Nelson Goering, last seen here talking about Old English, has a Facebook post about another interest of his, Chinese history; he’s discussing Yuri Pines’ Zhou History Unearthed: The Bamboo Manuscript Xinian and Early Chinese Historiography:
One of the neat things about early Chinese literature is that people (sometimes archaeologists, but very often, as in this case, tomb robbers) keep turning up new manuscripts which are either completely new works, or older versions of received texts. This book, which I’ve just finished after way too long reading it in snatches, is on one of the completely new texts, called Xinian (“Linked Years”, though it’s not actually an annalistic text arranged year by year, and Pines is a bit critical of the editorial team for publishing it under this title): a bamboo manuscript bought by Tsinghua University in 2008. Apparently this was very big news, and there have already been a slew of articles and books about this (not terribly long) text.
It’s kind of an oddly structured book: a short monograph (just shy of 150 pages), followed by a heavily annotated edition and translation of the Xinian. It’s not an edition with a long introduction, and the first part is an analysis of history writing in China in, roughly, the -500s and -400s (and very early -300s). Pines covers a number of topics […]
I have no real basis for judging any of Pines’s arguments, but he writes clearly and cogently, and makes the interest of his subject felt. He’s occasionally a bit acerbic in his evaluation of other scholars’ arguments, which was sometimes entertaining (since I have no skin in the game), though I thought he was also too harsh at times. I most enjoyed the parts where he’d sketch out some mystery or discrepancy in the Zuozhuan or Shiji and use a (typically brief) comment in the Xinian to unravel the issue.
One particularly interesting passage involved him critiquing Sima Qian’s account of a duumvirate that supposed briefly ruled the Zhou kingdom in the -800s briefly ruled the Zhou kingdom under the term “Joint Harmony” (共和, gonghe). The Xinian tells a different story, saying that Gonghe actually the personal name of guy who held power during the interregnum in question. Pines gives an account of how Sima Qian, faced with very imperfect sources, came to his reconstruction, and basically portrays him as a pretty conscientious historian doing the best he could with very imperfect sources (in this case, concerning events more than 700 years before he was working). There’s a neat little etymological epilogue to this, since the term “gonghe” is the basis for the modern Japanese and Chinese words for “republic”, a very nerdy neologism based on Sima Qian’s portrayal of the supposed (and per Pines, phantasmal) “Gonghe” period.
The Xinian itself forms the second part of the book. It’s not exactly a gripping document, basically a fairly compact overview of early Zhou history, followed by some of the major interactions (mostly wars) between a few of the major states — especially Chu, of course, as well as its major rival Jin, along with a bunch of the smaller states between them. Pines does a wonderful job of mediating this rather dense material. He gives each section an introduction (usually *much* longer than the section itself), a translation, and notes on particular points (again, often far longer than the translation). I’ve included a picture of one of the shorter entries (there are 23 total), which fits on a two-page spread. Pines also has several detailed maps, which helped me a lot in keeping track of all the places mentioned. I think the text would have been basically meaningless to me without this apparatus, which made it at least basically intelligible. There were also some interesting little details. For instance, I learned from one of Pines’s notes that apparently the “Yellow River” was never called such before the Han Dynasty (roughly -200 to +200), but instead was described as “bright” (as in the Xinian) or similar. Apparently the change in colour can be related to deforestation in the river’s upper stretches, leading to more erosion and silt build up. Still, for me at least, the more interesting part was definitely the monograph portion.
I confess I enjoy scholars who are a bit acerbic in their evaluation of other scholars’ arguments; at any rate, I’m bringing the post here for the interesting information about the name “Yellow River” and especially the history of gònghé — I love that kind of twisty background to unassuming modern words. Oh, and Yuri Pines (Hebrew: יורי פינס; Russian: Юрий Анатольевич Пинес; born 1964) is a Ukrainian-born Israeli sinologist and the Michael W. Lipson Professor of Chinese Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
I’m not able to see the Facebook post because it isn’t public, but it sounds fascinating.
From what I’ve read, the Japanese dug up the word 共和 (gònghé in Mandarin, kyōwa in Japanese) to translate Dutch republiek, but the influential Chinese translation of Henry Wheaton’s Elements of International Law (under the title 萬國公法 Wànguó Gōngfǎ) translated republic as 民主 mínzhǔ instead, another repurposing of an older Chinese term.
Later, after the Japanese and the Chinese learned of each other’s term for the concept, they would end up making use of both of these terms so that they could now distinguish between democracy (民主) and republic (共和).
I’m not able to see the Facebook post because it isn’t public, but it sounds fascinating.
Here’s the part I omitted from the middle:
“Public law of the myriad countries”?
Does this occur in Chinese outside of 共和國? My exposure is limited to Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó “PRC”.
I can’t resist muttering that Pines/פינס/Пинес is a very unfortunate surname for an English-speaker to have to pronounce.
“Hello, Professor Pee-NESS…”
A secretary who worked for the theoretical physicist David Pines told me she and her co-workers were taken aback when his Spanish-speaking collaborators called for him.
I presume he had assimilated his surname to the English word (plural of pine) to avoid such problems.
Pines has an unfortunate look to it in French too…
An early Zionist Pines has elicited remark as well.
I presume he had assimilated his surname to the English word (plural of pine) to avoid such problems.
Yes, that’s how he pronounced it. Behindthename says “Pines” can be English (referring to a place with pine trees) or Jewish (from Pinchas). I never gave any thought to his ethnicity, but the Wikiparticle says his father’s name was Sidney and his mother’s maiden name was Edith Adelman, so Jewish is sounding likely.
Le lapin, ça aime le pain,
et la lapine, ça aime… le pain aussi.
the Wikiparticle says his father’s name was Sidney and his mother’s maiden name was Edith Adelman, so Jewish is sounding likely.
Yes, I did the same research and came to the same conclusion.
OP: the -500s and -400s (and very early -300s)
This is the obvious way to write years before zero. Now that I see it, I don’t understand why it isn’t more widespread.
A relatively recent study in English of the use of the term 共和 in modern times is available here (Junghwan Lee, ‘The History of Konghwa 共和 in Early Modern East Asia and Its Implications in the [Provisional] Constitution of the Republic of Korea’, Acta Koreana 16/1, June 2013). See especially pp. 143ff.
Looks interesting; the abstract:
The article mentions an interesting criticism of the political system of the United States by a Japanese scholar in 1878 (page 147):
Regarding the electoral system for presidential election, he [Yasui] argued that no matter how sincere and unbiased the public tried to be, due to the necessarily limited nature of their understanding and insight, the election was liable to fail in its ambition to elect a truly competent man.
Whether this resonates will depend on your politics, of course.
Thanks, Hat and Xerîb! Relating to my previous post about two terms being coined (or repurposed) independently to translate the same concept before later being differentiated, I found this section interesting from that study:
Australia is officially “the Commonwealth of Australia”. It is not a republic since the British monarch is the head of state. Changing Australia into a republic is a long-running and sensitive political question.
Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów in Polish or Res Publica Utriusque Nationis in Latin tends to be rendered in English as the Commonwealth of Two Nations and is usually referred to as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In Lithuanian it is known as Abiejų Tautų Respublika.
That Polish/Lithuanian Respublika etc. of course had kings, albeit elected ones, and ones with more constraints on their power than was common in many other parts of Europe at the time. In English we tend to think of a “republican form of government” as non-monarchical by definition, but the contrast may not be as sharp/absolute when it comes to the cognates of “republic” in other languages.
Although in English see also wikipedia’s statement that (according to Thomas Hobbes, whose labels may not have been universally followed by later writers) “There are three types of commonwealths: monarchy, aristocracy and democracy.”
Australia was so named at the turn of the 20th century, and its founders obviously didn’t have a republic in mind. I checked Wikipedia and found it variously named in different languages. オーストラリア連邦 Ōsutoraria renpō (Federation of Australia) in Japanese; 澳大利亚联邦 Àodàlìyǎ liánbāng (Federation of Australia) in Chinese; Thịnh vượng chung Úc (literally common prosperity of Australia) in Vietnamese, Австралийн Хамтын Нөхөрлөлийн Улс (‘Australian together partnership country’) in Mongolian, Commonwealth d’Australie in French,… I stopped there.
Mongolian Хамтын Нөхөрлөл is also used for the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania and the Commonwealth of Nations. Japanese and Chinese use 英連邦 / 英联邦 (British Federation) for the Commonwealth of Nations. German Wikipedia just calls the Polish-Lithuanian entity “Polen-Litauen”. Japanese calls it ポーランド・リトアニア共和国 Pōrando-Ritoania Kyōwakoku (republic), Chinese calls it 波兰立陶宛联邦 Bōlán Lìtáowǎn Liánbāng (federation).
Cromwell’s commonwealth is translated as 共和国 (republic) in Chinese and Japanese, Commonwealth in French, etc.
“Commonwealth” is one of those words that don’t translate well.
Returning back to the important question, I raise everyone Guy Pines.
“Does this occur in Chinese outside of 共和國?”
Not as far as I know, though my Chinese is poor. This is why I said it was the “basis” of the modern term. Pines himself was perfectly clear, citing the full modern term, and also noted that it was originally a Japanese coinage. There’s also more to the story of the original Gonghe, since the Bamboo Annals are also involved.
I’ve heard more than one English speaker apply taboo avoidance to Yuri’s name, incidentally, I think once even introducing a talk by him. I suppose he has just become used to it. I’ve long ago reconciled myself to hearing my last name pronounced as “goring” (it actually rhymes with “herring”). Sorry for no IPA, since that’s harder on the phone.
Zhihu (the Chinese version of Quora) even has a question: 为什么很多人分不清民主与共和？ “Why is it that many people can’t distinguish between mínzhǔ (democracy) and gònghé (republic)?” There are 29 answers.
I’ve long ago reconciled myself to hearing my last name pronounced as “goring” (it actually rhymes with “herring”).
Thanks for that — I’d been mentally saying it wrong.
I think of “rhymes-with-herring” as the obvious/normal Anglicized/Americanized pronunciation, but in hindsight that may be due to the contingency of having known a bearer of that surname (or maybe a close variation) while growing up in Normal-American suburbia many decades ago. For all I know I may have overgeneralized from a limited sample.
The only times I’ve ever heard my name pronounced correctly were when I was visiting my grandparents in an area of Kansas that had a lot of Goerings (and also some Gehrings, from, I assume, a different branch that made different choices when immigrating).
When I lived in Belgium, I could at least get people to spell it right over the phone by pronouncing with the onset and nucleus of Dutch goed (again, apologies for no IPA).
Matt Groening /ˈɡreɪnɪŋ/ is similar (though not identical.)
I’ve known an American named Koepper, pronounced Kepper, and one named Boettner, pronounced Bettner. The latter and I talked about the pronunciation of her name, and I jokingly suggested she should pronounce it as in German. She said “Then it would be Beertner” (first syllable /bɪɹ/). I was nonplussed.
Speaking of David Pines — long ago, when I was fairly new to the US and working at Nature, one of my colleagues came back from a conference and asked me if I knew who David Pines was. Yes, I said. He looks like Howdy Doody, my colleague said, but that was lost on me since I didn’t know who Howdy Doody was.
Not long afterwards, I was reading a magazine or newspaper and came across a picture of a puppet from an old US TV show. I took it to my colleague asked him if it was Howdy Doody. Yes, he said, how did you know? Because it looks like David Pines, I replied.
“herring” and its rhymes have the SQUARE vowel, which is said by the pundits to be ɛr in GenAm even though one always feels intuitively like it ought to be eɪr. I did learn the sound going with German ö when I was in 9th grade, but generally did not attempt to use it to pronounce Americanized names of German origin whose echt-Deutsch pronunciation would have used it. (Apparently that same sound pops up in some Englishes, as in New Zealand and South Africa, but not in North America.)
I’ve known an American named Koepper, pronounced Kepper, and one named Boettner, pronounced Bettner.
I would instinctively have used those pronunciations, but for some reason the -r- in Goering threw me off.
“Spider” John Koerner was /kɝnɝ/ (rhymes with Turner).
Paige Bueckers, the WNBA phenom, is ‘beckers.’
“herring” and its rhymes have the SQUARE vowel
Is that always the case? Depends on what you do with mary-marry-merry, doesn’t it?
Ex–House Speaker John Boehner is bayner.
“herring” and its rhymes have the SQUARE vowel, which is said by the pundits to be ɛr in GenAm even though one always feels intuitively like it ought to be eɪr.
I think I was taught it’s eɪr, which probably settled the matter for my intuition.
Being from Ohio, I merge Mary-marry-merry. If your definition of GenAm does too, then I imagine that for phonemic purposes, which possibility you pick doesn’t matter. As for the sound, I think I only have it before /r/.
Yuri Pines was not the first such-named professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Shlomo Pines (1908-1990) made an English translation of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed.
And he was involved in one of the most-published academic debates–that on the Testimonium Flavianum, whether Josephus in Antiquities 18 mentioned Jesus as available manuscripts have it, or didn’t mention Jesus at all if the passage is fully later interpolated, or Josephus did mention Jesus, but his mention was later modified by a Christian. (Probably imo the latter, but the additions and/or subtractions are much debated.)
Pines, Shlomo (1971). An Arabic version of the Testimonium Flavianum and its implications. Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
I did the same research and came to the same conclusion.
Sorry to tell you something you knew already. Incidentally, I’d have been more amused if I’d known the original pronunciation of the name. Speaking of that, which syllable is stressed in the Jewish surname “Pines”, and does it depend on whether you’re in Israel or the Old Country?
David Pines was definitely Jewish. I met him, probably about twenty years ago, but I don’t remember it very distinctly. We must not have talked about anything particularly interesting.
Sorry to tell you something you knew already.
No, no, I was just pleased we had the same train of thought!
Speaking of that, which syllable is stressed in the Jewish surname “Pines”
The first, unfortunately for English-speakers.
languagehat 2017 loess was a discussion on anglicised pronunciation of German oe/ö.
I fear Nelson Goering’s “rhymes with herring” hint is incomplete for those of us without the merry–Mary merger. Does Nelson also rhyme it with, say, “daring”?
—If so, then “rhymes with daring” would help more of us to get it right;
—if not “rhymes with herring rather than daring” would be more explicit, though likely to confuse some of those with the aforesaid merger. .
I see that in the old thread mollymooly linked to I argued for GOAT as the default AmEng pronunciation of “oe” in German-origin surnames, but none of the examples I gave were followed by “r.” Why the rhotic environment should lead to SQUARE rather than FORCE, I dunno, but that’s my intuition, although as noted above I may be overgeneralizing from one childhood classmate surnamed I think maybe Goeringer? (Rhymed with bellringer not derringer as to the penultimate consonant …)
Maybe this goes here as a “names Americans aren’t good at pronouncing just guessing from the spelling” bit, but OTOH I don’t think the given name of Jhostynxon Garcia (just called up from triple-A Worcester by the Red Sox) really reflects the traditional orthographic conventions of his native Venezuela as opposed to being innovative-to-wacky in that context. https://www.mlb.com/news/jhostynxon-garcia-red-sox-callup (He has a younger brother Johanfran Garcia, currently a few levels further down in the Red Sox farm system.)
The story says his name is pronounced JOES-tin-son, for what that’s worth.
More Goeringer than thou …
“Goering”
I have always mentally pronounced it to rhyme with “purring” or “stirring”, although perhaps with a shorter vowel.
I have a habit of pronouncing German-sounding names as if they were German. The one exception is the philosopher named “Kant”….
There is an American translator called “Neugroschel” whose name I mentally pronounce as “Noigroshel”, which is probably incorrect.
I’d translate mínguó 民國 as in “ROC” much more literally – as “nation-state”.
That’s exactly where the Electoral College is supposed to come in: instead of voting for a distant politician they only know from campaign material, people vote for people from their state that they know and trust to elect the best possible (or least awful) president.
This idea, reasonable in its original context, immediately comes crashing down as soon as parties exist. The electors are not elected individually, their names aren’t even on the ballots; they’re elected as all-or-nothing packages and were chosen by their parties for reliable party loyalty.
There really is no way around Condorcet: to elect a truly competent president, a majority of the voters (or a bit more if the Electoral College is kept) must be reasonably well educated first.
Same in German.
It’s [e], then, the same as a French é.
It is not inevitably the case in the U.S. that presidential electors’ names do not appear on the ballot although I’m not sure when the last time they did anywhere was. Certainly they appeared by name on the ballot in the somewhat peculiar circumstances of the 1960 election in Alabama, where you needed to vote for them one at a time and were thus not bound to support an entire slate (such that there were modest variations in vote total for the electors who did form part of the same quasi-slate, wikipedia has more numerical details than you probably want).
As recently as 1996, if my memory is accurate, names of proposed national-convention delegates appeared on the ballot in New York in presidential primaries, albeit along with the name of the candidate to whom they were pledged. This sometimes conveyed information, as when presidential candidate A’s proposed delegate was your state senator whereas candidate B’s was that guy whose name you recognize because the local newspaper is frequently publishing his gadfly letters to the editor.
Pines/פינס/Пинес is a very unfortunate surname for an English-speaker to have to pronounce.
the similarly afflicted אָסקאַר פּיניס | oskar pinis – author of an amazing (if a touch longfellow-inflected) anticolonialist poeme, Hatuey [1931], about the conquest of cuba, recently turned into an opera by the klezmatics’ frank london – became osher penn as soon as he relocated from havana to new york city. he, of course, was born in podolia (though apparently educated at harvard; no idea what name he used then).
“I fear Nelson Goering’s “rhymes with herring” hint is incomplete for those of us without the merry–Mary merger. Does Nelson also rhyme it with, say, “daring”?”
I’m afraid that since I have that merger myself, I can’t help those without decide which way to go. I think my own pronunciation is phonetically closer to herring in unmerged American, but I have a suspicion (completely unchecked) that daring might be preferred by those without as an adaptation of the original. I’ll try to provide IPA of my own pronunciation when I’m next on my computer and have a spare moment.
“I have always mentally pronounced it to rhyme with “purring” or “stirring”, although perhaps with a shorter vowel.”
That’s how most in England say it, in my experience. Reasonable enough, really.
I’d translate mínguó 民國 as in “ROC” much more literally – as “nation-state”.
“Nation state” means something different, though, which in Korean is translated as 국민 국가(國民國家) gungmin gukga or 민족 국가(民族國家) minjok gukga (the latter especially if referring to an ethnic national state).
For what it’s worth, here is how two major Korean dictionaries define 민국(民國) min’guk:
Both dictionaries list 민주국(民主國) minjuguk, 민주 국가(民主國家) minju gukga, and 민주주의 국가(民主主義國家) minjujuui gukga as synonyms. However, while the Korea University Korean Dictionary uses the exact same definitions for all these entries, the Standard Korean Dictionary uses a definition which is near-identical to the KUKD for all the other entries except 민국 min’guk:
Minjujuui is the standard translation for “democracy”, so minjujuui gukga and its variants mean “democratic state”, transparently enough. Min’guk is an outdated term that only appears these days in the official names of the Republic of Korea and the Republic of China, but if pressed most people will think of it as a short form of the more common current terms like minju gukga and minjujuui gukga.
Quickly: I’d transcribe my own pronunciation as roughly [kɛɹɪŋ]. (Note that it my variety of North American English, /g/ is phonetically voiceless word initially.) The transition from first vowel to rhotic is messy, and hard to render precisely in IPA.
@Nelson Goering: The only times I’ve ever heard my name pronounced correctly were when I was visiting my grandparents in an area of Kansas that had a lot of Goerings (and also some Gehrings, from, I assume, a different branch that made different choices when immigrating).
Since the people who know about these things haven’t mentioned it, I’ll point out that the surname Gehring also exists in German-speaking countries, so the question may have been settled long before immigration.
[Edit: I deleted a bit about the origin of “Goering”. If you’re interested in that at all, then as a linguist who works with Germanic languages, you must have found out more than I did with a single search.)
What is it? I have no clue what it is or how to search for it.
@dm
NG’s link to Gehring in Wikipedia says from Gero “spear”.
There is also a page for Goering which offers no separate etymology but the “see also” section includes the article for Gehring.
I deleted a bit about the origin of “Goering”. If you’re interested in that at all, then as a linguist who works with Germanic languages, you must have found out more than I did with a single search.
But the rest of us are interested as well.
Ja, unser Interesse ist nicht gering!
@dm, LH, de
The Deutscher Familiennamenatlas has this name:
https://www.namenforschung.net/fileadmin/user_upload/dfa/Inhaltsverzeichnisse_etc/DFA7_Teil_II_Index.pdf
Gives page 815, 816 of Band 2 of the DFA for Goering (and various other spellings).
You may be able to find a Google Books snippet of these pages, the DFA itself is not online and not cheap.
The two suggestions I saw in the Google results were that it’s a variant of “Gehring” (PP, supra) and that it’s from a Slavic word gora or similar, meaning “mountain”.
We heard about unrounding in German recently, but is there rounding that could get from Gehring to Göring?
I dimly remember reading about individual cases, mostly due to hypercorrection, but nothing on the scale and regularity of unrounding.
Hypercorrection, including etymological nativization, could absolutely do it.
There was one general rounding process. It happened soon after MHG and targeted vowels surrounded by labial consonants: that’s what gave us fünf & zwölf, and it doesn’t apply here.
Additionally, in the Bavarian dialects, general unrounding was followed by rounding caused by an immediately following /l/ in the same syllable, but that doesn’t apply here either.
Thanks, Hans and David M.