Hot answers tagged orthography
19
In modern Japanese these pairs are pronounced exactly the same:
ず, づ are pronounced either [dzu] or [zu].
じ, ぢ are pronounced either [dʑi] or [ʑi].
(the first sounding like the English J and the second like the French J, but both are with the middle of the tongue raised to the hard palate, producing what seems like a softer pronunciation).
So in short, ...
18
The Japanese equivalent of underlining for emphasis would probably be using 傍点【ぼうてん】 or 脇点【わきてん】:
Dots added over (if writing horizontally) or to the right (if vertically) of each character.
Wikipedia Japan has a page detailing their use, as well as their variants:
文字種としては、縦書きの場合は主に黒ゴマあるいは白ゴマが使用され、横書きの場合はビュレット（黒丸および白丸）が使用される。
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18
It's perfectly fine to use only half-width arabic numbers.
2009年6月30日
However, there are other rules in operation, coming from various time in the history of writing and printing:
A. Don't use arabic numbers at all - maybe seen in formal documents:
二千九年六月三十日
B. Half-width for two-digit numbers, otherwise full-width - mostly in printed materials:
...
14
ローマ字 is ローマ plus 字, not Roman plus 字.
ローマ is a Japanese noun, derived from a noun (from Latin "Roma", meaning Rome), while Roman is an English adjective, derived from an adjective (from Latin "Romanus", meaning "of Rome, Roman").
Since ローマ字 does not come from the English word "Roman", it has no ン sound.
(Although ローマ is probably not directly from ...
13
What I can think of is Japanese numbers are using when registration of house, family registrations, and some contracts.
But they used 壱 弐 弐 拾 萬 instead of ー 二 三 十 万 on those kinds of registrations, contracts to prevent obvious modifications. And according to trade law, session 2, No. 48 「壱、弐、参、拾」 are mandatory.
Old books using those Japanese numbers a ...
11
Some native feelings about the different spellings:
かっこいい is neutral
カッコイイ, カッコいい or anything with katakana looks like written by someone pretending to be young
かっけえ is frequently heard from young people. When a high-school student writes this in school, it would be corrected to かっこいい
恰好いい looks sixty years old-fashioned.
11
Searching on a name dictionary you'll get a long long list (93) of "midori" as a girl's given name. This excludes "midori" being used as a family name or a place name.
"Midori" is not limited to the kanji for green though. It can be made up of other kanji having 名乗り (nanori - name reading) of "mi", "do", "ri", "mido", "dori" compounded to form "midori".
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11
Expanding on my comment, some word types that are likely to be written in kana which haven't been covered so far:
Cases where one or more kanji in the compound are considered rare/difficult (for the level of the text).
Examples: 石鹸【せっけん】, where 鹸 is the sticking point. This is commonly written せっけん or 石けん, or if the kanji are used furigana may be provided. ...
9
As you guessed, it depends on the type of writing and the target audience, and also on the style. In text written for general public, such as newspaper articles, foreign personal names are usually written in katakana. In academic books and papers, it is more common to see names in the Latin script (at least in mathematics and computer science).
As for ...
8
All 3 are correct.
could appear in old and/or formal Japanese, where the question mark is often absent. Note that you would still need a punctuation then, probably a full stop: 「。」
and 3. will both appear anywhere and depend only on the level of formality of the conversation. Omitting the particle would make your question slightly more familiar (or, in ...
8
まし is not a loanword. It is actually 増し, the noun form of verb 増す (“to increase”). However, it is not usually written in kanji, probably because the meaning diverged widely from the original verb 増す.
If you follow the standard orthography, there is no reason why まし should be written in katakana. However, it is true that many people write マシ in katakana. ...
8
I agree with Matt that there's no fixed standard about which romanization scheme to use. My guess is that it depends on the project, author, term and the author's swing of mood at the moment, just as in any other context of Japanese romanization.
[Personal point-of-view] If I were to use a Japanese variable name, I'd use Hepburn-style romanization, because ...
8
I think that it is rare to use the words such as A子 and B子 as an abbreviation. They are placeholder names for females, and they do not usually mean that the names actually end with 子. Just like suffix 子, suffix 男 (such as A男) is often used to make placeholder names for males. (Here is a random example which uses A男 and B子.)
Some people use letters with 子 ...
8
Roman Jakobson famously said:
"Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey."
His point was that every language can sufficiently convey any idea that can be expressed in another language. The difference is that for each language there are some properties that must be specified when an idea is conveyed, even ...
8
Generally in Japanese handwriting the more feminine something is the more rounded out and cute it will be. If I think of girly English writing I think of neat bubbly letters while guys tend to be sloppy and angular. This carries over to Japanese.
Additional reading:
http://guideline.livedoor.biz/archives/51130942.html
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7
I'm sorry to inform you that there are many, many different ways to write the Japanese name Midori, as you can see from this search of a name dictionary. If you need to know how to write a specific woman's name, you probably need to ask her.
As for your other question about みどりの, the の is a word that comes between a word and the word it's describing. ...
7
This may be obvious but not has been stated explicitly on this page: in vertical writing, kanji numerals are much more preferred than Arabic numerals. Moreover, in vertical writing, we sometimes use the positional system with kanji, especially for large numbers; that is, 六万五千七百四円 is sometimes written as 六五七〇四円.
7
That's a good question, I used to wonder about that myself! This is what I've found out through my own experiences:
When the Chinese brought their written language to Japan, there were only Kanji (Literally, Chinese Characters). Unfortunately, although this kind of ideographic writing system works perfectly for the Chinese language, the Japanese language is ...
7
Mora with a glide: I guess, if it is ever used, the mark will express the whole mora rather than just the glide because two consecutive glides are not permitted in Japanese phonology.
Long vowel: For katakana, there are specialized symbols ー and ｜, so you cannot use it. For hiragana, you can you it.
あゝ、今日も終わりか。
Nasal coda: Japanese does not allow ...
7
First of all, you are right about ー: it always extends the vowel that came before it. (And the official name for it that I know is 長音符, ちょうおんぷ, "long sound mark", like cypher said.)
What struck me though is that in this case, they are using katakana for a word for which there is kanji: 携帯けいたい, and in that kanji, the first character is read けい. Not けえ.
...
6
I can't answer on the particular case of a word that would receive furigana after not receiving it earlier (the opposite, however, is naturally quite common): assuming the words are rigorously identical and identically read both times, this sounds more like an oversight than anything.
As for the general rules of adding furigana, they are pretty ...
6
I am not sure if there is any rule either (sounds like too recent a problem to have a strong tradition attached to it), but I thought this comment made (on the original Stack Overflow) by a native Japanese was interesting:
I'm a Japanese, and I loathe full
width numerals! Please just use the
half-width numerals within Japanese
sentences. All you ...
6
As you pointed out, there is no single correct pronunciation of Classical Japanese. It would be more accurate to teach different pronunciations used in different periods, but it would be probably too complicated to teach at schools. The pronunciation of Classical Japanese taught at high schools is the newest one used in Meiji period and later. (I do not ...
6
Short answer: no.
For details, read on.
There aren't any rules (as far as I know, anyway). Generally the insertion of spaces in texts written purely in hiragana serves only to improve readability. The writer can take liberties in doing this. Some common patterns do arise, though.
First, you generally tend to break things up word by word, so each ...
5
Your example case is a little strange and without more context, I am not sure about the intent.
In general cases, just like Amanda said: it indicates a word being cut-off (or sometimes a very strong exclamation).
An interesting aspect is that it seems to work a little different from the equivalent in Western languages, in that it does not actually cut-off ...
5
Yes, you are right. There is an old rule in the industry to substitute [半角]{はんかく}スペース for [読点]{とうてん} and [全角]{ぜんかく}スペース for [句点]{くてん}. 半角スペース are counted as 0.5 spaces and 全角スペース are counted as 1 space respectively. However, television shows are less strict than movies and generally only omit 読点 only, whereas movies omit both.
So, why is there this rule?
...
5
You forgot the other option: abbreviations like IPアドレス, HDD, etc. This is quite common when you start getting long, unwieldy strings of katakana.
I think there are multiple factors going on:
People who work in electronics/computing are more likely to have a good command of English, and know the terms in English, and direct borrowing of English terms is ...
5
[麒麟]{きりん} (Daijisen, Daijirin) means both giraffe and Qilin in Japanese. According to Wikipedia, the word originally meant Qilin in Chinese (the 5th century BC), and when giraffes were brought to China in the 15th century, the same word was used to describe giraffes because of some common characteristics between giraffes and Qilin. (Aside: in the modern ...
5
This is purely anecdotal and based on my own experience and confusion with this, but ううん has generally been a negative interjection, as in definition 1, and うーん has a meaning in English like "mmmm" or "ummm" or "hmmm" or something like that, conveying reluctance. I figured this out after some confusing situations wherein I would suggest going somewhere or ...
5
I think the difference between the is really captured by their appearance alone. As you mentioned, ～ sometimes has a sort of wavy 'tremolo' type feel to it, or at least that's the image evoked by looking at it. I'm not sure how many times you would actually fluctuate the pitch like that in an actual reading, though. I usually associate it with a kind of ...
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