--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "chesschance" <chesschance@...> wrote:
>
> On an unrelated note, does the river name, Amur, mean anything? I
> guess it's Russian.
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According to Wikipedia:
"The Amur River (Russian: Амур; Simplified Chinese: 黑龙江;
Traditional Chinese: 黑龍江; pinyin: Hēilóng Jiāng, or "Black Dragon
River"; Mongolian: Хара-Мурэн, Khara-Muren or "Black River"; Manchu:
Sahaliyan Ula, literal meaning "Black River") is one of the world's
ten longest rivers, forming the border between the Russian Far East
and Manchuria in China."
(If these fonts produce gibberish on Yahoo, the essence is the
river is called "Black" in local languages, "Khara-Muren" in Mongolian)
"Kara" means black" in Turkic languages, so I guess "Muren" means
"river" in Mongolian (and related languages?) and "Amur" would be a
Russian corruption thereof.
On the subject of the Amur, in 1689, the Treaty of Nerchinsk was
signed between Russia and China, which stopped the farther advance of
the Russians into the basin of the Amur for two centuries to come.
Question: What was the working language of the Nerchinsk conference?
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Answer: Latin, spoken by Polish noblemen on the Russian side and
Jesuit missionaries on the Chinese.
Dan