User talk:Eirikr/2015

Okurigana in Kanji readings sections

I've noticed that some pages have readings which show okurigana following periods and other pages don't show any periods to separate the okurigana. I have seen yet other pages which in place of periods show the kanji with okurigana in parenthesis after the complete reading. Which do you feel is the most appropriate?馬太阿房 (talk) 09:44, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

• Hello 馬太阿房 ("butter boy"? :) --

I haven't forgotten you. I've been super busy on the one hand, and chewing on this issue on the other. Hmm, sounds like I'm chewing my hands. Anyway. Okurigana in readings for single-kanji entries is something that we haven't had any good guidelines for. Pages that have no indication of where the kanji reading ends and the okurigana begin are generally older, and are pages that I probably haven't edited, since I'm pretty keen on being clear about okurigana. How best to be clear, however, is something that I've tried a couple different ways over the years, which is some of what you note.

For sake of example, let's consider the kun'yomi list at 出. Should it be:

• でる (出る, deru)

or:

• で-る (de-ru)

or:

• で.る (de.ru)

or...?

I've used all of these at some point. Over time, I've gravitated towards the formatting at the bottom of the list (these are roughly chronological as I've experimented over time), as this strikes me as possibly the visually cleanest and clearest. It's also roughly what Jim Breen uses in his online dictionary (click through to http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1B and enter 出 in the search box to see this example). But if you have any other ideas, I'm all ears.  :) ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 06:52, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

가 /ka/ vs が /ga/

Hi there.

A few days ago I edited the Korean page on that particle, but you removed everything, although I used a really reliable source, and what I wrote was not stupid or far-fetched. Could I ask to have that content published, even though you would prefer me to reword it? Thank you. — This unsigned comment was added by 122.17.81.57 (talk) at 04:46, 2015 January 4‎.

• The main issue was that the content you added would be more suited for inclusion in an encyclopedia. A comparison of the modern uses of Korean 가 (ga) and Japanese が (ga) is simply not appropriate for a Korean-to-English dictionary entry, regardless of accuracy or reliable sourcing. That explanation would conceivably be good to have in the Korean-to-Japanese entry at ja:가, or in the Japanese-to-Korean entry at ko:が. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 06:39, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

User translations badly formatted

Hi,

If you have some time, there are quite a few badly formatted translations here: Special:Contributions/Somnipathy. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:06, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Jeju

Just so you know, the ISO recently gave Jeju a code, jje. I have added it to Wiktionary and switched our Jeju content to use that code rather than the bulky exceptional code we had used before, qfa-kor-jjm. However, I notice that entries like this have been switched to use ko... - -sche (discuss) 21:08, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

• Thank you, -sche.

@Wyang What can you say about Jeju? Is this close enough to mainland Korean to count as a dialect? I've run across sources suggesting that perhaps it should be considered separately, but I don't know enough to really tell. At the bare minimum, shouldn't entries like 갈옷 (garot) or 자륜거 (jaryun'geo) include usage notes or some other means of indicating that this is a dialect word? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:37, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

• Jeju is considered a Korean dialect in Korean linguistics. Here is an excerpt from Korean Dialectal Dictionary: [1][2], and it can be seen that Jeju is just one of the many varieties of Korean (although I failed to find jaryungeo there). Regarding garot - this is a standard Korean word [3] and should not be marked as Jeju dialect-only. Wyang (talk) 01:21, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

• Thank you for the explanation and the fun links. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 06:31, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

• @Wyang What chance might there be that チャリンコ (charinko) is instead from Chinese, particularly Taiwanese? I note that the 自輪車／自轮车 (zìlúnchē) entry indicates that this term is mostly used in Taiwan, but the pronunciation section only lists Mandarin. Given the connections between Taiwan and Japan over the years, this might make a more likely source, especially if you can't find anything backing up the Jeju angle. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 07:06, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

• I tried to find 19th century or early 20th century attestations of 自輪車 on Google Books, Chinese Wikisource and corpora, but this word seems to be so rarely used in Chinese that virtually no useful attestations could be found. There are some interesting ones (Dialectal Chinese: [4]; Japanese: [5]; Taiwanese: [6]), but unfortunately none of them is viewable. My impression is that this word was used at a very low frequency in Japanese and then in Taiwanese (when it was under Japanese rule), and that it pretty much died out not long after that. The hypothesis that charinko might be directly of Chinese origin, to me, sounds unlikely. An interesting thing to note is the "ko" sound here. "車" in Middle Chinese had two pronunciations tsyhae and kjo, however the second k- reading had essentially vanished in modern independent usage and compounding - except, in Korean (거), where it is preserved in many compounds (such as 자전거) which would normally be read with the other tsyhae reading in other languages. The word charinko, if Sino-Japanese in origin, would definitely be more likely to have been borrowed from some Korean (dialectal) source, than either directly borrowed from Chinese or wasei kango in origin. There is also a possibility of this being derived from 자행거 (自行車, jahaenggeo, “old name for bicycle”) [7], which is the source of many dialectal forms of jajeongeo in the dictionary (via lenition of -h-). I think it may have been the Jeju form of this word [t͡ʃɐjəŋgɛ, t͡ʃɐjəŋgə], which spread to Japan by the Zainichi Koreans, that gave rise to charinko. Wyang (talk) 03:03, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

So, should we make jje an etymology-only code (like frc, "Cajun French")? (Should we open a BP discussion for that?) - -sche (discuss) 20:36, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Translation of snore

Hi,

Thanks for splitting the translation. It is achieved with much simpler coding:

鼾をかく (いびきをかく, ibiki o kaku), 鼾を立てる (いびきをたてる, ibiki o tateru).

Pls note how components are still linked to the right language. :) --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 21:59, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

• Cool, thank you! I dimly remembered that something like this was possible, but I couldn't remember the specifics, so I just hammered out what worked.  :) Cheers!

As a side issue, is there any value in including kana representations in translation tables? We don't include bopomofo for Chinese translations, for example, and the kana don't link anywhere either. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:22, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

I usually include kana for various reasons - it's often the alternative spelling (you can just write "いびきをかく"), it's educational - shows the right hiragana spelling. Bopomofo is restricted to Taiwan but we do provide Arabic and Hebrew vocalisation (diacritics, normally unwritten in a running Arabic or Hebrew text), which is the phonetic aid for these languages (dictionary style) and provide stress marks for Russian, etc. I think it's a long standing convention for Japanese to provide kana, although Shinji doesn't like it. Well, published dictionaries use either kana or romaji and sometimes both.

I don't think we need to link kana transliterations, let alone rōmaji (I'm very annoyed when it is). --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:32, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

姣

The {{ja-readings}} template in this entry is adding the redlinked Category:Japanese kanji needing attention, apparently due to being fed katakana instead of hiragana. I'm not sure how to fix it, but I thought you might be. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:29, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

While you're at it, I've been holding off on creating Category:Japanese terms spelled with 貴 read as あて‏‎ because I can't seem to reconcile the reading for 貴 at 貴人 with any of the readings at 貴 itself. Could you see if it's a problem at 貴, at 貴人, or in my meager understanding of Japanese? Chuck Entz (talk) 02:54, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

• I've fixed the issue at 姣. I'll have to look at 貴 later, as I'm about to fall over. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 08:26, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

• Chuck, does the update to 貴 resolve your issue? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 23:03, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Absolutely. Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 04:05, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Elderly

You correctly note that 'elderly people' is common as a noun, but 'elderly' used alone is not a noun, it's an adjective, as you surely know. This is my first attempt at editing wiktionary, I think, so maybe I don't understand the usage there. But to my nascent understanding of Chinese, the noun form of a word is, in fact, a noun, just like in English. So, shouldn't it be defined using an actual English noun, and not an adjective? If a Chinese speaker wants to know the English noun form of 老, they will read elderly, and be misled into sounding like a stereotype, which is unfortunate. 'Elder' may not be the precise meaning, but it is a noun. Wouldn't it at least be better to put the phrase 'elderly person' under the noun definition? Eaglizard (talk) 18:39, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

• The term elderly is used as a non-count mass noun, at least in US English (possibly also UK and other Englishes), generally preceded by the definite article the. See the entry at elderly for more detail. See also google books:"the elderly" for usage examples. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:42, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

• Reviewing the 老 (lǎo) usage examples more closely, I better understand your position. I've reworded the entry for clarity. Have a look and let me know if that change answers your concerns. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:58, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your reply. Yes, that is exactly what I was in the middle of suggesting here, when I got an edit conflict. :) (Although I was going with '[the] elderly', I'm sure you know formatting styes here better than I.) Although, in the long run I had decided perhaps this issue is too wide for the medium at hand -- there are a lot variations on plurality in English that clearly cause great difficulties for those raised without the need for them. But I'll leave it to wiktionary editors to decide how far to go with that problem. Is wiktionary really the place for a person to learn a foreign language? I don't know, but I'm certainly trying to use it to study the ideograms. In any case, I think I'll focus more on the easy job of linktext'ing Chinese chars over where I live, on en:wp. Thanks again. Eaglizard (talk) 19:08, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

龙龟

What about 龙龟?

90.219.200.199 14:01, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

I have deleted this crap. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 18:10, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

(After edit conflict)

• What about it? I don't know what you're asking.

Just off the bat, I can say that this isn't Japanese. Both constituent characters are Chinese simplified forms that aren't used in Japanese. ja:龙 has no Japanese entry, only Chinese. ja:龟 doesn't even exist, and was previously deleted. Meanwhile, http://www.weblio.jp/content/%E9%BE%99 and http://www.weblio.jp/content/%E9%BE%9F both clearly state that 「※日本語ではあまり使用されない漢字です。」　→ i.e., “This kanji is not really used in Japanese.”

If you'd like help with Chinese terms, I suggest you contact Wyang or Anatoli. I think they're currently the most-active editors of Chinese. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:08, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

• And I see Anatoli's comment, so presumably that combination of characters was not an inclusion-worthy term. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:08, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Since the IP doesn't seem to have a clue about the Japanese writing system, I didn't bother checking it or too long. In Japanese the term, if it exists and would pass CFI, would be along the lines of "竜亀". --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 19:15, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

(After another edit conflict)

Aaaand, looking at the deleted content, a big thank you to Anatoli! Anon, PLEASE use a dictionary before entering terms here. ESPECIALLY when those terms are in languages that you clearly don't know.

The deleted entry was not even wrong. I.e., it was so far off base that it's in a different ballpark altogether.

1. The purported reading of ryūkame isn't a Japanese word as best I can tell, outside of a placename (apparently a neighborhood in Yao City [8]).
2. The characters aren't even used in Japanese.

Again, please look things up and determine whether or not something is complete rubbish, before trying to add entries to this site. There are numerous online resources for Japanese<>English dictionaries, many of which are even free, like Weblio or Eijiro. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:12, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

kyūjitai

Hi,

I saw your edit on 韓國#Japanese and other kyūjitai. Would you support soft redirects with usage notes for kyūjitai, similar to {{zh-see}} for simplified Chinese, e.g. 韩国? (this adds to PoS and simplified Chinese categories)? Also: Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2014/December#Demoting_ky.C5.ABjitai_to_stubs.2Fsoft-redirects --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:05, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks, I'd forgotten about that thread. Yes, I'm open to making these soft redirects. That was basically my intent for 韓國. I'll have another look. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 00:15, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

鞋

Hi,

Do you mind improving the Japanese section a bit? TIA :) --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:48, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Actually, I confused the character with 靴 and was surprised it had so little info, so I'll leave it up to you. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:19, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

ゲット

Hi,

Would you like to have a go at this term? I find the usage interesting. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:03, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

• Sure. I might not be able to get (ha!) to it soon, though, so if you get impatient, please feel free to create an entry.  :) ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 00:08, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

  Yes, definitely. No rush. I may start it but let you enhance it. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:12, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

A couple of problematic Wanted Categories

I try to create as many of the redlinked entries in Special:WantedCategories as I can, but there are always one or two that don't seem to add up, mostly because there's nothing in the kanji entry's readings that seems to match the readings in the other entry's kanjitab. If the kanjitab was edited by someone whom I can trust knows what they're doing, and I can guess at the yomi, I may create it anyway, but after a while the clinkers start to build up.

Here are two of them that I'd appreciate your looking at:

Category:Japanese terms spelled with 封 read as ぷう, which was from an entry added by a US IPv6. The entry itself seems to check out ok with wwwjdic, but I don't know Japanese morphophonology well enough to figure out if the kanjitab is right. A change from ふう to ぷう is plausible- but I don't know if Japanese works that way. There could also be a reading missing from the kanji entry, and I would have no way to know it.

Category:Japanese terms spelled with 手 read as ず was the result of an edit by Kc kennylau, and the ず looks like it might be a variant of the goon reading of しゅ- but what do I know? Would the yomi be goon, or just on? Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 00:15, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

I've added another wanted category today: Category:Japanese terms spelled with 鏡 read as がね today. Not sure if "がね" is a true kun'yomi reading for 鏡. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:26, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Heya folks, thank you for keeping on top of that. I don't look at categories much, and I definitely appreciate the help. Some quick thoughts:

• Of the three categories, the one for 手 is the only valid one. ず (zu) is the kan'yōon for this character.
• ぷう (pū), and indeed any of the p- readings, is not a "standard" reading for any kanji. The p- sounds only occur in compounds, similar to rendaku. I don't recall what this phenomenon is called, and I'm reading around the JA webspace to try to remind myself. Once I find out, I'll create a template similar to {{rendaku2}} that we can use on entries that have these p- readings.
• がね (gane) is a rendaku-ed reading.

So the Category:Japanese terms spelled with 封 read as ぷう and Category:Japanese terms spelled with 鏡 read as がね cats need to be deleted, and the entries linking through to them need fixing. I might have time for that later today, but my schedule is way tight.

Thanks again! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:29,れ 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Re: rendaku on 色眼鏡. Thanks. I would format it so (like you did) but I couldn't confirm "かね" reading for 鏡 - I only have "かがみ" and 眼鏡 would need that too. Category:Japanese terms spelled with 鏡 read as かね is the new wanted cat.--Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 21:24, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

• The term megane always uses the 鏡 character, and that character is always read as if it were the 金 character instead, so I think you'd have to parse the kane reading here as a non-Jōyō kun'yomi for 鏡. From my quick searches of my electronic dictionaries, it looks like 眼鏡 (megane) is the only word where 鏡 is read as if it were 金 (kane). Does that agree with what you're finding?

Not sure what you mean by “I only have "かがみ" and 眼鏡 would need that too” -- the only readings I can find for 眼鏡 are the kun'yomi megane and the on'yomi gankyō (archaic, military).

I also just realized that these categories hadn't actually been "created" yet (with header info, etc), they were just auto-generated by the MW software, so there's nothing to delete. I struck through my mistaken comment above. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:33, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Would you consider non-Jōyō readings as irregular? If that's the case, instead of kun'yomi, the entries (眼鏡 and 色眼鏡) and should say "irregular" (not kun'yomi, IMO) and no autogenerated (wanted) red-linked categories would appear. I meant that the only kun'yomi reading for 鏡 I can find is "かがみ". If "かね" is also valid (even if rare), it should be added to 鏡. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:40, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

• Where to draw the line between irregular versus just non-Jōyō -- my personal thought is that a spelling is entirely irregular if the individual phonemes cannot be attached reliably to any one kanji. Things like 蝦夷 / 夷 / 戎 (ebisu, “the Ainu people”, according to Shogakukan, presumably from Ainu term emchiu or enchu meaning "person", but Batchelor's AIN-EN-JA dictionary doesn't contain any such term; the closest match is probably Ainu エムㇱ (emush) or エムシ (emushi, “sword”), possibly adopted into Japanese to mean "person" due to the politics of Yamato expansion and repression of the Ainu, and the inevitable armed resistance by the Ainu) or 天鵞絨 (birōdo, “velvet”, from Portuguese veludo) or 麺麭 (pan, “bread”, from Portuguese pão) are definitely irregular. Things like 眼鏡, though, look instead to be very regular, if perhaps non-Jōyō: this is simply a matter of ateji of a sort, swapping 金 (“metal”, probably in reference to the eyeglass frame) for 鏡 (“mirror”, probably from its Chinese meaning of lens).

The kane reading for 鏡 is definitely be valid, as it is the only kun'yomi reading for this character (albeit with rendaku) in the everyday term 眼鏡 (megane). That said, 眼鏡 is also the only word I can find that uses this reading for this kanji, so there wouldn't be much use in having the category. Maybe "irregular" makes the most sense here? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 23:15, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

I think we should make the readings "irregular", rather than adding rare, non-productive (and confusing) readings. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:49, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

• Sounds good to me.  :)

One thought for future -- I think it might be useful to be able to show readings both for the whole term, and by individual character. So for things like 眼鏡, we could show that the whole word is regarded as kun'yomi, while the me is regular kun'yomi, and the kane is irregular. Or say, in 上手, we could indicate that the whole word is on'yomi, the jō is goon, and the zu is kan'yōon.

Maybe even add in functionality to allow specification of separate words, so when {{ja-kanjitab}} is used on phrase entries, we could break the whole phrase down by word, and then by character.

But that's for later.  :) Cheers, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 00:00, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Etymology of 武

Some reference.

《说文解字》字本义错误举隅

Huhu9001 (talk) 02:14, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

• Hi. I can't get that site to load, but the core issue I had was that 止 definitely includes a "stop" meaning. Your previous edit removed the "stop" meaning entirely, even though the the body of the etymology just below describes this character as meaning "stop". I see now that the entry lists both meanings, which is fine by me. I've tweaked it to use the {{Han compound}} template again, since the template adds some useful links and categories.

Cheers, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 15:34, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

googly moogly (was: Removal of item from Wiktionary:Requested entries (English))

(moved from User talk:Kiwima)

Hello, I recently discovered that my request for googly moogly was missing from the Wiktionary:Requested entries (English) page. The removal of entries from requested entry pages usually means that the entry has been created, but googly moogly is still missing, and apparently has never existed.

Did you intend to create this entry? Or did you remove the listing for some other reason? Curious, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:01, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

I created googly-moogly, because when I looked for usages, that is what I found. If you can find enough instances of googly moogly without the hyphen, I will gladly add that as an alternate form. Kiwima (talk) 18:13, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

• @Kiwima Thank you for the reply. Google NGrams, for some reason, does not return any instances of the hyphen-less form, but visually scanning through the hits at google books:"googly moogly" produces plenty of hits, including this book title, this climbing route name, this book on Mississippi dialect, and this novel, among others.

For that matter, NGrams also fails on alternate spellings googaly moogaly / googaly-moogaly, regardless of capitalization. But again, google books:"googaly moogaly" finds enough hits to meet CFI.

Given the complete failure of NGrams to find usage that's already in Google's corpus, I'm not sure how to judge which form is more common, but it does look like these might all merit entries. (Though it bears noting that I am no power user of NGrams, and it's entirely possible that I'm doing something wrong.)

Thank you for your help! I've removed my now-redundant request from Wiktionary:Requested entries (English). ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:02, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Just to add one suggestion: if you create an entry that's different than the one requested or if there's a reason not to create it at all, it's best to leave a note right next to the request, so the requester knows what happened. You can show that you've taken care of the request by surrounding it in strikeout tags, with <s> before the text and </s> after it, so that it appears as being struck out. Later on, once everything is sorted out, the request can be removed. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:43, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

カーゲーベー

Hi,

Sorry for the confusion on カーゲーベー. I just thought that we over-capitalise Japanese (also Chinese and Korean) transliterations. The choice between proper and common nouns is not always straightforward. "KGB" may merit proper noun status in Japanese as the name of an organisation but will you agree that language names, demonyms should be common nouns? Japanese shouldn't always follow English rules when deciding what is a proper noun or a common noun. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:20, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

• Heya, no worries. I've spent a little time looking into the Japanese perspective on proper nouns. There does appear to be a trend among Japanese writers / lexicographers / etc. to use initial capitalization for things deemed to be proper nouns, when writing in romaji. Here's a corroborating entry from Shogakukan's Kokugo Dai Jiten:

こゆうめいし(コイウ‥)【固有名詞】
（英proper nounの訳語）ある類に属する個物に与えられた名称を表す語。人名、地名、国名のほか、書名、会社名、学校名、年号、商号、商品名、器物・家畜の呼び名など。ローマ字つづりでは、頭文字を大文字にする習慣がある。⇔普通名詞

That's broadly the guideline I've been following with romanized entries here. The enumeration of 地名、国名 and the like leads me to think that demonyms and language names would be similarly treated as proper nouns. Briefly googling around suggests that this is the case.

Does that answer your question? (honest question on my part, no snark. :) ) ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 20:53, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks but what leads you to think that demonyms and language names should be proper nouns as well? In the (vast) majority of languages country names doesn't make demonyms and language names capitalised - Italia/italiano, Suomi/suomi/suomalainen, Россия/русский, etc., etc. In other words, "Nihon" (countries, place names, company names) - yes but "nihongo" and "nihonjin" should be lower case and the kanji terms - common nouns. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:45, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

My personal experience led me think that demonyms and language names are generally capitalized. Digging around just now, Google NGrams seems to back this up:

• nihongo,Nihongo,doitsugo,Doitsugo,eigo,Eigo
• nihonjin,Nihonjin,doitsujin,Doitsujin,igirisujin,Igirisujin

The init-capped forms are more common, where they appear at all.

Ultimately, though, this exercise is a bit academic, since Japanese usually isn't written in romaji at all. When it is, it's generally for teaching purposes, in which case, the romaji text is often written to conform to the orthographical conventions of the targeted audience.

From that perspective, inasmuch as this is the English Wiktionary, I think it makes sense to follow English conventions in cases where there isn't any clear Japanese convention. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 23:33, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. I would put this to a vote. Haplology did agree on having them in lower case, which is also reflected in many of our entries. Shinji is of the same opinion as you, I think. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:42, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'm open to discussion. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 01:30, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Katze

This rollback is in error (in case of point 2).

1. "Katze" commonly refers to small cats, i.e. house cats or German "Hauskatzen". As it shouldn't be like "first cat refered to all cats, then in colloquial speech it often became restricted to house cats", it should make more sense to list the common meaning first.
2. Simple google book seach quite often has "Kätzin" in books like "Verhaltenstherapie der Katze" (behaviour therapy of cats), "Krankheiten der Katze" (illnesses of cats), "Katzen gesund ernähren" (To feed cats healthly). So, it's obviously technical -- to differ between cats (Katze), female cats (Kätzin) and male cats (Kater) --, and not "jocular" or "hypercorrect". Many Germans - especially cat owners and educated persons - shouldn't have any problem with "Kätzin".

-IP, 17:03, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Two issues with Japanese entries

Hi,

I got two issues with Japanese entries today

1. 十七 doesn't display additional reading - "じゅうなな"
2. 稟告's kanji categories are not correctly generated. I made manual ones but they are empty - Category:Japanese terms spelled with 稟 read as ひん and Category:Japanese terms spelled with 稟 read as りん. Any help is appreciated. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 11:55, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

• FWIW, I really don't like this use of alternative readings -- different readings have their own independent etymologies, and should be listed separately. That said, I'll have a look.

Oh, and the readings for 稟 aren't showing up in the cats because it's not a Jōyō character -- the cat generator for {{ja-kanjitab}} only includes readings for Jōyō kanji. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 07:05, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

1. Thanks. Fixed by User:Umbreon126, which was just an extra white space. One way or another, both readings should be displayed, whether the etymology is present or not. I always think that etymologies are of lower priorities and are "nice to haves", not mandatory attributes of the entries. Alternative readings as parameters are just a simple way to add those readings without having to add etymologies but can be changed on expanded entries. Well, hiragana and katakana readings on the same headword don't need additional etymologies.
2. I see. Thanks. Should I delete Category:Japanese terms spelled with 稟 read as ひん and Category:Japanese terms spelled with 稟 read as りん then? I probably will. (BTW, I duplicated the question in the Grease pit.) --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 07:15, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
   • Re: the categories, I have no strong feelings. It might be nice to have readings even for non-Jōyō kanji, but the coding required for the module might be too cumbersome -- both to develop, and possibly to run. A grease pit discussion is probably merited. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 07:42, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

1. • Deleted categories. I didn't know they were only made for Jōyō kanji, so I thought there were some module problems. Thanks for your input.--Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 07:54, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

• Anatoli, I reworked the 稟告 entry. Upon looking into this term, it became clear that the hinkoku reading is dying out, and that the hinkoku and rinkoku readings have somewhat different senses.

I know it's a bit more work, but I strongly recommend that you add in separate ===Etymology=== headers for separate readings in future. Doing so makes it much clearer that the readings are separate. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:06, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Your revert

Hello, your revert here:

http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=%E7%B6%A0&action=historysubmit&type=revision&diff=32791177&oldid=32791174

was incorrect -- consulting a reliable online Chinese dictionary such as Zdic DOT net will show the "lu4" reading for this character, which was lacking from the entry. Thank you for checking before reverting in the future. 173.89.236.187 23:27, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

• Numerous other Chinese dictionaries do not include a lù reading. I did check. Even zdic.net doesn't list any lù reading. Please be more courteous before assuming malfeasance on the part of others. And if other editors have asked you to post in the Tea room or other discussion fora, please post there to discuss and establish consensus before (re-)adding controversial content. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 23:45, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

フランス

Look at these:

Daijirin Kokugo Daijiten

I wonder how "clearly" the dictionaries indicate as such as you say. ばかFumiko￥^talk 08:06, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

• I'm guessing that 1) you're not familiar with the notation conventions of these dictionaries, and 2) you've been unaware that only English and French spell the name of the country as France. I just checked my dead-tree copy of the 新明解国語辞典 in addition to your screenshots and my own digital copies, and these all list the etymon as France. That's pretty clear. So it's got to be from either English or French. Either way, the ultimate source is French, it's just a question of whether the term came into Japanese directly from French speakers, or indirectly via English speakers. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 09:14, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Exactly my point. You don't know whether it's from French or English, and the dictionaries don't tell you anything about that. ばかFumiko￥^talk 15:18, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

• ... which is what the etymology currently says. I'm confused what you object to? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 20:55, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Dude, that's what you say, not the dictionaries. Can you point out exactly the part of the Kokugo Daijiten or Daijirin that specifically says what you say? ばかFumiko￥^talk 02:32, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

I am with Eirikr on this one. The above dictionaries are not our only sources. "France" is the word "フランス" is derived from. As Eirikr said, the spelling "France" is only used in two languages - French and English, so logically, the etymology has only two possible sources - French and English, ultimately French, anyway. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 08:21, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Let me make it clear again: Kokugo Daijiten and Daijirin are not our only sources, no, but they are the only sources used for this one entry, フランス. I wasn't sure if the spelling "France" are exclusive to English and French (I did think so) until both of you confirmed that for me. Consider sources of borrowing of Japanese (usally English, French, Portuguese, Dutch, German, Italian, Chinese), that sounds fair enough. The thing is none of the dictionaries above, our only sources used for this one entry (フランス) states that the term derives from French or English. If the spelling were unique to French, or English, alone, that would be no problem (where else could the term comes from?). But it is not. And the dictionaries don't tell us anything about the term derives from French, or from English, or from French via English. The statement in the etymology section is merely arbitrary (it does sound reasonable though), not on the account of both dictionaries, which are the only sources used for this one entry. Both dictionaries do not say "this word is from French", "this word is from English", or "this word is from French, via English". No. So I think the dictionaries should not be cited there. We should at least include another source that states that very statement ("From French France, possibly via English.") or at least something similar. ばかFumiko￥^talk 13:45, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

• All of the dictionaries consulted so far do state that フランス comes from the term France. As you note, none explicitly state the source language. However, *only* English and French have any term spelled France that refers to the country. Ergo, by logical reasoning, the source language for Japanese フランス *must* be either English or French. Given that the term France itself originated from French, the ultimate source must be French.

This is what the etymology at フランス currently states: this term is from French. The etymology also mentions the possibility that the term made it into Japanese via English, allowing for the present ambiguity in how the term entered Japanese.

This is in accordance with what the sources say. By logical reasoning, this is the only possible meaning that the sources could be intending by listing France as the etymon of フランス.

Is your concern instead that the etymology wording should be changed to clarify the limitations of what the sources say? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 16:10, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

My concern is about the citation. You said that the spelling was only either French or English, I got it. But the etymology, as you said, was inferred by logical reasoning, not actually confirmed by the dictionaries themselves. And I think that makes them not good enough to be cited in the etymology section. Say I had no idea where the term comes from at first, I looked for it on Wiktionary, I found the etymology which said it came from French (via English?), and the etymology came with such citation sources as Kokugo Daijiten and Daijirin. I then looked for the term on Kokugo Daijiten and Daijirin which only gave the spelling "France", and absolutely nothing else. Surely "France" could ony be either French or English, but I would wonder why the dictionaries were cited in the etymology section. They just gave the spelling, the didn't explicitly say the term was directly from French, or from French via English. If the spelling were only French, then it would be damn fine. But it could also be English, and no one was sure about that. Then why are they cited in the first place when they explain absolutely nothing about the spelling being from French or English? By logical reasoning, you think that the word must be from French and possibly via English. But that is not what Kokugo Daijiten and Daijirin say (because it is by your logical reasoning), then why do you cite them? A dictionary that says "This term is from French, possibly via English" would be way more worth citing.

P/s: I'd like you to take a look at 屈狸. Here I put the citation number right after the word "Nivkh", since the first part is taken from Kojien which says "This term is from Nivkh". I didn't put the citation number after the spelling "к’узр", because Kojien says nothing about the spelling which can be attested just by logical reasoning (if "屈狸" is from Nivkh, "к’узр" must be the Nivkh spelling needed, right?) Isn't that better? ばかFumiko￥^talk 03:11, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

• Fumiko, it appears that you don't understand the etymological notation conventions of these dictionaries. The listing of France in the Daijirin and Kokugo Dai Jiten entries, for instance, is a listing of the etymon, i.e. the source term. By way of comparison, please have a look at the respective entries for ベルギー: both list the etymon as België, and in both cases the entries do not explicitly list a source language. This is quite common in Japanese dictionaries. Looking up the etymon België shows that this term is Dutch, and as such, we can state in the ベルギー entry that the Japanese term comes from Dutch. We can even say that Daijirin and the Kokugo Dai Jiten both list the source as Dutch België, as there is no other possible source language for the given etymon.

If the Kojien entry for 屈狸 lists к’узр (kʼuzr) in the etymology, then it would be correct to put the Kojien citation marker after the Cyrillic. If the Kojien entry only says that 屈狸 is from Nivkh, but does not give the etymon, then it would be more correct to put the Kojien citation marker before the Cyrillic, and then add a "probably" before the Cyrillic.

I am puzzled by your abusive tone. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 05:27, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

I apologize if what I said (wrote) make you feel abused. I tried pretty hard (maybe a little too hard) to make myself as clear as possible by using a lot of bold words. But you said it yourself: "France" is either French or English, while "België" is only Dutch. If "France" were only French, or only English, I wouldn't make such a "abusive tone" here. ばかFumiko￥^talk 05:54, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

ドイツ

Kokugo Daijiten lists "Deutschland", not "deutsch" or "Deutsch". That suggests the dictionary gives the name of the country in its own language, not the etymology. In fact, Daijirin, Daijisen and Kojien all do so, but they do give the etymology that ドイツ is from Dutch. By logical reasoning I can tell you that. ばかFumiko￥^talk 04:09, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

糞

Under the readings, the ばば reading is listed as Kan’yōon, but under Etymology 3, it's supposed to be kun. Which is it? — This unsigned comment was added by Chuck Entz (talk • contribs) at 19:00, 12 June 2015‎.

• Fixed. Last I worked on it, I forgot to fix the ====Readings==== section. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:35, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

水面

今晩は。 In a song I was listening to (captivating 秋冬 by Hiyashi Asami-san, 0:40-0:45 in the video), this word has the pronunciation (and explicit furigana spelling) みずも. However, here the extant Hiragana spellings are すいめん and みなも, whilst the other resource I am using to extend my Japanese vocabulary (和独辞典) lists those two and みのも , but not みずも. Do you deem it worth being added as a spelling and have you encountered this spelling/pronunciation in speech or in a written resource? Is this a non-standard, an obsolete or poetic spelling? Regards, The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 09:21, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

• Hmm, interesting. I find no evidence of a mizumo reading for 水面. For that matter, I can't find any word at all with a reading of mizumo. I suppose it might be dialect, or even just the song author's own idiosyncrasy. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:18, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

蜜柑

This entry divides the みかん reading up as 蜜=み + 柑=かん, but 蜜 doesn't list み as a reading, and 柑 lists みかん as well as かん. I'm guessing there's more to this than meets the eye, and I don't want to create Category:Japanese terms spelled with 蜜 read as み until I know what's going on. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:17, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

• Looks like it was formerly read as mikkan, with the expected mitsu reading for 密. The gemination later vanished, resulting in modern reading mikan, and thus an irregular reading for 密. I'll revise the 蜜柑 entry accordingly. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:21, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

I just wanted to note that 日本(にほん) (nihon) is listed as regular via a sound-change (in derived terms, inconsistently as either a sound-change (e.g. 日本語) or direct reading (e.g. 日本人)). Sometimes ateji do this e.g. 阿弗利加(アフリカ) (afurika), 倶楽部(くらぶ) (kurabu), 滅茶(めちゃ) (mecha). Nibiko (talk) 01:34, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

• Good points. @Nibiko, the に (ni) reading for 日 isn't listed as either on'yomi or kun'yomi, though, is it? The JA wikt entry at ja:日 doesn't include just に (ni).

(I ask, because part of Chuck's initial concern had to do with how readings are categorized.) ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 20:34, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, that's true, it isn't listed as either. I wanted to bring this up for consistency across these readings, with the three ways of going about it (irregular, regular as sound-change, regular as direct reading). Nibiko (talk) 19:37, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

• That's an interesting point. It would probably be useful to have three categories, then. I know nothing much about how categories are created though. Chuck, Haplology, Anatoli, Shinji, what do you all think? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:03, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Since 日 is read に only in 日本, it should be treated rather as an irregular reading. The sound change is reasonable but it doesn’t follow the regular sound rule of sino-japanese words. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 00:05, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea. Re: "it doesn’t follow the regular sound rule of Sino-Japanese words". I invite you guys to take a look at the Wu (Shanghainese) pronunciation of 日, it's [ȵi̯ɪʔ¹²]. It's not the only case when Wu matches closer than other Chinese dialects the modern Japanese pronunciation, e.g. 人 - [ȵɪɲ²³]. These Japanese readings must have been borrowed from a version of Middle Chinese from which Wu came.

How would you categorise/display readings like ひと (as opposed to ひとり) for 独 in 独りぼっち (sorry Chuck, I have reverted your edit)? Or た reading (as opposed to たて) for 建 in 建物. Various forms of okurigana usage makes the choice not straightforward. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 11:59, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

• FWIW, I'd say that the 建 in 建物 has a kun'yomi of tate. The JA WT entry lists tate as a non-Jōyō kun'yomi. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:03, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Of course. That’s why they are called 呉音: 呉 is Wu. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 16:08, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Nivkh к’узр

Are these sources good enough? ばかFumiko￥^talk 09:05, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

• Hi, yes, I am satisfied that the term exists. However, for purposes of the RFV, the required threshold for limited-documentation languages (WT:LDL) like Nivkh is at least one quote, showing the term used in running text (i.e. not just in a dictionary, and not just where the term itself is mentioned or talked about), with the stated meaning. My own remaining question at this point is the spelling, since the one Nivkh dictionary I have access to (the one linked by Liliana earlier) includes the caron over the final р. I just commented over on the RFV thread. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:30, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

2 problem users and a new entry

First of all, there's you know who(90.216.74.231 (talk • contribs • whois • deleted contribs • nuke • abuse filter log • block • block log • active blocks • global blocks) I blocked him and reverted some of his edits, but I wasn't sure about a few of them. Then there's 75.134.129.118- definitely not a vandal, but I reverted most of his Japanese translations and left him a note about the difference between translations and transliterations. If you have time, you might want to look over my reverts and see if I overdid it on a few.

Finally, I created myoga, and put the kanji that I found at WWWJDIC in the etymology, though we have an entry at 蘘 that suggests otherwise... sort of. I'd appreciate it if you could verify my Japanese (I'm not sure exactly why I put hiragana along with the romaji, but I did...), and maybe even add an entry for whichever Japanese spelling is correct (I won't say if you've got the time, because I know you don't). Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 00:07, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

• (I won't say if you've got the time, because I know you don't) -- Heh. Right on that count -- a big project at work is heating up, which is great because it means progress, but it also means that I have even less time. Mixed feelings about that.  :)

I'll have a look at myoga and the related entries, probably this weekend. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 06:05, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Why no use of citations for etymologies and archaic readings not glossed as archaic in the reading section?

I saw the etymology provided for the Japanese word いのち and wonder what reference work that was derived from. The chi referred to in the いのち etymology is the Chinese word Qì (chi) which would be 氣 in Chinese and not 靈. It would make sense if ち was an ancient Japanese transliteration of the Chinese word Qì (氣) that was used in ancient Japan to form the word いのち, and then it later got associated with 霊 because of it's similar meaning. Is that what is supposed to have happened? To me this seems doubtful for some reasons, but I am wondering what your thoughts are on this (or just to know the reference work).

Shouldn't the etymologies and archaic readings be footnoted to the appropriate reference work (at least the ones that are ancient Japanese) or shouldn't they at least be labeled archaic? み is another reading given for 霊 which only appears as 名乗り in printed reference works I have access to, but I understand why it is there, given the etymology under 神. Incidentally, these readings (ち and み) are not shown under 靈 but only under 霊. Shouldn't both pages contain the same information?

A couple more things I found curious... (1) Is there a Japanese reference work that can be cited to support the supposition that the Ainu word kamuy was derived from ancient Japanese, as suggested under the headword, kamuy. This seems doubtful to me for various reasons as well, but I am interested to hear your thoughts on this (or just to know the reference). I've noticed that the Japanese wiktionary page for kamuy says the same, but also gives no reference. I've seen kamuy written in Japanese as 神居 and 神威 which seems to go against what the etymology says under the headword Kamuy (or were 居 and 威 used for the emphatic particle, i). Also, (2) what is the point of rendering Ainu words with Japanese kana on English wiktionary pages? Is it because the majority of Ainu are in Japan where modern Ainu may learn to read and write that way as they assimilate Japanese culture? For indigenous people, like Native Americans, who never developed their own script, wouldn't it make more sense to just use Latin-based script? Isn't that a standard practice? I've noticed on Japanese wiktionary pages, they don't use kana to spell Ainu headwords, but it is understandable that they do use it to transcribe them into Japanese script on the page. As for English headwords, they don't use kana to spell them anywhere on the page, and that can be done just as easy (I have some older Japanese dictionaries that do this using a mixture of large and small kana in exactly the same way as has been done to represent Ainu words). I perused an old Ainu dictionary online in which kana had been used, but in his preamble, the linguist stated how using Japanese script was not his intention. Although he had been opposed to it, the Japanese was added because he had yielded to the will of Japanese friends who wanted to make it user friendly to Japanese. It therefore became an Ainu-Japanese-English dictionary. I'm interested to know your thoughts on this as well.

馬太阿房 (talk) 00:39, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

• Wow, that's a lot. I don't have a lot of time, so I will have to respond to your queries in stages.

Oh, and in future, I'd greatly appreciate it if you could edit your messages more comprehensively before clicking Save page -- I got thirty-odd email notifications, all about your post here, which was a bit of a nuisance.

Anyway, on to the answering part.  :) ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 07:07, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

About Japanese chi

The chi in 命 (inochi) is not the same as Chinese 氣／气 (qì). The modern Mandarin pronunciation is [t͡ɕʰi⁵¹], which is very close to the Japanese [t͡ɕi] pronunciation for this chi in 命 (inochi). However, the modern Mandarin comes from an older Middle Chinese pronunciation of /khjɨj^H/ -- this was the pronunciation when the term 氣 was borrowed into Japanese, and the modern Japanese on'yomi of /ki/ is from this older Chinese pronunciation.

The term chi appears to be very old within Japanese, and is most likely native. Consider also 力 (chikara, “strength, power”, from chi “mystical power” + kara “inherent quality”), 大蛇 (Orochi, name of a mythical serpent; from o “ridge; hump?” + ro (possible particle) + chi “mystical power”), 雷 (ikazuchi, “thunder”, from ika “terrible, imposing” + tsu possessive particle + chi “mystical power”), or on its own as 霊 (chi, “mystical power or force”).

Remember that kanji spellings can be widely variant -- kanji are not native to Japanese, so which kanji get applied to which kun'yomi has historically been a fascinating and sometimes seemingly arbitrary process. Even now we see wide-ranging innovation, such as 騎士 (kishi, “mounted warrior”) instead being used with the reading naito borrowed from English knight. Looking at the Japanese root word chi, the base meaning appears to be something like “mystical inner power or essence”. From a certain perspective, blood also fits this meaning, as does milk, raising the distinct possibility that 血 (chi, “blood”) and 乳 (chi, “breastmilk”) were originally the same word as this 霊 (chi, “mystic power or essence”), differentiated now by kanji spelling.

For sources, my dead-tree version of 国語大辞典（新装版） (Kokugo Dai Jiten, Revised Edition) provides a definition for chi spelled with the 霊 kanji that basically translates out to “mystical power or force”. You can also read more online (in Japanese) at the Kotobank entry for 霊. Granted, our entry here at 霊 is in need of expansion and footnoting, as you point out.

I'll respond to your other paragraphs at a later date. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 07:07, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Very interesting, Eirikr. Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions thoroughly. It's interesting to consider that Japanese had a native word meaning the same as the similar sounding Chinese word, but if I understand you correctly, that is just because of changes over time to the pronunciation of the Chinese word I thought the etymology of えのち was referring to. It looks like much of what I am asking can be answered by that Kotobank web site. Thanks for pointing me to that! I'll have to refer to that regularly from now on. Oh, and sorry about all the edits which resulted in flooding your inbox. I'll need to be more considerate about that in the future.馬太阿房 (talk) 01:23, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Another good resource aggregator site is Weblio: http://www.weblio.jp/ They also have a 古語辞典 accessible from that same page, which can be fun to poke around in. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:44, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

About archaic readings and kyūjitai

Shouldn't the etymologies and archaic readings be footnoted to the appropriate reference work (at least the ones that are ancient Japanese) or shouldn't they at least be labeled archaic?

Ideally, yes, archaic readings should be marked as such. One of the challenges there is that Japanese references themselves often lack such detail.

About the discrepancies between 靈 and 霊, the former is the 旧字体 (kyūjitai) or obsolete character form of the latter, which is the 新字体 (shinjitai) or new character form. I think these were mostly codified in the Japanese spelling reforms of the mid-to-late 1940s. For Wiktionary purposes, all kyūjitai entries should be stubs pointing to the shinjitai entries, and all of the meaty details should be in the shinjitai entries. If you run into cases where the kyūjitai entry is more than just a stub, please move the details to the lemma entry (the shinjitai form) and stubbify the kyūjitai one. I think the current standard is to use {{alternative form of}} on the definition line. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:41, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that the kyūjitai entries should be treated as stubs pointing to the shinjitai entries. Now that I think of it that way, it makes more sense than duplicating information needlessly, and it moreover points those who don't know any better to the modern form where the full information can be found. So, I'll not worry about the discrepancies in readings between the old and new forms, and will do as you suggest and use {{alternative form of X}} on the definition line in the Japanese section of the kyūjitai entry pages. 馬太阿房 (talk) 20:30, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

人材 vs. 人才

While checking to see if I should create Category:Japanese terms spelled with 才 read as ざい‏‎, I discovered that User:Tooironic had moved 人材 to 人才 and replaced it with a soft redirect to 人才, but without making any changes to the Japanese section or to the Japanese pages that linked to it. Out of an abundance of caution, I moved the Japanese content back to 人材 until I could get a Japanese editor to look at it. The two spellings do seem to be variants in Japanese as well as in Chinese, but subtle things like differences in the readings between 材 and 才 led me to the conclusion that the Japanese section shouldn't have been moved without a Japanese editor checking for and fixing any side-effects from the move. I don't know enough to judge which entry should house the Japanese content, so I won't mind if you undo what I did- just check it and make any changes you feel necessary. Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 02:45, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Both are variants of both Chinese and Japanese. The Chinese lean more on using 人才 (mainland China) and Taiwanese on 人材 (it's also Min Nan). Japanese dictionaries use mainly 人材 and "人才" is referred to as "same as 人材". Korean dictionaries use hanja 人材 for hangeul 인재. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 09:43, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Some dictionaries only use one spelling (which is no suprise). So I could find the pronunciation of 人材/人才 only using 人材 in NHK dictionary of pronunciation. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 09:48, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Note that 才 is quite often used in Japanese in place of a more complicated character 歳, Chinese doesn't have this sense, it has a different simplified character: 歲／岁 (suì) (and a different traditional). The meaning of [材]] is more obvious to me - wood radical (meaning "aptitude" here) + cai (phonetic). --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 09:55, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

In Japanese 人材 is considered standard: [9], [10]. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 03:35, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that was what I meant, if it wasn't clear. 人才 is also acceptable, marked with 「人材」に同じ (i.e. same as "人材"). --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 13:07, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

bogus etymologies

Eiríkr, speaking of bogus etymologies (continuing a discussion begun on my discussion page), see Etymologies 2, 4 and 5 in the Japanese section for the entry 上下, which are Sino-Japanese words. I think I had inappropriately patterned a couple of entries I had made after samples like this, which, as you pointed out, lead one to believe that the word was coined in Japan. Thought you would probably want these brought to your attention so that you could fix them. 馬太阿房 (talk) 01:50, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

• Have a look now. I just massively reworked the Japanese entry. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:18, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Wow!! Very nicely done! It's entries like this which make wiktionary great. I'll let you know if I see others like that.馬太阿房 (talk) 17:18, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/202.94.136.55

Is this the same person as the untrustworthy anon that you recently blocked? —suzukaze (t・c) 22:11, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Possibly. However, although their wording is a bit odd, their content seems to be less wholly incorrect than the 110 anon. That said, I'll keep a close eye on them. Thank you! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 04:29, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/124.35.40.222? —suzukaze (t・c) 02:52, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Talk:host_country

>If someone is so clueless about English that they cannot string together words, then a dictionary is not the resource they need.

So, which resource do they need? --Romanophile (talk) 03:14, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

• A textbook. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 09:27, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Talk:mote#Etymology

Thank you for your edit; I have adjusted my etymology connections accordingly; but have included the etymology of MAD here, as from the origin of the Old English word being connected with MAIDIJANAi, because it is just ludicrous. The root of MAD does not seem to be related to Greek METHU (wine, any strong drink) at all. The analogy with 'cripple' is way out here; because there is no semantic evidence with the Gothic word that certainly derives from the second Germanic root. Andrew H. Gray 19:25, 21 September 2015 (UTC)Andrew

• @Werdna Yrneh Yarg: Have a look at mad#Etymology, and compare to mead#Etymology. Unless the information given there is spurious, it appears that English mad and mead are not directly related. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:54, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

From the etymologies given, there is no evidence of any connection; but the idea that I read as to Wiktionary's policy is not to just compare what a certain dictionary presents for two related/unrelated words, but to be able to pioneer origins based upon the rules bearing upon etymological paths and the Sounds Laws, being essential. The first Germanic root is totally logical! The Irish AMAD, however, has also been presented in Ogilvie's dictionary, but that is in 1870. Pre-20th century dictionaries are, on the whole, not reliable enough for Wiktionary's contributions. There really needs to be an intermediate meaning connection for users to accept any analogy between the meaning of 'mad' and that of an unattested root or meaning of 'cripple'. Andrew H. Gray 20:11, 21 September 2015 (UTC)Andrew

• Even just working from sound changes, it is hard to see how Old English gemād could be derived from the same root as Old English medu. If you can find a watertight explanation, more power to you.

FWIW, Irish amadán appears to derive ultimately from Old Irish ammait (“supernaturally powerful woman, witch; foolish woman”). Wiktionary itself doesn't show any further derivation of the Old Irish term, but so far, there's no mention of drunk or related senses. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 20:42, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

This site suggests that Old Irish ammait is cognate with Latin amita (“paternal aunt”), source of English aunt. This other document appears to corroborate this derivation. I'm not sure of the scholarly value of either web page, however. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:30, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for all your research on this; I really appreciate it. Currently, I cannot remember nor find the source of the connection between the origin of 'mad' and 'being drunk', so shall condemn that idea to a figment of the imagination for now. However, I should need to be in full-time employment if you wanted me to buy a copy of your talk page! It is probably the task of a Celtic etymology genius to trace the Old Irish word back to its real origin. Andrew H. Gray 22:01, 21 September 2015 (UTC)Andrew

Previous edits and info regarding 姫

You added the "tra=姬" data to the separate Cantonese and Mandarin sections a while ago but it appears that this isn't quite accurate. It looks like the character 姫 is simply the Japanese shinjitai variant of 姬 and is not used in China. It's probably partially my fault by having added the Cantonese section in the first place (adding to the confusion). Cheers! Bumm13 (talk) 16:10, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

• Heh, it's no biggie. Thanks for reworking the entry! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 16:27, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

電子

Something's wrong with the last of the terms in the "Compounds" collapsible box, resulting in a module error. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:06, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Fixed. Wyang (talk) 04:13, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you both. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 06:13, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Taíno language

Hi, Eirikr. On Wikipedia, on Talk:Taíno language, you wrote:

Renard, I appreciate that you're trying to make a point, but this is trolling, and unhelpful.

For others, please refer to the ongoing discussion at Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2015/January#Ta.C3.ADno_vs_Taino. User Victar makes essentially the opposite point there, that most academic papers written in English use the spelling Taíno, with the accented í.

Unfortunately, there's no such section at Wiktionary as Beer_parlour/2015/January#Ta.C3.ADno_vs_Taino, and I haven't been able to reconstruct whatever address you might have meant. -- Thnidu (talk) 00:06, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Actually, there is: in the link above, the "í" in "Taíno" has been encoded for html as two bytes of hexadecimal. The system treats Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2015/January#Ta.C3.ADno_vs_Taino and Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2015/January#Taíno_vs_Taino as the same thing, converting both to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2015/January#Ta.C3.ADno_vs_Taino. In fact, if you click on the link in Eirikr's text (or on any of the three links in my post), it will take you to the correct section. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:25, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

• @Thnidu, I realized that the issue was a missing wikt: prefix in the link on the Wikipedia page. I have since fixed that.

@Chuck, thank you for chiming in.  :)

‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:40, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

@Eirikr Thanks for the fix. @Chuck Entz Thanks. For whatever reason, though, my smartphone was failing to find it. I'm on laptop now, and hope that our host's prefix-fix has fixed it completely. --Thnidu (talk) 19:35, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Ainu

Hello, thank you for your corrections on オウペカ. I derived the small Kana from a section in the Ainu language article. — Ivadon (talk) 10:32, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

• Thank you for the source. I did some googling about, and I couldn't find evidence of the small-ゥ in owpeka anywhere: google:"オゥペカ". I did find evidence of regular-sized-ウ when searching for google:"オウペカ", and not just in old resources, such as at this page from the Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Ainu in Samani, or this page from the Greens party of Japan.

I note that the second link doesn't consistently use the small kana specific to Ainu spellings, rendering that a less-than-wholly-useful reference. However, the former link does seem to use the small kana, including small-ゥ to spell トゥ tu, suggesting that the lack of small-ゥ to spell owpeka is a deliberate choice. But then again, Ainu orthography is somewhat ... unsettled, and regarding the page move, as my wife often tells me, I reserve the right to be wrong.  :)

If folks can find any evidence of the small-ゥ spelling, we should certainly have such an entry. I just couldn't find any sign that this spelling gets any actual use out in the wild. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:12, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

ぐわいでん

Hi Eiríkr. Could you take a look at ぐわいでん for my idea of how to format historical-hiragana entries, please? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 15:51, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Heya. In general, that looks pretty good. One serious issue, though -- the automatic romanization code will need a new mode for historical spellings. These did not use small kana, so single-mora 拗音 (yōon, “palatalized or labialized vowel”, literally “bent sound”), like gwa or myo, were spelled with two full-sized kana, as ぐわ and みよ respectively. I haven't done enough research into historical kana spellings to know if any [KANA] + [Y- or W- KANA] combination was always a 拗音; if it is, then this should be relatively easy to code for, but if it isn't, then things get complicated. Either way, the current automatic romanization doesn't work for historical spellings with 拗音. For the specific example at ぐわいでん, the romanization should be gwaiden (gwaiden) instead, without the u after the g.

@Wyang, @Anatoli, @Keφr, @Shinji, do any of you know more about historical spellings and how to rework the romanization code for these? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 20:21, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for pinging but I don't think I can help here. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 06:19, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

ぐわ may be guwa or gwa. You cannot decide which without knowing the word. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 12:53, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

@Eiríkr Útlendi, Anatoli, Shinji: I might be being simplistic, but would simply moving this entry to ぐゎいでん (gwaiden) not solve this problem? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 14:52, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

• @Shinji, thank you for confirming. It sounds like we'll need to override the automatic romanization in these cases.
• @I.S.M.E.T.A., The small kana are a relatively modern innovation to avoid exactly this ambiguity.

But that's also the rub -- they're relatively modern, only used consistently since the mid-20th century, and thus they are not, strictly speaking, the historical kana spellings.

Given the ambiguity in the spelling, the best way forward that I can see is to 1) use the regular-sized kana, since those are what were actually used historically, and 2) simply supply the romanization manually with the rom= template parameter.

‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:08, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

When did the わ/ゐ/ゑ/を yōon become obsolete? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 15:22, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

• The various /w-/ varieties of yōon only appeared in borrowings from Chinese. These are called 合拗音 (gō yōon) in Japanese. See ja:w:拗音#合拗音 for more details. In a nutshell, the /wa/ yōon after /k-/ and /ɡ-/ became obsolete only relatively recently, in the Edo and Meiji periods, and some dialects might still have these. The other /w-/ yōon disappeared earlier, possibly as early as the later Muromachi period, but I haven't seen anything yet to pin this down.

For more detail about the 捨て仮名 (sutegana, the little kana used to spell the non-moraic vowel in modern yōon), see ja:w:捨て仮名#歴史. These only became standard starting from around WWII.

‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 20:01, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

I see this situation with the sutegana as relevantly analogous with the development of the letter-casing distinction in the Latin and Greek scripts. Consider this first-century Roman mosaic and this copy of a fourth-century bust. The characters actually used in the mosaic read ΓΝꞶϴΙ·ϹΑΥΤΟΝ, but we'd still give the words entries under the headwords γνῶθι (gnôthi) and σαυτόν (sautón), and the closest I can get to representing the characters on the bust stroke-for-stroke is with ΠΕΡΙΑΝΔΡΟΣ ΚϒΨΕΛΟΥ ΚΟΡΙΝΘΙΟΣ, but those three words' entries would be listed under the headwords Περίανδρος (Períandros), Κυψέλου (Kupsélou), and Κορίνθιος (Korínthios); in both those cases, we disregard the fact that only the ALLCAPS forms actually occurred, since the different uses of the two letter cases were merged into the upper case because the distinction had not yet developed. From what you describe, it sounds as if the sutegana simply had not developed as distinct kana from their normal-sized counterparts by the time that the gō yōon became obsolete in standard Japanese. Therefore, in the same way that we make use of the letter-casing distinction in Ancient Greek and Classical Latin entries, I believe we should use sutegana in Japanese historical hiragana (and katakana) readings. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 01:50, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

• One key, and very serious, difference is that different capitalization has never indicated differences in phonetic values. However, large kana versus sutegana do indicate different phonetic values in modern Japanese, and the large kana can indicate multiple phonetic values historically, depending on context.

In addition, many monolingual Japanese sources only list historical spellings in all-large-kana. Users are less likely to encounter the sutegana spellings, even in dictionaries. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 04:26, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps the situation is more closely analogous with the application of the I–J and/or U–V distinction to Latin-script texts from the Mediaeval period or earlier, even though neither of those distinctions really started to develop until the Renaissance. What is the purpose of Unicode's encoding of separate codepoints for the ゎ and ヮ sutegana, if not this? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 16:55, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

• Apologies for the delay in replying.

The Latin-alphabet historical shifts in the I-J and U-V distinction do seem like a somewhat closer analogue, but I'm not sure if they speak much to historical yōon spellings in Japanese: for instance, equus only ever indicates the one term, and is unambiguous even when spelled as eqvvs or mixed eqvus; meanwhile, the historical Japanese kana spellings are often inherently ambiguous, and could indicate multiple terms depending on whether they are read as full-value non-yōon phonetic values, or as digraph yōon values. One quick example is くわいし. Read with the full phonetic values, this would indicate 桑石 (kuwaishi, kun'yomi, “a stone with a grain pattern similar to mulberry wood”, compound of kuwa “mulberry” + ishi “stone”), but read as a yōon, with くわ instead serving as a digraph for kwa, this would instead indicate any of several other on'yomi compounds, including 会誌 (kwaishi, historical, modern kaishi, “company magazine”), 怪死 (kwaishi, historical, modern kaishi, “mysterious death”), 回視 (kwaishi, historical, modern kaishi, “recollection; looking around”), etc.

Sutegana are a modern invention, and their inclusion in Unicode is part of modern character encoding standards. Historical spellings, as they appear in historical records, and indeed as they are given even in many modern resources that provide historical spellings, do not use sutegana. Shogakukan's Kokugo Dai Jiten does use sutegana when showing historical readings, but Daijirin, Daijisen, and Shinmeikai do not.

I would be open to the idea of including both, as the small-kana spellings more clearly indicate the yōon and thus make the readings unambiguous -- and the big-kana spellings and romaji could both be derived programmatically from the small-kana spellings. That said, I'm not sure of the best means of including all of this information without making things too cluttered. Perhaps have the historical hiragana data on a separate line, that appears collapsed by default (similar to derived terms)? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 01:07, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Re the delay, I apologise for my being guilty of the same.

Well, there's Māius (L&S) and mājus (L&S), which mean “[of] May” and “great”, respectively, but which would've both been spelt maivs in Roman square capitals. Despite the orthographic ambiguities of source texts (with regard to letter-casing and the I–J distinction), L&S and we still determine page titles according to grammatical and phonetic considerations; those two words don't both come under MAIVS (or whatever). Perhaps Shogakukan's Kokugo Dai Jiten determine their historical readings according to such grammatical and phonetic considerations, too; but even if they don't, I still believe that we should.

"Sutegana are a modern invention, and their inclusion in Unicode is part of modern character encoding standards." doesn't apply to ゎ and ヮ, because "the /wa/ yōon after /k-/ and /ɡ-/ became obsolete only relatively recently, in the Edo and Meiji periods" (as you wrote above in your post timestamped: 20:01, 16 December 2015), so ゎ and ヮ couldn't have application in contemporary Japanese, because the phonetic phenomenon they represent became extinct before sutegana were invented. (Unless, of course, you're right that "some dialects might still have these", but we'd need proof, not only of that, but also that those dialects use ゎ and/or ヮ for yōon in their writings.)

Re including both, I would recommend showing only the historical-hiragana reading that includes sutegana in the headword line; in the same way that the headword line does not include the Rōmaji reading of the historical-hiragana reading, neither should it include a non-primary historical-hiragana reading (i.e., one that eschews sutegana). If we have both historical-hiragana readings, that is; I can see the merit of having both, though I'm not hugely enthusiastic for it.

I recognise that I'm rather peripheral to the Japanese editing community, so if you think I speak out of turn, please say so and I'll butt out. :-)  — I.S.M.E.T.A. 21:22, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Leaving aside that contentious issue, what else do you make of the presentation of ぐわいでん (​gwaiden)? If everything else is OK with it, should we make {{lb|ja|historical hiragana}} autocategorise into Category:Japanese historical hiragana? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 17:26, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry to have annoyed you with this issue. I'll drop it now. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 17:38, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

• Heya, no annoyance on my part -- this just fell off my radar.  :)

Aside from the sutegana issue, the ぐわいでん entry looks mostly good. The romaji string needs a tweak, and we probably want to create a new category for historical spellings -- with relevant logic added to the {{lb}} infrastructure. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 21:54, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Hi Eirikr. Finally, eight months later, I got round to sorting this out. Special:Diff/42652281 added “historical hiragana” and “historical katakana” to the {{lb}} infrastructure. I created Category:Japanese historical hiragana; feel free to give it a longer preamble like that of Category:Japanese hiragana if you deem it worth while. ゐ (Wa), ゑ (wi), and を (wo) will probably need to be added to {{categoryTOC-hiragana}} in its use in the historical-hiragana category. I also fixed the Rōmaji given in ぐわいでん (gwaiden). How's it all looking now? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 22:07, 17 April 2017 (UTC)