From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Help:Japanese is part of WikiProject Japan, a project to improve all Japan-related articles. If you would like to help improve this and other Japan-related articles, please join the project. All interested editors are welcome.
NA	This page is not an article and does not require a rating on the quality scale.
Japan To-do: edit purge Full to do list

Contents 1 IPA 2 Name change 3 Name change (again) 4 Rewording 5 Hard or long? 6 Removed pseudophonemic transcription 7 Help:Japanese/Editing 8 Mora 9 Japanese form needed 10 "original Hepburn" 11 So-called "help" is FAR too detailed 12 the consonant 'f' 13 Those who can read &/or write Japanese; Could you help me on a wikipedia project? 14 /i/ 15 About this page as the target of the nihongo template link 16 The vowel /e/ 17 Pen names 18 Add help template? 19 Long/short vowels, a/o/u versus e/i? 20 Archive? 21 Link copied from Yuri

IPA

Japanese vowels are pronounced as in Italian or Spanish according to the article. How is that helpful if you don't know Italian or Spanish? What's needed is an IPA transcription. Jimp 2Nov05

I agree. Feel free to add it; however I feel that I&S also have a place here since a lot of peole (even if they don't actually speak the language) are familiar with the sounds. 'nother Remark: although I know what Japanese sounds like, I'm not too well versed in IPA. I also have a disagreement with a a lot of quite well regarded textbooks on, among other things, the pronounciation of the u, so it's quite possible that I'm not the right person to do this. Shinobu 09:54, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I think I shall when I get round to it. Jimp 5Nov05

How is IPA helpful for people who have not studied its special symbols? Fg2 06:48, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

"The consonants are pronounced like in English." - This is not accurate either, because something like "wheel" contains the "Latin i", while "well" does have the "Latin e". So, this should be fixed! Jengelh 17:04, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

You're talking about vowels, not consonants. Of course the Japanese consonants are not identical the English ones either. Perhaps it should say something like "much like" or "roughly like". Shinobu 23:02, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

"How is IPA helpful for people who have not studied its special symbols?" asks Fg2. It's not. You're right. What's the alternative? Those who have not studied the IPA symbols had either better do so or forget about having any hope of understanding anything written about pronunciation.

Suggest such vague statements as "much like" and "roughly like"? Don't people want to know how the sound is rather than what it sort of kind of sounds like? I'm not opposed to having both but IPA is best and is what the Wikipedia manual of style recomends.

Note also that there is a great problem with saying such and such in Japanese is like so and so in English. Well doesn't have the Latin e ... doesn't it? It all depends on your accent. Similarly, how about "オ"? I sounds sort of kind of like the vowel in cot for me but tell this to an American. Jimp 19Dec05

Jimp, I really can't agree with your stance here. You have to remember this is a general guide for people that get confused when they see they see a squiggly character beside a strange English word and so they click on a little question mark wondering what the hell it's doing there. This is not meant to be a comprehensive guide in any way (hence the link to Japanese phonology etc.) and to force any level of linguistics on Wikipedians of this level is simply nonsense.

The 'vague' statements are there to please the 2 opposing camps; the people who want facts but would be confused by wordy or truly comprehensive explanations, and the people who will argue that the statement this = that isn't quite true in situation xc, xe, and xp so it shouldn't be stated so plainly.

To put it simply I think you're completely messing with the learning curve here by not only increasing the simplicity of the English, but increasing the amount of linguistic jargon.

Lastly, your statement: Those who have not studied the IPA symbols had either better do so or forget about having any hope of understanding anything written about pronunciation. comes from what theory, general understanding, or justified belief? As an almost trilingual teacher of languages, I can honestly say that knowing IPA is necessary in absolutely none of the 4 basic areas of language study, although it may be useful to a certain type of intellectual, and interesting to another. If you had that kind of mind set towards learning anything on Wikipedia, you'd have to have studied advanced Calculus notations and modern theologies on logic before you could understand even the most basic article about addition and subtraction.   freshgavin TALK   

Putting aside your confused maths analogy: of course you don't need to know IPA in order to acquire the phonology of a language (let alone other aspects of it). That's because you usually have speakers of that language at your disposal. However, users of this web page do not. Sounds have to be represented as graphemes, and the set of IPA graphemes is the best yet devised. Use of IPA is in no way incompatible with less formal guides, and there's nothing wrong with the accurate explanation of Japanese sounds in terms of Italian or Spanish sounds. (However, I've removed the Spanish comparison as it seemed misleading at best, if not plain wrong.) -- Hoary 01:19, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Since writing that comment I have taken it upon myself to learn IPA, so I have a slightly different view on the issue now, but I still can't agree with Jimp's "all or nothing" proposal. I agree that the IPA should be included... must be included for an accurate transcription, but of all books on Japanese topics directed at a general audience, I wouldn't count on finding any using IPA, and yet all of them manage some way to express Japanese in a reasonably useful manner.  freshgavinΓΛĿЌ  02:21, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Name change

Another point. This should be called Japanese/Help: this is an English encyclopædia after all ... besides those of us who know Nihongo means Japanese probably don't need this help. Jimp 5Nov05

Well, I feel the present title makes more sense as it creates a more consistent style with regards to the other help pages. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 01:59, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Name change (again)

I suggest moving this page to Help:Japanese. Would the Help namespace be correct? —Philip N.✉ 12:36, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I seriously don't know what that namespace is for, but this is a help page so it sounds good. Ashibaka (tock) 19:01, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

If someone objects, we'll notice soon enough. The Help:-namespace seems more fitting than the original location, which I merely chose because I felt it a bit presumptious (for want of a better word) to add a page to the Help:-namespace. I support the move; it makes sense having all help files in the Help:-namespace. Shinobu 19:28, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

It turns out that this namespace is supposed to be for MediaWiki templates, but that strikes me as silly seeing how Help:Contents (a Wikipedia-only article) is linked from the top of every page. So I say, damn the torpedoes, this name is fine. Ashibaka tock 01:37, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Rewording

Slight change of wording and I added a little to the pronounciation. The way it was written before wasn't of much use as it didn't actually indicate some of the pronounciations but rather referred to them. The IPA guide is completely useless if you're not a linguist (I'm rather well versed in linguistics and I still can't look at IPA) but I'm still having trouble explaining pronounciation for gutteral stops (double consonants) and syllabic /n/ when followed by a vowel (a la 万円 man'en). Appreciate input for those 2 cases.  freshgavin TALK   05:11, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I've heard the small tsu pronounced in different ways, e.g. やっと "ya-ato" like it was written *やあと, even though that doesn't seem to be the textbook way to do it. Okay, that was in a song, but still... Shinobu 19:38, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, that's only in music that they pronounce it that way. Just try to produce a gutteral stop at the top of your lungs (in rhythm with music) and you'll see why.   freshgavin TALK    16:24, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

The IPA guide is completely useless if you're not a linguist (I'm rather well versed in linguistics and I still can't look at IPA) This comment strikes me as bizarre. First, here in Japan, many (non-linguist) learners of foreign languages have at least some familiarity with IPA; and it's hard to believe that Japan is unique. Secondly, I've encountered many linguists and while many (syntacticians, etc.) have been rusty in IPA, not one of them has been unable to look at it. Thirdly, I think you underestimate the intelligence of readers of WP, who can surely pick up the necessary rudiments of a notation system if they think it's worthwhile. (In order to make use of IPA, you don't have to know much of it.) And lastly, the kind of person who'll refuse to make any intellectual effort is unlikely to be reading a page such as this: they'll just pronounce the Hepburn as if what's written in it is in one of the languages they already know. -- Hoary 07:23, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Hard or long?

The vowel sound /u/ is hard, pronounced like the oo in moon.

I'm unfamiliar with the use of the 'hard' or 'soft' when talking about vowel sounds. Should this say the sound is 'long' instead? (no snickering from the 12-year-olds please) — mjb 21:14, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... when I was younger I always heard that ŭ in cŭp was 'soft' and ū in jūne was 'hard'. (Note, the macrons I just used are NOT equivalent to the macrons used to romanize Japanese!) Now that I think about it, there's a good chance that it was just something my kindergarten teacher made up to make it easy to understand for kids.

Then again, if you say that the /u/ sound is LONG, it seems to refer to a lengthening (I used the word 'extended' I think) of the sound. For example to paraphrase the pronounciation of the /u/ in 空港 (kūkō) it would appear that there was a long, long /u/ sound (Or a hard, extended /u/ sound... I think the 12 year olds can be excused now).   freshgavin TALK    23:43, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

In my first-grade phonics (this was in Ohio in 1976) I was taught "short" vowels are like those in bat, bet, bit, bot, but; while "long" vowels are like those in mate, mete, mite, mote, and, uh, mute (sort of). Certain consonants could be "hard", like the c in cat, or "soft", like the c in ceiling. Vowels were never hard/soft and consonants were never short/long. I wonder if this is a regional thing or what. When studying Japanese, I was surprised to hear that "long" vowels were simply extended to what English speakers would consider a normal duration, though without dipthongs. — mjb 23:59, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

To complicate matters even further, there seems to be a lot of variation in the pronunciation of the u. The variant I seem to hear most is like the French u or the German ü, or a schwa when silent. A Latin or English like u seems to occur but much more seldomly. But I'm not an expert and the textbooks seem to disagree with me so please ignore that comment. Shinobu 02:57, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Mote? Did you learn Shakespeare in first-grade? Silly mjb. I think Shinobu means romance or English /u/, because the latin /u/ would be pronounced long, as that was before the whole pronounciation shift. What do you mean by variance in pronounciation? In Japanese you mean? I wouldn't say there's much of a variation but nobody would deny that it has a different value than the other vowels in Japanese (hence the des' instead of desu) but honestly there is a little bit of pervertion of the /u/ sound especially at the end of a sentence (mostly among young people who are experience with making stupid sounds with their mouths) which could make it sound closer to something like /uei/ e.g. ittekuruei!. Umm... I can't really explain that anyways so forget it.

I'll change the descrition to recognize long/short with a small explanation.   freshgavin TALK    06:36, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't know about romance u's because I don't know how they are pronounced; for clarification: I've heard both, although a lot less than the ü. (It's part of what makes jpop attractive; I can't help but enjoy the way moon is pronounced like "German" mühn.) But again, I'm not an expert etc. etc. Oh, by the way, I think the words you are looking for are "closed" and "open". "Well": closed; "fake": open (and slightly diphtongized (is that a word?)). Shinobu 13:10, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah you're probably right. I'm not sure how many people would understand 'closed' and 'open' though, it sounds a little IPAish (as real a word as dipthongized is). If I were doing the word creating around here, I would have chose dipthongified.   freshgavin TALK    23:35, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I can't speak for the way Japanese (or German) is pronounced in pop songs, but neither "moon" in English conversation nor ムーン in Japanese conversation is pronounced like as "mühn" would be pronounced in German conversation. Hoary 01:19, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

What I am taking from this conversation is that we should just say The vowel sound /u/ is pronounced like the oo in moon. …or perhaps like the u in altitude. — mjb 04:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd prefer not to use a word like 'altitude'. Sure it actually includes the letter u, but it is sometimes pronounced with a dipthong like altityude and that would be misleading. I would also prefer to use SOME kind of terminology to refer to the different values for vowel sounds, referring to actual sounds is merely a secondary method of explanation to make them easier to understand for people unfamiliar with linguistics turns. (Try and see how much you can get out of the Japanese phonology page.)   freshgavin TALK    23:48, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

@I'm not sure how many people would understand 'closed' and 'open' though:

I wouldn't know about that. In the Netherlands you learn that kind of things when you learn to write (3d grade primary school or so) since a sound being open or closed has important implications for Dutch spelling. But I'm not sure whether English kids learn about these things. Shinobu 15:36, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Hard vs. soft, long vs. short, closed vs. open, etc. etc. all of this is the kind of nonsense that a plain old IPA transcription avoids. Forget your primary school terminology and use IPA. JImp 19Dec05

I've been searching a bit more info, and nowadays the words "free" and "checked" are used, probably to prevent confusion with the "closed" and "open" of IPA which means something else entirely and to disassociate from the concept of open and closed syllables. I don't know if anything of this is specific to Dutch phonoly though. If you want IPA you can grab it from the linked article, but a lot of people can't read IPA. Shinobu 20:56, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Free vs. checked are not very familiar terms. Indeed they are probably less familiar to the average reader than is the IPA. Worse than this, though, is than like long vs. short they are misleading. All vowels in Japanese would be counted as free.

You're right, a lot of people can't read IPA but I don't suggest we use IPA only. I've taken a table from Japanese phonology and pasted it here this should eliminate the need for such terminology. I've also taken the vowel chart which many be a good substitute for IPA. JImp 20Dec05

I don't want to drop IPA either - don't get me wrong on that. I like IPA. Oh, and the chart might clarify things to those who have a basic grasp of linguistics but can't read IPA. Shinobu 19:42, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Removed pseudophonemic transcription

I have removed the pseudophonemic transcription. Slashes, " // ", are used for phonemes. This article had a number of misuses of these. For example, there is no such phoneme as /ch/ also the syllabic n is not the same phoneme as the n in Nara. Rather than go into all the detail I though it best just to refer to orthography using italics. JImp 20Dec05

My bad, I wasn't really positive about the use of the slashes, I was just following the (apparently wrong) examples of some other wiki users. Omoshiwake gozaimasen! m- -m.   freshgavin TALK    16:26, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Help:Japanese/Editing

I've moved Customization and Usage in articles to a new page. This info is only useful to Wikipedians. People who don't edit Wikipedia will only be baffled by all that stuff. Jimp 20Dec05

The "Check for Support"-part with an example of a Japanese text is grammatically incorrect, unless it is using ancient grammar I am not aware about. For example the "ni" in "umarenagara ni shite" and the "to" in "risei to ryoushin to wo" are incorrect. Someone who is sure about the exact grammar and can also change the text in the picture, please do so.

Don't the two spellings of the syllable/particle "wo"/"o" need any discussion? --Danielzzz 06:19, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Instead it's perhaps a good idea to find a new text, make an SVG file, either with embedded font, or with text converted to paths (but be sure to upload the original too in that case).

How about (this text is short, and not too wide, so it allows for side-by-side comparison):

色は匂へど

散りぬるを

我が世誰ぞ

常ならむ

有為の奥山

今日越えて

浅き夢見じ

酔ひもせず

I can create the example file, if necessary. Shinobu 11:31, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Mora

Can anybody justify that guy's edit from Syllabic to mora? He didn't complete the edit so now it doesn't make sense, and I'm not a linguist so I can't tell the difference between the two terms. As far as I understand it mora would be referring to the unit of sound (related to pronounciation but not Japanese specifically) where syllabic refers to the Japanese concept of n as an individual syllable, as opposed to the n from na etc.   freshgavin TALK    05:17, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Once again, in the Hepburn romanization page it states ん as a Syllabic n. If nobody defends the change I'm going to change it back.   freshgavin TALK    00:52, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Above, you claim "I'm rather well versed in linguistics". But you aren't (as is clear from the confusion over slashes in phonemic notation). I'm not knocking your right to contribute here or questioning your ability to raise points of interest, but I do think you should consider pausing and reading around a bit. Me, three years ago I might well have known a lot less than you know now, but now I'm slightly versed in linguistics, giving me a limited insight into morae in Japanese. I'm not a phonologist and thus cannot give an impromptu lecture on the subject, and I also don't have enough time at my disposal to bone up on it and write little disquisitions wherever the matter turns up in WP talk pages. Very simply, however: ア is a mora, ワ is a mora, and ン is a mora. アン is a bimoraic syllable and ワン is a bimoraic syllable; at least as part of アン or ワン, ン is not a syllable. This doesn't mean, of course, that well-intentioned guides to pronunciation for the impatient (as well as guides written by the underinformed) don't call ン "syllabic": you'll easily find material that appears to contradict what I say. However, I don't think a phonologist who's at all familiar with Japanese will contradict it. -- Hoary 01:19, 28 March 2006 (UTC) PS the difference between syllable and mora comes up in various Japanese-language contexts. Consider the word 疲労 and the place-name 広尾. Both are trimoraic but the former has two syllables and the latter has three. (This is why it's written "Hiroo" in Hepburn. Incidentally, please don't ask me why modified Hepburn dictates that, say, "Iidabashi" -- four syllables, not five -- is so written, rather than with a macron: I am no apologist for Hepburn.) -- Hoary 07:29, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't know where you read me saying that I was "rather well versed in linguistics". It looks like I said, "I'm not a linguist so I can't tell". Edit: Nevermind, it looks like I did say that up a few months ago. Guess I got a little bit ahead of myself.
But anyways, all I was contending was an edit that wasn't well justified (in fact, wasn't at all) and it conflicted the statements made on a few other pages related to Japanese phonology. You have made a statement which seems to imply that "moraic" is more standard, and "syllabic" is only occasionally used (I assume in lesser publications). I am (was) not so much confused about the linguistics as I am about the common use of certain terms, but thanks for you explanation.  freshgavinΓΛĿЌ  01:57, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Part of the confusion may also be due to different speakers having different "syllable habits". I've heard some combinations of morae that are normally pronounced as one syllable pronounced separately, as two distinct syllables. This also sometimes happens with the "n". Shinobu 11:36, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Japanese form needed

I had a feeling that there was a category/template/somewhere to post a request for original Japanese names. I've just started the article Seiichi Hatano, and don't know the Japanese form of the name. Is there some method of asking for help, or am I imagining it? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 15:59, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

According to [1] the Japanese title of "Religious Philosophy of Personalism: Seiichi Hatano and Emmanuel Mounier" is "人格主義の宗教哲学 : 波多野精一とエマニュエル・ムーニエ".

So I would think it's safe to say that his name is spelt 波多野精一 (Japanese order). Provided this is the same Seiichi Hatano, that is. Shinobu 17:00, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

"original Hepburn"

I've removed a reference to "original Hepburn". Old man Hepburn first used this rather ghastly romanization system way back in the nineteenth century. It was to some extent a transcription system, paying attention to now-obsolete distinctions in kana use. (Cf the occasional distinction even now between ズ and ヅ.) If we want to talk about "original Hepburn", we'll have to consider that for example 会社 was originally Hepburnized as "kwaisha". Clearly such utterly obsolete versions of Hepburn weren't what was in the mind of the person talking here of "original Hepburn"; I have therefore done some rewording. -- Hoary 07:30, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Great job on the rewording. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 23:25, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

So-called "help" is FAR too detailed

The help section is used to help people who have no knowledge of the Japanese language. Most people who come in here aren't going to understand "mora", "ateji", "bilabial", etc.. Sentences like: "A moraic n followed by a vowel or y is written n'" are also useless. I speak Japanese and I still have no clue what the hell that means. Moraic "n"? Come on... The word "mora" is so specialized it's not even in my Oxford dictionary.

"'a', 'e', 'i', and 'o' are pronounced like Spanish or Italian."

"'r' is pronounced the same as Korean."

Huh? This is an English page. Spanish and Italian, MAYBE you could get away with... MAYBE. But Korean? How many English speakers know what a Korean 'r' sounds like?

And that .png file... WTF?

This help page should be written like the introduction to a Lonely Planet phrasebook, which avoids all of the linguistic terms and comparisons to other languages. The best way to do it is with a chart, that shows the nearest English equivalent of all the sounds using examples. We're lucky that (other than "r") Japanese pronunciation is so easy. We can easily get away with just a chart. (Two would be better, one for vowels, one for consonants) Then, below the respective charts, you explain the difference between "long and short vowels", "double consonants" (no need to use the technical terms) and the difference that the apostrophe makes between "n'ya" and "nya". You briefly show them how the afore-mentioned points are written in hiragana/katakana, using "っ", "ー", etc.

Linguists may cringe at the idea of dumbing it down so much, but this page isn't for linguists. They can go to the Japanese language page for more information. You tell them that at the top of each page or section: "For more details, please see ---" whatever page.

I can see from the talk page that there's already been some discussion about this. I don't see why. It should be obvious that this page is designed to help people pronounce Japanese (from romaji, not from kanji or hiragana) and it should be aimed at a complete beginner with no linguistic knowledge whatsoever. We don't need to duplicate the Japanese language page; we need to dumb that page down and make it accessible to a 14-year-old American manga reader. You need to keep it short and simple. Anything more will just scare people off.Bueller 007 20:24, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I quite agree. And I've agreed for quite a while.  freshgavinΓΛĿЌ  04:04, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I too would like to voice out my agreement with this. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 16:15, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Why not use some sound files instead of trying to figure out which sound in English sounds like this sound in Japanese? wikimedia ja sound files If they're missing one, make more! --Kunzite 23:48, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I would be all for sound files, but I can't create them. A) I haven't got a mic and B) these files should be created by someone Japanese (and someone who's confident that his speech is as close to standard Japanese as possible and free of region/class/gender/dialect related accents and peculiarities). Shinobu 01:47, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

the consonant 'f'

In this edit, Urutapu added to the end of The consonant f is bilabial: the teeth are not used, and the sound is much softer than the "f" of English the following: sounding somewhat similar to the English "h". Because of this, "fu" and "hu" are usually considered correct Romanizations of ふ and フ.

The addition isn't completely wrong, but it isn't helpful, either. Yes, perhaps フ sounds similar to English /hu/, but this may give the impression that it sounds (or is) guttural, which is untrue. If "bilabial" is too technical, one can always rephrase this in terms of "pursed lips" or whatever. And it's not because of a perceived [by anglophones] resemblance to English "h" that フ is romanized "fu" or "hu"; it's because of a perceived resemblance to English "f" that the Hepburn system renders it as "fu", and it's because it's an allophone of Japanese /h/ that other systems render it as "hu". -- Hoary 01:41, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The way Uratapu has worded in essence says "F sounds like H", which isn't putting the correct message across at all. Simply adding that "fu" is sometimes romanized "hu" is sufficient.  freshgavinΓΛĿЌ  04:02, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

But I don't think it's necessary even to say that. As long as Wikipedia uses Hepburn [ugh!], this should explain how to derive the pronunciation from what's written in Hepburn. But if there's a non-negligible number of articles that use an alternative to Hepburn, then yes one might say something like "'hu' sounds the same as 'fu'". (Kunreisiki and Nihonsiki deserve and already get their own explanation(s) elsewhere.) -- Hoary 04:25, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

It's perhaps interesting to note that the pronunciation of "fu" varies among speakers. Most of the time it starts (to my ears at least) with an f, but I've heard it pronounced as h as well. Shinobu 01:43, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Those who can read &/or write Japanese; Could you help me on a wikipedia project?

I need to know how some Japanese names are written in Kanji/Kana, all I have is their romaji form. If anybody thinks they could help me out with this, please leave a note on my talk page. Thanks! Nagelfar 22:11, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

/i/

I'm surprised to read that Japanese /i/ is like the "i" of "fit" in British English and the "ee" of "feet" in US English: perhaps naively, I hadn't been aware of significant US/British differences for either "fit" or "feet", and thought that the Japanese /i/ was between US/British "fit" and US/British "feet". But I am not a lawyer uh I mean phonetician. -- Hoary 04:20, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Scots pronounce "fit" like "feet", so I assume some northern (and scattered pockets of) English do as well, but I've heard no Englishman of the standard variety pronounce in such a way. The other wiki page on phonology uses the American example but not the British example for /i/, and I'd say it's safe to get of the extra one as well.  freshgavinΓΛĿЌ  05:07, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

True, this is actually a minor problem to worry about it too much. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 20:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

About this page as the target of the nihongo template link

1. From my (mainly) readers perspective: at least a minority of readers will be annoyed by the (currently) question marks behind (potentially) all the Japanese spelled words (the {{nihongo}} template). Somewhere a hint to a convenient way to get rid of this question marks might be helpful. Since this page is the target of the question mark link, maybe somewhere in this page (listed in the contents). The only (not really convenient and perhaps not robust) method of getting rid of this question marks that I could find (after a lot of searching) was creating a additional css file as subpage of one's user page of the skin one is using, with:

.t_nihongo_icon {display: none}

BTW, (meta?) if more of this kind of rather extreme help links will be introduced into articles, it might be an idea to put them into a category that can be hidden all at once from preferences (level of help wanted).

2. The top of the page looks somewhat confusing (considering that its aim is to help readers that hardly know a thing). The reference to other Asian fonts, as the first line at the top, seems misplaced. The Japanese text example too big (a few words on a line would suffice, and make room for better navigation). Doesn't the contents box at the top to the side of the intro make the top look overcrowded? Maybe just my impression, therefore I'm not editing it.--Kornelis 09:28, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

To address your questions:

• .t_nihongo_icon {display: none} is currently the easiest way to remove them. It might not be as convenient as one might hope, but it is robust. For easier ways to remove this questionmark and other similar things (like media help and IPA notices) we can only hope that the devs help us out. Which they probably won't, at least not in the near future.
• Originally the hope was that the template could be rigged in such away that only the first instance shows the icon. Due to current wikitext limitations that was only possible with a bit of custom script in the user js.
• Japanese-language Characters should probably be moved down or something. Most of us can view them, so there's no need to have this at the very top.
• Perhaps we should replace the first section with a very short notice saying "If 日本語です looks like five boxes or question marks, click here"?

Yours sincerely, Shinobu 04:45, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I totally disagree with this. Like "bilabial" is helpful to anyone? Or "The consonant r is similar to Korean r."? Huh? If the person doesn't know Japanese, they most likely don't know Korean.

I really think the browser information is more useful to more people than the pronunciation charts or the sounds-like chart where we pull random English words and compare them to Japanese vowels... and the IPA chart that might as well be wrtitten like this for non-linguists: --Kunzite 12:19, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

That's true, but there's a crucial difference: the non-mathematician probably doesn't feel a need to talk about the ideas represented by that mathematical formula, while many non-linguists do want to talk about pronunciation. They have two alternatives (aside from sound files): they can mess around with undefined, ambiguous descriptions like "hard" and "soft" and "roughly like Spanish or Italian ...", or they can learn a bit of phonetics -- well-defined terms and symbols, all of them explained within Wikipedia articles -- once and use them to talk about the pronunciation of any language. They don't need to learn all of the IPA, just what's relevant to the issue they're concerned with. The choice seems clear to me.

@If the person doesn't know Japanese, they most likely don't know Korean.:

:-) Spot on. Yet, since most modern browsers offer foreign character support out of the box, or automatically show instructions on how to activate it when such characters appear, I think pronunciation is more important, and will get more so in the future. But I agree with you we're not trying to give anyone a crashcourse linguistics. Shinobu 21:40, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

The vowel /e/

I am not sure, but the given pronunciation [unless I have missed something] is actually like the a in gate, not the e in get. I have taken a Japanese language course from a native Japanese man who has spoken Japanese before English [speaks English quite poorly] and I was taught that e [like in sake, sahkeh] is pronounced like the a in gate, not e in get. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 142.161.67.86 (talk • contribs) 03:48, 30 July 2006 (UTC).

I suggest you bring this up to a user you is an expert in the Japanese language. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 18:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not an expert in Japanese, but I've seen a lot of anime, and I listen to J-pop (*ducks*) and all I can say is that Japanese pronunciation varies from speaker to speaker. For example, I've heard the "u" pronounced as /y/ even though it doesn't say so on the Japanese phonology article. The cause of this is that where in other languages these vowels contrast (my own native language has a /u/ vs. /y/ contrast for instance), in Japanese they don't, and therefore are more subject to variation. At least that's what I think. Specific to this particular question, most of the time "e" seems to be an /ɛ/ as in "get", while "ei" seems to be an /eː/ as in "gate". But I reiterate that I'm not an expert, so perhaps it better not read this. Shinobu 09:55, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

The final part is correct. "E" is an /ɛ/ as in "get", and "ei" is an /eː/ as in "gate." An exception is 絵 (picture), which is technically え but often pronounced えい (possibly because it's a single mora, possibly because it comes from the obsolete ゑ. Dekimasu 00:54, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Pen names

I'm looking at the article Yoshihiro Takahashi and hoping to clean it up, but I'm confusing myself. His name is shown in kanji, but the article implies that he publishes work with his first name written in hiragana. Is that a pen name? Just a simplification? How would you describe it? Dekimasu 00:58, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

It could be his pen name. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 20:23, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Most likely a pen name. According to this web page, 義廣 (also Yoshihiro) is the real name, which is not written on ja.wp yet though. --marsian 02:38, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Mmph... I didn't explain that well. I know they're pronounced the same way, but I'm wondering what the correct term for it would be. You're not really hiding your identity by writing your first name in hiragana, so I don't feel confident that "pen name" fits. But you are changing the name you're writing under to a certain extent. Is there any other term for such a thing? Dekimasu 11:17, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Add help template?

Should we add this template, {{H:f}} to the Japanese help page? Any comments or criticisms against this idea is most welcomed. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 12:59, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Long/short vowels, a/o/u versus e/i?

Is there a particular reason for grouping the long vowels e/i separate from a/o/u instead of grouping them e/o and a/i/u? After all, 'e' and 'o' are the ones commonly written differently when long (as 'ei' and 'ou'), while a/i/u are often just written doubled. --Quietust 15:24, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

The reason they are listed separately is because they are romanised in a different way, but I don't know why they are commonly romanised as they are. Shinobu 14:12, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Archive?

This page is getting a bit too long and I feel that it is time to archive this page. If there are no objections over this, I shall be doing this within the next 24 hours. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 04:27, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Link copied from Yuri

Reiko-chan's "Japanese for Anime Lovers" homepage Perhaps it's usable. Shinobu 07:11, 6 October 2006 (UTC)