Talk:Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture

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[edit] Name and transliteration

Which transliteration is "Sipsongpanna"? olivier 13:59, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Sipsawngpanna (or Sipsongpanna) is the transliteration of the Tai name (used in Thailand and Laos) for the region. As a Tai region, it probably bares mention, but the current article does not explain this. The meaning is:

Sip (ten) sawng (two) = 12

pan = 1000

na = rice field

... putting it together, 12,000 rice fields.

- prat

I have reformatted the article and added this explanation. - prat

"sipsɔngpanna" is the transcription of the name of the prefecture in Dai ([Tai Lü language|Tai Lü]) in the International Phonetic Alphabet. The name "sipsɔngpanna" is in fact a result of linguistic borrowing between Chinese and Tai: sip corresponds to Chinese 十, sɔng to 雙. Are you sure that panna isn't just one word? I've read that panna means "village". The word pan could also correspond to Thai พัน ("thousand"), Chinese 萬 ("ten thousand"), or to Thai บ้าน ("house"). The Thai word ปัน means "to distribute" or "to divide", นา means "field". Chinese sources say that an older Dai name for Xishuangbanna is Měngbālānàxī 勐巴拉娜西 (in Chinese transcription), but I couldn't find out what that would be in Dai originally. Babelfisch 03:48, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps someone with the capability should add the names for the region in Thai and Lao script (unsure if they differ).

- prat

First of all, the name should be added in Dai script - and yes, the Thai and Lao languages have two different scripts. Babelfisch 03:48, 19 August 2005 (UTC)