# Chinese/Japanese/Russian/Arabic/Ancient Egyptian: Dawn



## HKK

Dear forum members,
I'm designing a new shield for a club of which I am the PR guy. Since its members are students of Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Arabic and Ancient Egyptian, and its name 'Eoos' is the Greek goddess of dawn, I would like to know the words for dawn in these languages. By the way, you can check out the first version of my shield here. It features cuneiform script instead of hieroglyphics, but I'm going to change that. To be clear, dawn technically refers to the time from the first sunlight to the appearance of the sun itself (sunrise).

I've already made some educated guesses thanks to Wikipedia.
*Arabic*: 'Dawn' is the name of a sura, الفجر. I'd like to know if in this case, a native would use the article or not. I'm guessing yes.
*Chinese, Japanese & Russian*: Wikipedia suggests 拂晓, 明け方 and рассвет respectively. Are those correct? I'm also wondering if the Chinese characters are simplified or not, and if they are, would that be appropriate on a shield?
*Ancient Egyptian*: I'm hoping someone can help me 

thanks a lot
David


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## elroy

HKK said:


> *Arabic*: 'Dawn' is the name of a sura, الفجر. I'd like to know if in this case, a native would use the article or not. I'm guessing yes.


 You are right.


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## Josh_

Maybe the entry for dawn at Websters Online Dictionary will be of some help.  Scroll have way down for the translation into other languages.

As for ancient Egyptian, the only thing I can think of is to go to your local library or book store and look for an ancient Egyptian dictionary.


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## palomnik

This is what I could find for Ancient Egyptian:

http://static.egyptology.ru/lang/Wb/Wb-j.pdf

This is a PDF file of Erman's "Worterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache." Go to page 52, which is where I set it and hopefully it will show up when you open it (it will be listed in the book as pg. 126) and look under ỉḫḫw - the entry for "Dammerung." It will show you the word in hieroglyphics. I have no idea how to display hieroglyphics on a computer, but I presume you do. Good luck!

If you care to pursue this further, I found this information on a Russian website, which has a variety of interesting files on Ancient Egyptian, many set up for downloading (including this dictionary), and not all of which are in Russian: http://www.egyptology.ru/lang.htm

On the subject of Russian, I think that _рассвет_ is probably your best bet, but maybe a native speaker will oblige us on the exact nuance between _рассвет_ and _заря_.


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## HKK

Thanks to all of you. Palomnik, I'm very impressed with your access to information. The German-Egyptian dictionary really is a great document. Dämmerung is maybe not exactly the right word, as I think it means twilight. But since idioms differ, especially between German and an ancient language, maybe it's right after all. 

D.


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## palomnik

HKK said:


> Dämmerung is maybe not exactly the right word, as I think it means twilight. But since idioms differ, especially between German and an ancient language, maybe it's right after all.


 
I wondered about that, but I can't find any other word for "dawn" in German except _Morgendämmerung; _"sunrise" is _Sonnenaufgang_. The Egyptian dictionary says that the word I cited means both _Morgendämmerung _and_ Abenddämmerung,_ so I presume the Egyptians used the same word for both_._ Who knows? Maybe the Egyptians had only one word for "sunrise" and "dawn" too.


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## HKK

I see, thanks. I'll try to sort out the hieroglyphics some other way. However, are there any opinions on the Chinese and Japanese words? The problem is I need the translations on the pc, since I cannot type these languages myself, so checking a real physical dictionary would not be very useful.


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## Flaminius

HKK said:


> I see, thanks. I'll try to sort out the hieroglyphics some other way. However, are there any opinions on the Chinese and Japanese words? The problem is I need the translations on the pc, since I cannot type these languages myself, so checking a real physical dictionary would not be very useful.


Do you mean 日出 and 天体の出没?  Neither is a good Japanese word for "dawn", perhaps they aren't in Chinese either.


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## Anatoli

palomnik said:


> This is what I could find for Ancient Egyptian:
> 
> On the subject of Russian, I think that _рассвет_ is probably your best bet, but maybe a native speaker will oblige us on the exact nuance between _рассвет_ and _заря_.



"Заря" [zary*a*] sounds better to me but "рассвет" [rassv'*e*t] is also OK. Both are OK as a name but if you use it on a shield with many other languages together, someone may misread the latter as _paccbet_ (Latin) or something, so the former would be my preference.


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## HKK

Thanks Flaminius and Anatoli. Flaminius, no, I don't mean the words on the image. I was confused about dawn and sunrise when I made it. Wikipedia calls dawn 明け方 in Japanese. My extremely limited knowledge of Japanese makes me think this is a kanji followed by two hiragana characters. The Webster dictionary suggests 払暁 or 暁天, which I think are purely kanji characters. Which do you agree with? Or do you think none are valid?

For Chinese too, the dictionary gives another result (黎明) than Wikipedia (拂晓). Any opinions?


Flaminius said:


> Do you mean 日出 and 天体の出没?  Neither is a good Japanese word for "dawn", perhaps they aren't in Chinese either.


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## palomnik

日出 means "sunrise" in Chinese, and was the name of a famous novel from the 1930's. Since we're making a distinction between "dawn" and "sunrise" though, I don't think that 日出 means "dawn." 拂曉 is, I believe, a good idiomatic equation for "dawn" in modern Chinese, perhaps better than 黎明 which I think means "daybreak" as well.  Personally, I don't know of a Chinese online dictionary that I completely trust, so I can't recommend another place to try.  Bear in mind too that there are a number of classical expressions for "dawn", some of which are only one character; let me know if you want to pursue that avenue.

My Japanese is not as good as my Chinese, but I can advise that 明け方 are two kanji with kana in between (_akegata_). I suspect that the word doesn't have the poetic overtones that you may be looking for, although I may be wrong. The problem is that many, if not most Chinese expressions can be used in written Japanese, but that doesn't mean that they are common or even easily understood options.

Anatoli, I suspect that Заря actually means "daybreak" rather than "dawn", although I admit that if I had a choice I think Заря is a much more beautiful and evocative word than рассвет.


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## HKK

I'm going to make the shield next week using the appreciated suggestions. Thanks everyone for your help.


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## kareno999

palomnik said:


> 日出 means "sunrise" in Chinese, and was the name of a famous novel from the 1930's. Since we're making a distinction between "dawn" and "sunrise" though, I don't think that 日出 means "dawn." 拂曉 is, I believe, a good idiomatic equation for "dawn" in modern Chinese, perhaps better than 黎明 which I think means "daybreak" as well. Personally, I don't know of a Chinese online dictionary that I completely trust, so I can't recommend another place to try. Bear in mind too that there are a number of classical expressions for "dawn", some of which are only one character; let me know if you want to pursue that avenue.
> 
> My Japanese is not as good as my Chinese, but I can advise that 明け方 are two kanji with kana in between (_akegata_). I suspect that the word doesn't have the poetic overtones that you may be looking for, although I may be wrong. The problem is that many, if not most Chinese expressions can be used in written Japanese, but that doesn't mean that they are common or even easily understood options.
> 
> Anatoli, I suspect that Заря actually means "daybreak" rather than "dawn", although I admit that if I had a choice I think Заря is a much more beautiful and evocative word than рассвет.


You are very erudite, palomnik.
Maybe 暁（あかつき）is a better choice for Japanese. According to the pronunciation, this word etymologically means beginning to become red 赤つき, hence dawn.


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## kareno999

palomnik said:


> 日出 means "sunrise" in Chinese, and was the name of a famous novel from the 1930's. Since we're making a distinction between "dawn" and "sunrise" though, I don't think that 日出 means "dawn." 拂曉 is, I believe, a good idiomatic equation for "dawn" in modern Chinese, perhaps better than 黎明 which I think means "daybreak" as well. Personally, I don't know of a Chinese online dictionary that I completely trust, so I can't recommend another place to try. Bear in mind too that there are a number of classical expressions for "dawn", some of which are only one character; let me know if you want to pursue that avenue.
> 
> My Japanese is not as good as my Chinese, but I can advise that 明け方 are two kanji with kana in between (_akegata_). I suspect that the word doesn't have the poetic overtones that you may be looking for, although I may be wrong. The problem is that many, if not most Chinese expressions can be used in written Japanese, but that doesn't mean that they are common or even easily understood options.
> 
> Anatoli, I suspect that Заря actually means "daybreak" rather than "dawn", although I admit that if I had a choice I think Заря is a much more beautiful and evocative word than рассвет.


I read the original post again. 
Since this is going to be used on a "shield", maybe 黎明 is better than 拂晓 since it can be used figuratively and brings the meaning of hope and light. 拂晓 on the contrary is usually used to describe the time (and if used figuratively it kind of focuses on the short dark period before the light comes out. Well, this is just my personal feeling anyway). 

How about using the traditional form of the character 曉? Both chinese and japanese are covered this way.


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