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Dungan vocabulary requests

Could you give me the Dungan translation for these words:

Christianity

China

Jesus

Bible

Twenty

Century

True

America

--Jose77 (talk) 03:06, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Jose, this is a more realistic request for me than attempting to translate a paragraph into a language that I don't know. This is what my dictionary (ed. Yu. Yanshansin, 1968, Bishkek) would have (with Russian or Chinese equivalent, added by me, when obvious):

Christianity = җидўҗё

China = Җунгуй (中国)

Jesus = Эрса

Bible= Инҗил

Twenty - эршы (二十)

Century - шыҗи (but 世 is шы, so 世纪 probably would be шыҗи)

True = ?; but they have

• шыди = truth; real (实的 ?)
• шызэ = truly, in reality (实在)
• шыян = true words, truth (实言)
• шыхуа = truth, true words (实话)

America - Америка (Russian loanword)

As you might imagine, a small Soviet dictionary like this would not be heavy of Christian terminology, so I don't have an idea if, for example, when Dungan people decide to talk about Christianity they would use a word like 基督教 (which could be transcribed җидўҗё, in the regular way), or one more like the Russian or Arabic/Persian name for the same concept (maybe equipped with a Chinise suffix, such as 教 "җё"). Similarly, I would have no idea if Jesus would be 基督 (Җидў), or a word like Rusisan "Иисус" or Arabic Isa is used; whether the "Bible" would be 圣经 (шынҗин), or "Библия" (from Russian), or some Arabic/Persian loanword is used; whether the word 教派 (җёпэ) exists in Dungan, etc, etc.

You may be interested to know that there actually were people who set themselves the task of translating the Gospel into Dungan: http://www.ibt.org.ru/english/info/info_news_en06.htm ; http://www.orthodox.cn/news/20061115dungan_en.htm . There is a photo of the book cover there. And guess what is the word chosen to mean "Gospel"? It's "Инҗил", which of course is not Mandarin at all, but Arabic Injil! So I would say that if you are really serious about rendering your Church's message into that language, you may want to contact IBT and get yourself a copy of the Gospels in Dungan - that would give you all vocabulary you need.

In practice, though, my impression is that that Russian is very widely known in Kyrgyzstan or Kazakhstan by people of all ethnic groups. Regardless of one's ethnicity, pretty much all Internet users in those countries are likely to have a good command of Russian. Nonetheless, I appreciate your desire to express your message in other languages, and I am sorry that I don't happen to know them.

I agree. Perhaps the word for "Jesus" could be "Isa" as mentioned in the Koran but this needs to be confirmed. --Jose77 (talk) 09:23, 2 October 2009 (UTC) The Dungan word for "Jesus" is "Эрса". --Jose77 (talk) 04:48, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

As a bonus, a few words that were attested in the dictionary:

• җин = a holy book, a religious book (经)
• җин = an evil spirit, a daemon (憬)
• пушы = (entire) world (普世)
• пушыди = world wide ( (普世的)
• пушы-тянщя = everywhere in the world (普世天下)
• тян = sky, heaven (天)
• тяншон = in the sky ("in the heaven"?) (天上)
• тянтон = Paradise (天堂 ?)
• тянщя = universe (天下)
• тянщян = angel (天仙 ?)
• Шэтани = shaitan, satan (from Arabic)
• шыщин-шыйи = sincerely, honestly (实心实意)
• шызы = cross (十字)
• шыдэ = era (时代)
• шын = spirit, deity (神? 圣? )
• шын ды гуй = spirit and the devil (神...鬼)
• шы, шыҗе = world (世, 世界)
• шынпэзы = icon (圣牌子)
• шысы = fact (事实)
• шыфын-шийи = in reality (十分实意 (?))
• шышон, шыҗёшон = in the world (世上, 世界上)

Regards, Vmenkov (talk) 04:46, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Thankyou very very much for your Excellent help Mr. Vmenkov.

I am currently in the process of compiling a Chinese pinyin to Dungan vocabulary list.

Would you also be able to kindly help me transliterate the "real" Dungan text here into the Dungan cyrillic alphabet? Because it is currently in latinized form.

Thankyou very much.--Jose77 (talk) 07:54, 2 October 2009 (UTC).

Ah, the schoolbook exaxmples quoted in Victor Mair's article! I'll try to do it some time, but not right away. Vmenkov (talk) 08:00, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Dungan words, 2nd installment

In the meantime do you know the Dungan equivalents for these words:

• Pray 祷告
• Year年
• Feet/foot 脚
• Spirit灵
• Wash洗
• Rest/sabbath 安息/安息日
• Save/salvation救
• Receive 得到
• Judgement 审判
• Last最后
• Sing Song 唱歌
• Dance 跳舞
• Cure 医治
• Illness 病
• True 真
• cast out (the devil) 赶
• interpretation 解释
• ten thousand 万
• luck 福
• sound 声音
• Nation 民族
• meeting 开会
• worship 拜
• mistake 错误
• Spread 传
• Enter 进入
• Welcome 欢迎

--Jose77 (talk) 08:39, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Apologies if I have caused any inconveniencies to you due to my regular editing on your talk page. --Jose77 (talk) 09:01, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

See below, as per the same small dictionary. For some words not in the dictionary I have put a hypothetical "transcription" preceded by a "*".

• Pray 祷告 (*дого)
• Year年 нян
• Feet/foot 脚  ? (*җё)
• Spirit灵  ? (but they have шын = spirit, deity (神? 圣? ))
• Wash洗 щи
• Rest/sabbath 安息/安息日 ?
• Save/salvation救 җю (not necessarily with any religious overtones, of course)
• Receive 得到 дый (得) (* дыйдо, 得到)
• Judgement 审判  ? (* шынпан)
• Last最后  ? (* зуйху)
• Sing Song 唱歌 (* чон гә)
• Dance 跳舞 (* тё ву)
• Cure 医治 ?
• Illness 病 бин
• True 真 (see my previous message)
• cast out (the devil) 赶 ?
• interpretation 解释 ?
• ten thousand 万 ван (they do have вансуй for 万岁)
• luck 福 фу
• sound 声音 шын, шынйин
• Nation 民族 минзў
• meeting 开会 кэ хўй (to open a meeting; to conduct a meeting)
• worship 拜 ?
• mistake 错误 цуә (错) to make a mistake; a mistake
• Spread 传 чуан
• Enter 进入 (* җинжў: they do have җин (进))
• Welcome 欢迎  ?

Bonus words, from the same 1968 dictionary:

• йимани - belief (in God) (from Arabic iman)
• йилюха - to bequeath
• вансуй - 万岁
• мәмин - a true Muslim
• минҗин - the time of one's death
• Мыйгуй - 美国 (along with Америка)
• нэмазы - namaz (Muslim prayer)
• сэвабу - an action good for the salvation of one's soul
• сэҗыдэ - bowing to the ground (while praying)
• суәдэгэ - alms, donations (to religious charity)
• хуәкын - Hell (火坑)
• хўйхўй - a Muslim; a Hui person (回回)
• хўйхўй җё - Islam (回回教)

Obviously, the fact that I could not find a Dungan version of a Mandarin word in this small dictionary (looking up at its expected spelling) does not mean that it does not exist - and vice versa, some words attested in the dictionary may not be current anymore... Vmenkov (talk) 12:10, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Gratitude

THANKYOU SO MUCH Mr. Vladimir Menkov for your Outstanding Translation effort!

I am overwhelmed with gratitude.

May God Bless you!

If you want your favorite articles to be translated into the Chinese or Minnan language, then I would be glad to help you. --Jose77 (talk) 22:12, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Dungan Words, 3rd Installment

Greetings Mr. Vladimir Menkov my friend,

Do you know the Dungan translations for these Chinese characters:

• 安 (ān); eg. Peace (平安), comfort (安慰)
• 和 (hé); eg. and (与/及)
• 现 (xiàn); eg. appear (出现), discover (发现）
• 创 (chuàng); eg. create (创造）, establish (创建/建立), begin/commence (开始）
• 目标 (mùbiāo); eg. Aim/purpose/goal (目的）
• 更 (gēng); eg. Change/alter （更改）, Renovate (更新）, Reform (改革）
• 各 (gè); eg. Every/each (各自）
• 误 (wù); eg. Misunderstanding (误解）, Error (错误/误差)
• 对 (duì); eg. Sorry (对不起）, Dialogue (对话）, Compare (对照）
• 解 (jiě); eg. Understanding (了解）, Explain/Explanation (解释）
• 正 (zhèng); eg. Accurate (正确), Correct/correction (更正),
• 拯 (zhěng); eg. Rescue/Save/deliver (拯救）
• 真 (zhēn); eg. Sincere/Genuine (真诚); Real/Actual/Authentic (真实); , genuine/real (真正)
• 包 (bāo); eg. Including/comprising/consisting of (包括)
• 靠 (kào); eg. rely on/lean on/depend on (依靠)
• 赶 (gǎn); eg. catch up (赶上), hurry up (赶快),
• 治 (zhì); eg. Rule/govern/administer (统治/治理),
• 礼 (lǐ); eg. Ceremony (典礼), Circumcision (割礼), Marriage (婚礼), religious service (礼拜),
• 拜 (bài); eg. Visit/pay a visit (拜访), Request (拜托）
• 餐 (cān); eg. Meal (餐), restaurant (餐厅), Breaskfast/Lunch/dinner (早餐/午餐/晚餐)
• 息 (xī); eg. New/tidings (消息), Interest (利息)
• 主 (zhǔ); eg. Lord/master (主/主人), Advocate/proposal (主张), mainly/mostly/principal (主要), Allah (真主)
• 跪 (guì); eg. Kneel down (跪下)
• 同 (tóng); eg. Same time (同时), identical (相同/同样)
• 本 (běn); eg. Originally （本来/原本）, basic (基本)
• 独 (dú); eg. independent (独立), unique (独特)
• 地 (dì); eg. Earth/ground (地球/地上), Map (地图)
• 徒 (tú); eg. Members/Followers/disciples/believers (信徒/门徒)
• 强 (qiáng); eg. Emphasise (强调); Strong (强)

--Jose77 (talk) 22:32, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Could you check the Russian-Dungan dictionary to see if the following words exist:

• Soul/Душа/灵魂
• Genuine (подлинный, истинный, настоящий, искренний, одлинный, подлинный, неподдельный, чистопородный)
• Establish (учреждать, упрочивать, укреплять, создавать, заложить)

--Jose77 (talk) 06:40, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Linxia County

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DYK nomination of Louis J. Gallagher

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Barnstar Award

		The Original Barnstar
		For your many months of service to Misplaced Pages, I, Jose77, hereby award Mister Vladimir Menkov this barnstar. --Joseph, 22:40, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Louis J. Gallagher

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Thank you - have a rest! Lots of time to get a Halloween hook Victuallers (talk) 21:28, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

China counties

Hi. No worry, I expect bots to add interwiki links after creation. If no, I will add links later or ask bot to add them. My goal is to start all counties and then import figures from de wiki. Sources will be added later too, I don't know Chinese.Starzynka (talk) 15:07, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

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Siberian Cossack

You added this to article Ivan Petlin. What do you think of the use of 'Cossack' to refer to practically the whole Russian population of early Siberia? These people were mostly from Northern Russia and seemingly had nothing to do with the Don or Zaporozhian Cossacks. Is this a loose way of saying that they were neither landlords not peasants, is it a misuse by foreigners, or does Cossack have some meaning that I do not understand?Benjamin Trovato (talk) 02:23, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Truth be told, I don't know much about the Cosacks, but I am certainly aware that besides the better known Don Cossacks and Zaporozhia Cossacks, there was a veritable host of other "Cossack hosts", such as the Siberian Cossacks. I believe that being a Cossack was indeed a particular legal status (soslovie) in Czarist Russia (distinct, indeed, both from peasants and landlords), with its own rights and obligations (in particular, military ones, of course).

As to Ivan Petlin and his traveling companion, I follow the venerable Samuel Purchas, who no doubt went along with the text of the original (1619) reports in Russian, which include phrases like this: "Лета 7128 августа в... день государь царь и великий князь Михайло Федорович всеа Русии велел сибирского Томского города казаку Ивану Петлину проведывати про Китайское государство и про Обь-реку великую и про иные государства" ("On August ... of AM 7128, the Lord Mikhailo Feodorovich, Czar and Great Prince of All Russia, ordered Ivan Petlin, a Cossack of the Siberian City of Tomsk to investigate about the Cathayan State and the great Ob River and about other states"). The "Tomsk Cossack" appellation was then used in the title of numerous Russian publications of Petlin papers in the 19th and early 20th century, back when the Cossacks were still around as an actual soslovie, so I assume that the historians who used the term knew what they were doing.

As I was looking at other "Petlin papers" in this collection, I've noticed that at least one does use a more general term than "Cossack" to describe Petlin and Madov. Namely, the Tomsk voevoda I.S. Kurakin, reporting to Czar Mikhail, writes: "В нынешнем, государь, во 127 году писали мы, холопи твои, к тебе, государю, с тоболь конным казаком с Климком Бобошиным, што пришли в Тоболеск ис Китайского государства и от Алтына-царя томские служилые люди Иваинко Петлин да Ондрюшка Мадов", i.e., "we... sent a report to Your Majesty with the Tobolsk Mounted Cossack Klim Boboshin, that the Tomsk Service People Ivan Petln and Andrei Madov had returned to Tobolsk ....". So in this letter, the voyvoda uses different terms for different people: he sends a Cossack to the Czar to report of the arrival of the Service class people (ru:Служилые люди) Petlin and Madov. But even then, according to the Russian wiki, the Service class people (ru:Служилые люди) included Cossacks as one of their subgroups, so this text is not necessarily contradictory. Vmenkov (talk) 03:10, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

P.S. And as to the very early Russian Siberian (i.e. the first several decades of the 17th century), I would not be surprised that most of the Russian people in Siberia (or at least in the areas closer to the current frontier of expansion) during some decades were in fact classified as Cossacks . While I don't know this for a fact, I reckon that in any given region there certainly had to be a period of exploration / conquest prior to the start of more regular agricultural and urban settlement, which brought more "conventional" Russian peasants and city people (meshchane, ru:мещане) to the region. Vmenkov (talk) 03:20, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The best source I could find is Raymond H. Fisher, 'The Russian Fur Trade',1943. He says that service-men were divided into Voyevodas,boyar-sons,streltsy,prisoners of war and cossacks-the largest class. In return for compulsory military service they received a salary and a plot of land (in eastern Siberia??) and elected their own atamans (??). When their services were not needed they could work on their own account. 'Ultimately all these military serving men came to be known as Cossacks', probably because distinctions broke down under frontier conditions. This still does not explain how the term migrated from the Don to Siberia. A mystery. Benjamin Trovato (talk) 06:15, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Again, I don't claim expertise on this matter, but I reckon that the term migrated from the Lower Volga (home of the Volga Cossacks, mostly suppressed by the government in the late 16th) to the Kama (being recently conquered, and intensively colonized, in the 1570s) to Siberia (with Yermak).

A cursory search on Google Books reveals plenty of references to the 16th century Cossack activities not just on the Don and the Yaik (now Ural; see Ural Cossacks) but on the Volga as well. (They sure knew the way there - after all, that's where Stepan Razin had his rebellion a century later... ). While you don't hear much about "Volga Cossacks" these days, they apparently were quite active in the 16th c. - but already in decline, suppressed by Moscow authorities, by 1600: http://books.google.com/books?id=oIJcxOCwv54C&pg=PA11&dq="volga+cossacks"&as_brr=3&ei=VDMOS_DQHpOElQTo4JGYDA#v=onepage&q="volga cossacks"&f=false , page 11; http://books.google.com/books?id=SXewkdStLTEC&pg=PA60&dq="volga+cossacks"&as_brr=3&ei=4zEOS8C5FZWelQS6iqTYCw#v=onepage&q="volga cossacks"&f=false Ranging on the Volga, of course they would take part in the colonization of the recently conquered (after the fall of Kazan) Kama basin in the second half of the 16th century; thus, Yermak Timofeyevich was able to go from the Upper Kama to Siberia ca. 1580 with a band of Cossacks...

Forsyth has 58 hits for "Cossacks" in his book ( http://books.google.com/books?id=nzhq85nPrdsC&pg=PA33&dq=cossacks&as_brr=3&ei=eDQOS9nqE4qQlQSD8vicDA#v=onepage&q=cossacks&f=false , mostly none too complimentary ), and feels that the term was sometimes used quite generically (pp. 33-34). Vmenkov (talk) 08:03, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Image

Hi. can you help out with this? I've used it in a FAC here and the comment has been this. Thanks. Fainites scribs 16:38, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much.Fainites scribs 23:22, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

There's a message for you at the bottom of my talkpage.Fainites scribs 14:42, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help.Fainites scribs 19:30, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Russian Far East

Hi, Vladimir! When I first joined Misplaced Pages, my intent was to work on the topics related mostly to the Russian Far East. I did that for a while, but then moved on to broader subjects. Nevertheless, I managed to leave after me a whole lot of mess (well, it wasn't mess then, but by our current criteria it is). One of the things I was routinely doing is to include very early histories of areas on which modern Russian places now stand. History of Primorsky Krai, for example, contains a whole bunch of stuff dating back to Bronze and Iron Ages, and there were a few other articles like that. At that time, there was no good place to put that kind of information, but now it can probably very easily be split into separate articles or even merged into existing ones. Would that be something you'd be interested in doing every now and then? I see, for instance, that you've recently worked on the Blagoveshchensk article; perhaps it would have been easy for you to offload the "early history" section to somewhere else? I do believe this kind of information adds value to these articles, but the problem is that it is often way too elaborate and creates a false impression of longer history (which, for the most part, has nothing to do with the Russians). A short paragraph or two is often quite sufficient, and, if a need arises, the main subject can always be linked to via {{Main}}. Do you have any thoughts about this?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:47, November 30, 2009 (UTC)

Uvazhaemye Ëzhiki:

Thank you for your thoughtful comment. This region is not my top interest at the moment, but I do edit relevant articles every now and then. More often than not, I do it when I get too annoyed by seeing a little fact appear in a distorted or a strangely out-of-context way (as it was with Nikolayevsk-on-Amur a while back, I believe), and I feel it appropriate to provide more of that context. So in a sense I feel that I don't initiate "adding remote and irrelevant history" (as someone might say) to those articles, but rather try to bring existing half-digested pieces of history (usually, deposited by some anonymous contributors ages ago) into better shape. Thus my response to your suggestion will be necessarily "nuanced".

1) I certainly feel that plenty more separate articles on historical issues - peoples, places, and events - related to the Russian Far East and Northeastern China ought to be created and expanded. I myself have created such articles as Duchers, Sarhuda, Yishiha, Tyr, Russia, Boris Petrovich Polevoy and significantly expanded Zabaykalsk, South Manchurian Railway, Aigun, Ning'an, Ivan Petlin, Russian–Manchu border conflicts, Willow Palisade. I hope to do something with Outer Manchuria some day; at present, I can only be puzzled by the term, because of a seemingly anachronistic and "a-historic" name (basically, my impression is that the expression "Outer Manchuria" has hardly been ever used in the purported meaning outside of Misplaced Pages; a more likely early (19th c) use was simply, "the part of Manchuria north of the Willow Palisade". But I digress here...) So I certainly am in favor in creating higher-level historical articles and linking to them from individual cities' articles. How to properly "divide" the history is, of course, another issue - there should be of course a History of Amur Oblast article, but even then much material could probably located not there but in articles whose topic is defined in a more appropriately historical way - e.g. Amur Valley during the Bronze Age, or Russian settlements in 17th century Amur Basin, or Qiqiha'er Governorate, or whatever.

2) In principle, I quite agree with you in not being in favor of putting only vaguely relevant history material into every article that it can be conceivable connected to. (E.g., one could insert a disquisition on the Silk Road into most articles about Central Asian cities, but I try only to insert facts from that period that are relevant to the particular city).

3) Nonetheless, I don't think that I added too much "prehistory" to this particular article, Blagoveshchensk. That is, there are now exactly 7 sentences in the section Blagoveshchensk#Early_history_of_the_region (i.e., dealing with the area's history before 1856). These sentences were intended either to link to larger-scope historic articles of relevance (such as Russian–Manchu border conflicts or Treaty of Nerchinsk), or to talk about settlements that existed within immediate vicinity of today's Blagoveshchensk (i.e., first the Duchers' Aytyun, then the Manchus' Old Aigun), and for which there is no separate article. I don't think that the "impression of longer history" is necessarily false; nor do I think that the fact that the people who had lived in the area of today's Blagoveshchensk and Heihe during most of the last 1000 years had "nothing to do with the Russians" (or with Chinese) implies that the their history does not belong in the story of Blagoveshchensk. There is a big paragraph on Eora in Sydney; there is a bit of Mi'kmaq, and plenty more on Acadians in City of Halifax; so I daresay that the Duchers or Daurs deserve at least as much. In my view, history is continuous, and the existence of the (Ducher) agricultural civilization in the region in the 17th century affected both the Russians' and the Manchus' actions at the time, which in their turn determined what happened to the area for the next 200 years. And even if the Russian settlers and governors of the 1860s and later decades may have wanted to have a clean break with the past, I don't think that that was possible.

From my point of view, the problem with Blagoveshchensk#History is not so much that it has too much on "pre-history", but that it has too little on later (Russian Empire / USSR) history! As you can see, I have added a couple paragraphs (and references) on 1890-1900, but I have no ambition to write other sections from scratch - but it, obviously, is absolutely ridiculous that the article presently has exactly one (1) sentence on the city's USSR-period history! I guess that, unlike Nizhny Novgorod, Khabarovsk, or, lately, Tyumen, we just don't have any contributors from Blagoveshchensk who are interested in writing a good article about the place's more recent history - but IMHO that's hardly a reason why other contributors should not add information on other periods for which they have sources. Ideally, of course, the history section should be expanded to at least a couple pages, with both pre- and post-1917 information; and once it's that big, it will be justify to move most of it into a separate History of Blagoveshchensk article.

With Nikolayevsk-na-Amure (which I edited a year or so ago) the situation was a bit different: it used to have some, generally correct, but strangely represented, facts, and I just tried reference them and put them in the right context (which, incidentally, would indicate that Tyr, Russia is a fairly long way upstream from Nikolayevsk-na-Amure, so the facts in fact aren't all that relevant... But again, lacking a history article with a proper scope to which I could move those facts (and then refer to them with {{Main}}), I did not move them out of the article.

4) If you have an inclination to reorganize history coverage for the region by creating appropriate articles and reshuffling existing material accordingly, I will be only glad to see that. I probably don't have time and sufficient dedication to undertake such a project myself. Two projects for which I do have plans to finally complete them are User:Vmenkov/Linxia City and Dungan Rebellion, and both are 2+ years in the making already... Vmenkov (talk) 01:21, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your detailed and thoughtful reply, Vladimir. With Blagoveshchensk, I admit it wasn't the best example to use; it just was something that popped up in my watchlist that day, so I used it as an example. I most certainly don't think that there is too much "pre-history" in that particular article. History of Primorsky Krai, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely.

All in all, my thoughts about handling the history sections of places/oblasts/krais in the RFE are as follows. With cities, I believe it suffices to provide a short blurb regarding the area in which that particular city is located, but the detailed stuff should start from around the time of the city's foundation by the Russians. With Vladivostok, for example, we could mention that the area had a rich medieval history followed by a period of relative quiet, and then really go into details starting with the 1850s. For modern polities (like Primorsky Krai or Amur Oblast) the focus should really be on the 1930s and later. Earlier histories should be placed in articles about earlier entities (like currently non-existing Primorskaya Oblast), and histories earlier still would be covered in more appropriate articles (for example, describing the intricacies of Mohe tribes in the "history of Primorsky Krai" article in relation to modern districts of Primorsky Krai, as it is currently done, makes no sense whatsoever). Yeah, Mohe did live on the territory of modern Terneysky District, but that warrants a short side note in the Terneysky District article at best, not an elaborate description in an article about the history of a krai which did not even exist until 1938. While history is continuous, care should be exercised as to not imply connections which are simply not there. It's not about severing links to the past (i.e., separating Russian and pre-Russian histories); it's about not creating links that never were. Ancient Jurchens have no relation to modern Primorsky Krai whatsoever, other than the fact that their empires covered the same territory Primorsky Krai now does. There simply is no continuity here. You and me know that, of course, but I'm afraid an uninformed reader stumbling upon the "history of Primorsky Krai" article might very well get a very false impression.

The bottom line is that I'd love to be the one to organize all that history stuff neatly and properly, but when I was asking you I was kind of hoping you'd be able to do it (since you are one of very few people interested in this area). Alas, it seems you don't have much more time for that than I do, so I'm not going to keep bugging you, asking to clean up the mess for which I myself am in no small part responsible. So, all I ask of you is to keep in mind possible splits and separations if you happen to stumble upon something you are going to edit anyway (like Blagoveshchensk or Nikolayevsk-na-Amure). Thanks again for your time and response!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:54, December 1, 2009 (UTC)

Eurasian Land Bridge

A content RfC has been opened on this topic if you would like to comment. Cla68 (talk) 07:01, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

• Thank you for the help and input with the article. One concern: this edit provided some good information, but it isn't cited. In order to pass the Good Article assessment, it needs a citation. A Russian language source is fine if that's where it's from. Otherwise, I'll have to remove it in order to pass the assessment. Cla68 (talk) 05:49, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Great work on adding a lot of good information. Perhaps a lot of that also needs to be added to the main articles on those railroads. I'll need to go through and list the sources in the references section, so I may need to ask you for more detail on the Russian sources. Thanks again. Cla68 (talk) 12:51, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

It's just that when I searched for the word in Misplaced Pages, it came up with several locations around Eastern China with that same name, so I took the easy way of dealing with it. Cla68 (talk) 12:09, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

That link to Trans-Eurasian logistics is very useful. By the way, I'll probably be spending some time fixing up the Bering Strait crossing article which means I may be away from the Eurasian Land Bridge article for awhile. Cla68 (talk) 23:48, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

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Request for input

Hi Vmenkov,

I've often seen you making edits to China-related articles and you always do good work. So I was wondering if you'd like to (if you have time) offer comments or criticism on the July 2009 Ürümqi riots, which is currently at FAC (see Misplaced Pages:Featured article candidates/July 2009 Ürümqi riots/archive1). If not, that's ok; just thought I'd ask. Best, rʨanaɢ /_contribs 08:41, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

DYK for Bixi (tortoise)

On January 25, 2010, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Bixi (tortoise), which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page (here's how, quick check ) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Materialscientist (talk) 18:00, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

What is your opinion? Share with us!

We are having problems to reach a stable consensus about removal of visa-free sections from the Passport articles. Please share your opinion with us here: Talk:Passport and here: a request for mediation Thanks. --Ozguroot (talk) 15:50, 4 February 2010 (UTC)