Talk:Tenzing Norgay

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Contents 1 Birthday 2 Death 3 Tenzing and Hillary 4 Tenzing's Birthplace 5 Tenzing Norgay's nationality 6 Chomolangma 7 "Sherpa language does not have written form" 8 George Medal 9 Mallory and Irvine 10 "all the photos that existed of the mountaineers on the top showed only Tenzing ..." 11 Who was first on summit?

[edit] Birthday

From 29 May, he tops Everest on his birthday. Really? --Error

yes... User:68.101.247.109

Actually, he didn't know his exact birthday, but he knew it was about late May from the weather and the crops. He decided to treat May 29th as his birthday since that was the day he climbed Everest.

PatGallacher 11:15, 2005 Feb 11 (UTC)

Then why does it say in the first sentence of this page that his birthday is May 15 if (1) his exact birthday is uncertain and (2) he decided to treat May 29th as his birthday? Both facts contradict the statement that his birthday is May 15.

Also, the sentence "he knew roughly what time of year it was from the weather and the crops" should be clarified. I assume that it was not so much that he knew (since he was a newborn at the time) but that he was told that he was born around that time of year by his family members. —Lowellian (talk) 00:19, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Death

Some mystery surrounds his death in this article. Could someone please elaborate? User:218.214.49.92

[edit] Tenzing and Hillary

The summit chapter in "High Adventure" doesn't describe Hillary pulling Tenzing up any steps, not even the "Hillary Step". Nor does he describe Tenzing falling to the ground. Has anybody got a reference? Pete 02:47, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree. I do have a brief article from Hillary in an Everest book where he says that Tenzing had problems with his oxygen equipment on the way up, but that was resolved, and Hillary never mentions pulling Tenzing up. He does say that he cut most of the steps but not in a way that denigrates Tenzing. I think this passage should be removed unless someone can give a verifiable reference. Lisiate 22:44, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree as well. It seems a very uncharacteristic thing for Hillary to have said. (Without a reference, I find it somewhat insulting to both Tenzing and Hillary.) According to http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/hil0bio-1, Hillary authored three books in the 70's. The article only says: "In his book, Hillary ..." Cbotman 11:17, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tenzing's Birthplace

Tenzing Norgey Sherpa was born in Namche-7 Thame, Solukhumbu, Nepal.

Do you have good authority for this? There was some controversy about this, unless it was properly resolved we should not state a definitive answer. PatGallacher 12:55, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

does being born in solukhumbu as a kid count :). But then again if you have a better fact then it would be cool to know. Realnepal 17:28, 5 December 2005 (UTC)realnepal

You should refer to Ed Wester's book "Snow in the Kingdom" (2000). He attempted to climb Mount Everest from the Eastern (Kangshung) Face in 1988 and travelled with Norbu Tenzing Norgay, the eldest of Tenzing Norgay's sons. After finding relatives and place names (consistent with his father's childhood stories) in the Kharta Valley, Norbu pretty much proved exactly where in Tibet his father was born. csearl 17:17, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tenzing Norgay's nationality

I asked this question on Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities but didn't get a concrete answer. Jay 10:06, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Which country did Tenzing Norgay belong to ? Was he Nepalese, Chinese (Tibetan) or Indian ? Did he ever change his citizenship officially ? What was his nationality during the time when he scaled the Everest ? Jay 11:48, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

The article you link says it all, really - he was Nepalese, although there were occasional rumours that he may have actually been Chinese. He lives some of his life in India. To the best of my knowledge, he was a Nepalese citizen at all times, and certainly he was during the 1953 ascent. Grutness...wha? 12:06, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I guess so too, but several General Knowledge and text books say he was the first 'Indian' to scale Everest. Jay 03:58, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

The short answer to this is that this question may not have a concrete answer, it may be an example of trying to impose Western concepts like "nationality" on non-Western societies. Tenzing himself said later that this was not an issue at the time he climbed Everest, he had never owned a passport before this. After he climbed Everest, Nepal and India both claimed them as his own, and he said he belonged to both of them. The technical answer may be that he had dual nationality (or possibly even triple nationality). PatGallacher 21:50, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that will do for me, since I was wondering if Norgay should be included in List of firsts in India. But isn't the concept of nationality universal as opposed to western ? Perhaps citizenship is a western concept, but even that may not be true. Jay 08:26, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chomolangma

Good point about the name Pat, I assumed because the Mount Everest article said the other name was Nepalese it was the one used byt he Sherpas. I didn't realise their language is different. 22:30, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Sherpa language does not have written form"

This is an interesting statement. Regardless, Tenzin's name is Tibetan, and was given to him by a Lama, who would be literate in Tibetan Script. The sherpa for the days of the week are identical to those in Tibetan. Sherpa is Tibetan for "Easterner". Have you looked at any of the prayer flags in the Sherpa region? They are covered in.. Tibetan Script. Seen any of the books read by the Lamas of Sherpa? Tibetan Script. So, what I am wondering is what you mean by Sherpa language does not have written form, and how it applies to Tenzin Norgay, who was quite possibly born in Tshechu, in Tibet. Moreover, བསྟན་འཛིན་ནོར་རྒྱས - his name as it would be written by those Sherpas who are literate, mean "holder of the teachings" (tendzin) and "fortunate" (norgye). So, though it is True that Sharwa is also very connected to Nepali, and has it's own roots, it must be understood that the Monastaries, and all the Lamas used Tibetan - indeed, all Sharwas can understand Tibetan.(20040302 20:54, 28 April 2006 (UTC)) Addendum: see Tibetan language for an entry of Sherpa.

I object to including Tenzing's name in the Tibetan script to some extent on the practical grounds that it just comes up as a line of boxes on my computer, and I suspect a lot of other people's computers. My main authority for my statements is actually Tenzing himself, I have just consulted Man of Everest. In several places he says that the Sherpa language has no written form, and he refers to Tibetan as a separate language, albeit one similar to Sherpa. When he went back to Namche Bazar in Solo Khumbu in 1952 he saw that there was now a school, but it was teaching in Nepali. So it may be that historically Tibetan was the cultural language of the small number of educated Sherpas, but even in the 1950s Nepali was taking over this role. It was also the language he knew best after his native Sherpa. Tenzing never became fully literate, but in later years he learned to sign his name in the Latin script, I am not aware he learned to sign it in any other script. So I do not consider there is sufficient justification for including his name in the Tibetan script. Why not include the Chinese version as well, since Tibet is now part of China, or Nepali or Hindi? PatGallacher 21:10, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Sherpa is a dialect of Tibetan in the same sense that the speech of most of the Tibetan cultural area is. In general, these are conventionally written in Classical Tibetan, even though the spoken form is significantly different. It's probably true that, traditionally, very few Sherpas were literate, but, the same can be said of Lhasa and the rest of Tibet (and, for that matter, most places). So, I don't think that writing a Sherpa's name in Tibetan is the same as writing it in Chinese or Hindi. However, in this person's case, it doesn't really seem necessary, since he was apparently not in an environment where written Tibetan was very important in his life. - Nat Krause^(Talk!) 22:19, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I have had a look at this link, it regards Sherpa as a language, albeit part of the Tibetan group. It appears there have recently been attempts to develop written forms of Sherpa, using the Devanagari and Tibetan scripts, but neither is widely used, although the former is more common. It's possible that the man himself would have regarded the English version as the primary written version of his name, since when he had to have dealings with people in writing it was usually in English (or other languages which use the Latin script) and this was the version which he signed. So it would be artificial to give his name in any other language. PatGallacher 10:33, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Pat, there is much more to this. Recently (in the last decade) the residents of Sharwa, when asked which written form they would like to use at schools, generally decided they would prefer to use Tibetan script, even though most of them are more familiar with Devanagari (from Nepali).

The domain shift away from Sherpa and Tibetan toward Nepali and English, especially in the Sharwa family home among males and young people, as well as the proliferation of new commercial situations in which Nepali language facilitates cooperation between different ethnic groups, probably indicates that Nepali is progressively replacing Sharwa among Sharwa speakers.

Future studies would ideally be empirical and diachronic, testing whether Sharwa is in reality losing ground to Nepali among younger people and in mainstream or poly-ethnic situations. Another interesting subject in Sharwa language use is whether as Fisher (1990) suggests, Sharwa emphasis on religion is intensifying, so that while the number of Nepali-preferable situations is steadily increasing, the number of Sharwa cultural religious venues using H-variety Tibetan is also increasing. Further investigation might expand and more fully characterize language-choice behavior during the post-1990 collapse of the international tourist economy and ongoing civil war.

Sherpa does indeed belong to the Tibetan group of languages, though it has many loanwords, as is found throughout the Indian subcontinent. Regardless, I continue to dispute that Sherpa has no written form: such a statement in my mind is patronising and reductive to the extreme, regardless of the author. If one wishes to be accurate, one could state that Sherpa has many cultural influences, including multiple sources for it's scripts. Regardless, up until the 1950's, it's written form was Tibetan, and since 1990 or so, the community has been decisive about re-adopting their cultural roots, in face of the strong erosion of their culture over the last 50 years or so.

The Lama that named Tenzin Norgye did so from within a particularly Tibetan stream of the Sherpa culture: Namely the Buddhist stream. FYI, the Tibetan script is recognised by China as a valid script for Chinese (Tibetan) documents.

Of course the fact that you haven't got a Tibetan font on your computer is no argument at all. (20040302 14:10, 4 May 2006 (UTC))

On further consideration I'm prepared to go along with the inclusion of the version of his name in the Tibetan script, providing it is clearly labelled as such, but anyone who knows the Devanagari script version should feel free to add it as well. PatGallacher 01:58, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] George Medal

Is it worth mentioning that for his part in the Mount Everest expedition, Tenzing Norgay was awarded the George Medal? Davery06 18:16, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mallory and Irvine

Did somebody hear about a well guarded secret about China having undeniable proof that Mallory and Irvine summited, and that they, the chinese, are holding the information until Sir Hillary dies, afraid that the news will upset the old man too much?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:201.19.171.206

Please sign your posts. Also, comments go at the bottom of the page, not the top. Also, how does anyone know what is contained in a well guarded secret? Also, do you think we should put Conspiracy theory cats on all of the pages you have posted this same comment too? Moriori 23:35, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "all the photos that existed of the mountaineers on the top showed only Tenzing ..."

Can we get one? :)

I imagine it'd be fair use - practically the definition of a historic and unreproducable image! FiggyBee 12:04, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Tenzing said in in biography that he asked Hillary to take him a photo, but he did'nt want.

[edit] Who was first on summit?

The story that Tenzing ever claimed that he was first to set foot on Everest seems dubious, this is the first I have heard of it, I propose to revert soon unless someone can source this. It is unlikely that money would have influenced him. From his account in his autobioraphy, shortly after he climbed Everest there were statements put in front of him which he signed without knowing what they said, as he was illiterate. Shortly after Hillary and him issued a joint statement that they had reached the summit almost together, and a year or 2 later Tenzing was big enough to disclose that Hillary had been first to set foot. PatGallacher 14:25, 23 February 2007 (UTC)