Mo River Spengler
« previous post | next post »
Rachel Kronick has a knack for finding strange foreign equivalents for Chinese toponyms on Baidu, China's foremost online encyclopedia. See "The city of Mr. Andreessen, South Korea" (4/22/14).
Now she has struck paydirt again with "Mo Ri River Spengler" for Mòrìgélè hé 莫日格勒河 in the Baidu encyclopedia.
For Mòrìgélè hé 莫日格勒河 Google Translate has "Mo River Spengler", Baidu Fanyi has "Mo Spengler River", and Bing Translator has "MO River".
Wherever or however it started, you can find various transformations of the name of this river that contain "Spengler" strewn all over the web.
Mòrìgélè 莫日格勒 is the Chinese transcription of the Mongolian name, which is Mergel. This is a narrow but extremely meandrous river in the Hulun Buir League (Kölön Buyir qota ᠬᠥᠯᠥᠨ ᠪᠤᠶᠢᠷ ᠬᠣᠲᠠ) of Inner Mongolia. Judging from the tremendous number of photographs available on the web (do a Google search under Mo River Spengler), the grassland scenery there must be spectacularly beautiful, especially at sunset (Sonnenuntergang [Ch. rìluò 日落]), though lately there has also been news of many dead fish clogging the river due to pollution.
Juha Janhunen has investigated the language of the Khamnigan Mongol speakers who live in the Mergel basin (see ch. 4 of his The Mongolic Languages), so perhaps he would know the actual etymology of "Mergel", insofar as it is possible to determine one.
Based on previous experience, I would expect such weird proper names within translations as "Mo River Spengler" to come from mis-parsed bilingual texts used to train translation engines. I've described examples of exactly that sort of foul-up in previous posts on Chinglish. The thing is that the original texts that cause such blunders tend to be easy to find, but in this case I haven't found one. Consequently, I'll have to hypothesize several possible glitches in the training process.
A transcription of "Spengler" ending in -gélè 格勒 should be involved. Oswald is surely the most celebrated Spengler, and the usual transcription of his name does indeed end in -gélè 格勒: Àosīwǎ'ěrdé·Sībīngélè 奧斯瓦爾德·斯賓格勒. The identity of the last two characters in the Chinese transcription of Spengler's surname and the last two characters of the Chinese transcription of the river name Mergel, i.e., Mòrìgélè 莫日格勒, surely must be the main trigger for the confused machine translation.
Oswald Spengler is universally famous for his masterwork, The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes), Chinese title Xīfāng de mòluò 西方的沒落. We already know what happened to the last two syllables of the Chinese transcription of the Mongolian name Mergel. How about the first two syllables, mòrì 莫日? These two syllables, which literally mean "not day", are perfectly homophonous with mòrì 末日, which means "end time; doomsday". In addition, they partially overlap in sound and meaning with mòluò 沒落 ("waning; decline").
Another possible trigger for the mistranslation: David Goldman, a political commentator who writes (used to write?) under the pseudonym "Spengler". Western commentators whose views are (circumstantially) aligned with the Party's are often mentioned (or even write) in state media, so that could have been a possibility. An example of the phenomenon: this article on an official website of the Chinese Communist Party by William Engdahl which mentions Spengler (the Younger) in the transcribed form Sīpénggélè 斯彭格勒, with the same two tell-tale final syllables.
Note that Goldman / Spengler's two recent books both also have to do with the collapse of nations and civilizations:
It’s Not the End of the World, It’s Just the End of You: The Great Extinction of the Nations (2011)
How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is dying too) (2011)
This explanation of how the internet got from the Mongolian river name "Mergel" to the Chinglish designation "Mo Ri River Spengler" may strike readers as unduly sinuous, but, hey, that's the shape of the Mergel after all.
[Thanks to Jichang Lulu]
Nick said,
August 12, 2016 @ 3:00 pm
Dr. Mair,
To stray off topic, I have heard there is V in Cantonese and Shanghainese. I suspect Li Bai and Du Fu used that sound. When did Mandarin (with all its predecessors) lose that sound? Is there any text in English you can recommend that will answer this and other similar questions about how certain sounds got lost?
Many thanks!
Nick
Bathrobe said,
August 12, 2016 @ 4:23 pm
The deeper background to the problem is that Mandarin is now the de facto standard for rendering place names in China. The principle that Chinese-character names should be convertible back to the original language seems to have been almost completely abandoned, if it ever existed. (I was always under the impression that China under Mao, at least, respected the place names of minority ethnic groups, although I could be wrong.)
The Chinese now appear to consider Kashi the true name of Kashgar, Lasa the true name of Lhasa, Huhehaote the true name of Hohhot, Erlian the true name of Eren(hot), etc. The names of particularly well-known places (like Lhasa and Kashgar) hang on in many English-language sources, although sinified versions are more and more commonly seen. But less well-known places seem to have been completely sinified. If my memory is correct, the railway station at Erenhot (Èrliánhàotè, known to the Mongolians as Ereen) bears the English-language name of "Erlianhaote Station".
I was once trying to read a Mongolian-language article (in the traditional script) about water issues in Inner Mongolia, where many lakes and rivers are shrinking or disappearing. I had some difficulty finding English language names for many bodies of water or rivers. Sometimes I could find a Chinese name, but either there was nothing on the Internet about that lake or river in English, or the only English-language references used the Chinese name (which is simply a transliteration of the Mongolian name). I think this failure to respect local language names in China is behind problems that Baidu and others experience finding names like "Mergel". If there were decent sources for finding the original names it would not be such a problem. But if the original names are completely ignored in China, the only version available for international consumption is the transliteration, hence mangled names like "Mo Ri River Spengler".
Bathrobe said,
August 12, 2016 @ 4:37 pm
Incidentally, Kölön Buyir qota means Hulunbuir City (呼伦贝尔市 Hūlúnbèi'ěr shì).
It was previously a league, when it was known as 呼伦贝尔盟 Hūlúnbèi'ěr méng or Kölön Buyir ayimaɣ.
Rachel said,
August 12, 2016 @ 6:11 pm
Thank you for the research, Dr. Mair! Mongolian is on my list of languages to learn, but time has never allowed it, so the true name of the river was unavailable to me. It's wonderful that you've found it.
I suspect that the most famous Spengler in Anglophone countries is not Oswald, but the fictional character Egon, from Ghostbusters, played by Harold Ramis. See https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BC%8A%E6%A0%B9%C2%B7%E5%8F%B2%E8%B3%93%E6%A0%BC%E5%8B%92 . That doesn't seem to change the effect of your theory, though; I wouldn't be at all surprised if the most famous Spengler is still Oswald in China and the rest of the world.
Bathrobe said,
August 12, 2016 @ 6:59 pm
I agree that it is very impressive that Professor Mair found the Mongolian name. Googling "莫日格勒河" turns up Morigele River, Mo Ri River Spengler or Moergele River. Googling "莫日格勒河 river" doesn't turn up "Mergel river" in results. Only if you google "莫日格勒河 Mergel" will you find "Mergel river" — and even that is not the first result. "Mergel" is buried so deep that it may as well not exist for Google.
Not a naive speaker said,
August 13, 2016 @ 5:21 am
Hi,
some googling and guessing and the map collection of Utexas resulted in this index map of Manchuria
The meanders of this Mergel river might be on sheet NM51-7 YA-K'O-SHIH. There are two large happily meandering rivers on this sheet:
the larger one Hai-la-erh Ho,
the smaller one north-west Mo-erh-ko-er Ho
I have no clue if one of the names is a butchered translation/transcription. Some of the watercourses are unnamed, it might be one of them.
Bathrobe said,
August 13, 2016 @ 7:46 am
I would say that Mo-erh-ko-er Ho is Wade-Giles (without tones) for Mòěrgé'ěr Hé, probably 莫尔格尔河, another way of sinicising "Mergel gol" (Mergel River).
Transliteration of Mongolian into Chinese is not fully standardised. Both 莫尔格勒 Mòěrgélè and 莫勒格尔 Mòlègé'ěr can also be found on the Internet.
Googling "Мэргэл гол" will turn up Mongolian sites mentioning the river.
Victor Mair said,
August 13, 2016 @ 8:33 am
From Juha Janhunen:
I have spent several months on the shores of the river Mergel, but the etymology is unclear to me, like that of most other hydronyms in the region. The names can be pretty old, even Pre-Mongolic and Pre-Tungusic. However, the Mo River issue reminds me of the way the Chinese distort all non-Chinese personal and place names of the former Manchu empire which they now administer under the name of PRChina. Giovanni Stary has written about this problem in connection with Manchu names. Even uninformed western sources have started speaking of historical persons like "Nuerhaqi" etc. instead of what should be Nurhachi etc.
Michael Watts said,
August 13, 2016 @ 3:15 pm
If by V you mean the voiced labiodental fricative, it exists in mandarin as an allophone of /w/.
When I asked a Shanghairen about the pronunciation of 勿 in shanghainese, I was told (n = 1, here, so be careful) that [f] and [v] are equivalent sounds in shanghainese (which they are not in mandarin – [f] is the phoneme /f/, and [v] is the phoneme /w/). I have no information at all on whether shanghainese includes the sound [w].
Michael Watts said,
August 13, 2016 @ 3:19 pm
This definitely happens, but I think it's an inevitable part of speaking a non-Manchu language. I had a friend tell me she was fond of "Benedict Cumberbaqi". There's no malice there; it's just that Chinese people know the Chinese names of things. English distorts non-English names too; there's really no way not to. :/
Bathrobe said,
August 13, 2016 @ 3:47 pm
@not a native speaker
That map is a rare find. It's not the sort of map that Chinese would find pleasant to see, however, because it obviously dates from the period of Japanese control of Manchuria. While most of the place names are in Chinese in Wade-Giles transcription, and in some cases in Chinese characters, there are certain parts that give Japanese names in Rōma-ji. For example, Kuridōru-ka, Torumoruji-ka, Sei Irakutochī-ka, Tō Irakutochī-ka (where ka is 河 'river', sei is 西 'west', tō is 東 'east'), Porudōno-san, and Kammunega-san (where san 山 is mountain). These are concentrated in a certain part of the map. Neither the Chinese nor the Japanese names seem to be much of a guide to the pronunciation in the original language(s).
Jichang Lulu said,
August 13, 2016 @ 4:04 pm
Shanghai has separate /f/ and /v/: 放 fã, 房 vā (the tones are different, but that difference is not phonemic).
勿 has a /v/.
There is a [w] glide.
Jichang Lulu said,
August 13, 2016 @ 5:49 pm
Wrong diacritic in my previous comment: 放 fã, 房 vã (both with the same nasal vowel).
Joseph Bottum said,
August 14, 2016 @ 12:39 am
I assume you mean the joke of using "meandrous" for the Mòrìgélè hé, since the word is itself a very rivery word—"meander" coming to us from the Greek name for the Meander River in Asia Minor, thought the most meandrous river of all.
Jichang Lulu said,
August 14, 2016 @ 9:00 am
@Nick
The common ancestor of modern Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese (etc.) had a v sound, as well as other 'voiced' sounds like b, d, z. Those have been lost in Mandarin and Cantonese, but are preserved in Shanghainese and other related varieties. For example, the character 房 'house, room' begins with an f- in Mandarin and Cantonese, but with a v- in Shanghainese, as it's assumed it did in mediaeval Chinese. Tang poets like Li Bai and Du Fu most likely had a v- there.
Michael Watts mentions that in many northern forms of Mandarin, pinyin 'w' can have a sort-of-V-like pronunciation, especially among younger female speakers. That happens if the following vowel is a or e, but not if it's o or u. Actually, that sound isn't a labiodental fricative [v] like that of English or Shanghainese, but a labiodental approximant [ʋ]. That's the usual pronunciation of e.g. Dutch w (some forms of Dutch have three labiodental phonemes /f v ʋ/. This is a separate phenomenon from e.g. Shanghainese /v/ preserved from mediaeval Chinese. Mandarin [ʋ] occurs in syllables that wouldn't have had a [v] in the Middle Ages.
(Of course there might be speakers of Mandarin who have an actual [v], but that's not the pronunciation you'll hear from e.g. newsreaders as it's considered non-standard by the Relevant Departments.)
If you're interested in getting an idea of what Tang poetry might have sounded like, you could have a look at David Pager Branner's transcriptions (e.g. here starting around p. 25). You might find some v's there.
Nick said,
August 14, 2016 @ 11:27 am
Thanks for the responses to my intrusive query! -Nick
Michael Watts said,
August 14, 2016 @ 3:02 pm
Actually, that sound isn't a labiodental fricative [v] like that of English or Shanghainese, but a labiodental approximant [ʋ]. That's the usual pronunciation of e.g. Dutch w (some forms of Dutch have three labiodental phonemes /f v ʋ/.
This makes me curious. Speaking English while smiling, I can produce a labiodental nasal instead of [m], or a labiodental approximant instead of [w]. That labiodental approximant sounds to me like a /w/. The allophone of Mandarin /w/ that we've been discussing sounds to me (only native language： American English) like a /v/. What's making the difference?