Mystery Hammered Dulcimer Player?

[Ptarmigan]

Looks like you feel quite strongly about this talasiga.

Perhaps you should sign up to Wikipedia & correct their pages on Santoors & Santurs:

The santur is a Persian hammered dulcimer similar to the Indian santoor.
The santoor is a trapezoid-shaped hammered dulcimer often made of walnut, with seventy strings.
The special-shaped mallets (mezrab) are lightweight and are held between the index and middle fingers.
A typical santoor has two sets of bridges, providing a range of three octaves.
The santoor is a hammered dulcimer, derived from the Persian santur (which is believed to be the first instrument of its type), and related to similar instruments in Iraq, Pakistan, India, Armenia, Turkey, and other parts of Asia.
It is related to the shata-tantri veena of earlier times.
The Kashmiri santoor is more rectangular and can have more strings than the original Persian counterpart, which generally has 72 strings.

Wikipedia - Santoor

Many instruments around the world at least in part derive from the santur.
Similar forms of the santur have been present in neighboring cultures like Armenia and Turkey for centuries.
The Indian santoor is thicker, more rectangular, and can have more strings.
Its corresponding mallets are also held differently.

Wikipedia - Santur

Looks like Wikipedia have it all wrong!
With info like that on such a reputable site, it's no wonder folks like me get confused, is it.
So the quicker someone changes it, the sooner newcomers to the instruments, like me, will better understand them.

[talasiga]

That Wikipedia article is pretty good although Wikipedia can get things wrong sometimes (or even often).

If you look at all my posts you will discern that NOWHERE have I said that the Indian santur is exactly the same as the Persian santur (and some of the sites I have referred you to actually describe the little differences).

All I am saying is that what I have said just now, namely

NOWHERE have I said that the Indian santur is exactly the same as the Persian santur

may just as correctly be written as

NOWHERE have I said that the Indian santoor is exactly the same as the Persian santoor

or

NOWHERE have I said that the Indian santoor is exactly the same as the Persian santur

or

NOWHERE have I said that the Indian santur is exactly the same as the Persian santoor

.

[ceadach]

Talasgia,
Whoa, relax man!! Life's too damned short to get this excited over a couple of vowel placements. No one here is trying to hem you into a hole!


Breath!!!:o

[talasiga]

Talasgia,
Whoa, relax man!!
.....

What?
If Ptarmigan uses coloured text he's cool
but if I do it I'm gettin hot?
I want to be a rainbow and you want to rein me in?

Exactly which part of my past posts is too tense for you.

[Ptarmigan]

OK Talasiga, fair enough. As my colourful print seems to upset you, I'll go back to grey.

Talasiga said:

If you look at all my posts you will discern that NOWHERE have I said that the Indian santur is exactly the same as the Persian santur (and some of the sites I have referred you to actually describe the little differences).

Yes, I know that Talasiga, & if you check back, you will see that nowhere have I actually said that you did.
[ But I'll resist the temptation to say that four times.. in quotes! ]

However, you have been drawing attention to the fact that the words Santoor & Santur are used to describe both the Indian instrument & the Persian instrument, often on the same website.
You even point this out again at some length, at least FOUR TIMES in your last post.

So to qualify, all I was doing in my last post was simply showing, as clearly as I could, how:
A - I obtained my info in the first place - via Wikipedia
&
B - suggesting that as you appear to have a knowledge of these languages & this subject, you might like to write to them & have it corrected.

Simple as that really ... it's been about language really, not instruments.

As far as I can see, the actual instruments themselves & their similarities & differences haven't yet been discussed to any great degree.

I noticed ceadach understands that too, when he points out how, in his opinion, this whole debate is all about:

a couple of vowel placements

Hopefully the new GREY me will lead to more relaxed debate on this interesting subject.

Cheers
Dick

[Ptarmigan]

SANTOOR, SANTUR or SANTOUR?

OK Just in case anyone else is wondering what the bejayzus we're talking about here & why I am just a little confused, here are a few of the sites I have looked at on this subject.

Wikipeda says:

The santur is a Persian hammered dulcimer similar to the Indian santoor.
The santoor is a trapezoid-shaped hammered dulcimer often made of walnut, with seventy strings.
The special-shaped mallets (mezrab) are lightweight and are held between the index and middle fingers.
A typical santoor has two sets of bridges, providing a range of three octaves.
The santoor is a hammered dulcimer, derived from the Persian santur (which is believed to be the first instrument of its type), and related to similar instruments in Iraq, Pakistan, India, Armenia, Turkey, and other parts of Asia.
It is related to the shata-tantri veena of earlier times.
The Kashmiri santoor is more rectangular and can have more strings than the original Persian counterpart, which generally has 72 strings.

Wikipedia - Santoor

Wikipeda also says:

Many instruments around the world at least in part derive from the santur.
Similar forms of the santur have been present in neighboring cultures like Armenia and Turkey for centuries.
The Indian santoor is thicker, more rectangular, and can have more strings.
Its corresponding mallets are also held differently.

Wikipedia - Santur

Pars Bazar's Persian site says:

“This Our regularly featured Santoor we have posted this santoor on international Auctions”

Pars Bazar

Nandkishor Muley in India says:

acoustic santur, the exquisite hammer dulcimer of South Asia”

This beauty has a name: the Santur, an 87- to 100-stringed hammered dulcimer, plays all three requirements of India's classical tradition: drone, rhythm and melody.

An ancestor of the Mesopotamian Psantir, the Santur came to India via trade routes.

Played in temple and during ceremony, both traditionally and by the religious sects of Sufis and Sadhus, the Santur has gained immense popularity

Nandkishor Muley

Pandit Shivkumar Sharma's Indian Santoor Site says:

Santoor is a Persian word , and it means a hundred strains.

Popular by the similar name Santour in Iran, Iraq and Turkey, it is a 72 stringed instrument.

Although the santoor was a part of the classical music repertoire in Persia and Arabia, in India it was only heard in the hills and valleys of Kashmir.

Conventional wisdom says that the santour is the dulcimer's ancestor, opinions might vary on this issue.
The word "santour" is very old, deriving from the Aramaic "psantrin" (and Greek "psalterion"), but what exactly that instrument was is a good question.

The earliest Persian miniatures (16th century A.D.) show a plucked instrument.
By the 17th century, however, the modern santur was in use as a court instrument in Turkey, Iran, and presumably Iraq.

Somehow the old santour disappeared in Turkey, to be replaced by the newer type with fixed bridges.

Pandit Shivkumar Sharma

Chandra & David's Indian site says:

Santur is an instrument indigenous to Kashmir, but nowadays played throughout the North.

“One must not confuse the Indian santur with the Persian santur.”

Chandra & David

IndoBase: Music of India says:

The santoor is a trapezoid-shaped musical instrument.

Santoor is usually made of walnut, with numerous strings and is said to be related to the shata-tantri veena of earlier times.

Chandra & David

So NOW do you understand why I am, just a little, confused by these names?

[talasiga]

.......
So NOW do you understand why I am, just a little, confused by these names?

No I can't see why you are confused especially after I shared with you my insight. I am not confused by any of that.

"Guitar" in a discussion about R&B is going to be a reference to a different instrument to the "guitar" in a discussion about Manitas de Plata. All guitars but different types. And in France they may write it as "guitare".
And?

[Ptarmigan]

Oh well, it looks like I'll just have to settle for this instrument being called a Santoor &/or a Santour &/or a Santur in India, while in Iran & Turkey etc they call it a Santoor &/or a Santour &/or a Santur!

I just hope this trend doesn't catch on though, otherwise we might end up here in Ireland talking a Flute &/or a Floot &/or a Flout!

Perhaps in Scotland they might start talking about their Bagpipes or their Bagpypes or their Bagpeipes!

Mind you, the way those guys can drink, it can be hard to tell what they're talking about, at the best of times!

Cheers
Dick

[talasiga]

Oh well, it looks like I'll just have to settle for this instrument being called a Santoor &/or a Santour &/or a Santur in India, while in Iran & Turkey etc they call it a Santoor &/or a Santour &/or a Santur!
...

No. You are perfectly entitled to ARBITRARILY choose a convention for spelling one one way and the other the other way for the reason of CONVENIENCE in your own website. Just don't CONFUSE your choice as a reflection of some absolute conclusion about the usage that is not reflective of the actual.

[talasiga]

......
I just hope this trend doesn't catch on though, otherwise we might end up here in Ireland talking a Flute &/or a Floot &/or a Flout!

Perhaps in Scotland they might start talking about their Bagpipes or their Bagpypes or their Bagpeipes!

......

No but someone with a website about guitars in say, Mongolia, with a similar logic deficit as you, may get confused because in USA, Britain and Europe the same (and also various varieites of the ) instrument are written as guitar, guitare, guitarra. In France they write it one way and in Germany another and in Romania another. So what?

[Ptarmigan]

No but someone with a website about guitars in say, Mongolia, with a similar logic deficit as you, may get confused because in USA, Britain and Europe the same (and also various varieites of the ) instrument are written as guitar, guitare, guitarra.

In France they write it one way and in Germany another and in Romania another. So what?

At last! That's exactly the point I've been making for the past two pages here!

Yes, each country has it's own way of spelling Guitar, but each country uses only ONE way of spelling, not THREE!

So you see, the Mongolian would have no cause to be confused, so that's a very poor example, sorry!

If only India & Iran used only one spelling in each country, but they don't, they use three!

However, not wishing to appear arrogant, I shall resist the temptation to hurl an insult back at you!
After all, there's no point in both of us sinking to that level, eh!

[talasiga]

......
Yes, each country has it's own way of spelling Guitar, but each country uses only ONE way of spelling, not THREE!
.....

Yes, do you really think that Farsi, Turkish, Hindi, Punjabi etc are written in English Roman script (alphabet)? In the script used in each of these languages, the word is consistently written one way. The difficulty occurs in transcribing from how it is written in the languages' script to writing it in a script (the Roman script) used in English or in the Franco Roman script.

This is because the Roman script is NOT a universally phonetic script and graphemes (letters) have different phonemic (sound) values depending on which language it is being used for. For example, look at the application of 'j' in the various languages.

I don't know about Farsi and Turkish but I do know Hindi (my mother tongue) and that language, like Sanskrit, its mother, uses the Devanagiri script. The script for Hindi has 51 specific letters in its alphabet, EACH one exclusively for one of the 51 spounds used in the language.

Also, in HIndi, you don't get a situation like you do in English, where one letter can stand for more than one sound. Typical example: the "u' in put compared with must, nuclear, pruning etc

So what happens when you transcribe from a foreign language script to English Roman script is that you have so many choices as to how you can do that because in English
*different letters and groups of letters can represent the SAME sound
*the same letter or the same group of letters can represent DIFFERENT sounds.

So when a South Asian transcriber or a Westerner (familiar with the indic)
writes the second syllable of the instrument in question as "toor", he or she means to represent the vowel in it that is like the vowel in "room"
which is the same as first vowel in "pruning". This means that the transcriber may choose to write that syllable as "tur" just as well. That is not then meant to be taken as the "u" in "must". Now if you look at the Devanagari, it has a specific letter for the "oo" sound as in room. So these ambiguities do not arise in it.

Now do you understand my earlier reference to the problems of transcribing into English Roman script? I thought the implication would have been clear.

[Ptarmigan]

Thanks for the details Talasiga, but I'm just wondering now, how the language to English Dictionaries spell the English word for their instrument in both countries?

Perhaps if there was a standard way of spelling the English name for these instruments in each country, in their English Dictionaries, might that not eliminate this confusion.

For example, I'm just imagining French / English Dictionaries in this country which each spelt the names of French objects in a number of different ways.
I'm sure the teachers & lecturers would soon have something to say about that & would insist that they standardized the translations, wouldn't they?

So I wonder why this has not been done in Iran & India?

[Steamwalker]

So to qualify, all I was doing in my last post was simply showing, as clearly as I could, how:
A - I obtained my info in the first place - via Wikipedia
&
B - suggesting that as you appear to have a knowledge of these languages & this subject, you might like to write to them & have it corrected.

Just to clarify, Wikipedia is a user-written website. You wouldn't write to them to change it, you would change it yourself. This is one reason why Wikipedia is not always the best source of correct info. Even so, I love and use it all the time.

[talasiga]

Thanks for the details Talasiga, but I'm just wondering now, how the language to English Dictionaries spell the English word for their instrument in both countries?
........

You're thanking me for the details but the real thanks would be if you actually understood what I said. That doesn't mean you must agree with me. Your latest post indicates to me you just don't get it.

So let me try from another angle completely.

Lets just look at English.
These are listed in my Oxford dictionary
and I have come across both forms in my readings:-

fantasy and phantasy
gibe and jibe
engulf and ingulf
philtre and philter
ruff and ruffe
scallop and scollop
organise and organize
judgment and judgement
mortice and mortise
etc and et cetera