Talk:Nara, Nara

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[edit] Nara used to be the capital of Japan

I think this should be mentioned in the history section, probably in the first sentence. At the moment, the only mention of this fact is this oblique reference:

"Even after the capital moved to Kyoto in 784"

I don't know enough about the history to make this edit myself, but I think the history section should begin something like "From (date), Nara was the ancient capital of Japan, until (Emperor) moved the capital to Kyoto in 784", then get into the detailed information. PaulHammond 12:36, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

Found what I was looking for at the Nara period article. PaulHammond 12:49, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Origin

I don't care that most of the origin of the name Nara is deleted but the citation I provided seems to suggest that a Korean origin for the name for the Nara is at least a credible theory. Please discuss before deleting the sentence again. I don't think it's a neutral point of view if you supress interesting and relevant information. Thanks. Tortfeasor 03:09, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

The citation you provided supports Korean word nara for "country" has a near-alike pronunciation. It does not, however, support "Nara" actually comes from Korean "nara". --Kusunose 04:40, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Yep, if you'll notice i'm not the one blanking the whole page every time Korea is mentioned. And the citation I added was for the specific point you mention above. I'm not the one who deleted the rest of the "theory"/original research which is why what I readded may look weird by itself. What do you want to do? Tortfeasor 04:49, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm no linguist but this at least seems to suggest that nara is from the Indian/Korean for land/territory. "Bruno Lewin 113 connects the final -ra of Kudara with the final syllable of the names Silla, Kara 加羅 114 , Nara 奈良, and says that -ra means "land, territory" 115 . This -ra was studied also by Hayashi Taisuke 林泰輔 in a research about the relation between Korean and the languages of India 116 . As a matter of fact, if not with the languages of India, -rah of the MK narah "country" and the -rak which appears in the names of Shiragi 117, Karak 加洛 (= Kara) and Naraku (= Nara) 118 can be connected to an altaic root which appears in Turkish as -laγ, "dwelling" 119. From the analogy between the name Kudara and the various names of small states listed in the Chinese sources concerning Korea, we can think that perhaps also the -ra of Kudara could derive from the same root, but with the drop of the final fricative. " Tortfeasor 04:52, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to have a reliable source to the claim itself. Per Wikipedia:No original research#What is excluded?, we should not introduce a theory without a citation.
As for the above citation, it looks interesting. In that theory, Japanese "-ra", not "Nara", is a cognate of Korean "nara" and Turkish "-lay". This suggests "Nara" originally meant "land of Na". --Kusunose 07:13, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
It's not a big deal to me either way. Although I wouldn't agree necessarily that it's original reasearch per se. It's a pretty easy inferrence just based on what the article says and this part also says something about Nara being based on a Korean loan word. "As regards kudŭ, the addition of a final vowel in the name Kudara is not difficult to explain 214 and refers to the current of Korean loans that in Japanese underwent the addition of a vowel or the loss of a final consonant for phonetic reasons (cf. for instance the Korean kom "bear", Japanese kuma id.; Korean narah "country", Japanese Nara, name of the capital city of the period with the same name). The final -a would anyhow be more consistent with an ancient pronounciation *kudɑl, because it is more logical that the vowel added after the last consonant were homologouos of the last original vowel of the Korean word. This problem, anyhow, is easily solved because we know that the character 達 (tal) in ancient Korean did transcribe also the meaning of "stone" 215."
I'm not going to go out of my way to search for a source (I doubt that there is one in English) and I just stumbled on this while doing other research. But I would still think this is a sufficient source to introduce the theory. At the very least, based on the above quote, I think its okay to leave it in the status quo. Let me know what you think.
Not to seem "tit-for-tat" but I am curious if the Nara = flat plain has an English source? Tortfeasor 07:41, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Please examine the meaning of Nara in the language dictionary of Japan. It becomes the most correct answer.
The reference to [1] seems irrelevant to me as well. I could not find the Japanese name 奈良 mentioned even once on that site (Google search on "奈良 site:corea.it"). However, the idea that there is a connection with Korean exists elsewhere. It is mentioned in both the Spanish version of Wikipedia and also on the Japanese one. Both pages dismiss the theory, but they find it worthwhile to mention that it exists. Google finds more matches - none of them reliably supporting the theory, as far as I could find. My conclusion would be: 1) remove the irrelevant reference. 2) Mention the theory and say that it is not widely accepted. Mlewan 22:00, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Nara, with the Chinese characters, is mentioned on that site. Please read the first excerpt I wrote above. The second excerpt says Nara may be a from Korean loan word. But, I'm fine with mentioning that it is a minority opinion. It seems to be cited. Tortfeasor 22:22, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, the theory is minority opinion, and dinied. So, we should write the theory as a denied fact briefly. Gegesongs 23:05, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
Tortfeasor, you are right. Nara is mentioned on the page. Google played tricks on me. There are two identical looking unicode characters, 奈 and 奈, and my query got to include the wrong one. No idea how that happened. I think we agree on everything else. Mlewan 05:50, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Mlewan: I thought I was reading something different than everyone else :) So it should be okay to leave the sentence with the current citation, and be described as the minority theory? Thanks. Tortfeasor 17:19, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
>Tortfeasor, Please cite primary sources of the pronunciation about "nara" in 7th cent in Korean peninsula. It is said that what you insist is not worthy of being called a reserch, because as it was the primary sources are not exist. To fathom it from contemporary pronunciations is unreasonable. Mythologia 18:41, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Can someone else explain to Mythologia how a neutral point of view works at Wikipedia and why a primary source isn't needed or probably shouldn't be used because that would actually be original research as opposed to the citation that I provided which explicitly says Nara may be a loan word of the Korean Narah. Tortfeasor 18:46, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

>Tortfeasor: It is not insisted that "Nara" has Korean origin in the paper which you cited. What you insist is a pure original research of you. Please cite a direct paper of this point. As I wrote above primary sources of the pronunciation about "nara" in 7th cent in Korean peninsula are not exist, so I think such type of paper is not exist. Mythologia 19:10, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd have to agree with Mythologia. The author (Valerio Anselmo?) categorically says "if not with the languages of India", and then says Kudara MAY have derived from the Korean/Altaic roots, and is related to the MK (Middle Korean?) word narah.... not Nara (奈良). Valerio Anselmo denies an Indian connection for Kudara only, but doesn't clarify whether Nara (奈良) has an Indian connection or not. Since the Japanese word for narayana is naraen (那羅延) and one of the alternate kanji for Nara (奈良) was 那羅 according to Yahoo / Daijisen Japanese dictionary, Nara (奈良) indeed appears to have an Indian connection. (Narayana is of Sanskrit origin.) So while Valerio Anselmo says Nara (奈良) had a Korean pronounciation, nara-ku (寧樂 / 寧楽), he never says what the origin was. Therefore, if you say "it comes from the modern Korean word nara" based on this citation, that would be pure original research.--Endroit 15:21, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

But no one is saying that it comes from the modern Korean nara based on the citation. Tortfeasor 15:29, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I assume it violates WP:NOR then.--Endroit 15:31, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry but what violates original research? Tortfeasor 15:33, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Your wording "it comes from the modern Korean word nara" will violate WP:NOR, since there would be no source.--Endroit 15:35, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi Endroit: Thanks for your comments but I think you're jumping too conclusions. Please take a look at the page history for the last couple of days or so and see why this current version is the way it is and why it is still in discussion and why I have not reverted Mythologia's unilateral deletions and also why myself have added some citations needed brackets and then I will be happy to discuss your issues with the sentence but please don't kill the messanger :)

The source also says Nara may be a Korean loan word. Tortfeasor 15:45, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. Valerio Anselmo only establishes that there was a Korean pronounciation. Your interpretations of Valerio Anselmo amounts to original research.--Endroit 15:49, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
I just fixed the wording to conform to the source. However, I also vote to delete this text. If there is enough consensus, this text should be deleted altogether.--Endroit 16:07, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree with you >Endroit. The paper that Tortfeasor cited has actually little relation to the origin of the word "Nara". I think that Valerio Anselmo only offered a hypothesis about the word "Paekche"'s origin. I'll wait to the source for a certain time, and vote to delete this text.Mythologia 20:39, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
It's not really a matter on whether the Korean etymology is good or not. I think most of us agree that it is bad. (Personally I think it is ridiculous.) The problem is that the idea is out there, as can be seen from the Japanese Nara page and googling around. If an idea is there, we should mention it and dismiss it. It's like Intelligent design or Astrology - mention and dismiss.
We don't improve the Nara page by removing it. We can rephrase it. We can add a lot of other things about Nara. But simply deleting this sentence without a trace is not a solution. Sooner or later someone else will add it again anyhow. Mlewan 05:49, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
I think someone else will add it again too. But we can delate this sentence again. We should keep WP:NOR and if the sufficent material is offered, it will be added. Or the NPOV of WP will be violated. Mythologia 15:18, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Overall readability and Gallery section

Nothing personal, nor against the photographer or the person who created the Gallery section, the number of pictures, with always the deers, seems excessive.

In an attempt to improve the readability of the page, I also tried to re-locate the World Heritage infobox, but without real success, so I gave up --- nothing is changed for the moment.


[edit] Suspected Copyvio

The whole paragraph added on April 11th 2007 appears to match a part of [ http://www.jamesswan.com/sacredjapan.html this webpage]. --OhMyDeer 23:47, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for noting that. I had already removed part of it because it was off-topic, and now I've reverted to the last version by you. The added text contains some errors, so even if the editor who added it is the copyright owner, it'll need some touch-up. Fg2 01:42, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Translating temple names

An editor has correctly used the Japanese names for temples. I think they need the English translation attached though. It is difficult for those of us educated only in the Roman script to differentiate between these names. Until translated, they are just "a bunch of incomprehensible names." "The Western Temple" would be more understandable, IMO. Student7 (talk) 01:23, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

That's an interesting topic. Articles have been written about temple names, and they have meanings. To Japanese speakers, those meanings are more accessible than to those who don't speak (or read) the language. A case can be made for translating them. However, at least for temples for which articles have been written, the right place for the translation would be the article on the temple, rather than articles that refer to it. How do other editors view this? Fg2 (talk) 02:23, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Every name has some sort of meaning. Most people don't care about the majority of cases. I say leave it out unless it's particularly notable. If the subject has its own article, include it there. -Amake (talk) 11:07, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nara, Nara, Nara!

The name of the article looks funny. I realize that Nara is properly in Nara Prefect but it still looks funny in English. Can it be a one word title? Just "Nara"? Having unique ownership of a four letter word is unusual in English and there will probably be conflicts but I would think this city would win. Every time I see the title now I think of a movie or a joke. "Nara" alone would solve the problem for me. Student7 (talk) 14:00, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

This has been debated in numerous places time and time again. The answer is no. -Amake (talk) 17:37, 29 February 2008 (UTC)