User talk:Eirikr/Archive 2006-2007

Location of main entry for Japanese words

Hi Eirikr. Your post regarding the best location for the main entry for on'yomi vs. kun'yomi is considerably more valuable than "¥2". :-) I have very little linguistic expertise in Japanese, but I am completely persuaded by your reasoning. That is, it makes etymological sense and simultaneously minimizes redundancy to put the main content for kun'yomi terms on the kana page and the main content for on'yomi terms on the kanji-compound page.

To be clear, my understanding of your proposed Japanese term organization policy follows. Please expand or correct it as necessary:

The kanji for Japanese words of ancient Japanese origin (i.e. 和語 terms, read as kun'yomi) were transliterations of the ancient Japanese terms into Chinese, so some kun'yomi have many alternate kanji renderings. Likewise, the kana for Japanese words of Chinese origin (i.e. 漢語 terms, read as on'yomi) were transliterations of the Chinese terms. In order to maximizing usability and minimize redundancy (from having multiple entries for homonyms), the full entry for on'yomi terms should be on the kanji or kanji-compound entry for that term, with links to and from a brief entry located at the furigana transliteration. Likewise, the full entry for kun'yomi terms should be on the hiragana page for that term, with links to and from a brief entry under the kanji-compound version of the term.

In order to update Wiktionary:About Japanese to include such a policy change, it would be best to have consensus from other contributors. I fear the length of the recent related talk page sections may obscure the attempt to gain such consensus. So, I propose to refactor Wiktionary Talk:About Japanese#Romaji and Wiktionary Talk:About Japanese#Hiragana and romaji in entries in order to highlight your proposal more clearly and perhaps open a straw poll regarding the proposed policy modification. If you agree, let me know whether you'd prefer to do the refactoring yourself or to have me refactor it. Rodasmith 18:04, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Section headers for newly proposed format

Refactored posts no longer relevant

Hi Rodasmith, sorry for the absence --

My take on the subheadings was that they mean the word as XX, i.e. as a noun, as a kanji, etc.

I thought I'd formatted along the lines of your lower example; now I'm suddenly confused...? Ah, but I read your note.  :) Hm, I agree to some extent, but the trouble is that the kanji are generally used for a particular word regardless of the part of speech, and thus I feel Kanji deserves an independent 3rd-level heading. For example, 使い "use (n.)" and 使う "use (v.t.) both use 使. This isn't the best example as the two terms have okurigana. For 彼, for instance, the kanji is used regardless of whether kare serves as a noun ("boyfriend") or pronoun ("he"). Thus, making Kanji a sub-heading of the part of speech doesn't seem to work too well. Does this make sense?

Incidentally, have a look at Wikipedia:Furigana for an explanation of the term -- it means specifically the smaller ひらがな written above (or to the side) of a kanji as an aid in reading; they're usually only seen in children's books or textbooks, and occasionally in newspapers when non-Jōyō kanji are used.

Hope this helps clear some things up.  :) Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 21:19, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Refactored posts no longer relevant

Close, but not quite what I was thinking. I was thinking more like we would use Hiragana form for terms listed under the kanji (as with 彼), and Kanji form for terms listed under the kana (as with かれ). The example above looks misleading as it seems to me to say that the In kanji bit is part of the word's hiragana form. Looking at 彼 again, I'd suggest this:

== [[Japanese]] ==
 === Kanji readings ===
 {{kanji|[[ひ]] (hi)|[[かれ]] (kare), [[かの]] (kano), [[あれ]] (are)}}
 === Noun ===
 ...
 === Pronoun ===
 ...

Note that I've changed the Kanji heading to instead read Kanji readings, slightly more accurate as the content shows how it's read, not which kanji are used. Here, after thinking it through, we actually might not need a Hiragana form heading, as that's essentially what Kanji readings is.

Meanwhile, for kana-headed terms like かれ, my thought was that we'd use this:

== [[Japanese]] ==
 === Noun ===
 ...
 === Pronoun ===
 ...
 === Kanji form === (or, === In kanji ===)
 # [[彼]]

Basically, if the term is listed under かれ, we already know it's hiragana, and thus I see no real value in putting in a Hiragana form heading. And again, putting Kanji under Hiragana seems to make kanji somehow an aspect of hiragana-ness, if you will, which doesn't look quite right. Does this make sense? Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 23:31, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I just updated Wiktionary:About Japanese##Considerations about Japanese language entries with the relaxed CFI proposal and cleaned up the remaining formatting in that section. In doing so, I now see that I misunderstood the purpose of level 3 headings. The current proposal actually is consistent with yours if we just change its recomendation for level 3 "Hiragana" section heading to the actual part of speech for 和語 (wago) terms. I.e., it suggests the following layout:

== [[Japanese]] ==
=== Noun ===
'''かれ''' (''kare'')
...
=== Kanji reading ===
# [[彼]]

How does that sound? Rodasmith 05:15, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

We're getting close!  :) Might I suggest that the lower heading in your example here be changed to Kanji forms, Kanji renderings, or something similar? Kanji reading to me implies how to read a kanji, how to pronounce it --> i.e. what hiragana to use. Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 15:42, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Sure. Your suggestions both seem more accurate than "Kanji readings". Do you prefer either "forms" or "renderings"? "Forms" seems to be more popular from a Google search (search: "Kanji forms" noun vs search: "Kanji renderings" noun), but that probably isn't a strong basis for the choice. Rodasmith 16:29, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree, "forms" sounds more natural and accessible. I added "renderings" simply to convey that I'm not set on "forms" if you'd prefer something else. But if "forms" works for you, let's use it.  :)

Oh, and I just added a reply to Talk:onyomi regarding apostrophes, which I now bethink me might also belong as part of Wiktionary Talk:About Japanese. Let me know what you think. Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 18:15, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

The proposed Japanese entry modifications have generated little feedback, perhaps due to the length of Wiktionary talk:About Japanese. To help move torward implementing the proposals, I archived inactive discussions. I would like to continue by refactoring the active discussions into succinct proposals so that the few Japanese language contributors can more easily respond to each one. As far as I know, there are now five active proposals:

1. Move the preferred location for 和語 (wago) terms to the term's kana page.
2. Use the actual part of speach instead of "Romaji" and "Hiragana" in POS headers for Japanese terms.
3. In hiragana entries, show individual kanji with that reading in a "Kanji forms" section header.
4. Use "on'yomi" and "kun'yomi" instead of "on" and "kun" for kanji readings.
5. Format particle entries to show positions, per above.

Does that match your list of active proposals? Rodasmith 22:52, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Inasmuch as I can keep in my head :), yes, that just about covers it. There is one other proposal related to on'yomi and kun'yomi, which is that we should probably use hyphens in romaji entries to signify ん + vowel, to distinguish between that versus な に ぬ ね and の. Otherwise we wind up with the same romaji for entries like ぶんあん and ぶなん.

Thanks for all your work refactoring the discussion, Rodasmith. I very much appreciate it. I understand the ideal behind "be bold", but I also know I haven't been here on Wiktionary all that long, and I've seen plenty of evidence on Wikipedia for how misguided earnestness can be read as disruption, making me somewhat reticent to just plunge in and undertake massive editing surgery.  :) Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 18:51, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

My pleasure. To be clear, you mean apostrophe and instead of hyphen (e.g. fun'an instead of fun-an for the romaji of ぶんあん), right? Obviously, we'd want the romaji entry for ぶんあん to be at fun'an and the romaji entry for ぶなん to be at funan, but given the variations of and confusion about romaji, it would probably also be good to add a {{see|fun'an}} note to the romaji entry at funan. Right? Rodasmith 19:12, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I refactored Wiktionary talk:About Japanese to highlight the separate active proposals. To do so, I had to split one of your posts into two different sections because it proposed changing both the format of romaji/hiragana entries and the main location of 和語 (wago) entries. I believe that split preserves the integrity of your proposals, but let me know if you believe otherwise. Rodasmith 20:26, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Doh! I did indeed mean apostrophe. That's what I get for staying up too late, I guess -- my brain stuck at a low wattage setting. And yes, I do think a "see also" note would be a very good idea, primarily for beginners and those otherwise unfamiliar with proper romaji renderings. Minor note: The kana above are bun'an and bunan.

Thanks too for refactoring the About Japanese page, I'll give it a look now that I'm back from lunch and see how it reads. Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 21:09, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Kun'yomi & On'yomi

Regarding the changes I made in あい, I completely agree with you and the terminology of Kun'yomi & On'yomi being more accurate term to describe the phenomena. I had simply made the changes to reading, because looking at many other pages it seemed that Kun-reading & On-reading were being more widely used on Wiktionary. I assumed that this was the standard format, but I would support the format to change to Kun'yomi & On'yomi without any problem. I just think we need to standardize it to one or the other - who can decide that? Please feel free to revert the changes regarding those fields though, I do not mind at all. Lastly, I had one last thing, I saw your edit on エキス and you gave as an etymology エキストラクト a katakana form of the English word extract. I double checked with Kõjien (広辞苑) and Shinmeikai Kokugo Jiten (新明快国語辞典) and both dictionaries give the etmology to be from Dutch, which most likely sounds extremely similar to something like エキストラクト, however エキストラクト is not a word in the Japanese lexicon. I was originally going to write the Etmology as Dutch (I do not however know how to say extract in Dutch) and I did not know how to include etmological information so I did not. If you would not mind, please check on the word and let me know. Thanks! Sudachi 03:27, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, Sudachi. The best way to change the "standard" here, inasmuch as there is one :), is to take it up on the Wiktionary talk:About Japanese page. Things are getting rather complicated on the page, however, so it might take a while to figure out where best to post.  :)

Interesting about the Dutch connection. My long-suffering copy of the 1988 Shogakukan 国語大辞典 shows:

（「エキストラクト（英extract）」の略）〈エッキス・エクス〉

Seems that might not be right, then. Indeed, a lot of early 外来語 (excluding Chinese, of course) came from Dutch, what with Nagasaki and the whole 鎖国 thing, as the Dutch were almost the only foreigners the bakufu was willing to put up with. Looking into it, Freedict gives the Dutch for extract as afleiden, so that doesn't seem to match too well in this case. Interglot gives us aftreksel and afkooksel. Meanwhile, the online Merriam-Webster gives the etymology for the English extract as:

Etymology: Middle English, from Latin extractus, past participle of extrahere, from ex- + trahere to draw

Perhaps extract was used by the Dutch in years past? The online LEO German-English dictionary gives Extrakt as one German cognate, so perhaps Dutch uses (or used) this too and it's simply missing from the sites above? For now, I'll amend the note on the エキス page to indicate that the etymology may be from Dutch, and may be from English, at least until we can nail down that Dutch definitely has had something at least close to "extract".

Thanks again for posting, and I'll look to the Wiktionary talk:About Japanese page. Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 05:56, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Found it -- This link shows that extract is in fact a Dutch noun, meaning more or less exactly the same thing as the English noun. I changed the エキス page accordingly. Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 06:00, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Verification request

Hi Eirikr. I expanded 平安 with a couple of noun definitions, but I'm not sure the final product is correct. It doesn't seem right to have a ===Kanji=== section in a kanji-compound like that, and I'm not 100% sure that 平安 is really used as an abbreviated version of 平安時代. I'd appreciate your verification if you find time. Rodasmith 02:36, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Hey there Rodasmith --

Sorry for the delay, I've had far too much on my plate this past week and am quite run down. へとへと... Be that as it may, I've reworked 平安 a bit. Give it a look and let me know what you think. I've done away with the ===Kanji=== heading, and inserted ===Etymology===, ===Adjective===, and ===Adverb=== in its stead, and added the relevant categories. Hope that works. Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 02:55, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

It's good to take wikibreaks to avoid burnout, so I'm glad you did. 平安 looks great now. Thanks for cleaning it up! Rodasmith 04:04, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

FYI, I created a new template for quasi-adjectives: {{ja-quasi-adj}} and tried it out on 平安. As always, let me know if you see any room for improvement. I expect to end up with a complete set of Japanese inflection templates to help with consistency. Rodasmith 05:07, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for being supportive, not all online communities are so understanding.  :)

Looking over the changes to 平安, things look mostly good. I must admit I'm puzzled by the choice of terminology in calling な adjectives "quasi". What the heck does "quasi" mean here, anyway?  :) I mean, 平安な here is an adjective, pure and simple -- it's not a noun, not a verb, not an adverb. It modifies nouns and nominal phrases, the end -- ergo, an adjective. Theoretical linguists tend to get tripped up on the differences in particle usage etc, and while that might be all well and good in a purely theoretical linguistic context, it's enormously confusing for us mere mortals. It seems grammarians writing in English have seldom been able to come up with satisfactory names for this category, aside from the simple term "な adjective". There was a lot of interesting discussion about this over at Wikipedia:Talk:Japanese grammar/Archive 01 and at Wikipedia:Talk:Japanese grammar/adjectives, but none of it really came out with a term that made any more sense than "な adjective". Anyway...

Elsewise, I note some funny spacing after the conjugation table that might need fixing directly in the template. Also, do な adjectives really have 未然形 and 命令形? If so, wouldn't the forms involve the verb stem なる instead of ある? After all, the な adjective ending な is thought to come from なる (though actually that itself is thought to be from にある)...

Must crash, far too late here. I hope these ramblings hold together enough to make some semblance of sense.  :) G'night, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 06:49, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Keiyōdōshi

Since there is so little agreement on how to categorize 形容動詞, I have just been using "quasi-adjective", as that's the term already on WT:AJ. It's as least a good a term as any other proposals, showing both the adjectival semantics of the words and the syntactic differences from 形容詞 and the "true" adjectives (whatever that is supposed to mean). Anyway, Uehara and Kiyose use that term and it's what WT:AJ currently recommends, so I'm happy with it until linguists come up with a more compelling classification of Japanese grammar. (BTW, I'm pretty sure we shouldn't use "な adjective" because it is illegible to readers without asian fonts.)

Regarding the spacing, I tweaked the two related templates and it now looks right to me. Let me know if you see otherwise. My limited Japanese grammar competency prevents me from removing 命令形 (meireikei, "imperative") from {{ja-na}} without further research, but I understand your taking issue with it. 形容動詞 (keiyōdōshi, "na adjective", "quasi-adjective", "adjectival verb") conjugations are predicative but 命令形 forms never are, so the construction seems impossible, not to mention wrong since if it exists, it would probably end with なれ (nare). I'll also have to have a research whether the 未然形 (mizenkei, "imperfective") form is possible. Rodasmith 21:38, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Although 形容動詞 (keiyōdōshi) don't have a 命令形 (meireikei, "imperative") form of their own because of the reasoning above, the semantic equivalent is to combine their 連用形 (ren'yōkei, "continuative/conjunctive") form with あれ (are), the imperative of ある (aru) or, for a different shade of meaning, to combine the conjunctive with なれ (nare), the imperative of なる (naru). So, it looks to me like the template was accurate, in a sense, except for its peculiar romaji spacing surrounding de and are (which I have fixed).

Since だろ (daro) is the 未然形 (mizenkei, "imperfective") form of the copular だ (da), I think the form indicated on that row of {{ja-na}} really represents the plain root (noun form) of the 形容動詞 (keiyōdōshi) followed by the imperfective of the copular. I cannot find that explanation or example usage of such construction anywhere, but it makes sense grammatically. If that's a valid interpretation, it might make sense to list a polite imperfective form as well, e.g. as {{{kanji-stem}}}でしよ ({{{romaji-stem}}} desho). Rodasmith 05:56, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Thinking it over some more, na-adjectives don't really inflect at all -- what inflects is the verb / copula that follows. As such, does it really make sense to have a conjugation chart? Perhaps the conjugation chart should point instead at the verb / copula? At the very least, it should probably be pointed out that the adjective itself is inert, i.e. the root shizuka never changes, for instance. I-adjectives change all over the place, and can form predicates, which is why some folks deem them to be stative verbs when defining grammatical categories a bit more strictly, but na-adjectives are much more constrained.

Also, thinking through what the 命令形 would look like, I think it's probably more like ... ni shiro, as I've never heard 静かなれ but I have heard 静かにしろ. But that again will probably require more research.  :) Oh, and I don't think あれ really exists as the 命令形 per se for ある. The only times I've ever seen it is used in a more subjunctive sense, as in こうであれああであれ自分のままにする, "be it like this or be it like that, I'll do it my way".

Turning now to the 未然形, ... nara might be a better fit depending on how one looks at it. In which we have a problem looping us back to the question of conjugation tables -- do we choose the copula da, or the verb naru as the suffix?

Frankly, I don't think we should include the da/desu distinction in the conjugation charts, or they'll become unwieldily (if that's a word) large. Along the same lines, it's probably best to delete the lines including じゃ, as this is simply a verbal contraction of では and should not be used in writing, other than in very informal contexts like manga and personal email. A better place for noting the では -> じゃ kudake-kata would likely be on the 助詞 page for では.

Anyway, must go, work awaits.  :) Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 21:28, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Considering your comments, I researched 形容動詞 (keiyōdōshi) and have come to agree with your treatment of them more like nouns than like verbs. In that light, it makes more sense to show their declension than to try to make them fit the Japanese verb/adjective "conjugation" pattern. So, please see Template talk:ja-na, where I propose to change the structure of {{ja-na}} to show their declension more accurately. Rod (☎ Smith) 06:17, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

厸

I noted that you recently edited the page for 厸, and as I was curious about this character, I had a look at the page. I don't think this one is used in Japanese. The Japanese entry would seem to be for the kanji 隣, which I thought could be the traditional form for 厸, but looking into it over at http://www.mandarintools.com/worddict.html, I find no record for 厸 at all. Japanese 隣 turns out to be traditional Chinese 鄰 (I guess you could say the Japanese version is mildly dyslexic :) ), and the simplified Chinese 邻, which I only found by searching for the Pinyin reading lin.

I'm increasingly puzzled -- 厸 is absent from my Shogakukan, which while not the cat's pyjamas is still pretty decent, nor is it in any of the online Chinese dictionaries utilized by the site linked above. Might this character be a booboo? Curious, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 18:13, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Hm, digging further, I find 厸 is actually listed in the Microsoft IME for Japanese. In that case, perhaps we should make a note on the 厸 page that this is *not* a standard kanji? Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 18:16, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, please do note it as such. The change you saw me make was just a mechanical application of the {{kanji}} template. Rod (A. Smith) 19:47, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Kanji in general

Regarding your recent post to my talk page, I would say the first concern of mine should be to get all Kanji categorized as such. I can write a script to do so, but I need to figure out exactly what to look for. I guess the section headings "===Kanji===" or "===Japanese Kanji===" should catch most of them. Does that sound like a good start to you or are you aware of some kanji entries without such a section heading? Rod (A. Smith) 02:45, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Hey there Rod --

Looks like the "==Japanese Kanji==" heading is irregularly used, with some pages using "==Japanese==" followed further down the page by "===Kanji===". As such, searching for a "===Kanji===" heading might work better, only then you might also catch entries for compounds and other words that happen to also have a kanji form.

Examining several single-kanji entries, the common points seem to be that:

1. The entry is a single character
2. They all seem to have a "==Chinese Hanzi==" header (though some only link for "Hanzi" while others also link for "Chinese")
3. They also have a "==Japanese==" or a "==Japanese Kanji==" or a "===Kanji===" header (with similar differences in linking)

Any automated parsing to catch such pages starts to look pretty complicated just given these disparities, but I hope my observations help at least somewhat. -- Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 05:42, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

For the Non-Jōyō kanji, I like your proposal for a template. How about the template name {{ja-non-jōyō of}}, similar to {{plural of}} and the like? I experimented at 體 with using such a template, dropping "other info" and putting the note right on a definition line, but it looks awkward the way I did it. Maybe I should use "other info" as so many current kanji entries do. What do you think? It's not really recommended by WT:AJ and somehow seems strange to me, but maybe that's just me. Any suggestions? Rod (A. Smith) 03:09, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

體 looks good to me, but when I got to thinking it through, having the "non-jōyō" bit on a definition line could be problematic for entries that actually have a definition, such as 郷 for instance. Also, might it be better to point to w:Jōyō kanji, which really explains what they are, rather than an as-yet non-existent jōyō Wiktionary entry?

Another thought too, is that perhaps the template should be titled {{ja-non-joyo of}} instead, dropping the macrons? Though more accurate, the macrons can be a chore to input -- I haven't figured out any handy keyboard shortcuts, necessitating the use of the edit bar on the bottom, which is functional but not terribly elegant -- and using just plain "o" in the template name would make it easier to use. Or can redirects be used for templates too? That might be ideal -- keep the template name with the macrons as the more correct rendering, but add the redirect too for easier input. -- Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 05:42, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Userpage image

On the English Wiktionary, the only userboxes are supposed to be Babel indicators.

The image on commons has been replaced and nominated for deletion. See WT:CT#4_June for the relevant links to the Commons pages. --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:54, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Hodo

Is it alright to remove the [[Category:Japanese particles]] from that hodo stuff? Your user page comes up first when you serch that Category. :P Just wondering. --BiT 15:56, 16 June 2007 (UTC)