User talk:Jun-Dai/archive 20050603

Hi Jun-Dai,

Can you tell me what the "Tr end" template is you have created? Is there a a "Tr begin" is that is meant to go with it? — Paul G 18:41, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 18:51, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)>It was something of an experiment, so I didn't want to advertised it until I felt comfortable with it. I created the template for the translation tables. There is a Tr_top, Tr_mid (for the split between columns), and Tr_bottom. The idea is that it's a little bit easier to type (and no need to copy and paste) than the small mess of code for the translation tables. The even larger idea is that if we decide to put the translations in a box on the side or something similar, we need only change the template, and the entries will all be fixed automatically.

The only page I implemented it on was Japanese. It seems to work out pretty well, and so I might start adding it to a few other entries, and then I'll post it to the community page or beer hall pages (though if you like the idea, you're welcome to do that for me :)).

Incidentally, I made a little bit of a mess when I created the template, so if you'd care to delete Tr top, Tr mid, Tr end, Template:Lang_mid and Template:Lang_a-k, I'd be much obliged. I'll try not to make such a mess next time.</Jun-Dai>

Hello, I added a comment to Talk:Quotations:Tidal_wave. --Eean 19:27, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

impending argumentation

Jun-Dai, I'm not touching that entry with a ten-foot ethernet cable. Hell, not even my wireless connection.

s/discriminatio,/discrimination,/
s/[[cultural relativism]]]/[[cultural relativism]]/

#[[intolerance]]
#[[KKK]]
#[[Moral Majority]]
#[[Moral Minority]]
#[[NeoNazi]]s
#[[Rainbow Coalition]]
#[[Zero tolerance]]

<Jun-Dai 17:57, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)>Thanks! At least for now, I'm going to leave out mention of words for specific groups of people (such as the moral majority or NeoNazis), unless those groups exist to address racism. I'm definitely surprised that I missed intolerance :). Also, in my experience, zero tolerance doesn't have anything to do with racism per se. It's generally used to refer to behavior or traits that someone won't put up with ("I have zero tolerance for whining" or "My policy is to have zero tolerance for late essays"). Do you have any explanation of a connection?</Jun-Dai>

Sorry for the misspellings. Also KKK (even though you're ignoring groups for now.) Zero tolerange is an institutional mandate, not just an individual teacher's preference for timeliness. Zero tolerance seems empirically to be slanted against schools in ghettos, (as a bizarre form of indirect racism) but that's my personal POV, and yes, has no place on the official list. (Please delete this entire section when you have read it.)

wantedpages

Jun-Dai, I recently saw my little pet project added to the Recent Changes page - my template for Wantedpages. I noticed you added oriental out of order. I'm curious; I can't think of anyone better qualified to give a thorough definition of the term than you (out of the current batch of regulars that is)...so why did you want that one single word added out of order? --Connel MacKenzie 14:24, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 18:41, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)> I added it before some other words that I had just added (so in a sense it's not really out of order). I had noticed it in the list, and I wanted to see what someone else came up with before giving it a go. If I am likely to rewrite it, however, then I suppose that's not very nice, and I should simply try to give it a definition of my own from the very beginning. At the very least, however, I have to think about it first, and that's a sure-fire way for me to remember that it needs to be done. I didn't realize that the WantedPages was your pet project (how does one go about adding a line of words to the top of the "Recent Changes page", or for that matter, the main page?). Even so, I'm impressed that you noticed the change  :)</Jun-Dai>

When the server becomes intolerably slow, Special:Watchlist is one of the few things that does still work, so while I'm waiting for a word (or series of words) to post, I surf that, and peek at the differences view. It kindof stood out glaringly in that view.

The way *I* got that line added to Recent changes was by putting on my "Mr. Polite" hat, and asking an administrator/sysop.

What I'd like to see on the front page is a dreamy picture of a dead-tree 1913 dictionary with the words floating over it: "Have you ever/ looked up a word/ and thought/ I could write a better/ definition than THAT..." But I'm not graphically inclined enough to do it myself. And I'm still new enough here that I'm struggling to find my way around, and who's who. --Connel MacKenzie 22:09, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Jun-Dai, thank you for correcting ??. I currently don't have the ability to do those characters. (My current hard drive is full; I cannot load the regional languages for them just yet.) --Connel MacKenzie 21:46, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 21:48, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)> Not a problem. Are you able to read the characters? </Jun-Dai>

Nope. They just appear as ??. --Connel MacKenzie 22:02, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oriental

Jun-Dai, apparently I was correct in my hesitation in approaching a definition for Oriental. WOW. I am just an ignorant American; I had no idea people felt so strongly about that term. I am so shocked that it is considered perjorative, that I wonder if all Asian people agree with the sentiment? Is there ongoing dispute about this term, or is it now abolutely verbotten?

I think your Usage note borders on encyclopedic, however I don't readily see any portion of it that can be removed without losing important meaning.

Thank you for writing it up. Perhaps it could use a list of more acceptable euphamisms? Or "recommended substitutions"? I think listing "External links" to ongoing debates about the term might help also, so that it doesn't appear as a single person's opinion. (Note: I'm not saying it is, I'm simply saying it reads that way now.) --Connel MacKenzie 22:00, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It is not at all absolutely verboten (alas). Though it is widely recognized as such in the Asian American community. Not being the object of as much racism, I don't think people in Asia even have as much of an awareness of the term at all, much less an objection to it. You definitely don't see the term very often in the mainstream press, especially if you compare to newspapers from decades ago.

Your idea of "recommended substitutions" is a good one, although it's also a tough one, since a large part of the objection to the term has to do with what the term is trying to define rather than old-school associations with the term.

I shall dig up some external links. There is a brief coverage of it at dictionary.com (i.e., American Heritage). Also, for starters there's a discussion of it here.

Thanks. That link has some comments that echo my notion that Oriental carries no negative connotations at all. It also explains why that notion is misguided: the term was imposed by the British. Fascinating stuff! --Connel MacKenzie 22:43, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 23:07, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)> Well, it's not terribly surprising that people who are not referred to by the term would see no negative connotation. Or rather, it's not uncommon. To the people on the other end of such terms, however, the negative connotation is picked up through it's historical usage or etymology. In the case of oriental and hispanic, there is the additional factor that the term doesn't have a terribly useful function except out of ignorance (i.e., "what else do you call them?"). The term is useful if, say, you are running a Thai restaurant, but you fear some of your customers may not know what "Thai" is, and are more familiar with the idea of "oriental food." Between the general uselessness of the terms and the negative connotation, many people feel that it is time to retire the terms, because even though the people using them aren't being racist, the terms themselves represent a larger problem of racism through cultural dominance (e.g., control over the language--i.e., the assumption inherent in the use of the English language that the speaker is white and male unless otherwise specified).

In summary: neither hispanic nor oriental are well-defined or particularly useful, and I would recommend against using them. In most cases you can simply say Latino or Asian (respectively), and if anyone has a problem with that, the politic thing to do is to ask them what they would like to be called, or how they would recommend referring to the group of people that you are trying to refer to, and then use that instead (and if their view seems sensible to you, then you can adopt that as the default).

I hope I don't sound too condescending, but it seems like you haven't given much thought to the topic (that is to say, you weren't aware of the derogatory connotations of the term, at least as far as a number of the people referred to by the term are concerned), and I thought I'd spell out my views on it.</Jun-Dai>

Perhaps I am hyper-sensitive, but yes, that does sound a little impolite. I gave some thought to what the word means, and the contexts that I've heard it in. I've never before heard that the term has negative connotations. Never. Likewise, it never occurred to me the obvious truism that the English language implies a white, male speaker. As I said before, this is fascinating stuff. Thanks for expounding your views. --Connel MacKenzie 23:54, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

P.S. As an urban American, I would never associate Thai food nor Indian food with Oriental food. The term Oriental food here means only Chinese and Japanese food. Perhaps some rural regions in the US commingle them? I guess in the UK, the meaning is quite different, due to etymology & history? In Austraila, (due to geography) the meaning is probably wildly different again?

<Jun-Dai 00:13, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)>

Re: P.S., that's interesting. As an urban American, I usually hear/see Oriental food as referring to Thai/Vietnamese/Filipino/etc. mainly, and sometimes to Chinese food, and never to Japanese food. I don't know how the term is understood in the UK, and I don't generally hear Indian food referred to as Oriental, but then Indian has a surprising tendency to be excluded from the category of Asian altogether, except when qualified as "South Asian", for whatever reason.

As for the idea that the English language implies a white, male speaker, this comes up in the debate over the use of he as the default singular pronoun for a person of unknown or unspecified gender (people now tend to use he/she or sprinkle their text with a combination of hes and shes precisely in order to deal with this problem). That this the default implies an assumption of maleness rather than anything completely neutral is revealed by the telling fact that most people will use she as the default for people of professions that are strongly associated with female professionals (e.g., nurses and secretaries). Obviously this is a very large topic, and I am not a cultural anthropologist, so I cannot expound in any great detail on it.

I'm sorry for being impolite. It's just that I become frustrated when people are surprised that oriental carries negative connotations in the minds of a number of people (particularly as a noun). That the term is offensive strikes me as patently obvious, largely due to my Asian heritage, no doubt. I'm sure there are many people that simply don't see it as being offensive. It is not by any means your fault, however. It just indicates that awareness of the fact that people find this word offensive has a long ways to go. People who are offended or put off by the term hispanic probably have even farther to go, especially given its use in the official world.

</Jun-Dai>

We seem to be off on several tangents now.

I've never heard of Thai food referred to as Oriental food.

Yes, "he" vs. "he/she" is an obvious truism. But that doesn't stop people from prescriptively correcting "he/she" to "he," as often is still done. Gender is still applied as well to states, countries, ships, etc., and is an important characteristic of the language. That debate is far from over, in the mainstream.

Maybe I'm not being hyper-sensitive; I did consider this issue, but have no prior knowledge at all of any negative connotations. I had jokingly guessed there might be such an agenda, as there theoretically can be with any term that describes people. I was shocked when I saw your entry, not only confirming my guess, but expanding it beyond what I would have imagined. Is this truly a widespread issue in the Asian community, or is it a personal opinion shared by a very small minority within that larger community? I think a plethora of external references would bolster the Oriental entry. I'm sorry to say this, but the more I hear you explain it, the less convinced I am that it is a widespread sentiment. It's almost as if this is a case of prescriptivism gone awry, or a highly POV agenda that ignores the wider Asian community's use of the term. If that is not the case, and I've read too much into it, then the external citations will allay my doubts, and anyone who has similarly not encountered this information before. I don't think that many people who do use this term intend any connotation at all (Asian, European, American) and the descriptive approach would be to downplay the hoped-for issue, instead of prescriptively trying to raise the issue.

(And now, after previewing my post, it seems that to you, I must come across sounding like a racist asshole. I am not trying to be insensitive; but we *are* talking about a single term, a word, and not the larger category that it represents. Rest assured, I will remove the word oriental from my vocabulary, even in the context of my favorite food, but will anyone else? That is very hard to guess.) --Connel MacKenzie 01:30, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Should all or part of this perhaps be moved to the Talk:Oriental page?

---

Wow! --Connel MacKenzie 02:05, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

---

Extension pages for an article

JunDai, please see the entry I made in Beer Parlour, about extension pages. I think this might be very simple solution to the KISS vs Comprehensive entry argument. I repeat it here for your information

---

The other day I did a bit of work on bouncebackability, and noted that there is quite a Wikipedia article on it w:bouncebackability; it's origins etc.

Yet really this article is only the discussion of the origins of the word.

But here in Wiktionary we seem to limit ourselves to the definitions, and some limited etymology, usage notes and quotations.

Seems odd to me that the Encylopedia should have all the information about what is just a word, not the actual topic, but we don't have it.

Then I came across the entry for a punk, and did a bit on that. And added in the Dirty Harry quote of "Do you feel lucky, punk". But I also needed to explain that this was really a misquote, as that isn't the line in the movie (but it sure gets a lot of hits on Google). So I decided to create what I consider we need - an extension page - Punk/More:Usage, and added some of the detail there. Kept the main entry short, and just added a link to this sub-page.

Seems the same treatment could/should be used for bouncebackability, and probably a lot of other words where a more encyclopaedic entry would be justified. we could then take those pure "Lexicology" entries out of Wikipedia.

What do folks think ?--Richardb 14:29, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Beer_parlour"

PuTTY

I finally got around to loading the WinXP Settings --> Control Panel --> Regional settings --> Languages (tab) --> Install files for East Asian languages which then ate 230MB or so. I can now see Kanji characters in PuTTY (as per the instructions from earlier today over on my talk page.) Enjoy! --Connel MacKenzie 07:46, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

BTW, did you ever get this working to your satisfaction? --Connel MacKenzie 08:35, 3 May 2005 (UTC) --Connel MacKenzie 07:14, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 14:16, 12 May 2005 (UTC)> I did not. :( I found the Window->translation on puTTY, and my regional settings in Win2k are set for me to be able to write Japanese, but I can only see grey squares in puTTY. This is an inconvience, as I always check my e-mail through puTTY/pine, and when I receive Japanese e-mails, I have to save them as .txt files and put them in public_html, so I can read them in my web browser. Thanks for thinking of me, though! </Jun-Dai>

Hmmm. I'm using the "Development snapshot" of PuTTY as of 2/4/2005. It displays them just fine for me, on WinXP w/ regional settings mentioned above. Do you think it's a Win2k vs. WinXP problem, or just the version of PuTTY you are using? --Connel MacKenzie 17:21, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Furigana and Kanji readings

Hi, I'm new to here and have written some Furigana articles requested on header of Recentchanges. The articles include {{Furigana}} and {{Kanji readings}}, but these two templates seem to be too redundant, IMHO. What do you think about it? And I'd like to know some sample articles about it. Thanks, eG 12:57, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 21:30, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)> They are a little redundant. The reason behind them, however, is that I wanted the Wiktionary to serve as a furigana dictionary as well as a kanji dictionary. That is to say, one should be able to come to the Wiktionary with the question "what kanji have よう as their onyomi reading" and be able to answer it by going to the よう entry. It might make sense to simply drop the "kanji readings" header, but the benefit there is that someone can go to Category:Kanji readings page and see all the possible kanji readings that we have at the Wiktionary. Now that I am thinking of it, it might make sense to simply have ふりがな entries that also have くんよみ and おんよみ be put in the Category:Kanji readings, but without the header. I'll try this and see what I think.

In any case, use よう as your model. If you want to see what ふりがな articles are in need of completion or improvement, you can go to the (currently fairly small) list at Category:Furigana stub (this is down for the moment, but I imagine it will be back up soon). </Jun-Dai>

Hi, thanks for your reply and suggestion. I saw よう. よう is sometimes used as an interjection and auxiliary verb, so I added about them. One more thing, I edited the Furigana section. It's preferable that the items at Furigana section are separated into On or Kun yomi subsection. Because if Furigana section and its subsections have complete items, they'd overlap absolutely. Thoughts? eG 21:20, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 02:32, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)> To be completely honest, I'm not entirely happy with the decision to join the main furigana section with the on/kun sections. I was not entirely happy with my own solution either, but I wanted to distinguish between furigana for whole words and kanji readings. For example, よう for 幼 is not really a word (as far as I know), but merely an おんよみ reading of a 漢字. There's also the problem of words/phrases/idioms that contain both おんよみ and くんよみ.

The idea is that someone hearing a word (or remembering it by pronunciation) should be able to look up the term through the wiktionary and be presented with a list of words represented by that ひらがな. With the format you've suggested, they would have a list of items, some of which are words, others of which are just 漢字.

If there's a way to do what I'm requesting without the redundancy, then I'm in favor of it, but I don't want to see consolidation at the expense of clarity or at the expense of information. We are simultaneously serving as a kanji dictionary and furigana dictionary, but that doesn't mean that the format needs to be joined. </Jun-Dai>

Hm, okay, I see. Sorry for bothering you. Please feel free to edit よう as a your ideal style. If I have a question or suggestion, then I'd ask you. Cheers, eG 13:20, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 17:00, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)> Well, the formatting is pretty crappy, but you should be able to get an idea of the kind of information I want to convey with the changes I've made to よう. The idea is that the items that are "words" and not just kanji readings have meanings after them. Items that are not the readings of an individual kanji (see かんとく or よっぱらう) should have no On/Kun link. If you have suggestions of how better to get this information across without sacrificing the site's utility as a furigana dictionary as well as a kanji dictionary, please inform me. I haven't settled upon any formatting yet.

Also, I'm still trying to figure out how best to deal with:

• Words or parts of words that are almost always written in ひらがな (e.g., する, ある, お茶). Should these be under their ひらがな entry or their 漢字 entry (with a note indicating that they are almost always written in ひらがな)? In an attempt to follow the formatting of my J->E dictionary (kenkusha), I've been favoring the latter, but I'm not certain that that is necessarily the best.
• Verbs of nouns. Does 勉強する deserve a separate entry from 勉強?

I'm sure I'll have more to add to this list. I'd love to hear some ideas about how best to deal with these. As a native English speaker studying Japanese, I may be in a good position to judge what is most useful in learning the language, but as a native Japanese speaker your input is equally important, since you know best what categorizations and interpretations of the language are actually logical, sensible, and coherent. </Jun-Dai>

Hi, I can understand your idea of Furigana and Yomi dictionaries, and I found them useful for Japanese Kanji learning and searching Kanjis with their readings. Well, also I'm still not so sure what is the best format. Why don't we try to think about it with developing よう as the model article or creating other entries?

Then, I try to answer to other subjects:

• IMO, する and ある are essential and お茶 is also useful. Kanjis for ある (或 (或る), 在る or 有る) are informative for learning of Japanese classics, though these are not used so often in modern Japanese. お茶 can be combined with 御茶, I guess.
• In Japanese dictionaries, AFAIK, there is no article "勉強する". Generally "勉強" include it. So I think, verbs of nouns are not necessary.

eG 00:59, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Quotations:Tidal wave & Tidal wave:Quotes

Hi Jun-Dai.

I think you've seen my article which has a similarish name to yours. Recently my page came up for deletion on Wiktionary:Requests for deletion. I fought and explained and came up with a proposal whereby Tidal wave:Quotes would become Tidal wave/Citations and Quotations:Tidal wave would become Tidal wave/Analysis. I would greatly appreciate your ideas on the subject possibly on the deletion page or on Talk:Tidal wave:Quotes. — Hippietrail 03:59, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Alternate spellings

A while back, the British contingent was berating me for using the heading "Alternate spellings" and after some debate, agreed to the more-Atlantic-ocean-neutral "Alternative spellings", which is how it appears in WT:ELE, the last time I checked. --Connel MacKenzie 08:33, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Instant

Nice changes. Two very minor nitpicks though: "pl." should be "plural" as we are not to abbreviate within definitions (I follow the convention of italicizing it, followed by a colon) and the plural senses should be wikified (as per several conversations on WT:BP and elsewhere.) --Connel MacKenzie 09:03, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

<Jun-Dai 09:29, 16 May 2005 (UTC)> Sounds good. To be precise, the conventions don't sound good at all, but it's good to have conventions for this, and so I shall follow them  :) </Jun-Dai>

Policy Page

Thanks very much for also thinking about the need for Policy. However, you need to know there was alreadysome discussion along these lines. So I've moved your "Policy" stuff to the pre-existing Policy Page Wiktionary:Proposal for Policies and Guidelines. I've put it in a page Wiktionary:Proposal for Policies and Guidelines/Jun-Dai. Can you work on integrating it into that "Policy" page and/or the associated talk page.I've put a redirect under Wiktionary:Policy

One thing to note is that, as yet, there is no approval process!

Thanks. --Richardb 02:40, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Admin

I nominated you on Wiktionary:Administrators. Ncik 23 May 2005

Good luck Jun-Dai. I tried to be humorous when I modified my comment on my vote for you. But it occurs to me that I am possibly the least qualified human being to criticize anyone about their sleep disorder.  :-) --Connel MacKenzie 04:14, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Namespace#Usage:

Is Wiktionary:Namespace#Usage: accurate? Did you make it any further with that experiment? Also, what happened to your policy proposal? I can't really comment on it (much), as I prodded you into writing it. Is it too in-depth perhaps? --Connel MacKenzie 05:41, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)