Re: T[s]agantegia, Shanxia/Tianzhenosaurus questions

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

David Marjanovic (david.marjanovic@gmx.at) wrote:

<Actually it's _tsagaan_, as pioneering use of Google as a dictionary proves.
"tsagaan" (i. e. Ñ?агаан) gives no less than 313,000 Google hits, of which
at least the first 40 are actually in Mongolian (except for 4 in Russian and 1
in Japanese). The inverse spelling only gives 115, of which the first 40 are
all in Russian, except for 1 in Kazakh, 1 in Mongolian, and 1 in Ukrainian.
Looks like the one Mongolian occurrence is a typo, and the others are either
typos or false memory by people who don't distinguish long and short vowels in
their languages.>

  As people who know the team members who named the taxon show know, the
authors included not only Mongolians but also people who have been spending
something close to a quarter or more of the last DECADE in Mongolia. Similarly,
until recently, Mongolia has had its fair share of a nonstandardized typography
that included not only Romanized typography, but Chinese AND Russian, and only
recently has reverted back to a more ancient Sanskrit-based writing system
(though many researchers in Mongolia have studied abroad instead (Barsbold got
his degree in St. Petersburg, Russia)). If this is any consolation, then is
should be for those who decide it's neccessary to quibble about typography
irregularity and not let the name pass as an understanding of its history and
the authors involved.

  I do not think, in case anyone raises the specter, that *Tsaagan* represents
an inadverdent spelling error that must be corrected (usually for transcribing
personal and place names), according to the ICZN, but who knows.

  Cheers,

Jaime A. Headden
http://bitestuff.blogspot.com/

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)


 
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