Name for the Western Rgyalrong languages

[Guillaume Jacques]

Dear all,

I think that the RGYALRONG list is the appropriate place to address
terminological issues, in particular language names.

I cc Jackson Sun, Randy LaPolla, David Bradley, Scott Delancey, George van
Driem,  Chantel Vanderveen, Lhundrop Tunzhi, G.yu lha and Lobsang Nima who
may be interested by this discussion (and are welcome to join the RGYALRONG
list if they are interested).

While everybody agrees about the name Rgyalrong (with the alternative
spelling rGyalrong), there is no consensus yet for which Western names for
the Rtau and Lavrung groups are the most appriopriate, and I would like to
offer some reflexions.

For the Lavrung language, Lai (2013), although he adopt this name, points
out that it is largely unknown among most speakers, and that it appears to
be the house name of the family of Huang Bufan's main informant. In my
opinion, this is really a poor choice for the name of the language, and we
should collectively decide on something better.

For Rtau, we have several issues: the name of the main Rtau language and
the name of the group including variety that are not intelligible with it.

For the Rtau language itself, we have several options:

1) Using the Chinese translitteration Daofu. I think this should always be
avoided, because it obscures the real pronunciation of the language (and
personally, I find it sino-centric).

2) The standard Tibetan spelling Rtau or Rta'u. This is only sensible to
some extend. The real pronunciation of the name of the place is stɔwuwith
an s- not an r-, and the spelling is probably due here to an attempt at
folk-etymologizing the name as 'little horse'

3) A pseudo-Tibetan spelling Stau. It has been used before in an obscure
article published in the seventies, but it is not that bad.

4) A transcription Stowu closer to pronunciation.

5) Ergong is an entirely made up and offensive name that should be avoided.

6) There is an alternative name for the language rəsɲəske which would be
translitterated into Tibetan as Risnyuskad. This is the preferred name for
the language by our collaborator Lobsang Nima but I wonder if other people
use it too.

For the group including Rtau/Stowu/Risnyuskad and the language of Dgebshes
(Geshizha) and Stodsde (Shangzhai), I would prefer the Tibetan name Tre-Hor
which appears to be relatively well known among Tibetan people from
everywhere and which designates an area larger than Rtau rdzong itself. It
is a very strange name (Tibetan words do not normally contain tr-), but I
personally would favour it.

Of course, I think that the final word on this topic should be the decision
of native speakers. We are fortunate to have native speakers of both
Rtau/Stau and Lavrung who are studying linguistics at the moment, and their
decision as to which option is best suited for their language will be
decisive.

In any case, it is time to have a discussion on this topic. Several studies
on these languages are in preparation (MAs, PhDs and various articles), and
we need to reach a consensus as a community. Please don't hesitate to offer
feedback, whether your main area of speciality concerns these languages or
not. We could even consider collectively writing a paper about language
names in this area.

Best to all,

Guillaume

-- 
Guillaume Jacques
CNRS (CRLAO) - INALCO
http://cnrs.academia.edu/GuillaumeJacques
http://himalco.hypotheses.org/
http://panchr.hypotheses.org/

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