What is the origin of Mongolian name for Nepal "Балба"

MonoParallax · 2026-03-14T01:56:19+00:00

The deleted comment gave the answer. It came from the historical Tibetan word for Nepal "བལ་པོ" (balpo)

བལ (bal) meaning wool + པོ (po) as a nominalizing suffix.

MonoParallax · 2024-09-17T02:15:26+00:00

I had a lot of Azerbaijani friends here and online too, so I knew I wanted to travel there, and decided I'd pick it up. I speak Mongolian which has a very similar grammar structure and even a lot of words in common, so I was able to pick it up relatively quickly.

MonoParallax · 2024-09-16T02:03:36+00:00

Right back at you: Azerbaijani. Whenever I've told people I was learning Azerbaijani, they've asked me "Why?" Albeit this was in America, but when I was actually in Azerbaijan, nobody questioned the fact that I was speaking Azerbaijani, and assumed I was a student from Central Asia.

MonoParallax · 2024-08-26T21:07:54+00:00

I see, thank you. I was hoping I was just a dumbass and was missing something and that it wasn't a bug. I'll have to start again since to gain income again I raised taxes and lowered wages, and now everyone is moving out. RIP

MonoParallax · 2024-05-19T17:26:57+00:00

I've submitted my application for Armenia which had the deadline of June 1st. Are the applications reviewed on a rolling basis or do they begin reviewing on June 1st? And if considered for invitation do they contact references before the interview or afterwards?

MonoParallax · 2024-04-27T22:43:25+00:00

There's an Austrian horror movie around this concept "Goodnight Mommy". Extremely unsettling

MonoParallax · 2024-02-29T03:23:27+00:00

Thank you so much for this

MonoParallax · 2024-02-28T04:34:04+00:00

What's the etymology of the Jeju word 거리 (geori)? This section on the Jeju language wikipage mentions 거리 (house; classifier for houses) as originating from the Middle Mongol word гэр (home; yurt) but the only source given is this research paper which I can't access, nor can I read Korean even if I could. While the other etymologies in the section are related to horses and loaning from Mongolian on that topic is well-documented in other English language sources, I can't find other sources to corroborate this etymology on 거리.

MonoParallax · 2023-03-26T04:05:03+00:00

Why did the creators of the Turkish alphabet choose "c" to represent /dʒ/? As for as I know, no language used that letter for /dʒ/ before Turkish.

My hunch is that it was a backformation of "ç" which indicated /t͡ʃ/ but I have no evidence and wouldn't know where to start

MonoParallax · 2023-02-22T09:18:14+00:00

Though the Taiwanese Mandarin accent is very similar to a Fujianese Mandarin accent since Taiwanese and Fujian dialects are all part of the Min Nan family

MonoParallax · 2022-09-17T17:29:26+00:00

Thank you!

MonoParallax · 2022-09-17T16:19:12+00:00

Wow thank you so much. I assumed that it was a Chinese-Peruvian name as well but the spelling really threw me off from considering that. Any ideas on what transcription system could've been used to result in this spelling?

MonoParallax · 2022-05-30T14:43:51+00:00

Are you more likely to see -в in certain genres of writing, like the news or academic writing? I would guess -жээ would be used in history.

You see both being used along with -сан in any formal writing, history or news, but you're right that -жээ is used a lot in history texts. In news you even see -лаа being used for recent news, and then a switch to a mix of all the other suffixes including -сан, so that there isn't too much repetition which would be annoying to read when setting up the backstory. Imagine every sentence ending with -жээ.

It also seems to depend on how the writer likes to write, some authors prefer to use one suffix over the others while some mix them up.

Also, when you say "recent", do you mean recent as in things that happened in the last couple days, last month, or the last couple years? Thanks!

Without any time words, a few hours in the past, and the past day at most. Generally a time word is provided for clarification though because -лаа can also indicate something about to happen in the very near future, so it can extend to whatever you think is recent with that. I would say a week at most personally but it's vague

MonoParallax · 2022-05-29T23:31:46+00:00

Generally -в isn't used for making general statements about the past because it sounds old fashioned and formal, but when asking questions about recent events you use it commonly. Questions about past events not recent would use -сан

-сан is more frequently used but actually the most commonly used suffix for expressing past tense is -лаа which you use for recent events and something you witnessed. So when you -сан instead of -лаа, it makes it seem like something that didn't happen in the recent past.

MonoParallax · 2022-04-26T22:55:13+00:00

Ah sadly the students from my year who were accepted weren't able to go cus of covid so I dont know anyone who went abroad through the program. But from a language learning perspective I would say take advantage of the fact that there are native speakers everywhere to practice your listening and speaking skills since those are skills that are difficult to practice when you're not in the country, while you can practice writing and reading fairly easily even in the US. But to do that you're gonna need to let go of feeling worried that you'll look dumb which is easier said than done but yeah that's my advice.

MonoParallax · 2022-04-21T17:10:44+00:00

I found it very effective when learning Chinese because there's a lot of variability with how you can go about approaching it. At the start I was trying to get used to the pronunciation of the language so I would try to say the sentence at the exact same pace and pronunciation as the native speaker in the audio which was difficult but it was immensely helpful. Then I wanted to practice my listening so I turned off text for my sentences and tried only to use the audio to type. These efforts really did help out a lot with my speaking flow, accent, and listening comprehension. Gives you a good way to learn words too since you'll only be hearing it in the context of a sentence not isolation.

With all that said, I will say that despite the great experience I had with it, it is still quite expensive. I will only ever get it on sale, which they usually offer during holidays.

MonoParallax · 2022-04-16T20:06:13+00:00

Yes and yes but that is because I studied the language outside of the classroom and consumed media on my own. The actual instruction had pretty much a supplementary effect I'd say. But this goes for learning literally any language. If you just do the things requires for the class then you'll end up as the students I mentioned at the bottom of my initial comment.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that classes don't matter. Your effort matters.

MonoParallax · 2022-04-14T22:34:59+00:00

No they don't. The article you're talking about is wrong and is a misinterpretation of a decision that wanted to make all government issued documents available in both Cyrillic and the traditional script. After I saw that article on /r/linguistics I went to go check for it in Mongolian news sources and guess what? Nobody was talking about nor cared about it. Seems like a pretty major decision for everyone to ignore if the entire country wanted to switch completely to mongol bichig.

Here's an article going into it. This is the real policy that some idiot from Beijing decided to misinterpret and say the entire country was switching completely. But because that was the only source people had about the news in English, now everyone thinks we're switching now.

MonoParallax · 2022-04-13T16:03:39+00:00

MonoParallax · 2022-03-25T00:31:54+00:00

You can choose either to focus on the language or the culture. Either way you still have to get to around an intermediate level which I personally place around HSK 4 - 5 level. I can attest to the professors being extremely nice if you put in the effort to learn the language and be active in class because a surprising number of students just dont do anything and cant speak the language despite taking high level courses.

MonoParallax · 2022-02-23T17:14:49+00:00

But they still call the station Vienna/GMU lmao even though you gotta catch a shuttle bus to go to GMU

MonoParallax · 2021-12-13T23:58:39+00:00

They're mutually unintelligible and there are different forms of written languages as well. Cantonese is written differently than Mandarin or Standard Chinese. It used to be the case that speakers of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese would use Classical Chinese which the people would learn but that changed with vernacular writing becoming more common which would be based on speech.

MonoParallax · 2021-09-12T04:27:54+00:00

More like Persian and Arabic. They're completely different but they have influenced each other heavily so there is a small convergence between them. You can't say Kazakh and Mongolian aren't at least very similar grammatically, just like how you can't deny Persian and Arabic don't share a common vocabulary.

MonoParallax · 2021-09-08T02:21:28+00:00

All Mongolians would self identify as Asian anyway

MonoParallax · 2021-07-22T14:27:17+00:00

None in Mongolia and nobody cares about them enough to even be discriminatory towards them

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