the major ports, like Shanghainese . Many of these phonemic loans proved to be fads, however, and popular usage and linguistic reformers subsequently favored calques or neologisms in their place. A transcription into Chinese characters can sometimes be a phono-semantic matching , i.e. it reflects both the sound and the meaning of the transcribed word. For example, " Modern Standard Chinese 声纳 shēngnà " sonar ", uses

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