LittleWhole

"with small wo"

Hi. Are you sure that these exist? —Suzukaze-c (talk) 19:58, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes. They exist: w:ja:小書きヰ, w:ja:小書きヱ, w:ja:小書きヲ. Their romanization is also coded into Module:ja. LittleWhole (talk) 20:13, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I should have checked the Unicode proposals for evidence. Sorry about that. —Suzukaze-c (talk) 20:17, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

No problem :D LittleWhole (talk) 20:18, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

を゙, ほゎ, ほぁ

Do you have evidence that these exist? See WT:ATTEST. —Suzukaze-c (talk) 06:07, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

ほぁ:

• [1] - dictionary entry of being used to transliterate a Chinese person's name
• [2] - same as above, but a different person
• [3] - used in the name of a pretty well known Chinese restaurant in Kyoto.
• [4] - 花椒
• [5] - 雪花
• [6] - 雪花冰

を゙:

• Hiragana form of ヺ. ja:w:ヺ

ほゎ:

• [7]: Popular in usernames of Internet profiles. Most likely just a variation of ほぁ.

LittleWhole (talk) 00:36, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Then ほぁ is fine. But to make it clear, I am not comfortable with the addition of fringe theoretical syllables like ほゎ, を゙. and ヰェ. Again, see WT:ATTEST. —Suzukaze-c (talk) 04:08, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

And reviewing the romanized usernames (@XXX) that use ほゎ, I see 'howa', not 'hwa'. —Suzukaze-c (talk) 04:10, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Kun'yomi in Japanese entries

Hello LittleWhole,

I noticed that you'd added 訓読み (kun'yomi) to a lot of entries. Almost all of these were incorrect. Many appeared to be what the characters might mean, but they are not how the characters are read. Please confirm that readings are in actual use in running text by multiple authors before adding, and ideally include a quote example or three.

Thank you,

‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:39, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Problems at 𛀆 (yi)

Hello LittleWhole, there are many problems with the 𛀆 (yi) entry as of today.

• There is no historical evidence that /ji/ existed in Japanese. There is circumstantial evidence for its existence prior to recorded history, but in the entirety of the Japanese written corpus, as best I understand it, there is no /ji/.

Consequently, the statement that "In modern Japanese, old /ji/ evolved into /i/..." is just plain wrong: there was no "old /ji/".

• During the Meiji period, there was a certain faction in academia that pushed for regularizing many things, including kana charts. These academicians invented various new kana to fill in the missing areas in the 五十音 chart, such as yi or wu. However, these new kana were not based on anything actually used in Japanese.
• Words containing Old Japanese /ji/ of Sinitic origin:

• 犀

There is no evidence that 犀(さい) (sai, “rhinoceros”) was ever realized in Japanese as /saji/.

This term was borrowed from Middle Chinese, which realized this as something like /sei/, as a monosyllabic diphthong. Many researchers agree that Proto-Japanese probably did not allow vowel-vowel combinations. However, this term was borrowed during the historical period -- first mentioned in 934 -- and that restriction did not apply, and thus it would have been borrowed with a vowel-vowel diphthong. Indeed, that is what we see in historical spellings -- either せい (sei) or さい (sai).

• Words containing Old Japanese /ji/ of Japonic origin:

• 小さい

There is no evidence that 小(ちい)さい (chīsai, “small”) was ever realized in Japanese as /chīsaji/.

The -sai ending in Modern Japanese is used for both the 終止形 (shūshikei, “conclusive or terminal form”) used predicatively, and the 連体形 (rentaikei, “attributive form”) used to modify a noun or nominal phrase. This evolved from older 終止形 (shūshikei) -sashi and older 連体形 (rentaikei) -saki.

(Indeed, all modern ～い adjectives had this older ～し ending for the terminal and ～き ending for the attributive. No ～い adjective ever had any -yi ending.)さ゚

Although not mentioned in the page, I want to clarify as well that the medial chī- in 小(ちい)さい (chīsai) was also never /t͡ɕiji-/, and instead comes from older tipi-, likely cognate with 粒(つぶ) (tsubu, “a grain of something; a small round thing”).

• 刃

There is no evidence that 刃(やいば) (yaiba, “tempered blade”) was ever realized in Japanese as /jajiba/.

This term first appears in the late 1300s as a shift from older 焼き刃 (yakiba). This was roughly the same time period when medial /-k-/ fell out of other words, such as verb forms like 書きて → 書いて, or adjective forms like よき → よい.

• All "や行上一段活用" verbs:

These appear to be correct, with the proviso that /ji/ did not exist as a distinct phoneme in any historical Japanese text.

• All "や行上二段活用" verbs:

• 報い and 酬い -- the two mukui examples are simply alternative spellings for the same single word. You're better off linking directly to the lemma entry at むくい. If you want to use a kanji, use the more common spelling, 報い.
• 凍える (kogoeru) only appears from the early 1300s. This is a 下一段 verb, not a 上二段 verb. The verb stem kogoe is not directly from koyi, and stating so is misleading at best.

To illustrate the theoretical, reconstructed syllable /ji/ for this verb, you'd do much better to use the older 上二段 form, Japanese 凍ゆ (kogoyu).

• 用いる (mochiiru) is originally from 持ち (mochi) + 率る (iru, older reading wiru). The -y- verb stems only appear from the Middle Japanese period due to etymological confusion and hypercorrection. There was never any form /mot͡ɕiji-/.
• 臥す (fusu) and 臥ゆ (koyu) are wholly unrelated verbs. Your current layout shows that fushi is somehow derived from theoretical koyi, which is entirely incorrect.

I appreciate your passion and interest in Japanese, and your work in adding entries for various kana forms. For historical forms in particular, please do more research to confirm actual existence before adding or altering entries. If you would like to discuss resources or approach, please feel free to bring up questions in the Beer Parlor, Tea Room, Etymology Scriptorium, or my Talk page, among other places. Make sure to use the {{ping}} template if you want to let specific users know about the thread.

Kind regards, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:24, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed response. I was mostly referring to 1891 仮名遣 here: [8] and 1897 日本大文典. 第1編 here [9]. 仮名遣's "yi" table was officially used by the Unicode Consortium so I assumed it was a credible source. It is slightly difficult to read the scanned text though. LittleWhole (talk | ^{中文维基词典用户页}) 02:50, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

That's fascinatingly odd, thank you very much for the links. I have difficulty understanding what was intended here. I see one of the -yi- spellings appears where it would at least be phonetically reasonable to expect, specifically 隼人 (hayato) → hayito. The others are places where there are no grounds at all for using -yi-, such as 犀 (sai, “rhinoceros”), or places where the use of -yi- might conceivably be used to indicate a place where i arose through lenition of some earlier consonant, such as 鷂 (haitaka) from earlier hashitaka, or 刃 (yaiba) from earlier yakiba. Altogether strange to my eyes.

Again, thank you for the source links.

Sadly, the Unicode Consortium has a paucity of expertise when it comes to the CJK languages, and some of their past decisions have left others scratching their heads. I don't think they have the background necessary to fully vet some of the proposals that cross their collective desks.

Cheers, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:14, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

No problem, I understand. I also would like to ask about katakana ye (𛄡 (𛄡)). Most people say that katakana ye is エ, however after looking for a while, I believe that more historical sources in fact use a different character, derived from the bottom-left of 衣, as katakana ye. The Unicode Consortium seems to agree, and has drafted to encode this at U+1B121 as "KATAKANA LETTER ARCHAIC YE". It looks slightly like a ligature of イ and エ (but it has been disproven that it is actually a ligature of イ and エ because source 1892 仮名遣の栞 [10] uses a different form of ye that more closely resembles 衣, as well as 1886 片仮名元字 [11] straight up showing the origin). Most people directly go to 1873 綴字篇８課の１ページ目と２ページ目 which is the kana chart showing yi, ye, and wu that most people are familiar with, which shows katakana ye as エ - but I believe that this is one of the only sources that does this. Other sources either use the current one approved by the Unicode Consortium or the one with an extra diagonal stroke to the right. What are your thoughts on this? LittleWhole (talk | ^{中文维基词典用户页}) 05:48, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Beware any source that hearkens back to the Meiji period when it comes to divining historical kana -- the Meiji period saw a real push for standardization, some of it useful, and some not so much.

Have a look at w:Hentaigana. In short, there was much variation in kana usage prior to various reforms in the late-1800s and first half of the 1900s. Also, phonologically, /e/ and /ye/ merged rather early on in Japanese, and the two sounds were treated as basically allophones of each other. With no need to distinguish the two in writing, there never really was a clear kana difference for these two. In the Meiji period, again, the standardizers wanted to fill in the "missing" areas in the 五十音 chart, and decided to come up with a kana for ye. I'd have to do some research to reacquaint myself with the details, but I think I remember reading that the bottom-left of 衣 katakana form was invented at that time.

HTH, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:58, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

@Eirikr: I do believe that anyone is allowed to write to the Unicode Consortium (including "Abraham Gross", who sent the proposal— who is this person?). Please do send your feedback. —Suzukaze-c (talk) 01:21, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

In fact, the kana for ji does not exist in Old Japanese, but its sonority does, and is represented by i1, although ancient japanese writings do not distinguish between the individual vowels i1 and i2, words like i1me2 or i1ma (dream) i1 (sleep) has its phonetic like ji, so in fact the syllable ji have exist in old Japanese. Theyoungmetalattack (talk) 21:05, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Why did you add "eshin" to mod:ja-headword?

All those kyu, shin, eshin should go to t:ja-kanjitab. Kyu and Shin now remain there simply because there are many usages of them difficult to remove. That doesn't mean eshin belongs there. -- Huhu9001 (talk) 15:58, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Fish bowl already talked to me about this. LittleWhole (talk) 14:49, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I forgot it. -- Huhu9001 (talk) 04:36, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

About old japanese

Hello, I'm also quite a student of the Old Japanese language, I wanted to ask if there are any sites that cover Old Japanese, because most of the ones I found are about Classical Japanese, I wanted to know how I can go deeper into Old Japanese. --The Young Prussian (talk) 23:09, 20 November 2022 (UTC)