Talk:Gyantse

Size ranking

In the introduction paragraph, it says it's the third largest city, yet in the very next paragraph, it says it's the fourth largest. Which is it? --Nekura 16:12, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

It is the fourth - after Lhasa, Shigatse and Chamdo. cheers, John Hill 04:54, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Correct spelling in Tibetan pinyin (ZYPY)

The current article has Gyangdzê as the Tibetan pinyin spelling for Gyantse in the intro, while the table on the right has Gyangzê. Gyangdzê must be wrong because ZYPY doesn't include the sequence dz. So I suspect Gyangzê is correct, but not knowing Tibetan I'm not sure about the intersyllabic sound changes that apply. Just based on the tables for ZYPY, it looks like Wylie rgyal rtse would correspond to Gyäzê or Gyaizê. I'm stumped as to how it would become Gyangzê even after reading up on the phonological interactions between syllables in Tibetan. Does anyone know for sure? Iceager (talk) 09:36, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

 Done Correction made, thanks,--Pseudois (talk) 10:17, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that there are a few different pronunciations of this word that could be considered standard or semi-standard. It's hard to know for sure which would be considered the official pronunciation to be transcribed in ZYPY. I believe there's an official publication somewhere that lists all the official romanized place names, but I don't have access to it. Government publications such as the English edition of People's Daily are typically highly inconsistent in spelling.

There are few pronunciation issues, which are overall pretty minor but they create several conflicting options if we want to be exact. One thing is the fronting of [ɑ] to [ɛ] (that's "a" and "ai" ZYPY). It's considered "standard" for [ɑl] to always become [ɛl]. However, this pronunciation seems to be pretty specific to the Lhasa area. This shift is often not reflected in conventional romanizations and Tournadre and Sangda Dorje state specifically that it does not occur in Tsang (that's where Gyantse is) dialects, which are otherwise pretty close to the standard. This contrasts with the shift from [ɑn] to [ɛn] and other similar cases, which seem to be much more robust and are almost always reflected in romanisations.

The second pronunciation issue is the "floating nasal", a nasal consonant and vowel nasalization which occurs irregularly but frequently when m, n, ng, l, or ’ (’achung) appear in between a vowel and a consonant. This is the source of the "n" in the conventional romanisation "Gyantse". This sound is frequently pronounced but seems to be considered "non-standard" by Tibetan speakers and it is sometimes not included in conventional romanisations (I've noticed that English-language documents written by Tibetans will sometimes write "Gaden Monastery" instead of "Ganden Monastery"). The floating nasal does not affect the pronunciation of a preceding vowel. That's why it's Ganden (ZYPY: Gandain), not Genden (ZYPY: Gaindain).

A related topic is what to do with the l in rgyal-rtse if we ignore the floating nasal. Typically, Standard Tibetan speakers pronounce a syllable-final l by lengthening the preceding vowel; as a distinct consonant sound, the l is normally silent, although it may be enunciated in especially careful or formal speech. For this reason, romanisations can vary as to whether or not to include syllable-final "l". Conventional romanisations in English texts usually do; ZYPY often does not (note Qoigyijabu, which would more conventionally be "Chökyi Gyalpo"; although "jabu" for rgyal-po is an overall highly inconsistent attempt at ZYPY).

Anecdotally, unlike with most Tibetan places that might come up, I've spoken briefly with a person who actually came from Gyantse. The way she pronounced it sure sounded like [ɟant͡se] (or maybe [ɟãt͡se]) to me.

So, I don't really know what the correct ZYPY is. My guess would be Gyaizê, assuming a strictly standard pronunciation of [ɟɛːt͡se]). The nasal sound of the "floating nasal" is normally represented with "n", not with "ng", so I think Gyangzê is probably wrong. This spelling probably comes from media sources trying to use ZYPY but getting confused by the Chinese-language name of the city, Jiāngzǐ.—Greg Pandatshang (talk) 19:05, 14 August 2013 (UTC)