Talk:お団子

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お団子

This term is just the honorific prefix お (o-) + 団子 (dango). Just about any noun in Japanese can be prefixed with o- or go-. My sense is this should be deleted, but what do others think? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 06:20, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Keep. It is true you can very freely add お to any noun, but words with お are not necessarily synonyms. See ja:お, which lists some special cases. お団子 has two meanings: first, a politer form of 団子; second, a bun (hairstyle), which is rarely called 団子. See Google Image. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 07:03, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. I really like the first image that Google gives right now -- gotta love avant garde fashions and oddball art. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 07:25, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

You know, that is not an avant garde fashion but a joke... It really looks like matcha dango with azuki. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 07:49, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Forgive me, my mention of "avant garde fashion" was an attempt at dry wit; I think it still qualifies as "oddball art", even as a joke.  :) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 08:02, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

“but words with お are not necessarily synonyms”. But are they in this case? Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 16:08, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

From what Takasugi-san added and from further googling around, it looks like we have two senses for お団子: one for the confection, which is synonymous with 団子 and should redirect there as the lemma; and one for the hairstyle, which is so called for its resemblance to the confection, but which is apparently only ever referred to with the o- prefix. As such, I think this clears RFD; would anyone object to removing this from RFD? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:11, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

I saw a number of entries like this and left them alone because some words take お and others take ご, but if I understand correctly they are not interchangeable. I thought that much made it idiomatic. I think that お is for native Japanese words and ご is for words from Chinese? I think words borrowed from English take お... Anyway it's certainly not obvious to the beginner. It sounds like お団子 is different from 団子, for such entries, should the lemma be like ご飯 or like 御飯? -- — This unsigned comment was added by Haplology (talk • contribs).

• Whether a term takes o- or go- when prefixed with an honorific is sometimes a question of idiom, but can often be guessed from the reading of the term -- if kun'yomi, it takes o-; if on'yomi, it usually takes go-. I can't think of any kun'yomi that take go-, but there are some on'yomi that take o-, such as 団子 (dango) here.
• About whether to keep such entries, I think it depends on 1) whether the prefixed form has any meanings distinct from the unprefixed form (such as dango the food and odango the hairstyle), and 2) whether the prefixed form is more common (such as gohan the food and han which people just don't say). There might be other factors to consider; these are the two that come to my mind right now.

So お水 (omizu), while cromulent Japanese, doesn't seem to me to be idiomatic enough to warrant inclusion, whereas ご飯 (gohan) and お団子 (odango) both are.

• About whether to use the spellings お・ご or 御 for the lemmata, I'm not sure which makes more sense. If a term pretty much *always* uses the kanji spelling 御, I'd say use that; likewise if a term uses the kana spelling almost exclusively. Other thoughts? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:22, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree with your main points. Generally avoid entries with an honorific prefix, unless only the honorific form is always used, as in ご飯, and make the lemma the more commonly used of the kanji or hiragana prefixes. As far as whether to use お or ご, the burden is on the reader to know that お is for kun'yomi and ご for on'yomi and to click through to the pages for the kanji? It seems fair enough. I don't recall ever seeing a dictionary that indicated which one to use in the main entry. Western words are usually お, right? I can't think of many examples. Pardon the colorful one, but it's the only one that comes to mind: おペニス. --Haplology (talk) 16:51, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I’ve never heard of おペニス, which sounds ridiculous (maybe intentionally). The most common one is おトイレ. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 07:41, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

About "whether to use お or ご", if a user is looking things up by sound, we should have the kana and rōmaji entries to cover that base. If they're looking things up as written, we should have the most common form as the lemma (such as お団子) and we should also have the corresponding form (either all-kanji or using kana for the prefix) as an alternative form (such as 御団子). Even if the alternative form doesn't exist as a standlone entry, it should at least be linked to from the lemma form, in which case the search feature will find it.

About prefixed Western words, I'm not sure why it's an issue -- are you thinking about adding "this word takes お / ご" to entries? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:59, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I guess I missed the joke with おペニス. I was wondering if entries would benefit from "this word takes ..." but it sounds like in general it's not an issue. For rare cases where we want it, I guess it can go under Usage notes, for example in トイレ. It's times like this when I wish I had native speaker intuition. --Haplology (talk) 18:10, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

While we're on the honorific prefix subject, there's a fresh entry from the same contributor which may suffer from SoP: 御姫 and notice that +様 is listed as a derived term. Can't anyone be -様? --Haplology (talk) 08:07, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I have deleted 御姫, which was created probably by a wrong analysis. お姫様 is rather お + 姫様, just like お殿様. In some cases お- -様 functions like a circumfix and neither of the parts can be deleted, such as お嬢様, お孫さん, etc. (お嬢 is a neologism from お嬢様.) — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 04:59, 17 May 2012 (UTC)