Re: Megami71

Captain Nerd wrote:

In article <V66dnf5dJKe5JYDZnZ2dnUVZ_umdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxx>, The
Wanderer <inverseparadox@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Captain Nerd wrote:

あかさた vs. アカサタ

Then that's not precisely "representation" in the sense I was
talking about, is it? I'm talking about representing kana in
romaji, not about font issues.

I'm not really sure what you're trying to get at, here.

I see, you aren't interested in representing the actual Japanese
directly, you want to represent Japanese in some form of ASCII text
for your own purposes. I understand now.

Pretty close. It's not that I'm not interested in being able to
represent Japanese directly (although I'm not sure "represent" is quite
the correct term in this instance, but that's another argument), since I
don't have any means of doing so; it's that doing so is not what I was
talking about at the time.

Typing "fairu" yields ファイル in this window, using the katakana
font on my Mac. Not sure how your font will represent these
characters.

It comes out just fine. This does answer one small part of the
question I'd asked, but it does not satisfy me that the system
you're using will be able to arbitrarily produce the characters
desired; if you wanted to write *just* the ァ, without having to
have it be next to any specific predefined other kana, does the
romaji you're using for entry provide any way to do that short of
copy-and-paste from a longer string?

There is a "kana pallete" as part of the Kotoeri interface that lets
you click on a small kana vowel, "ャ", "ュ", "ョ" and "ッ", and it
inserts the character wherever your cursor is. There is a kana
pallete for both hiragana and katakana.

So, in other words, the answer is "no, but there's a non-romaji-based
interface which does allow that". Well enough.

(That's not *perfectly* satisfactory for some of the things I've wanted
to do - I've seen other characters than those nine rendered in "small"
form in at least a few places in manga and video games, although the
only place which springs to mind is a "ne?" rendered small in a context
which implied that it was spoken in an almost pleading tone - but it's
good enough for more than 99% of all purposes people are likely to
need.)

My Japanese (native) teacher refers to it as a "consonant
doubler" for the following consonant sound. It isn't quite a
glottal stop but it is a stop and an extension of the beginning
consonant of the next kana. At least, that's how she says it and
how she taught us to use it. In your example, the "ya" would
still be as short as usual, but there is a beat while holding the
"p" in "pa".

True enough, but since it also has a discernible effect when
appearing in a place which is *not* followed by any consonant (i.e.
at the end of a sentence - I've seen it used that way), and since
it does seem to fit in the more common instance for reasons whose
examples escape me for the moment (and I can't take too long
thinking since I have to work again this afternoon), I refer to
them usually as "vowel extenders". To my ear, the effect of the
character *is* on the preceding vowel, not on the following
consonant - to the limited extent to which it bears any relationship to either.

A trailing "ツ" is used as an emphasis, similar to an exclamation
mark. To my knowledge it isn't pronounced nor does it affect the
pronunciation of the previous vowel.

Probably, yeah, but by now I've lost track of why it was important to
argue this part, so right or wrong I don't feel like continuing down
this track any longer. I continue far too many arguments just out of
momentum, and I'd like to cut down on that number if I can manage it.

A "vowel extender" would be something like the "う" following any
kana with a trailing "o", as in "どうも" which adds a beat to the
"o" in "do".

I've rarely been able to get the faintest idea why that sort of
occurrence is not simply treated as "the additional vowel う occurs
at this point", since the sound matches that explanation equally
well for at least virtually and perhaps actually every example I've
ever come across.

Except the pronunciation of the additional kana changes to the vowel
sound of the previous kana, thus "せんせい”the "い" is now "え". *That* is
what the teacher calls a "long" or "extended" vowel.

....but that is an い, not a う, which is the vowel I was talking about.
I've never even heard it argued previously that any other vowel than う
acts to extend the previous vowel sound.

Bear in mind, I have to pay attention to what my teacher says,
and how she says it, if I want to pass my classes. そして、先生は日本 人で
す。I defer to her judgement.

Acknowledged - I've done a few similar things in my time. That
doesn't mean that I necessarily pay one whit of attention to them
*outside* of class, however.

(As for the other bit - terminology is terminology, I work with
what makes sense to me, and the issue of what the small 'tsu' and
the like are called is a digression anyway.)

Except when it comes to dealing with other translators and other
people who have learned the traditional methods. If you're only
dealing with yourself, you don't have to care about what others do or
the terminology they use.

True enough. I do adapt (mostly), when dealing with other people, to
things which match what I expect them to recognize and use; my point, I
think, was that I'm not particularly likely to change my own views to
match theirs just because of that.

Are you referring to "kanjipad"?

I believe I am, yes. It's been some time since I tried it, but that
name does ring a bell.

[snip]

I do *all* of my Japanese lookup with one of JEDI (now defunct),
WWWJDIC (primarily for longer sections, which happened to appear in
a copy-and-pasteable form, when I'm feeling lazy), or kdrill; in
practice, since so little of what I need to look up is kana (and
most of what *is* kana isn't easily searched on), I use kdrill
almost exclusively. Its radical search feature is powerful enough
to get me by, although I do run up against its limitations from
time to time. I've gotten fairly good at identifying 'component
radicals' in most types of kanji, although there are still
extensive problems in that direction.

I would recommend a paper dictionary called "The Kanji Learner's
Dictionary" published by Kodansha. It's small, and doesn't require
either an Internet connection or electricity. You will have issues
with their romanization, though. They have several methods for looking up kanji, from radicals to stroke count to on/kun romanized
pronunciation. It covers a bit more than 2200 of the most used
kanji, including kanji used for personal names.

http://tinyurl.com/pbqvr

I'll give it some consideration, although ongoing financial issues
crossed with the "uncomfortable romaji" bit mean I may not get to it
anytime soon.

(I'm also Not Remotely a fan of tinyurl or its kin, but presumably I can
find the book at a later date simply by Googling or searching Amazon or
the like.)

Obviously, you are pursuing a direction that I am not, so I won't
be able to contribute anything more to helping with your problem.
I've passed along what help I could, which apparently isn't much
at all, if any.

Regardless, it is mainly the thought that counts; I do thank you
for that. <grin>

どういたしまして。 ^===^

I've never previously encountered that with a て before - but as it
happens, I have just recently encountered the form どういたしましょう
and had no clue how to translate it. I've gone with "What should we
do?", but that's almost entirely a punt. Do you have a better
understanding of the actual meaning of this term by its components,
rather than simply as a black-box single unit?

(Random question, purely from curiosity since it doesn't actually
interfere with anything: is there any particular reason why your
posts have the new text indented by so many spaces after every
newline?)

My style. I use a tab to differentiate my new text from the previous
text, since sometimes left justifiying reply text isn't as clearly
distinct from the "> " lines as I like. I've been doing it for so
many years (decades) that it's instinctive now.

I've never seen anyone else do that, but there's nothing particularly
wrong with it, as long as you don't mind that the extra space disappears
when rewrapped while quoting.

--
The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
.

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