Attn: change in modus operandi -- from sign to sig

It's a good idea, I like it.:D It reminds me of how the Japanese swordsmiths would traditionally sign their katanas/wakizashis on the tang. That also means that Japanese sword collectors still know the names of some of the makers, even after several hundred years.

I think I remember John Powell talking about how nothing is known about the best kamis from the 18/19 centuries, becuase their names were never written down. This may change that in the future. Who knows? Maybe 200 years from now I signed Bura or Sanu khuk will be a highly sought after collector's item.:)

Beoram...IIRC Bura means something like "Old Man", and is just what the others at Birgorkha call him. Maybe Uncle Bill will fill us in later.:confused:
 
Bura's real name is Lal Bahadur but nobody calls him that, including his wife. But she doesn't call him Bura, either. She has much more choice names for him.
 
Another name change, oh well :). Sitting here looking at a BAS "signed" by KGR, and marked SN 71, with "made in Nepal" on the other side of the blade. Was the "initials thing" the first attempt to get the kamis to sign their work? Just curious.
 
Yes and the same guy signed them all regardless of who made them. Ser. 71 is most probably made by Kesar. He along with a couple or three helpers made the first 100 or so khukuris coming out of BirGorkha.
 
I guess the important thing is that they shouldn't re-use a mark (or a signature, if it comes to that) which somebody else has used before.

But even for signatures you need a Standard, Uncle :). Check out this file on Nepali font standards, especially page 16 (that's a PDF document and needs the Acrobat reader). Put it in Kami Sherpa's hands (and RUN before he looks at it).

(Actually, it's quite interesting - did you know there were 70 dialects in Nepal with two major language groups, or that the Nepali language(s) aren't quite captured in the Devanagari script?
 
Sounds like we'll be asking each other what the signatures are... who do they belong to, just like before :D

That's okay with me. ... as long as we are getting the same fine quality as always. Eventually, we'll figure it out.

BTW... Was Durba planning on coming back? I really hope he will. ... I LOVE my 12" AK! It is enough to make you want to covert to 'research. ...' DooHH! I went and said it :p

Alan
 
Originally posted by Irregular
I guess the important thing is that they shouldn't re-use a mark (or a signature, if it comes to that) which somebody else has used before.

But even for signatures you need a Standard, Uncle :). Check out this file on Nepali font standards, especially page 16 (that's a PDF document and needs the Acrobat reader). Put it in Kami Sherpa's hands (and RUN before he looks at it).

(Actually, it's quite interesting - did you know there were 70 dialects in Nepal with two major language groups, or that the Nepali language(s) aren't quite captured in the Devanagari script?
Click to expand...

Very interesting paper!

I'm still not sure about the Devanagari-not-capturing Nepali. It won't capture Newari probably, because Newari is a Tibeto-Burman language, unrelated to Nepali, Sanskrit, Hindi, &c. (imagine writing English with Hebrew characters). And maybe some of the other non-Indo-Aryan languages (Limbu?-don't know which language family it belongs to), but so far as I can tell nagari has all of the characters needed for Nepali--but since I'm not a Nepali-speaker, I could easily be wrong.

On page 6. there's a very strange comment:

While it is true that Nepali uses the character set of Devanagari, some developments peculiar to Nepali have taken place. Three of the conjuncts of Devanagari - ksha, tra, gya [sic] - have become letters of the Nepali alphabet, placed at the end after ha. Grammarians of Hindi and Sanskrit would view this as wrong, that the conjuncts should be broken down...but it is right for Nepali
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The three symbols/characters they show for ksha, tra, gya (the last is typically transliterated as jna) are perfectly intelligible to anyone reading nagari script and they stand for exactly those sounds! So I don't quite understand the quote. Hindi and Sanskrit aside - they are 'conjunct sounds', no matter what language they're in. The only place where it would seem to matter is in compiling a dictionary - and then to put them after ha seems odd, because the Devanagari alphabet is very carefully ordered, not randomly like the Roman or Greek alphabets, but scientifically, e.g. all of the velar sounds are together, then all of the dental sounds, &c. It just seems like blatant silliness to muck up the one nicely-ordered alphabet! But maybe there's a reason for it I don't understand, but the article doesn't explain....

cheers for the interesting link -

Uncle did we ever get a definitive version of the kami-signatures? Is Bura going to use 'Bura' or 'Bahadur Lal' ("red brave"?)

cheers again, B.
 
It is not uncommon in Nepal for the inhabitants of one valley to speak a totally different language from their neighbors in the next valley over. As noted, Newaris have a language all their own. Sherpas, Tibetans, Tamangs, Western Gurungs, Mananghis, Rai, Limbu, Magar, and I think about 35 others have their own tribal languages.

A kid growing up in a village will learn tribal language. When he starts school he learns Nepali. If he makes it to college it's English medium. So, in such a case a college grad "should" be master of three languages but I've seen college grads who had a hell of a time with English.

I know it drives the Peace Corps volunteers nuts. And me, too! It's hell when you need something in the outback and nobody understands you no matter Nepali, English or any other language you might have tucked in your pocket. I mastered a technique of exerted facial expressions combined with a very animated system of sign language that worked maybe 75% of the time. Getting directions was the worst.
 
beoram:
On page 6. there's a very strange comment: ...
Click to expand...

I didn't understand that myself, I thought they were making some esoteric point about grammar.
I got the impression they wanted one set of fonts which could be used for all (or most of) the languages spoken in Nepal.

Bill Martino:
It is not uncommon in Nepal for the inhabitants of one valley to speak a totally different language from their neighbors in the next valley over. (etc.)
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Sounds a bit like old Boston/The home of the bean and the cod/Where the Lowells speak only to the Cabots/And the Cabots speak only to God.
 
Originally posted by Irregular
beoram:

I didn't understand [comment on pg. 6] myself, I thought they were making some esoteric point about grammar.
I got the impression they wanted one set of fonts which could be used for all (or most of) the languages spoken in Nepal.
Click to expand...

That would make sense (though I don't know if there is such a set of founts [one might need a entirely new alphabet]) - but here they were just talking about Nepali itself, not all of the Nepali languages. The proposal they were making would be something equivalent to saying 'in English, since we use the sequences "tr" (e.g. 'train'), "cr" ('crane') and "pr" ('pray') so often, we're going to make those 3 sequences count as new letters, so that 'train' won't appear under T in the dictionary any longer, but rather under a new section TR, which we're going to put after Z'. That's why I thought this was an odd thing to propose - it seems to make things more difficult, and it doesn't actually have anything to do with grammar or really even orthography, but just how the characters are ordered (in a dictionary or whatever).....

B.
 
Originally posted by Walosi
of what you are talking about, Ben, but look at the "Index of Towns in Nepal" on the FAQ - Is this the sort of thing you are referring to?

http://www.calle.com/world/nepal/index.html
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No, Walosi - not really. The Index linked above is in Roman-alphabet order. Devanagari alphabet is:

a aa i ii u uu e o ai au - All the Vowels 1st
ka kha ga gha ca cha ja jha jna - All the 'velars', sort of
....
ta tha da dha na - all of the 'dentals'
&c. &c.
Click to expand...

for the most part the nagari-alphabet is arranged by how the sounds are pronounced (that's why vowels are separate from consonants) and where the sound are pronounced in the mouth (e.g. KA & GA are next to one another because they're both velar, pronounced in the back of the mouth).

But what the proposed plan in the paper referred to is to take some consonant clusters, which are written as one symbol in nagari, and make them new 'dictionary entries'.

Here's a better example. In English S & SH actually represent two rather different sounds - imagine if it were decided to separate all of the S & SH words in the dictionary by moving SH to end of the alphabet after Z. How difficult it would be to find anything in the dictionary! Not only would words starting with SH all be moved, but it would affect any word with SH in it, so ASH would follow AZURE rather than following AS.

I don't think anyone's really going to re-arrange the nagari alphabet for Nepali, so I doubt it matters...

B.
 
That reminds me of why ignorance is bliss :D I think the less I know along that path, the happier I'll be.
 
UNCLE ,CAN U GIVE ME THE NAMES TO THESE SYMBOLES? MOUNTAINS-AN M WITH A LINE UNDER IT AND A HALF MOON OR 1/4 MOON.... :)
 
M with a line has me buffaloed. I think the 1/4 moon is Bura. Half moon could be Bura or the half moon might be a butterlamp -- KNN.
 
Originally posted by JUSTRIGHT
UNCLE ,CAN U GIVE ME THE NAMES TO THESE SYMBOLES? MOUNTAINS-AN M WITH A LINE UNDER IT AND A HALF MOON OR 1/4 MOON.... :)
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I think the "M with the line under it" is the Flag of Nepal. Was Durba's mark but became Kesar's when Durba left.
 
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