Name for the Western Rgyalrong languages

[Hiroyuki Suzuki]

Dear Guillaume, Lhundrop, and all the members,

Thank Guillaume for proposing the terminology issue.
I have just read the messages of Guillaume and Lhundrop.
I have several adiitional comments to be shared with members.

1. I personally think we should avoid using the word "Hor" or "Horpa" alone.
Because: 1) Hor is polysemic in Literary Tibetan. Please refer to the article
of Takao Moriyasu (in Japanese with a French summary)
http://repository.tufs.ac.jp/bitstream/10108/21656/1/jaas014001.pdf
2) as far as I know, Hor in this area is not an autonym but an exonym
by Tibetan-speakers.
Then, I totally agree with the use of "Tre-hor." Guillaume mention it
is strange
to use the spell tr-, but in the Tibetan documents, this word is
consistently spelled
as tre hor. Therefore, the spelling has no problem.

It may be difficult to follow autonyms in all possible cases. But we
had better avoid
a use of terms which belong to a locally specific society (sociolect).
My collaborators from Daofu do not understand the word "Risnyuskad," neither
do Lhundrop. Why does such a situation occur? It may be because we simply know
partial things, with which we cannot decide anything important on proper names.

2. Personally, I do not like using Rtau/rTau for a language Tre-hor. Because
the Tibetan-speaking people living in Daofu use a name [rtauskat] for
their dialect.
So, the use of Stau/sTau is much better to distinguish itself from
Tibetan dialect.

3. Guillaume mentions "A transcription Stowu closer to pronunciation," but
no data of mine (9 points from Daofu) include a pronunciation as /stowu/.
Which dialect(s) use(s) this form?
In order to avoid any egocentric-like ideas, we had better conduct an
anthropological
study on the identity of the speakers of Tre-hor language group, and
if possible,
produce a linguistic map of autonyms, exonyms and their identity before we make
any decisions. It would be the most bothering but the best way to
decide a proper name.

4. Concerning the spelling itself, I do not agree with the
capitalisation rule of Guillaume.
I use rTau rather than Rtau, sTau rather than Stau, or rGyalrong
rather than Rgyalrong.
Why do not we respect the letter system of Tibetan? The centre of a
word should be
the radical letter, not always the first letter. Of course, there are
several ways of
transliteration, but we should have a philosophy and background to
transliterate
Tibetan letters.

5. Lhundrop says Horske is better as a language name, but
unfortunately I do not
think so. A language name may include no specific words designating
"language."
If Horske were used, a strange expression such as "Horske language"
might appear.

Best regards,
Hiroyuki SUZUKI

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