Talk:Tsagaan Sar

Airag?

I guess I am making a fool of myself with this question, but do people really drink airag on Tsagaan Sar? I used to think that airag is first of all a summer thing. Yaan (talk) 16:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Your question is right. Yes, they do, they freeze and store it till Tsagaan Sar. Gantuya eng (talk) 03:05, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Bituun

Bituun is the name of the lunar phase, not the name of 'eating to full' as many uneducated people think. The lunar phases are Bituun (dark moon), Shined (new crescent moon), Tergel (full moon), and Huuchid (waxing moon). The verb for the ceremony is "bituuleh", not "bituureh" which sounds like to "eat to death". If some people are calling it "bituureh", and comment that "they must eat to the full", this is result of their ignorance. Many people go to hospital during those days in the result of "eating to the full". The wrong, hungry interpretation of this astronomical phenomenon may have penetrated some literature and websites.
The actual ceremony involves cleaning around home thoroughly, herders also clean the livestock barns and shades, putting 3 pieces of ice at the doorway so that the horse of the deity Palden Lhamo could drink as she visits every household on this day and burning candles to symbolise enlightenment of the samsara and all sentient beings. In the evening they eat the normal way as on any other holiday, the best and tastiest, but not necessarily "to the full". Gantuya eng (talk) 03:23, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Diletant sources

Those website links I delete are politely speaking diletant. They fit to be a non-professional tourist impression only. And they seem to have been copied to several other diletant websites.

One of these sites is written by a person who completely doesn't know the meaning of the word "Bituun" and interpretes it as "last dinner". When people far from astronomy try to describe such an important event, it becomes really "tulga toirson setgelgee" (thinking which doesn't get far from the kitchen).

The other site tries to connect Bituun with the sky ibn the following manner:

"The Tsagaan Sar eve or the last day of winter is called "Bituun", which means "full darkness". It is a single night when no moon is visible in the sky. On this day people eat to be really full. It is believed that if you stay hungry, you will be hungry all the coming year around."

So what does it mean by "single night". Single for the month or single for the year? This indicates that the writer does not understand what he/she is talking about. And again he/she is so hungry that strives to "eat to be really full" and immediate medical attention is required. This reduces one of the most important Buddhist events related to the science of Astromomy and celebrated throughout the Buddhist world to something primitive. In Buddhism, greediness is one of the basic types of Nisvanis while the passion to eat "to the full" IS greediness. That's why swine is depicted in the centre of the Wheel of Samsara to represent one of the three roots of nisvanis. Gantuya eng (talk) 16:14, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I had to remove those links again. Wikipedia is not for promotion of commercial websites. Gantuya eng (talk) 02:49, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

And I had to put them back, as English-language information about Tsagaan Sar on the internet is scarce. Vidor (talk) 05:49, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

There is no need to link to external pages at all, whether they are scarce or not. And those two examples clearly fall under Links normally to be avoided points 1 and 13. --Latebird (talk) 07:44, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

What language is this?

What language or script is this? I cannot read, it shows cubics with numbers inside: ᠴᠠᠭᠠᠨ ᠰᠠᠷᠠ Gantuya eng (talk) 05:04, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I think it is classical and should read - on computers that display this correctly, mine doesn't - chaghan sara. Yaan (talk) 12:30, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Interesting. Does it go vertical when it displays correctly? Gantuya eng (talk) 14:59, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

My computer doesn't display this text correctly too. Bogomolov.PL (talk) 15:03, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

It's Mongolian script in unicode: 0x1834 0x1820 0x182d 0x1820 0x1828 0x20 0x1830 0x1820 0x1837 0x1820 --Latebird (talk) 19:01, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Today it works - not cubes but Mongol Bichig. Something with Wiki or with FireFox? Bogomolov.PL (talk) 00:42, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Maybe this made the difference? --Latebird (talk) 21:30, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

It's still cubic toys on my screen. Gantuya eng (talk) 05:34, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Which operating system are you using? Does it display Chinese and Thai characters properly? Yaan (talk) 12:36, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Windows XP, I guess. Yes, it shows Chinese and Thai characters properly. I asked the person who installed the OS to make it such that it would show Tibetan, Chinese, Korean, French and Italian properly. He had difficulty to do it with Tibetan, and when he succeeded, the Tibetan characters are shown very-very small.

My main headache is the accented Latin characters as in Italian, French, or German. They are suppressed by Cyrillic characters. Perhaps the Cyrillic should have to be uninstalled if I want to see them properly.

I have tried typing these 1834, 1820 etc codes holding down ALT key. Then it printed Arabic characters.

I read somewhere, Windows 7 has Traditional Mongolian Script just like Windows XP has Mongolian Cyrillic. Gantuya eng (talk) 13:05, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Windows Vista displays Mongolian script correctly, so Windows 7 should do, too. Those problems with accented characters might be from using fonts like arial mon, or inadequate encodings. Yaan (talk) 17:17, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

P.S. if you install the gb18030 support package from microsoft, the internet explorer should at least let you see the initial forms of those letters. Not sure if it is much better than squares. Also not sure if it works on other browsers, because I am too lazy to restart firefox now. Yaan (talk) 17:24, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

P.P.S. Any idea how your IT helper made Tibetan display properly? When I go to the Tibet_Autonomous_Region page, my browser doesn't seem to place the vowel indicators where they are supposed to be. Yaan (talk) 17:33, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps I'll continue this talk on your discussion page (talk) because it seems to be off the Tsagaan Sar topic. Gantuya eng (talk) 06:21, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Horse Meat? The Mongolians I know would never eat horse meat and regard this almost as a sacrilege. It should be checked which parts of society actually eat this (I have been informed that only Muslims eat horse meat in Mongolia). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.226.73.195 (talk) 14:09, 14 March 2011 (UTC) Hi, eating horse is quite common in Mongolia. -Joey — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:18E8:2:12C4:2C05:3B87:B3B4:3AED (talk) 00:44, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

2012 Date

Hi, some sources I find claim the 2012 date to be around January 24. What's the most authoritative reference? --Latebird (talk) 07:58, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Which greeting should we use?

I have found sources for:

• Амар байн уу? = Amar bain uu? --> ~102,000 but ~86,500 <-- цагаан сар Амар...
• Амар байна уу? = Amar baina uu? --> ~1,310,000 but ~230,000 <-- цагаан сар Амар...
• Амар сайн уу? = Amar sain uu? --> ~1,060,000 but ~303,000 <-- цагаан сар Амар...
• Амар сайн байна уу? = Amar sain baina uu? --> ~693,000 but ~301,000 цагаан сар Амар...
• Амар мэнд уу? = Amar mend uu? --> ~1,290,000 but ~237,000 <-- цагаан сар Амар...
• Амар мэнд байна уу? = Amar mend baina uu? --> ~1,270,000 but ~148,000 <-- цагаан сар Амар...
  

Now, except for a single page, Амар Сайн уу? Мэнд ээ. Амар Сайн уу? - Mayich's in Mongolia, which does not have much Mongolian in it, the phrase "Амар байна уу?" seems to be ubiquitous (omnipresent or present on every page).

Unfortunately the Internet relationship between English and Mongolian has a paucity incommensurate with the size of Mongolia (this is wack; we got dead dialects and dialects with a range a few kilometres wide but Mongolia's one of the biggest nations on Earth and we got squat). The most common phrase across these pages, Амар байна уу?, is shown on Амар байна уу? (Are you rested/peaceful?), the page in English that is most clearly written.

Following the results from these WP:Search engine tests and many others, i think the best thing to do is WP:Be bold and edit the article.

Warmest Regards, :)—_thecurran Speak your mind ^{my past} 06:09, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

The most common greeting is Amar baina uu? (Амар байна уу?), to my belief.

As long as known to me Amar sain uu? (Амар сайн уу?) is returned by an older person to a younger person who first greets with Amar baina uu? (Амар байна уу?). However, it is not for sure that nowadays these rules are strictly followed. "Are you rested/peaceful" seem to be distorted meanings due to literal translation. If a literal translation is to be used for a cognitive purpose, then perhaps "Are you staying in peace?" would be better. Semantically it probably includes "Are you well, healthy, happy, in wellbeing, in peace of mind, without any reason to worry?" A literal translation of Амар сайн уу? would probably be "Are you well and in peace?". Gantuya eng (talk) 13:24, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Ethnic groups

There's no way ALL those ethic groups celebrate Tsagaan Sar, seeing as many of them aren't even Mongolic or were ever subject to Mongol hegemony or influence. Citations needed. The Verified Cactus 100% 01:48, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

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