[Buddha-l] FW: H-ASIA: Tibetan language --Tibetan terms for "autonomy" & "independence" --query on usage

[jkirk]

This question raises some interesting, er, questions--
I'd love to know what the Tibetan language specialists on this
list think.
Is it true "that the Tibetan lexicon made no distinction between
the English words for 'autonomy' and 'independence''' ?

Hoping for replies, Joanna K.
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H-ASIA
Augsut 12, 2008

Query on Tibetan language usage - "autonomy" and "independence"
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From: Vincent K Pollard <pollard at hawaii.edu>

Dear Colleagues,

In his article "Official Policies and Covert Programs; The U.S.
State Department and the Tibetan Resistance," _Journal of Cold
War Studies_, vol. 5, no. 3 (Summer 2003), John Kenneth Knaus
refers to "the misgivings of the consulate translator, George
Patterson [in Calcutta, India], who warned [in 1951] that the
Tibetan lexicon made no distinction between the English words for
'autonomy' and 'independence'' (p. 62).

[Based on information supplied earlier in Knaus's article, the
bracketed material in that quotation has been supplied by me.]

In support of the statement quoted above, Knaus cites a letter
written by Patterson to him forty-five years after the event --
on 2 April 1996.

Was Patterson correct?

And is this an accurate summary today? In other words, has
language usage in Tibetan changed in the intervening fifty-seven
years?

                               
Vincent K. Pollard University of Hawai'i - Manoa

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~pollard/Asia.html