Vroor, what language is the Arabic script in your signature, and can you transliterate it? I'm guessing it's based on the Uyghur alphabet.
You could always download a Linux-type OS for free. I don't know if it would support Manchu though.

It really depends upon how traditional you are. If shall you be a traditional purist, then all particles must be written solo; however, now-a-days...you know, what-the-heck. As long as the word-combo does not change the sound and meaning of the words, I will not say it is allowed but, most Manchu youths will not really care. As for myself, I only allow myself to combine the modifier-i as it is the safest of all other particle combos.

It's Salar.



Örğenmese göz dar, tañnınmasa yol dar.



It is one of the alphabets suggested for Salar of which, is indeed based on the Uyghur system. Let us keep this thread's topic in-line, shall we?

I don't think I'm ready for Linux yet. Plus, there's the issue of compatibility. It seems like computing in general is designed primarily for Windows & Mac systems.


I had to look that one up. All this time I assumed it was Uyghur.

Salar and Uyghur share many similarities that, until recently most linguists mistook Salar as a dialect of Uyghur. In Uyghurstan (which the Communistic Chinese named Xinjiang), the local Salars there are called "ili türki". The Salars are not limited to the localities of Uyghurstan, there are Salars in Qinhai Provence as well as other areas within China.

Even though the Manchu language is a Tungusic language, some of its vocabularies are loans from other languages. Most of these loans are from Mongolian and Mandarin Chinese as one can expect; however, there is one word in Manchurian whose origin is very interesting: 【ᠠᡵᡴᡳ】.

【ᠠᡵᡴᡳ】arki, this word is often translated as "wine"; however, arki does not merely mean wine, it is a specific wine: حليب سباع‎ , the lion's milk. Thus, 【ᠠᡵᡴᡳ】is actually a loan from the Arabic word "عرق".

As time went, eventually the word 【ᠠᡵᡴᡳ】becomes to refer any kind of "wine"; however, traditionally, it refers to the lion's milk of the Arabs. Traditionally, 【ᠨᡠᡵᡝ】nure refers to the Mandarin wines, 【ᠠᡵᡯᡥᠠᠨ】arzhan refers to the Mongolian wine, and 【ᠠᡵᡴᡳ】arki refers to the Arabian wine.

عرق (known in English as arak/araq) is not actually a wine at all but a type of brandy. "The lion's milk" is also somewhat of a misnomer because سباع (the word translated as "lion" in the phrase حليب السباع) is better translated as "predatory animal" than lion. (The usual Arabic word for lion is أسد). So which word is used in Manchu?

The word I learned for "lion" is【ᠠᡵᠰᠠᠯᠠᠨ】(arsalan). This is clearly a cognate (loanword?) with Mongolian <арслан>.
Evenki, another Tungusic language, has <лев> which is a loanword form Russian.

The same word appears in Turkish as aslan and Persian as اصلان (like in the name of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reza_Aslan) which makes me think it's a Wanderwort of some sort.

What is the difference between wine and brandy?



True and, thank you for pointing that out. The old manchu records on alcohols named the Arabian wine as the lion's milk, yet with that original Arabic name given which is not really a lion. Thus, the lion can be a poetical translation added by the translator.



There are two words for lion in the Manchu language:【ᠠᡵᠰᠠᠯᠠᠨ】arsalan and【ᡝᡵᠰᡝᠯᡝᠨ】erselen. Both are loans from the Mongolian language, arsalan is the Mongolian accent whilst erselen is the Manchurian accent.