User talk:Eirikr/Archive 2011-2012

未然、連用...

While you obviously mean well, please refrain from editing the 活用 entries and discuss them in the respective Talk pages. The English used is from the given reference. I look forward to discussing with further in the Talk pages. Am quite busy at the moment, so will probably have to wait until the weekend, though. Regards, Bendono 03:27, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Sure, I'm happy to discuss. I've posted some suggestions and questions on the Appendix_talk:Japanese_verbs and Template_talk:ja-verbconj pages, and I saw that few of the 活用 term pages had anything on their Talk pages, so I went with the "Be Bold" approach. I'll shift gears to creating / posting on the Talk pages instead. Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 03:32, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

---

Actually, some of my questions / ideas involve multiple 活用 entries, so I'll post here for starters.  :)

As I was going through the 活用 entries, it occurred to me that 1) each entry should probably also point to Appendix:Japanese verbs, and 2) it might make sense to add a navbox along the bottom for just the 活用 entries themselves, as they are all of a specific family. What do you think?

We (the general Wiktionary "we") should make sure the six entries have similar formatting and present the same kinds of information. After seeing the expanded "See also" section for 終止形, I was about to start using that for the other entries when I saw your message. Would you object?

I noticed that you'd reverted my change of "an inflectional category" to "a verbal inflectional category"; was this substantive? Inflection applies (potentially, at least) to any part of speech, while the six 活用 terms are specific to verbs (taking the approach that the -i adjectives are stative verbs), so I thought that mentioning this was important. What do you think? And what would you say to phrasing such as "the conclusive conjugation form" instead of "an infection category; the conclusive form"?

For that matter, all six 活用 entries are quite spartan. Would examples be out of place, or would that belong more on the Appendix:Japanese verbs page? What of explaining a bit more what each 活用 is actually used for?

I have Shibatani here in front of me as luck would have it. I do see that he lists the 連用形 as "adverbial", but I must say I don't entirely agree -- while the form does certainly act in an adverbial role for 形容詞, the form for 動詞 can also operate as a clause ender or take particles like ながら, neither of which strike me as particularly adverbial but do seem worthy of mention on the term page. I'd learned this form as "continuative", hence my word choice in my previous edit. After re-reading the relevant pages in Shibatani and the 国語 dictionaries to hand, I'm fine with "adverbial" so long as some mention is made of the non-adverbial uses. Or perhaps such mention would be better suited to the Appendix:Japanese verbs page?

(Incidentally, I am quite happy that you've prompted me to look again at English-language terminology for Japanese grammar -- I've been stuck in Japanese-only mode for a while. :) This kind of exchange and learning is what I like about the wiki community.)

I look forward to your thoughts! Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 04:11, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

PS -- I just realized I also had "continuative" in my head as that's the terminology used on the Appendix:Japanese verbs page. That page needs substantial reworking, but that's another matter.  :) -- Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 06:39, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

PPS -- The Template:ja-verbconj table also uses "Continuative" for 連用形. If "Adverbial" is the way to go, we (generic "we") should make sure this usage is consistent throughout the various and sundry Japanese entry pages. -- Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 19:06, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Beowulf

I'm happy to find that page, as I'm much more interested in Beowulf in the Ænglisc than in translation. Heaney's was interesting to get my hands on, but, as a hard-core language geek, I'd much prefer to read the source and get a sense for the original cadence and meanings. Your page is most welcome in this regard.  :)

I'm curious about one thing though -- you note that all eths appear as thorns. Why is that? I see both upper- and lowercase eths in the Others list below the editing textbox. Is this a technical limitation of some sort, or due to how words are collated here in Wiktionary? I'm also curious about the presentation -- why no breaks at the end of lines? Was this to conserve space? Note that this isn't intended as criticism at all, simply questions I have.  :) -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 19:59, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the list was generated purely as a way of checking which words were still redlinks at Wiktionary, although I haven't really kept up with it recently. So I didn't bother about line breaks or punctuation, as it's not actually supposed to be for reading. The eths/thorns thing is because originally all OE words here used thorns instead of eths, in common with most printed OE dictionaries (and as specified at WT:AANG). In practice now some pages with eths have appeared, as {{alternative form of}} entries. But if you're interested in reading Beowulf in OE, there are lots of good editions available. The Mitchell & Robinson one is particularly good. You can also get one with the Heaney translation on facing pages, which is quite nice. Ƿidsiþ 20:06, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Cheers, thanks! I'll look for Mitchell & Robinson; I've actually already got the facing-page Heaney edition you mention. For instant-lookup though, it's hard to beat HTML.  :) -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 20:10, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

{{nonstandard spelling of}}

Hi Eiríkr. It's been fixed. To force the template to use the Latin script, use the sc= parameter with Latn as the value. It wasn't using this script before even when sc= was specified. Jamesjiao → ^{T ◊ C} 00:55, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

formatting question

Hi, sorry to bother you but there's a question I have that I haven't found an answer to in the docs. I've been making some edits without knowing the answer I may have done some improperly. Do the kanji sections always go at the top, or do they go in alphabetical order? If there is an Adjective section, does it go before? For example in 俄, what is the correct order for sections? Thanks Hap 17:22, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Heya, no worries. For kanji headwords, I've been keeping the Kanji heading at the top to stay in line with WT:AJA and WT:ELE. The most relevant sections in WT:AJA are WT:AJA#Kanji_entries and WT:AJA#Hiragana_entries. WT:AJA#Kanji_entries shows an example of wiki code with the Kanji heading first, but it doesn't actually explicitly say that this heading should come first; the WT:AJA#Hiragana_entries section states that the Kanji reading section should come first for hiragana headwords of kanji readings; and WT:Entry_layout_explained/POS_headers#Headers_in_use states that part of speech headers should come after any character or syllable headers.

About the ordering for the parts of speech, WT:Entry_layout_explained/POS_headers#Headers_in_use says that the POS headers should be in alphabetical order, after any character or syllable headers, and I dimly recall Mglovesfun fixing some of my edits similarly.

Along these lines, the 俄 entry structure would go:

==Japanese==
===Kanji===
====Readings====
====Compounds====
===Adjective===
====Declension====
===Noun===

HTH! -- Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 17:50, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. I'll go through my edits and reformat them that way tomorrow if I can (it's too late to do it today.) Thanks Haplogy 18:03, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

yet another formatting question

Hi, sorry to bother you again but there's another question that I haven't seen an answer to yet in the docs... are proper nouns capitalized in romaji pages? I noticed that 仙台 is rendered as sendai, for example. Would that be better as Sendai or as it is? Thanks Haplogy 23:08, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Excellent question. My personal take on this is that proper nouns should always be init-capped, c.f. the entry over at すばる, where I used init-caps for the company name link. So 仙台 here should probably have the romaji included as Sendai instead. -- HTH, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 23:16, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

See also 堀川, where the "Proper noun" entry is init-capped in the romaji. -- Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 23:20, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I thought so too but wasn't quite sure. Haplogy 23:25, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

旋毛

Sæll Eiríkr! Could you check your Japanese dictionaries for this / use your common sense to format it? It has five different etymologies, each corresponding to a different pronunciation, but because one meaning is in three sections (with a closely related meaning on a fourth) and another is in two sections, I wonder if all (especially pronunciations 1 and 5) are really different etymologies, even if they are valid. I also wonder if "semno:", including colon, is a standard romanisation. - -sche (discuss) 17:41, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Hallo, -sche --

Looking this over, it needs some cleanup indeed (as does derived term 旋風), but perhaps less than it might appear at first glance -- the somewhat haphazard way in which literacy happened in Japan means that kanji-based spellings can cover umpteen different pronunciations, and it's ultimately the pronunciations (i.e. the actual word as used in speech) that carry the etymologies.

About "senmo:", you're right to question that -- it looks like a copy-pasta goof from the IPA.

Anyway, thanks for the catch, and I'll get cracking! -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 18:09, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Looking it over more, I was wrong about 旋風, and the only change for 旋毛 was in fact that one romanization. But the confusing nature of the page layout does bring up the question of whether we couldn't format this quite differently. Japanese is again an interesting case because of the way the same kanji can be applied to multiple pronunciations, so you can wind up with multiple readings all with their own derivations / etymologies, even when the meanings are all identical -- as is the case with 旋風. As such, duping the Noun header and content four times, once for each etyl / reading, strikes me as a bit less than elegant... I'll think about this, and add to Wiktionary_talk:About_Japanese later. -- Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 18:19, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

etymology at 知性

Hi Eirikr, sorry to bother you again but I wonder what you think of the etymology at 知性, which we get from an IP address somewhere around London who I strongly suspect is our expert in magic and religion. I suppose the etymology given means it's a compound of the noun 知, taken to mean "wisdom", and 性, taken to mean "nature"--not that the editor specified that much--which sort of makes sense, but it seems fishy, and I suspect it's not really a compound noun. Thanks Haplogy 09:13, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

語感

Hi Eirikr! Are you familiar with this Japanese word? A-cai brought it up on WT:RFV#.E8.AA.9E.E6.84.9F because it had no references, but Anatoli says it's common, and it is in Kotobank and Denshi Jisho. If you, too, are familiar with it, I'd like to pass it. - -sche (discuss) 00:26, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Hey sæll -sche --

Yah, that's a perfectly cromulent --er-- valid word. Jokes aside, any Japanese writing class will use this word numerous times in the course of classroom discussions. Shogakukan has it in both monolingual JA and JA->EI, Daijirin has it in monolingual JA, the Daily Wa-Ei (JA->EN) has it, Nelson's JA-EN Character Dictionary lists it under the compounds for 語... I could go on, but that would mean getting out of my comfy chair and digging through my bookshelf for more references.  :) I trust this suffices? -- Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 06:32, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/2011-10/CFI for Mandarin proper nouns - banning entries not in Chinese characters

Hi,

Thanks for your input. I have set up the vote. The wording is not final before the vote starts. Please have a look and make comments in the talk page if you have any. --Anatoli 00:43, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

a couple Japanese numbers

Hi! You may have seen these already — if not, Special:Contributions/198.228.193.188 added two Japanese words, and then changed their Romaji back and forth several times, leaving me to wonder (as I patrolled Recentchanges)... could you take a look at them and see if the Romaji is right? - -sche (discuss) 06:00, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Ta, things look good, the hidx arg for sorting needed a tweak but otherwise the 十八 and 十九 entries both look good.  :) -- Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 06:28, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

administrator

Hi,

Thanks for your contributions. Not sure if you're an administrator. Would like to become one? Please reply here, I will nominate you if you're not an administrator yet. I've sent the same invitation to User:Haplology and User:-sche. --Anatoli 01:05, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

An administrator shouldn't uses double standard. Please see here. 2.27.72.128

You have no rights! j/k. Here are your current rights: Eirikr (talk • contribs • rights). Jamesjiao → ^{T ◊ C} 01:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Do you have any objections for me to nominate Eirikr, Jamesjiao? --Anatoli 01:18, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Not at all. Jamesjiao → ^{T ◊ C}

I'm surprised you aren't an admin, Eirikr! You'll find the buttons (especially the patrolling buttons) quite useful. Join us... - -sche (discuss) 01:22, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

• Wow folks, that's really something, thank you! I am happy to accept any such nomination. :D Apologies for being incommunicado these past couple days, I've got family in town and I will only be on WT sporadically for the next week as facetime responsibilities keep me busy. But thank you again, and I look forward to the next steps in the process, whatever they may be. -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 22:27, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

I have nominated you. Please accept here: Wiktionary:Votes/sy-2011-10/User:Eirikr for admin, add your time zone, check if Babel list is correct. The vote starts after your acceptance. Administrators must be contactable via email. Please change your user preferences. Good luck, keep up the good work! --Anatoli 08:48, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations! I don't know what should happen next. Could you please check it yourself? I have closed the vote and added you to Wiktionary:Administrators/List of administrators. --Anatoli 05:06, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Anatoli! I'll have a look at the vote page and poke around to figure out what the new buttons and available features are. Cheers! -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:51, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Eirikr, Anatoli closed your vote a bit prematurely, but it was obviously going to pass anyway. Unless someone objects to the early closure, you are an Admin. Please see Help:Sysop tools. —Stephen ^(Talk) 01:44, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I wondered about that, since the closing date on the vote page was 2 Nov, but I figured he must know something I don't, and left it at that. Thank you for the sysop tools link, I appreciate that, as I was beginning to think I should find out more details about what I now can and should do. -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 04:40, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I have closed the vote prematurely, sorry about that, as Stephen mentioned, it was going to pass, anyway. I must have been looking at another date. Anyway, if there are no objections, let's just leave it at that. --Anatoli 23:21, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Fine by me.  :) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 23:34, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad to see you're getting used to the admin buttons. :) One note: when you protected your userpage, you used "cascading protection", which protects pages transcluded into the page. Your userpage only contains Babel templates which should be protected anyway, so there's no harm done, but in general, cascading protection should only be used on highly-visible pages that contain changing content that doesn't need protection except when it's on the page. The Main Page, for example, offers cascading protection to the word of the day on the day that it is the WOTD (when it would otherwise be the target of vandalism), but not on other days (when it's more worthwhile to allow the page to be edited and improved). Babel templates which need protection should be protected individually, because they have an intrinsic need for protection (which is: they're highly visible, included on many pages). - -sche (discuss) 01:45, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Fascinating, and completely unintuitive -- I'd interpreted "cascading protection" to mean that all subpages would be protected (which is what I wanted). "Cascading" implies downwards, but the source of a transclusion link seems upstream to me, so that strikes me as backwards. Many thanks for explaining that! Is there an easy way to apply protection recursively to subpages? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 07:21, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

your signature

Eirikr, could we persuade you to change the isolated "|" (U+007C) between your name and "Tala við mig" in your signature to something else, perhaps "│" (U+2502)? The former symbol is used in wiki syntax, which makes it slightly harder to archive discussions inside {{rfd-archived}}, {{rfv-archived}}, etc. - -sche (discuss) 01:36, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Done - thanks for pointing that out, I don't think I would have noticed otherwise. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 05:24, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Eirikr, please check my update in the message above - User_talk:Eirikr#administrator when you have a chance. There's some actions to do! Although the vote will only start after your acceptance. --Anatoli 06:52, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

BP discussion revived

Hi, hope you're doing well. A couple of days ago the discussion at Wiktionary:Beer_parlour#Preferred_forms_for_Japanese_lemmata got going again because Mr. Takasugi added is opinion. The discussion is stuck at what POS header to use. I was thinking your comments might help advance the discussion. Anyway he agrees that page titles should not have "na", so everybody seems to agree on that point. Haplology 13:18, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Mixed script Mandarin entries

Hi,

You might be interested in this vote: Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2011-10/Mixed script Mandarin entries. --Anatoli 10:30, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

a vote?

Hi, I just noticed something funny, you re-added the suffix to 追跡者 because it was the only valid addition by The Wizard of IP, [[1]], but I'm pretty sure that actually I added that, not The Wizard, so The Wizard actually made no valid additions to that entry.

As for something completely different, do you think there should be a vote about editing AJA to include "Adjectival noun"? It seems like only 3 people care and they all agree, so maybe it's not necessary. There's a bot that keeps tagging those POS headers as nonstandard so it needs to be informed. I figure might as well edit AJA before that.

Just to be sure, some words are two words, noun and adjectival noun, right? As opposed to some like 科学的 which are only adjectival nouns. That's how I've been formatting entries like 淑やか.

Sorry I haven't been very helpful in cleaning up after The Wizard lately. Haven't caught a lot of his work and haven't been on as much. Haplology 16:21, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

No worries about The Wizard (nice name for him, by the by :). I gave him a three-day block last night for his latest crapflood, a bunch of entries ending in ...の精 that are apparently his attempt at giving Japanese translations for terms like wood nymph. However, we don't have wood nymph, water nymph, etc. because these are SOP, and so are the JA entries, so I'm going through those today and adding to RFD. I'm tempted just to delete them outright, but since I'm just a newbie admin, I want to be careful about overstepping my bounds.

Sorry about missing that the suffix was your addition; it looks like I mistakenly changed that to a {{compound}} in this edit, assuming that the preceding IP user Special:Contributions/2.125.74.75 had added it. Then The Wizard added it back and I'd forgotten about my earlier edit so I thought he added it afresh, and on looking into {{suffix}} (which I should have done before), it looked fine to me so I kept that part. That's my WT learning curve showing, I'm afraid.

So for adjectival nouns and WT:AJA, go right ahead, if there's anything that needs editing. I'm not sure what to do about the bot, other than to track down whomever owns it and see if they can edit the code. Parts-of-speech-wise, my sense is that 形容動詞 that have a noun sense should have a ===Noun=== header in addition to the ===Adjectival noun=== header -- which is exactly what you're already doing at 淑やか. Looks good to me.

Minor terminology quibble, I wouldn't say it's two words, and instead I'd say it's one word with two (or more) senses, one sense (or more) as a noun and one (or more) as an adjectival noun. Just like blue is one word with multiple senses, as an adjective, a noun, and a verb.

-- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:54, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

丸太

Wizard has fired the first shot of an edit war. Rather than returning fire I wonder if I could ask you to decide what form this should take. I don't think "log" should be put in the context of "timber" (as opposed to what kind of log?) or that 丸太 is a synonym of 木材. What think you? TIA Haplology 16:30, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I might have gone overboard; have a look. I threw in the link to w:ja:木材 partly as a sop to the Wizard, and partly because linking to w:ja:丸太 redirects there (which might be why they thought it was a synonym).

Incidentally, I'm not sure that this is the same wizard -- Special:Contributions/2.125.74.75 edited 丸太, but it was Special:Contributions/90.215.199.167 that I blocked, and that I thought we were talking about earlier.  :) Running a reverse-dns search using an IP locator on 2.125.74.75 resolves to "027d4a4b.bb.sky.com", and on 90.215.199.167 resolves to "5ad7c7a7.bb.sky.com". Both are in the UK (the site shows Newcastle upon Tyne, not sure if that's just where BskyB has its office), so I suppose they could be the same person; but my general impression was that 2.125.74.75 was slightly more competent than 90.215.199.167, and I thought there were days when both IPs were active... Anyway, I'll have a look at Wizard 2 while Wizard 90 is blocked and see if there's enough crap to warrant a block. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:09, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

置く, 説く

Hi. Could you please check the conjugation of those verbs, in particular the conjunctive form. Whilst my Japanese is nowhere near as advanced, I dare to maintain that I managed to comprehend the conjugation pattern for godan verbs ending in -ku which requires a -いて ending, in our case 置いて and 説いて. Is that true? The Template:ja-go-gu seems to contain the ending -いで, but in Template:ja-go-ku the ending is not -いて. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 20:16, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

まいったな。 I'd edited {{ja-go-ku}} a little bit ago to handle situations where there isn't a kanji, such as for おく. I'd already done that for {{ja-go-ru}}, so I copied that template code over and regexed it to fit -- and clearly forgot to change out the code for the -te and -ta forms. Thank you for catching that!

 Done. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:25, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Talk:月

An IP user brought up a good point, which I answered as best I could on that page, but I'm not sure what changes to make to 月. I thought you would be the person to ask about etymologies. One dictionary I have, namely 広辞苑, calls it 「つき」の古形。 and (上代東国方言)つき。 in two senses. Maybe it should go in the etymology section of つき in 月? TIA Haplology 14:20, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, good catch, I'll poke around in my own resources and see what I can find. A number of short Japanese nouns ending in -i seem to be the 連用形 of older verb forms, which themselves were sometimes used そのまま as nouns, such as つく / 月 and apparently あす / 明日. (明日 as a deverbalized noun reminds me a bit of how English morning looks like the gerund -ing form of possible deverbalized noun morgen. c.f. Merriam-Webster's etymology pointing to a possible verbal root at their entry for morn.) Anyway, I'll certainly take a look. It might be a couple days though given the work I need to get done before Monday. -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 20:11, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the Maori User templates

I've been trying to enlist the help of native Maori speakers, as my Maori is very basic (basic grammar and a small vocab), but have had no luck. Didn't know you know Maori too! Jamesjiao → ^{T ◊ C} 07:35, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Kua ako ahau te ngaringari o te reo Māori. 但是就一点儿的。 I've studied enough to be able to read a bit and tell POS, but I can't say much without sitting down and looking things up. I get some use out of http://www.maoridictionary.co.nz/, and http://www.koreromaori.co.nz/ has good resources for online studying. Kia ora! -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:53, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

PS -- I'm in Seattle and don't know any native Kiwis, sorry to say.  :( -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:54, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

You now know at least one New Zealander, though I am not native (namely Maori) ethnically haha. Jamesjiao → ^{T ◊ C} 21:34, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Nā reira ka kī anō au ki a koe, kia ora! Never been down yonder, would love to see the place some day. E noho ora rā! -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:56, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

senbon-shuriken

• • Hello, I uploaded the image to commons [[2]] and labeled it as a "shuriken", another user removed shuriken and substituted "senbon", I replaced "shuriken" and left "senbon" after doing some research. If you search for "senbon needles" or "senbon shuriken" etc on google image and web search you will find some examples. I have found some references that refer to senbon as "one thousand needles". "Senbon" seems to be used in manja a lot.[[3]][[4]]

Samuraiantiqueworld 01:16, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

• • Thank you for the background information, I appreciate it. As it stands, it looks like senbon might be becoming an English word meaning some sort of (imaginary?) ninja weapon, but 千本 as Japanese doesn't seem to have any such connotations. I'll amend the entry and discussion here on Wiktionary accordingly. -- Kind regards, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 01:23, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

鼻汗

According to this romaji do take a diaresis if the following vowel is pronounced separately, which if I'm not mistaken it is. Granted it's a draft proposal. Thanks. Haplology 06:46, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

• Ugh, I'd missed that. I quite dislike that document. There are many things not quite right there, and the diaresis recommendation is one of them. FWIW, I haven't seen any other romanization scheme for Japanese that uses diareses. I'm fully aware that that's just my personal experience, but I'm also aware that I've been around a bit, and so far Wiktionary is the only place I've ever seen these. My gut instinct is that we should attempt to be representative of romanization in the broader scope of Japanese materials for English speakers, in which case the only diacritics we should use would be the macron. For that matter, the Transliteration page's own description for when to use the diaresis doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, and the examples given are inconsistent:

Any syllable ending in the お (o) sound that is followed by another お or an う in the same word should be considered a "long お" and transliterated as ō. Exceptions: If the う is the final syllable in a verb, and thus transformed to another syllable as a result of conjugation, then it should be written separately. If the う is pronounced separately and distinctly from the お-sound it follows, it should be written separately with a diaresis. If the お-sound is part of the honorific prefix お- or ご-, then it is written separately. こうさてん (kōsaten), ありがとう (arigatō), but さそう (sasou) and おおうみ (ōümi)

But what of the diaresis for sasou? This is confusingly inconsistent. And besides, if long "o" is always transcribed as ō, then the only possible interpretation for ou or ōu is that the "u" is separate -- in which case, no diaresis is needed. Similarly for all other vowels: if long vowels are marked with the macron, then the only possible interpretation for one vowel followed by another is that the second vowel is separate -- in which case, no diaresis is needed.

Using more diacritics than really needed to transcribe a language unnecessarily steepens the learning curve and increases the risk of confusion. The diaresis in particular is used almost entirely to indicate a shift in vowel sound (i.e. umlaut, such as "u" /u/ vs. "ü" /y/), and only quite rarely in English (and perhaps French) to indicate a vowel that is not part of a digraph diphthong. Although Japanese *does* have digraphs, such as おお or おう for long "o", this is already handled in romanization by using the macron with a single vowel character. Since Japanese doesn't really have diphthongs per se, the diaresis isn't very useful in that regard, and since Japanese doesn't have umlauts either, the diaresis is left with no purpose.

• Other issues with this document include the mistaken use of the term syllable when Japanese doesn't use syllables (marked by consonants), it uses morae (marked by time). For instance, 高校生 is three syllables, but six morae. 勉強しました is either five or six syllables depending on whom you talk to (some folks interpret した in running speech as monosyllabic /shta/), but eight morae.
• And the parsing of word elements is also problematic. All romanization schemes that I can recall running across (that is, full and consistent stylistic guidelines, not just one-offs on bulletin boards or similar fora) take the stance that phonemically independent elements should be marked off with spaces. する is independent in Japanese, so all the compound する verbs should take a space before the する. However, anything with rendaku is dependent and thus bound to the preceding element. So 関する would be kan suru, but 感ずる would be kanzuru. For kanji compounds, elements that are always bound (usually single-kanji elements like 的) would similarly be shown as bound in romanization by a lack of space, but other elements would be separated by spaces. So 現代的 would be gendaiteki, but 現代思想 would be gendai shisō.

I suspect the no-space approach was adopted by folks looking for a closer alignment between English and Japanese terms. But the fact remains that Japanese is not English -- the compound する verbs are basically [noun] + "do". Much as one says "go bowling" in English and not "gobowling", in Japanese, one says 勉強する and by extension should romanize this as benkyō suru -- with the space. Sure, this is usually translated as the single English word study, but that doesn't mean the Japanese is a single word. And besides, a strict 直訳 would render this as "do studying" or some similar phrasing, since 勉強 is an independent noun and する is an independent verb. When one verbs a noun in English, one "does it", not "doesit". Leaving out the spaces when romanizing Japanese is similarly clumsy and unrepresentative of important structures in the language.

• Suffice it to say that I think the Wiktionary:About_Japanese/Transliteration page could use some help. I'd printed it out a couple months back and started going over it in hardcopy to edit, but got busy here at work and that fell by the wayside...

---

• On a related side note, I've been chewing on the issue of compound する verbs and wondering if we shouldn't handle them similarly to 形容動詞 (i.e., where we list noun, adjective, and ultimately even adverb senses on the main term page and not all separately as "term" on one page and "termに" and "termな" on full separate pages). To wit, I'm starting to think we should follow the example of all other J->E dictionaries I've seen by including the verb senses on the main noun page. So 勉強 would include a ===Verb=== heading indicating that one can add する to use this as a verb.

This should improve usability as well, especially for learners, as a user would find all relevant parts of speech on the main page, such as at 勉強 or 完全, and be able to see them all. The advantage of a dead-tree dictionary over Wiktionary is that everything is listed on a page, so the user sees nearby (and possibly related) entries all at once. With Wiktionary, the user only ever sees the one page, with no idea about nearby pages unless they're explicitly linked, so splitting things off into separate pages reduces discoverability and raises the risk of folks not finding relevant information. For instance, someone landing on the 感動 page as it currently stands wouldn't see that this word can also be used in a compound する verb. If I look up 感動 in my dead-tree dictionary, I can see the +する sense right there alongside the noun sense, and likewise if I pull it up in the 9 e-dictionaries currently to hand -- 大辞林 (J-J only, on my PC), リーダーズプラス (J-E, on my PC), 小学館国語大辞典 (J-J only, on my PC), 小学館 Progressive J-E Dictionary (on my PC), Weblio (J-J only), Jim Breen (J-E, you'll have to paste in the word), Kotobank (J-J only), Jisho.org(J-E), 英辞郎 (J-E, though you do need to scroll down to see the +する uses).

I should probably bring this up in the WT:Beer parlor, but I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know what you think.

And now, to work with me! -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:37, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

That makes sense. As I understand, revised Hepburn romanization gives a long /a/ as "aa," as in "Masaaki," which would overlap with "aa" indicating vowels pronounced separately. That is, unless it is a foreign word, in which it does take a macron. Maybe I'm confusing Hepburn romanization with some guideline somewhere. It doesn't make sense to me, since other vowels use a macron. Whenever you have time please revise the document on WT according to your best judgement.

There are a lot of reasons to put 勉強する on 勉強 and I can't think of any to list it separately. It feels a little strange to list 勉強 as a verb, since that word itself is not a verb. Right now there are 1,227 of those pages, so it would take a lot of work. Haplology 17:10, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

For Vowels: Judging from all the kerfuffle over at w:Talk:Hepburn_romanization, it's pretty clear that the terminology used to describe the different Hepburn variations is itself far from clear. Then reading the w:Hepburn_romanization page, it's clear that Hepburn himself was a bit confused -- long "e" in his first romanization system, Traditional Hepburn, was variously romanized as e or ē, which just seems sloppy, and for some reason long "i" alone of the vowels was never romanized as ī, which seems inconsistent with the other vowels.

The main WP article doesn't mention it, but the Talk page does describe use of i + macron in the Revised (or was that Modified? Or Revised Modified? Or Modified Revised?) Hepburn system, albeit with the only examples given of borrowed katakana words with the 長音符.

My own sense is that all doubled two-morae vowel sounds ああ, いい, うう, ええ, and おお / おう should be romanized as a single vowel letter with a macron, provided that the second mora is not (1) part of the next word element / kanji character, nor (2) part of a declining stem, such as the end of -i adjectives or the -u in vowels. Examples:

• あたらしい: atarashii - the second i changes during conjugation
• とりい: torii - the second i is part of the next kanji character
• ちいさい: chīsai
• おおきい: ōkii - o + macron for the long "o", but for the long "i" here, no macron since the second i changes during conjugation
• どう: dō
• 問う (とう): tou - the u changes during conjugation
• おねえさん: onēsan
• けいかく: keikaku

The combo えい would be a bit of an exception here compared to おう, always being transcribed as the separate vowels ei. But then again, maybe this isn't so much of an exception -- my mind might be playing tricks on me, but I think that えい is actually pronounced slightly differently from ええ. Consider ええと (the common hesitation sound) and 生計 (せいけい) -- the long vowel in the former is open and broad, pretty solidly the mid front vowel [e̞] in the IPA vowel chart at w:International Phonetic Alphabet#Vowels (or at w:IPA_vowels_chart_with_audio, with audio for most of the vowels), whereas the latter reading seems to me to be slightly less open, more like the close-mid front vowel [e]. But maybe that's just me -- what do you hear around you there in 東海?

The different sounds of えい in different contexts might just be due to assimilation, since in your example [t] and [k] are far from each other in the mouth. I think I've heard the same thing here in 東海. Sometimes I think I hear [ɛ] but I'm not sure. It might be useful to note the exact IPA pronunciation in a pronunciation section, since usually pronunciation is left to the romaji but in this case romaji is inadequate. I'll leave the work of writing it to somebody else though, personally.

I think what you say makes sense, and the transliteration page should be rewritten along those lines.

For 愛する I agree it should be written without a space as aisuru, but I stand by spaces with separable -suru verbs. I wouldn't have any idea how to put a space in 接する-- ses suru? sess uru? se ssuru? But it seems like everybody agrees on this one already. I got into trouble with that one by putting too much faith in the guidelines and proposals. Haplology 15:35, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Anyway, let me know if this makes sense to you, and if so, I'll seriously get to work on Wiktionary:About_Japanese/Transliteration (but slowly, given my current workload at my job).

For する: I appreciate the feedback, I'll bring it up at WT:BP some time soon for broader discussion -- hopefully getting some feedback from Takasugi-san and any other native-J editors (though I think he's the only one active now). -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:43, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

About Masaaki: The distinct double-"a" is appropriate here, as the second one belongs to the next kanji character. Same for Takaaki, kawaai (川合い), etc. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:39, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Hello. I would write kansuru for 関する, because you cannot separate it, while I would write kankei suru for 関係する. I have explained it at User talk:Haplology#ai suru (as you have already seen it). — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 04:22, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I debated internally about 関する, and thinking on it again, I agree that kansuru is more appropriate. That said, I think that might count more as idiomatic or 決まり文句 use, rather than comparable use to 愛する. FWIW, google books:"愛できる" does get what look like credible hits; besides which, 愛 works just fine as a standalone noun, matching the common [noun] + する pattern, whereas for 関する there is no appropriately matching noun sense for 関. -- ボケボケ thoughts on a full belly, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 04:29, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Those Google hits are Japanese grammar books explaining *愛できる is ungrammatical. ;-) — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 13:01, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

• Doh. Well, I did say ボケボケ. (- -); 日本語ウォッチング certainly appears to be a prescriptivist grammar. And although we get no context, I suspect from the title that 日本語教育事典 is probably making a similar argument.

  Going back over things, I cede my argument -- you've prompted me to re-examine the evidence, and I have been convinced.  :) For these cases, such as 愛す・愛する, 接する, 発する, and similar, it sounds like these should all have their own pages, crosslinked to/from the single-character 愛, 接, 発, etc. pages. Does that make sense to you (and anyone else reading this)?

• On a separate note, and in a more conjectural line of inquiry, I find it significant that Japanese language materials targeting Japanese speakers feel the need to argue against the use of 愛できる -- this suggests that this phrasing is not entirely unknown among native speakers. Is it possible that this part of the language is undergoing some change? Splitting an infinitive was once a sin in English, but it is generally regarded as a non-issue anymore by most people.

  Is it possible that the former inseparable form 愛す that gave rise to 愛する is being forgotten, and that some native speakers are reanalyzing this as 愛 + する? google:"愛せる" certainly gets hits, but then so does google:"愛できる"; adding a particle to weed out compounds ending in 愛 also gets hits for both, as in google:"を愛せる" vs. google:"を愛できる", or google:"が愛せる" vs. google:"が愛できる". Granted, 愛できる is certainly much less common, but it does seem to exist.

  Or, is 愛できる never more than a glaringly non-standard usage most found amongst children and other language learners, similar to English brung?

  ご教示をお願い致します。 -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:47, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

(Why is the section title 鼻汗…)

The book 日本語ウォッチング is really descriptive and not at all prescriptive. It says, just like I have said, that native speakers won’t say *愛できる, which is just ungrammatical. It is not a problem of style but of native speakers’ intuition. All the Google hits show other terms such as 復活愛できる, 略奪愛できる, etc., in which 復活愛, 略奪愛 are compound nouns, or something written by non-native speakers. The only instance I have found correct was その美しさを愛できる暇もなく, but it is 愛でる mederu (love, admire) + きる kiru (completely). For me, 愛する is an undividable verb. You might be interested in the following posts of mine: [5], [6], [7]. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 01:53, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

It's titled 鼻汗 because thinking about romanization makes my nose sweaty! lol Haplology 14:53, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

90.215.199.167, 野火

Hi. An IP whom you seem to have admonished on his talkpage on multiple occassions, has just created the entry 野火 where the kanji's on'yomi readings are applied (やか). However, in two dictionaries I consulted only the kun'yomi is listed - のび . Do you think やか is a rogue pronunciation? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 06:19, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Jim Breen's definition seems to agree with Bogorm's observation as well. Even ja.wp has のび as its pronunciation. I can block him again, you just give me the word! Jamesjiao → ^{T ◊ C} 07:16, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Cheers guys, I certainly appreciate having more eyes on this anon to try to keep the messiness and bogosity to a minimum!  :) That said, やか actually is listed here in my 1988 edition of the 小学館国語大辞典. Granted, that reading points to のび, but it is listed. Though curiously they only listed it on the J-J side; the paired J-E dictionary that came with only lists のび, so the やか reading seems to be a bit rarefied. Anyway, I'll give the 野火 entry a good looking over and expand / fix as needed. -- Ta! Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:24, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

The expanded entry looks marvellous in sooth. Regarding the will o' the wisp meaning, do you think 陰火 (inka) might be listed as a synonym? If I understand the sentence in Japanese wikipedia correctly, inka is the will o' the wisp visible during the haunting of an apparition or of a dead man's soul. Is 陰火 a hyponym? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 07:23, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Glad it meets with approval.  :) One beef I had as a learner of Japanese in my earlier years was that the J-J dictionaries always seemed much more complete than the J-E versions. Now that I can actually read the J-J entries, I guess one of my missions here is to expand the J-E Wiktionary to at least match the quality and breadth of content that I find in the J-J dictionaries I have access to.

About 陰火, I thought I'd added that -- but checking, I discover that I added it on the 鬼火 page. I'm currently confined to using my wife's laptop and I don't have Japanese input (I just copy-pasted the two terms here); would someone else be so kind as to update the 野火 synonyms under etyl 3 to add 陰火 etc. from the 鬼火 page? -- TIA, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 07:40, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Bogorm! -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:01, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

持参金

Can you see if I got the header template right? Especially the hidx= parameter. Jamesjiao → ^{T ◊ C} 03:57, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

The hidx arg looks great, no worries there.  :) I'll add to the def later -- there's a sense used in the Edo period having to do with rights to demand the dowry back in the event of divorce. -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 04:22, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Nice thanks~ Jamesjiao → ^{T ◊ C} 09:05, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Revised Hepburn transliteration

Hi,

Please join the discussion if you can. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 21:29, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Navajo conj

putting the conjugation tables @ 3rd person sg flies in the face of every expectation. Navajo verbs' dictionary base forms are 1st person sg. Seb az86556 07:48, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you. I’ve already argued about that at Talk:nahatʼeʼii with User:Eirikr and with others on other pages that I don’t remember anymore. They seem to have the idea that, since Arabic and Hebrew used the 3rd person as the citation form, there is an inherent (but unexplainable) logic for choosing the 3rd person. I think I pointed out that many language use the 1st person for the citation form, including Greek, Latin, and Bulgarian. I always added etymologies with the 1st-person in mind, but when User:Eirikr and others started adding verbs, they went with the 3rd person in spite of my objections. —Stephen ^(Talk) 15:38, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah well. I'm just pointing that out. They might as well want to spell German with a macron if suits their fancy. Seb az86556 16:15, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

霊力

Hi, Eirikr. When you have a chance, could you check out 霊力? It was linked-to from 霊漿, which I deleted, because my understanding of the RFV discussion is that it (霊漿) failed RFV. - -sche (discuss) 04:31, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks -sche --

霊力 shows up in reputable dictionaries, so I'm happy keeping the term in general. I've cleaned out the bogus See alsos, which was actually all of them so I just got rid of the subsection entirely. Cheers, -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:58, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

我が家ほど良い場所はない - there's no place like home

Hi,

Re: your edit and edit summary.

I added this translation a while ago. It is attestable on Japanese language web site and was actually used on a site translating the Russian equivalent of the proverb, so I added it. 住めば都 may be more idiomatic but 我が家ほど良い場所はない seems like another synonym to me. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 22:00, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Hiya, Anatoli --

Interesting background. That phrasing sounds a bit unnatural to my ear, so I tried googling for it, and after much weeding of the results, it seems like the web is just a giant echo chamber -- all the hits I could find were ultimately mirrors of Wiktionary. 8-\

While 我が家ほど良い場所はない is certainly understandable as Japanese, it has that いわゆる「翻訳語」 sense to it. 住めば都 and 地獄も住家 (jigoku mo sumika) would be more natural turns of phrase -- pulling either of these out in the right social context is pretty certain to get you a 「うぁ、日本語がすごく上手ですよね」.  :) -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:21, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

The problem is also that the meaning of 住めば都 is more like (copying from EDICT) - you can get used to living anywhere; home is where you make it; wherever I lay my hat is home. Perhaps it's more natural for Japanese but the meaning is not the same. In my opinion, like words, proverbs do get translated into other languages and find new homes if there is no perfect natve equivalent. I don't know if 我が家ほど良い場所はない is a translation as there are variants even used in books, eg. 家のようなところはない, わが家ほどよいところはない, see [8]. I'm going to add it back, if you don't object. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 22:40, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Heh, this seems like it really boils down to a question of: whether to translate proverbs, by using the words of the target language to most closely approximate the meaning of the original; or whether to localize proverbs, by finding the proverb or turn of phrase in the target language that most closely approximates the original.  :)

It might be worth noting that "there's no place like home" arose from a longer version, "be it ever so humble, there's no place like home" -- which is where I find more hits for google:"我が家ほどよいところはない", as the second half of どんなに粗末でも、我が家ほどよいところはない or たとえどんなに粗末であろうと、我が家ほどよいところはない. In this older version of the English expression, the "be it ever so humble" part points out that 住めば都 is actually closer to the original meaning -- "no matter how run-down it is, where I live is the best". If memory serves, the English phrase gained particular currency during the Great Depression, when things were quite dire, and having a home of any sort at all was something to be thankful for. This suggests that 地獄も住家 is also a good fit -- "even hell can be home", i.e. if you live there, you can get used to it, and some home is better than none, even if it's hell.

And no, I don't object to re-adding the translated version, so long as we include the localized versions as well.  :) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 23:04, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

If the translated version only exists on websites that mirror Wiktionary, should we include it, though? We're just coining something at that point. Meh, maybe qualify it as {{qualifier|literally}} and don't link it...? Because if (if!) we've coined it and it's not used in Japanese, we can't have an entry for it (it's not a proverb), so we should linkify it. - -sche (discuss) 23:20, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

The phrase does exist on Japanese sites, not only those copying Wiktionary and in Japanese books, in this and other variant spellings/forms, where words are written in kanji/kana and words like 場所, ほど and 良い are in spelled in various synonyms - ところ,　のよう,　いい. Another variant I have found: - わが家にまさるところはない Putting a Google Books search in quotes restricts the spelling but without the quotes it gives a variety of forms, which have the same basic meaning. Just take a look at this link [9]. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 00:37, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

• @-sche --

It turns out that the specific wording, 我が家ほど良い場所はない, is only on WT and WT mirrors. However, as Anatoli notes above, variants of the phrase appear in more places than just WT. This is a translation of an English proverb rather than an old home-grown saying, and is consequently less settled in Japanese, with variable wording.

• @Anatoli --

The variety of versions for this expression in Japanese strongly suggests to me that it is not as much of a set proverb in Japanese as it is in English. I have no qualms about including the 我が家ほど良い場所はない version or some other version (or versions?) of "there's no place like home" translated into Japanese, so long as any such JA entry page makes it clear that this expression is more variable than the English version.

FWIW, my handy copy of Shogakukan's 国語大辞典 lists 我が家に勝る所無し (wa ga ya ni masaru tokoro nashi) as the headword, and explains this as 自分の家ほどよい所はない (jibun no ie hodo yoi tokoro wa nai) (which is precious close to phrasing I've seen online as the translation for "there's no place like home"). -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 05:11, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

FWIW, I just checked Wiktionary:ELE#Translations, where the second-to-last item in the list of do's and don'ts clearly states:

Do not give literal (word-for-word) translations of idioms, unless the literal translation is what is actually used in the target language. Most idioms do not translate word for word. For example, the idiom "none of your beeswax" cannot be translated into German literally as "nicht dein Bienenwachs", as this does not have the same meaning in German; an idiomatic translation is "nicht dein Bier" (which means, literally, “not your beer” in English).

I also checked Shogakukan, and the reason the headword and def for "there's no place like home" are so similar is precisely because they provide translations of proverbs and idioms from Chinese and Western languages, with 我が家に勝る所無し (wa ga ya ni masaru tokoro nashi) as one of those translated entries.

This changes my perspective, and I now oppose including this or 我が家ほど良い場所はない as entries in Wiktionary. I'm fine with the text being included somewhere in an explanatory or descriptive use, but as a translation into Japanese of a non-native saying, I do not believe this should be included as a Japanese entry.

Incidentally, this means I'm also deleting 馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない from the translation list on the "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink" page, and any other non-native translations of idioms that I run across, in accordance with the Wiktionary:ELE#Translations guidelines. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 07:01, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Please don't delete or seek broader consensus. Mark as a translation, choose a more common version if not happy with the current one but don't delete. Consider this: The proverb to err is human is Latin and is translated into other languages using the most common version. The way I read the section in Wiktionary:ELE#Translations - don't use a literal translation, which may be wrong, like "nicht dein Bienenwachs". The translation I have given is not wrong, it has the same meaning, it is used and attested, even if it may be known as a borrowed proverb (not sure about this part). It's perfectly OK to borrow sayings and this can be marked as such if needed. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 07:27, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, the bit about the horse is decidedly non-native-Japanese, and after weeding out the Wiktionary-related entries, Google doesn't give me much -- google:"馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない" -wiktionary -wiki does generate 3K+ hits, but most of these contain the dubious back-translation "you may take a horse...". Removing this specific phrase from the results reveals that roughly 3,300 of these sites were just echoing each other. Of the remaining 58 hits, weblio.jp, a known WT copier, has 50 of them. The remaining 8 hits suggest that this phrase is not that widely used in Japanese. C.f. google:"馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない" -wiktionary -wiki -"you may take a horse" -weblio. Also:

• google books:"馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない": 0 hits
• google scholar:"馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない": 0 hits
• google groups:"馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない": 0 hits

Similarly:

• google books:"我が家ほど良い場所はない": 0 hits
• google scholar:"我が家ほど良い場所はない": 0 hits
• google groups:"我が家ほど良い場所はない": 0 hits

By way of comparison:

• google books:"住めば都": 4,610 hits
• google scholar:"住めば都": 282 hits
• google groups:"住めば都": Unknown, but pages upon pages, and so many that it apparently breaks Google (says "Showing 1-10 of about 0" despite there being 14 pages of hits just for Google Groups, and 43 pages of hits for all groups)

I appreciate your concern about taking due consideration, Anatoli, but these Google results suggest that these translations of English idioms do not have much currency. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 07:49, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for providing the counts. I was mainly referring to the other translation. As for the "horse bit", I still insist the obviously literal translation is merited, simply as a "translation" albeit non-idiomatical. As a native Russian speaker I do translate proverbs and sayings into Russian as well, even if there is no equivalent idiom available. Any translation school will recommend this. (Books and movies are translated into languages). --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 09:53, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I can certainly see the merit in providing a translation if that is all there is; my concern then is that we don't go beyond that to create full-blown pages for non-idiomatic, non-phrasebook-worthy phrases. The examples we discuss above would seem to fail WT:CFI, for instance. Would it be acceptable to you, for example, to add the bit about the horse to the translation list, but with the links only going to the individual terms? Example:

Japanese: 馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない (うまをみずべにみちびくことはできるがうまにみずをのませることはできない, uma o mizube ni michibiku koto wa dekiru ga uma ni mizu o nomaseru koto wa dekinai) (literal, rare, non-idiomatic)

This provides a translation into Japanese for the ostensible English speakers who might look up "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink", but does not suggest that we have or should create a page for 馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない (which we probably shouldn't, since it seems to fail CFI).

Would that be a palatable workaround for you? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:52, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

(my 2c again) Given that you're looking to reverse a specific part of WT:ELE, it's probably appropriate to bring this up in the BP for wider comment. FWIW, I think Japanese: 馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない (うまをみずべにみちびくことはできるがうまにみずをのませることはできない, uma o mizube ni michibiku koto wa dekiru ga uma ni mizu o nomaseru koto wa dekinai) (literal, non-idiomatic) (note that I'd leave out rare, since many literal phrases will be rare) is one acceptable solution, although I'm not opposed to the current ELE practice of forbidding literal translations, either. - -sche (discuss) 19:04, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm OK with your suggestion to link individual words (the same would apply for phrasebook entries). The only reason it's not done because it's time-consuming. Bring it up in BP as well, if you wish but at the moment, I don't think it's really contradicting ELE, if the translation is correct and no idiomatic translation exists or there are various translations. The template {{qualifier}} can explain everything. A literal translation that closer matches the original also helps non-English speakers to understand a proverb better (as with the "home" proverb. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 22:18, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

@-sche Thanks for your input. Re: contradiction to ELE, please see the ELE section again and pay attention to "unless..." and "most..." parts. Again, if your main concern is unidiomatic translations (to both of you), breaking up into words can be done. I'm not too happy about doing this myself, though, as I often add translations into phrasebook entries, multipart collocations (fall ill, catch cold, feature film, etc), proverbs, sayings and words that can differ in the number of words across languages but I promise to pay attention to comments. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 23:17, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I have read the paragraph in WT:ELE, and I think it applies here: the word-for-word equivalent of this proverb is not used (idiomatically) in Japanese. I'm not necessarily opposed to including it, but I have started Wiktionary:Beer_parlour#literal_translations_of_idioms so there can be a broader discussion. - -sche (discuss) 01:56, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

IPA

Hi, I saw that you posted about the このこ deletion on my wall and I guess I'm still not sure which it is either (though I'd like to believe the "folk etymology" since it makes it easier to remember), but if valid sources prove it, then I guess I was wrong. Also about IPA, in many of the pages, there is an inconsistency on using [] or // for Japanese, so I only used the slashes when I was sure that that was the phonemic transcription (such as /hana/ which would be the same phonetically [hana]), otherwise I used []. The reason is because certain sounds such as [tɕ], [dʑ] and [ɕ] are sometimes treated as phonemes and sometimes as allophones of /t/, /z/ and /s/ before [i], but they have more or less phonemicized now since syllables like [tɕa] "tea" also exist (which would contrast with /ta/). Sometimes this is used as evidence for separate phonemes, sometimes it's treated as /tja/. In order to avoid the issue, whenever I came across these sounds, I used a strict phonetic transcription in square brackets [].

Also, I downloaded an IPA keyboard that allows you to type the symbols needed without having to copy and paste. You can download one too, here: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=UniIPAKeyboard

– Jmolina116 (talk) 18:23, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Cool, thank you for the explanations. I'm growing a bit muddled about IPA on WT as it is, and just posted at Wiktionary:Beer_parlour#IPA_brackets in an attempt at clarifying how folks here are using brackets and slashes. And thank you very much for the web link, I'll certainly take a look. I installed AllChars a bit ago (http://allchars.zwolnet.com/download/index.html), and while that's useful for some characters and diacritics, it doesn't cover all the bases. I'll see how the SIL folks do.  :)

-- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:33, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Of course. :) I personally think there should be a consensus as to whether we should treat [ɕ] etc. as separate phonemes or not. I personally think /sja/, /sju/, /sjo/ look weird and aren't descriptive enough about the sounds produced in actuality and that /ɕa/ etc. are they're own phonemes (despite Japanese orthography and the history of these sounds) because they have undergone phonemicization now. For now, maybe it would be best to include both transcriptions as a phonemic/phonetic pair? EG. /syuusyoku/ [ɕuːɕoku]. I'm not sure of any good way to do this. That also brings up the question of whether to treat long vowels as long vowels or double vowels. Anyway, thanks again for the information about 茸 and the standard punctuation for glosses. –Jmolina116 (talk) 02:20, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

/ɕa/ is contrastive with /sa/, whereas /sja/ or /sʲa/ don't really exist in modern Japanese. Depending on the speaker, /ɕa/ might be pronounced as [sʲa], but it would still be contrastive with [sa]. /sja/ and /sya/ might correlate better to しゃ, but the whole point of IPA is the "P" in the middle of the acronym, so changing the IPA transcription to match the writing system seems to be the wrong way to go about it. Basically, I'm a fan of using /ɕ/.  :)

About long vowels, I think the only reason to use doubled vowels instead of the colon-looking /ː/ marker would be where the second mora of the vowel sound takes a different pitch or is pronounced distinctly. For instance, /o.kaː.san/ versus /ma.sa.a.ki/.

Does that sound sensible to you? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 20:55, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

That is the main reason for using double vowels, but Ancient Greek has the similar process of pitch assigning, and they are usually marked as long vowels instead of double vowels (probably because the writing system employs a single letter for them). If the high pitch is marked on the second mora it is written over the long mark. E.G. [ɔː́] in ὀκτώ [oktɔː́]. So it doesn't seem like a good enough reason for me. I'm am also a fan of using /ɕ/ in both phonetic and phonemic transcriptions. But there are also morphological reasons to not use them. For example the transcriptions /hanasimasu/ and /tatimasu/ show more clearly that the root is /hanas-/ and /tat-/, as opposed to /hanaɕimasu/ and /tatɕimasu/ where you'd have to indicate the allomorphs /hanaɕ-/and /tatɕ-/ for the root before the phoneme /i/. So you have to choose between allmorphs of roots or allophones of sounds. I think that for the purposes of WT, however, /hanaɕimasu/ and /tatɕimasu/ are better, because phonetics play a bigger role here than morphology.

Also demarcating by morae like in /ma.sa.a.ki/ would also mean that /ko.ɴ.ɕu.u/ and /ke.k.ko.ɴ/ (more accurately /ke.Q.ko.ɴ/ where Q represent the sokuon) would be the correct transcriptions. But the symbol /./ is a syllable marker, not usually a mora marker. Since in Japanese, syllables don't play any significant roll, morae do, I think it's best not to include it at all and just use /masaaki/. I also agree that where there is a morpheme boundary such as in this word or in inflectional endings between two of the same vowels, they should be marked separately: so /masaaki/ and /ataraɕii/, not /masaːki/ and /ataraɕiː/. But I think in other cases, it should be marked as a long vowel. That's just my personal preference though. –Jmolina116 (talk) 02:48, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

NOT saying that romanizations should sway anyone one way or the other, but in some romanizations まさあき is still transliterated with the w:macron (masāki). I completely disagree with this usage of it, but the pronunciation is still technically that of a long vowel. -Jmolina116 (talk) 03:01, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Interesting about Greek, that's not a language I'm at all familiar with. But when you say "so it doesn't seem like a good enough reason for me", I can't tell if you mean that we shouldn't use doubled vowels, or that we shouldn't put pitch accent over the long-sound marker.

About allophones, I agree that we should lean more towards the phonetics than the morphology, since the IPA is intended to mark the sound.  :) Adding /tatimasu/ would be misleading to anyone not familiar with Japanese phonology. (My sense is that the final /u/ shouldn't be there in transcription, since it's really only ever pronounced when someone is being über-polite or overpronouncing; do you have strong opinions about that? Perhaps that's more square-bracket territory than slash?)

My intent with /ma.sa.a.ki/ was actually not to demarcate morae, but instead to point out a sound boundary between the two /a/s. The /a/ sound is two morae long, but qualitatively different here than the two-morae /a/ sound in /o.kaː.san/ (where I again used the periods to group by sound boundaries). Perhaps just using /aa/ for the former and /aː/ for the latter would suffice?

Incidentally, I'm fine with /ataraɕiː/, since again my assumption with the IPA information given under the ===Pronunciation=== headers is that we're trying to represent sounds, regardless of underlying grammatical inflection, and the final /i/ in /ataraɕiː/ is indeed just a long /i/, with no sound boundary and no pitch change. (or is this again something that would be more appropriate within square brackets?) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 04:35, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't think the quality in /okaːsaɴ/ is any different than that of /masaaki/. Again this is just a perception based on the morpheme boundary between /masa/ and /aki/ and only in careful pronunciation would such a thing be distinctive from a long vowel (masaʔaki), but I myself have never heard this form. A long vowel and a double vowel in IPA are really the exact same thing since it's just a sound twice as long with no pause and no change in quality. Also /a/ and /a/ will always have the same quality, because they are the same vowel, the same phoneme, so that can't be a reason to mark them differently. So IPA tends to mark these sounds as long sounds in languages, unless there is evidence in the modern language that this only stems from a doubling of a vowel (such as morpheme boundaries between the two). Some of the long vowels fall under this category but a great deal don't, even in historical evidence (such as /oː/ from /au/, kjoːto > kjauto), which is why I favor long vowel markings.

By "so it doesn't seem like a good enough reason for me" I meant that I think pitch shouldn't affect transcription to me, especially since in Japanese pitch is usually never marked (because of dialectal differences in pitch).

And as for the /ataraɕiː/, this is the same as the case with /masaːki/ where there is a morpheme boundary between the two i's: ataraɕi-i, new-ATTRIBUTIVE. /ii/ and /iː/ are two ways of transcribing the same sound in IPA so I think it doesn't matter which you use phonetically. And in cases of morpheme boundaries, there is evidence that these vowels are double since it's just an /a/ that happens to be followed by another /a/. Another good example would be the /kuː/ in /kuːki/ as opposed to /kuu/ "to eat". So perhaps, one way of transcribing should just be picked for whatever reason, and people should stick to it. –Jmolina116 (talk) 14:55, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

And the final /u/ in /tatɕimasu/ is voiceless, so it's almost silent. The same as the u in /huku/ or /suteki/. So it should still be included. Having consonant clusters and ending in a coda other than the nasal /ɴ/ is a violation of Japanese phonology. –Jmolina116 (talk) 16:04, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

• About Masaaki -- it's not a glottal so much as a tone/pitch shift, where the second /a/ is tonally distinct from the first, in a way that speakers don't use with okāsan -- i.e., a "change in quality". It's subtle, but it's there, phonetically and not just morphologically. However, if tonality is not enough to mark the first /a/ and the second /a/ separately in Masaaki in slashed phonemics, I'm copacetic about leaving it as a long vowel /aː/ in IPA.
• Ditto for /ataraɕiː/ and transcribing 食う as /kuː/ (i.e., let's use long vowels instead of doubled, and leave the doubled vowels to romanization, where morphological structure is more important than phonetic).
• About final /u/, it's often completely silent, not just almost -- such as in ですか, which in running speech is often [de̞s.ka̠]. But as your reply suggests, leaving the final /u/ out would apparently be more appropriate in a square-bracket phonetic transcription, but not in a slashed phonemic transcription, so yes, let's include final /u/.
• Thank you for your replies, I really appreciate the dialog. -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 15:41, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Of course. :) All of this has been extremely useful, and I'm glad we figured out what we're going to stick to for this. I also hope you found the SIL keyboard useful. Thanks :) Jmolina116 (talk) 17:24, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

-suru demo and conj template question

Hi Eirikr, I went ahead and put a Verb section under 判断 as a demo. Let me know what you think. I was joking with the "off the rails" comment in the page history because there's so much debate about minor changes and this is a relatively big change.

Also, I noticed that {{ja-suru}} no longer has spaces before most of the -suru forms. I'm not objecting but just wondering if that was intentional and if so, why. I thought it didn't matter much but was a style issue and that the spaces made the words more readable.

Thanks --Haplology (talk) 05:54, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Cool, thank you for the demo -- will give that a look -- and for the heads-up on the template screw-up -- I added some code to handle cases where there is no kanji, but then goofed the regex. Doh! I'll put the spaces back in. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 06:35, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

テメ

Is the new (current) definition of テメ valid? Haplology's edit summary "as best I can tell" doesn't sound completely confident, and a search for "テメ"+"deception", hoping to turn up other dictionaries, turns up mostly just Wiktionary. If it's valid, let me know and I'll close the RFV as resolved (or you can); if we can't find a reference or clear citation supporting it, the entire entry should be deleted as RFV-failed. - -sche (discuss) 07:21, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Ta, I'll create the lemma 手目 entry. I thinka Hap's gloss is mostly OK; the kicker is that the テメ entry is written in katakana, something that very seldom happens for the word 手目 (or for the word 手前 that we first thought this might be). Do you think a marker of {{rare}} or a usage note would suffice, or does the rarity of the テメ spelling warrant that entry's removal? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 15:37, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Hm, one way of handling such entries (attested katakana forms of words normally written in other ways) would be to make them soft "katakana form of..." redirects like this. What do you think? - -sche (discuss) 21:08, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

That looks good to me, and rings a faint bell in my memory -- did we discuss something like this before? Anyway, I like the way that scans on the page. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:23, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Spelling error

How do I correct a spelling error I did not catch in the 'plural section'? Scienceexplorer (talk)

Um, what 'plural section'? I have no idea which entry you're referring to.

That aside, any subsection within an entry should have a blue link marked [edit] to the right of the subsection header. Click that to edit just that section. Alternately, click the Edit link at the top of any editable page to edit the whole page at once.

-- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:00, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

following up on LT

Hi. Apologies for duplication if you and Yair are already discussing this somewhere else, but if you aren't... [[Thread:User talk:Yair rand/following up on the discussion of LT]]. - -sche (discuss) 21:35, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Vienna

Take a look at the first discussion on KYPark's talk page. - -sche (discuss) 08:57, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Very interesting. And not just that first thread, but most of that page. I sympathize somewhat, as there are some very interestingly suggestive correspondences between PIE and some Korean terms -- but the extreme paucity of Korean texts with clear pronunciation information before the arrival of Hangul in the 1400s makes Korean etymological study a bit of a dead end. KYPark's apparent refusal to assess the work of others objectively and then "stand on the shoulders of giants" suggests that s/he won't get very far, which is a shame given the obvious enthusiasm. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:40, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

pre-existing -suru pages

Hi Eirikr,

What do you think should be done with the -suru pages that have already been made? It's inconsistent to have both styles but I suppose it wouldn't be all that bad to keep the pre-existing -suru pages, as long as they have the etymology section that we talked about. If I created them I'll go ahead and delete them though, since I assume nobody would notice or mind.

Thanks --Haplology (talk) 12:29, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Yah, I'm not sure what would be the best way forward. Deletion is attractive, as it cleans things up and prevents potentially misleading newcomers into thinking that we should have such pages. I guess so long as people can still find the terms -- for example, if I type in 放出する into the search box, I'd expect to be directed to the 放出 page, or at the bare minimum to get that page in the list of search results.

... That currently doesn't happen. Even searching for 放出 + する as copied directly off the 放出 page doesn't find anything either, which seems a rather bad failure on the part of WT's search feature. I'll ask about this in WT:Grease pit. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:46, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

shōjo vs shojo vs shoujo

Until a moment ago, we had romanisations of 少女 at shōjo, shojo and shoujo. I deleted the Japanese section of shoujo because I don't think we provide nonstandard romanisations, and I merged the English sections per WT:RFM#shojo, but I'm not sure if the Japanese sections of shōjo and shojo should be merged or not. They say they have different hiragana and pronunciations. Can you take a look? - -sche (discuss) 17:46, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll work on shōnen / shounen / shonen too, later today. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:48, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

BP discussion re: context

Hi Eirikr,

The Beer parlour discussion about {{context}} is about a change that some have suggested making to the common practices that editors are supposed to follow. I did my best to outline the reasons for the change, and most of those reasons are technical in nature, but I'd rather not get sidetracked with technical proposals that are completely under the covers, since (1) they don't really belong in the Beer parlour, (2) they could potentially cause less-technically-minded editors to miss the true point of the discussion, and (3) they duplicate, and fragment, existing discussion at the Grease pit. (See Wiktionary:Grease pit#Rewrite {{context}}? — {{User:Ruakh/label}}, where I proposed, and presented an implementation of, the same changes that you're now proposing.) Would you be terribly offended if I asked you to re-examine your comments in that light, and see if some parts of them should perhaps be removed as irrelevant to that discussion (and perhaps moved to the Grease pit discussion(s) instead)?

Thanks in advance,
—Ruakh_TALK
23:42, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

P.S. If you edit your comments there in a way that renders my reply there irrelevant, then please feel free to remove that as well. Thanks again. —Ruakh_TALK 23:42, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Gah, forgive me. Sometimes I lose track of which page a thread is on. Would it be better form for me to delete my comment, or just strike it out and add a note as to why? (I'll have a look-through the GP thread later, probably this weekend or maybe Monday, and chime in there -- hopefully more intelligently.) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 00:08, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Never mind my previous question. I just removed the technical part and will repost as appropriate later in the WT:GP thread. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 00:15, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! Sorry to be a pain about this one — usually we're not sticklers here about distinguishing between the various discussion rooms (except perhaps RFV vs. RFD), but in this case I'd made a point of splitting the one BP-relevant part off from the GP discussion, and I was worried that that was about to backfire. :-P   —Ruakh_TALK 00:28, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Link to Commons radicals

Hallo Eiríkr, du sagst du kannst auch Deutsch, das wiederum kann ich besser als English (oder polynesisch oder 한글).
Inzwischen sind in allen 214 Seiten Index:Chinese radical die Radikale verlinkt, das hat mir User:CodeCat mit MewBot gemacht. Um auch noch alle Radikale von 一 bis 龠 mit so einem Link zu versehen gibt es mehrere Möglichkeiten, wie ich dir auf meiner Talkpage geantwortet habe. Am liebsten würde ich es als kleine Erweiterung von {{Han char}} einbauen, das wäre der geringste Aufwand und die eleganteste Lösung; in Template talk:Han char#Expansions habe ich das mal andiskutiert.
Siehst du dir bitte mal die verschiedenen Möglichkeiten in 月 an? Damit ich dort bald wieder aufräumen kann. If you answer after some days, please give me a note on my talk page -- sarang♥사랑 14:50, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Hallo Sarang, danke sehr für dein Antwort. Ich habe die 月 Seite angeguckt, und ich glaube daß vielleicht "Test: before" oder "Test: Han ch" wie das Beste aussieht. Ja, "Test: float" tut meine Augen weh, eigentlich. Diese Beispiele zu machen, 감사합니다 / mahalo nui / どうもありがとう / 多謝 / tusind tak / muchas gracias / ahéheeʼ / danke sehr.  :) -- Tschüß, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 02:33, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Ich kann gut verstehen dass die float-Version keinen Beifall findet; es war einer der Versuche. Nun werde ich mich bemühen die "Test: Han ch"-Version einzusetzen; das kann ich allerdings nicht allein, weil {{Han char}} geschützt ist. Es wird also noch dauern, 月 kann ich wieder frei machen. kia ora, [감사합니다 -- sarang♥사랑 08:48, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Chinle

I was there 2 weeks ago, I've added (with reference) the meaning of the name. 81.109.118.115 14:37, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Doug! I appreciate it. I'll add the etyl to the EN WT entry soon. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:56, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

完壁

Special:Contributions/Tomzo changed the definitions of 完壁 to "wrong kanji phrase," from alternative form and after checking it seems that he or she is right, that 完壁 is considered incorrect, but I wonder if you think there's a more...professional way of writing "wrong kanji phrase." Similarly 完璧 has the header "wrong forms". In English it would be "common misspelling of", but do you think you can say "spelling" with Chinese characters? Thanks --Haplology (talk) 04:25, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

How do things look now? And if there is a "common misspelling of" template, feel free to add it -- I think "spelling" is perfectly appropriate for kanji as well.  :) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 06:07, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for taking a look at that. There is such a template, and I plan to add it later. --Haplology (talk) 17:09, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

einander

This edit made two changes, and I actually disagree with both of them.

• Re: ''...'' vs. {{term|...}}: {{term}} adds HTML annotations to indicate that the text is in German. It also uses CSS, rather than <i>, to induce italics, so its appearance is customizable. And — it explicitly indicates, in the wikitext, that this is a mention, whereas italics are used for plenty of other things as well. We don't use {{term}} as consistently as I'd wish, but I don't see what downside you see.
• Re: [[Special:BookSources/3423325119|→ISBN]] vs. →ISBN: Since, on en.wikt, →ISBN links to [[Special:BookSources/3423325119]] anyway, this has no advantage that I can see, but it does have a few disadvantages: (1) someone changing the ISBN has to do it in two places, one of which is less obvious than the other; (2) this puts the link to the Special: page in the wikitext, so that mirrors have to filter it out.

What am I missing?

Thanks,
—Ruakh_TALK
21:57, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Heya, thanks for the feedback --

1. {{term}} vs. italics: I was going purely for brevity. I had not considered any annotations, and was unaware of any such. I'm happy for that to be reverted. Sorry for the trouble.
2. Wow. I don't know if there was a browser hiccup or my eyes are just crap today -- I did not at all see that that was still a link, and I could just about swear that the text appeared black (i.e. as regular non-linked text) when I previewed. I didn't know it would automatically link, and not seeing that it was a link, I thought it needed an explicit link to work. I'm really sorry about that.

Thank you very much for saying something, I've learned a couple new things from this! (And, I've just rolled back that last change of mine.)

-- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:07, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Japanese

Hi, how come there is a "ki" in the pronunciation at (deprecated template usage) 戦闘? Surely this is an error? 50 Xylophone Players talk 19:53, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

You're right, I had too many tabs open at once and mistook which tab I was entering text into. Fixed. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:55, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Translation

Hi, I was wondering if you could help me with a little translation. I was wondering, would 僕の憎しみが君の憎しみになりました be how you would say "My hatred has become your hatred" in Japanese? (Yes, I am aware "boku" and "kimi" are informal pronouns.) It doesn't seem right according to Google translate but I don't know where to trust it or not. 50 Xylophone Players talk 21:37, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, the parallel construction might come across ambiguously in some ways. As with so many things, the best translation depends on the context.

If you mean something like a transfer of ownership, where "I" previously hated something and now "you" own that hatred, you could say:

• 僕の憎しみが君のものになった。

If you mean that "I" and "you" now share a hatred of something due to a change in circumstances, where previously only "I" hated it, you could say:

• 僕が憎んでいることは今君も憎むようになった。

Frankly, it's a bit of an odd turn of phrase in English, so it's a bit of an odd turn of phrase in Japanese. It might help if you could say what the object of the hatred is; that might suggest different wording.

Given the sentiment, I suspect that 俺 and お前 might be better than 僕 and 君. Either way, use plain form (する・だ) instead of polite (ます・です). Polite could work with 僕 and あなた, but it sounds a touch odd with 僕 and 君. -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:50, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

I see, so the second option, is that read as "Boku ga nikunde iru koto wa ima kimi mo nikumu yō ni natta" 50 Xylophone Players talk 21:58, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's right. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:00, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

possess

Could you formulate a definition of [[possess]] as used in the Twelfth Night line you cite? Shakespeare is well known, so the sense meets CFI and passes RFV... I just can't work out how to define it; simply "to occupy" seems too brief and unclear. - -sche (discuss) 22:12, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, lemme see what I can come up with. It's really a causative use -- "to cause someone to possess something". This can then used in a passive way -- "to be possessed of something". As I understand the line from Shakespeare, the missing indirect object is the information that Maria has and that Sir Toby wants to know.

By way of reference, google books:"possessed him of" gives us:

• "...I have possessed him of by a deed of Gift under my hand..." -- Foster genealogy: Part 2 - Page 982
• "He is required to prove, "that after the execution of the mortgage, he bona fide lent the property to the mortgagor, or otherwise honestly possessed him of it."" -- Reports of cases argued and determined in the Supreme Court of Tennessee (1818-1837), Volume 7 - Page 442
• "I possessed him of the danger of a partial, and the inevitable mischief of the total, rejection of the bill." -- The works of Edmund Burke: Volume 5 - Page 487

Then google books:"possessed her of" gives us:

• "I give to my daughter, Mary Magdalen White, all the property that I have heretofore possessed her of, to her and her heirs forever." -- Virginia reports: Jefferson--33 Grattan, 1730-1880 - Page 81
• "Then those demons that had possessed her of that vice took the defendant's senses away from her..." -- The Inquisition Of Francisca: A Sixteenth-century Visionary On Trial - Page 135
• "Again the forward push and her current speed possessed her of a soft landing." -- The Falling Tree - Page 85

I should have added the years of publication above, but it's not always clear from the summary list of Google hits, and I'm actually a bit under the gun IRL right now, so suffice it to say that the last quote is apparently from 2007, but the others all seem to be from the early 1900s or earlier.

-- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:48, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

PS: Looking again at possess, all the quotes above, and the one from Twelfth Night, all look like the current sense #4 to me: "To vest ownership in (someone) with ownership." (That wording could use some help.) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:50, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

A sample section for labeled-section transclusion

And here's some sample text.

• And a bullet point.

Mentoring program

インラカプテ(こんにちは in Ainu)! Metaknowledge just told me User_talk:Britannic124 is adding Ainu terms, so I invited them to the WT:Mentoring program. I would love to be involved in that, but I know nothing about the complexities of editing with Japanese and might need help. Would you be interested in signing up to be a mentor and/or help me if B124 wants a mentor? --BB12 (talk) 00:07, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Heya Benjamin, I'm certainly happy to help if I can. I just learned that my second job is back in season, so I may not respond as quickly as might be optimal, but feel free to post any questions / concerns / brainstorming / etc. here and I'll reply when I can.  :)

What kind of JA editing complexities are you concerned about? I know that WT:AJA is somewhat out of date; do you have any specific questions? -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 03:29, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Congratulations on the new job. I don't have any questions in particular right now, but I know the About Japanese page is pretty complex and I can imagine that questions will come up. I appreciate the offer to help! --BB12 (talk) 07:32, 25 July 2012 (UTC)