英和和英

別の表記

• Takla Makan, Taklimakan

語源

Most researchers agree on makan being the Persian word for "place", however the etymology of Takla is less clear. The word may be an Uyghur borrowing from the Persian tark, "to leave alone/out/behind, relinquish, abandon" + makan

発音

• enPR: täklämäkänʹ

固有名詞

Taklamakan

1. A cold desert in Central Asia
   • 1980, Peter Hopkirk, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road‎^[1], Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, published 1984, →ISBN, LCCN 83-24092, OCLC 10207988, pages 9-10:

     Surrounding the Taklamakan on three sides are some of the highest mountain ranges in the world, with the Gobi desert blocking the fourth. Thus even the approaches to it are dangerous. Many travellers have perished on the icy passes which lead down to it from Tibet, Kashmir, Afghanistan and Russia, either by freezing to death or by missing their foothold and hurtling into a ravine below. In one disaster, in the winter of 1839, an entire caravan of forty men was wiped out by an avalanche, and even now men and beasts are lost each year.
     No traveller has a good word to say for the Taklamakan. Sven Hedin, one of the few Europeans to have crossed it, called it ‘the worst and most dangerous desert in the world’. Stein, who came to know it even better, considered the deserts of Arabia 'tame' by comparison. Sir Percy Sykes, the geographer, and one-time British Consul-General at Kashgar, called it 'a Land of Death', while his sister Ella, herself a veteran desert traveller, described it as 'a very abomination of desolation'.
     Apart from the more obvious perils, such as losing one’s way and dying of thirst, the Taklamakan has special horrors to inflict on those who trespass there. In his book Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan, von Le Coq describes the nightmare of being caught in that terror of all caravans, the kara-buran, or black hurricane.

   • 2015, Catherine Matacic, “Carbon tomb buried deep under Chinese desert”, in Science‎^[2]:

     According to the study, carbon-rich runoff from irrigation started seeping into saline aquifers under the Taklamakan nearly 5000 years ago, when humans first took hoe to the region. Since then, it has continued to collect.

   • 2022 May 12, Chan, Minnie, “Satellite images ‘suggest China is practising missile strikes on targets in Taiwan and Guam’”, in South China Morning Post‎^[3], archived from the original on 12 May 2022:

     The Chinese military has refined its anti-ship missile training from striking large, carrier-sized targets to smaller ships and naval bases, according to recent satellite images.
     They show a training base in Xinjiang’s remote Taklamakan desert with the layout of mock-up ship moored in a naval base that resembles one in northeast Taiwan and other targets in Guam, according to a Taipei-based naval analyst.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Taklamakan.

同意語

• Taklamakan Desert
• (from Mandarin Chinese) Takela Magan, T'a-k'o-la-ma-kan

発音

• enPR: täʹklə mə-känʹ

固有名詞

Takla Makan

1. Alternative form of Taklamakan
   • [1866 August, Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal‎^[1], page 183:

     Six miles north of Ilchí is the great desert of Taklá Makán (Gobi), the shifting sands of which are said to have buried 360 cities in the space of 24 hours.]

   • 1974, Chia Yu-chiang, “A Survey of the Takla Makan Desert”, in China Pictorial‎^[2], number 1, page 35:

     THE Takla Makan Desert, the largest in China, is located in the centre of the Tarim Basin, [in] the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region....
     After Liberation, the Academy of Sciences of China, together with organizations concerned, sent teams to survey the Takla Makan Desert....
     Occupying an area of 320,000 square kms, one-third of the total of China's deserts, the Takla Makan Desert has dunes in different shapes, crescent, chain-like or domed.

   • 1975 April 6, L. Chen, “Mao's young enemies are everywhere”, in Free China Weekly‎^[3], volume XVI, number 13, Taipei, ISSN 0016-0318, OCLC 1786626, page 3:

     According to a recent escapee from the mainland, no less than 700,000 of the youths forcibly sent to the far northwest in the last seven or eight years—since Peiping started an allout "downward transfer" operation—had died from overwork and exposure to bitter climate or as victims of shifting desert sand.
     The escapee, a Mr. Hsia who came out early in February, said the figure was based on the reports and other data he had handled while working at the Shanghai Office of Downward Transfer Operation.
     The deaths, he said, had been recorded in Inner Mongolia and the provinces of Sinkiang, Ninghsia, Kansu and Shensi. He gave no breakdown but noted that the Takla Makan desert of Sinkiang was responsible for the biggest kill.

   • 1996, Ella Maillart, “Foreward”, in The Alluring Target: In Search of the Secrets of Central Asia‎^[4], Trackless Sands Press, →ISBN, LCCN 95-52545, OCLC 994768977, page xiii‎^[5]:

     I did fulfill another dream, however, one that began when I first looked down on the Takla Makan Desert from atop a 17,000-foot mountain in Russian Turkestan. I dreamed of traveling through Central Asia and finding people not yet influenced by our civilization.
     It may seem strange that someone in love with boats and the sea should love the deserts of Central Asia. The Takla Makan is as far from the sea as you can get. Yet, the sea and the desert are strangely similar. The illimitable expanses of both, stretching away to the horizon on all sides, can inspire exhilarating feelings of freedom, of being master of your own fate. Both the desert and the sea can also be pitiless to the lazy, the unprepared, the unwary traveler who ventures upon them. He may pay with his life for his shortcomings.