Editing Jurchen language (section)

==Writing Jurchen names in English==
Due to the scarcity of surviving Jurchen-language inscriptions, the overwhelming majority of primary documentary sources on the Jurchen people available to modern scholars are in Chinese.<ref name=chieia422>[[Denis Sinor]], ''The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia''. Published by Cambridge University Press, 1990. {{ISBN|0-521-24304-1}}. [https://books.google.com/books?id=ST6TRNuWmHsC Partial text] on Google Books]. Page 422.</ref> 
Therefore, when names of Jurchens, or Jurchen terms, are written in English, the same writing convention is usually followed as for Chinese words, that is, the English spelling is simply the Romanization ([[Pinyin]] or [[Wade–Giles]], as the case may be) of the [[Modern Standard Mandarin]] pronunciation of the Chinese characters that were used to render the Jurchen name or word. This standard presentation does not attempt to reconstruct the original Jurchen pronunciation of the word, or even the 12th-century Chinese pronunciation of the Chinese characters (even though more-or-less hypothetical [[Middle Chinese]] pronunciation of Chinese characters can be looked up in specialized dictionaries and databases,<ref>[http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/query.cgi?basename=\data\china\bigchina&root=config&morpho=0 Database query to Chinese characters]. StarLing database server. Retrieved 22 July 2009.</ref> and reconstructing pronunciation of some Jurchen words is attempted by some authors as well<ref>See e.g. Kane (1989).</ref>). Thus, for example, the Jurchen name of the first [[Jin dynasty (1115–1234)|Jin]] emperor is written in Chinese as {{lang|zh-Hant|[[:zh:完顏阿骨打|完顏阿骨打]]}}, and appears in English scholarship as ''[[Wanyan Aguda]]'' (using Pinyin) or ''Wan-yen A-ku-ta'' (using the Wade–Giles system).