Talk:Northern and Southern dynasties

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Untitled[edit]

The term should be plural as found in serach on google and numerous historical texts. Ktsquare

Should be Southern and Northern Dynasties, Southern Dynasties are before Northern Dynasties.--[[User:Zy26|zy26 (Talk)]] 08:19, 2004 Sep 20 (UTC)

I just added two new sections, the Northern Dynasties and the Southern Dynasties, so this article is a stub no more. :)

--PericlesofAthens 04:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why no map?[edit]

This article needs a map. John D. Croft 03:08, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ask, and ye shall receive. Three years later, true, but still... Map added.  White Whirlwind  咨  15:09, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

southern dynasties are longer than the Qin Dynasty[edit]

I can't believe it! The Qin Dynasty gets it own article while the Southern Dynasties of the Southern and Northern Dynasties still are combined. All the Southern Dynasties have like more than 30 years of ruling or something, (some, even 50), while the Qin Dynasty ruled for only 15 years!!!! 24.1.201.172 (talk) 02:26, 10 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's not really the point - the Qin receives such a greater share of attention because of its historical significance and uniqueness, not because of its length. What the above user is suggesting is akin to grading the importance of peoples' lives by how long they live, not what they accomplish while living.  White Whirlwind  咨  00:39, 25 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Translating the Chinese Article to add more material[edit]

I'm planning to translate the Chinese Article to add more material to this article. If anyone wishes to help check my translation, or to help translate sections, that'd be cool. DemonicInfluence (talk) 18:56, 24 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good! I intended to do it once upon a time, but it seemed a bit dull and I moved on to other pages. I would be happy to proofread or help out by doing a few sections - maybe the History and Culture sections.  White Whirlwind  咨  00:37, 25 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'll probably work from the top down on translating it by section, working first on the dynastic histories of both the north ans the south. DemonicInfluence (talk) 01:52, 25 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Good job so far. Let's finish up the text now. There's on issue I wanted to ask you about, DemonicInfluence, and it's the poem you've included in the "Liu Song" section. It's an accurate translation - I'm assuming you've done it yourself, here - but I have always been hesitant to translate actual poetry like that because I feel it violates Wikipedia:No original research. Now, it's a little gray, because their original authorship is rarely cited and they're thrown in Chinese in weird places, but I have never felt comfortable including my own translations of those sorts of poems for the above-mentioned WP:OR reason. Let me know what you think. Also, your translation doesn't rhyme - most translators don't do it because, I think, they feel it's too much work. The Chinese originals rhyme, and I make sure my translations do too.
I feel like that falls under verifiability of non-English sources. I included it because it seemed like an interesting ballad. Maybe my Chinese skills are lacking, but it doesn't seem to be an obvious rhyme to me. Perhaps that is slant rhyme (though I'm not sure if they use it in Chinese).DemonicInfluence (talk)
Ok, I looked at verifiability of non-English sources, and I think that's ok for this article. With regard to the rhyme, your Chinese skills are lacking, I guess. Don't make the mistake of reading poetry - and Classical Chinese in general - in Mandarin: it hasn't preserved most Middle Chinese and earlier rhymes.
For example, look at your poem's end rhymes in Cantonese:
城 sing
萦 ying
- Can't remember, this one's the off-rhyme line, anyway -
兄 hing
And that's all it takes. You can easily cheat and just read them in Cantonese or Min to check the rhyme, you don't have to get out a book of MC or Old Chinese reconstructions, though that's often fun if you're into that sort of thing. The bottom line is, Chinese poetry very rarely doesn't rhyme.  White Whirlwind  咨  01:58, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the quick lesson. I knew about the sound change, but it didn't click in my mind as I read your comments. Sadly I don't know Min or Cantonese, so I can't use that trick. But I'll try to keep that in mind for the future, and I added a note in the article.DemonicInfluence (talk) 02:29, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also, some of the map PNG's will need to be translated, as well.  White Whirlwind  咨  22:44, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not so good at graphics =/, I'll see what can be done about that, though it will take priority after the article body. DemonicInfluence (talk) 23:16, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Southern Dynasties article[edit]

The article at Southern dynasties is much less developed from an editorial/historical perspective, but it has a great table of the emperors. I'd like to suggest that we rename that article to be Emperors of the Southern dynasties and then have it clearly link back to this article for the main historical content. This article can likewise link back to it for the full list of emperors. Does anyone have thoughts on this? —Zujine|talk 03:15, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I guess there's no real need to have those sub-articles (other than as a list), considering that each dynasty also has its own article. Same goes with the Northern dynasties. I'd suggest having those current pages redirect to this article. --Cold Season (talk) 13:17, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Cold Season, I'll wait just a bit longer to make the changes, just in case someone else comes along with a good argument against it. Also, I forgot to add in my first comment that there is also a page at Northern Dynasties in the exact same situation. —Zujine|talk 13:56, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 11 December 2015[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved uncontested and non-controversial. (non-admin closure) Tiggerjay (talk) 02:17, 19 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Southern and Northern Dynasties → Northern and Southern dynasties – The present title is a direct translation of the Chinese name Nánběicháo (南北朝), but "Northern and Southern" is more common in English usage. Kanguole 11:47, 11 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Examples of usage:

Kanguole 11:47, 11 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 26 July 2018[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page to the proposed title at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 22:09, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Northern and Southern dynasties → Southern and Northern dynasties – I think we should overturn the 2015 RM, which had no participant. The nominator user:Kanguole provided a few sources supporting the "Northern and Southern" usage, but he probably overlooked the fact that "Northern and Southern dynasties" in his sources refer to longer periods than the topic discussed in this article (420–589). Specifically:

In Chinese language, the term Nan-Bei-Chao (literally "Southern and Northern Dynasties") will never include the years from 220 to 386. Whether the period begins with the year 386 (start of Northern Wei) or 420 (start of Liu Song) is debatable, but all agree that Three Kingdoms and Jin dynasty (265–420) are separate periods from Nan-Bei-Chao. I understand some western historians like to think of the 3 periods as a whole (as well as Sixteen Kingdoms), but there's already a term that lumps all of these periods together: Six Dynasties, which is a different article. Timmyshin (talk) 06:18, 26 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose – the word order reflects English-language usage, not the range of the period.
    Lewis, in the Harvard University Press book, explicitly says he's introducing an expanded sense of "Northern and Southern dynasties" from the usual meaning, of a period following the Jin. Other sources consistently exclude the Three Kingdoms period and Jin (at least when they ruled all of China).
    As you noted, there is some variation in the start of the period, but there is no English-language distinction between a longer "Northern and Southern dynasties" period and a shorter "Southern and Northern dynasties" period. The authors make clear that the English term is a translation of the Chinese one. They use the reverse order because it is simply idiomatic English to put "Northern" before "Southern". Kanguole 08:18, 26 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. North comes before south in English. Instead of "north south east west," the Chinese say "east south west north."[1] The narrow versus extended period issue is not relevant. Reversing the directional order is a well-established practice, a matter of proper translation. For example, Dōngběi is always translated as "Northeast," never as "Eastnorth." See this ngram. Nine Zulu queens (talk) 01:06, 27 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Title[edit]

Shouldn't the title be Southern and Northern dynasties (Chinese: 南北朝) instead? I know in English the word "north" is usually placed before "south" as north is considered more important than south, but this is a Chinese history article, shouldn't we translate the title as per the Chinese language which puts the word "Southern" before "Northern"?

Another important factor to place the word "Southern" before "Northern" is that the Southern dynasties (Liu Song and its successor states) were administered by Han Chinese while the Northern dynasties (Northern Wei and its successor states) were administered by Siberian (Xianbei ethnicity) nomadic tribes and they were considered foreign invaders instead of local Chinese regimes. 2001:8003:9100:2C01:3C74:FEF2:3BB3:D3E (talk) 06:27, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The relevant part of the Wikipedia article naming policy is WP:COMMONNAME, "as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable, English-language sources". A lot of English-language literature discusses the topic of this article, and those sources consistently use the name "Northern and Southern dynasties". Kanguole 11:03, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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