Questions tagged [orthography]
正書法. The standard way of writing the language.
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Origin of 夜露死苦?
I've seen よろしく written out as 夜露死苦 on a couple of occasions where it's being used sardonically. At first I thought it was just authors having fun substituting characters that sound the same, but it ...
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What special kana are used to write foreign words?
How does Japanese handle sounds outside the 五十音図【ごじゅうおんず】? Are there ways of distinguishing sounds such as V or L in katakana renderings of foreign words? How are the missing sounds in the ワ column ...
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ー vs small kana vs long kana for writing long vowels
I had thought that for writing long vowels in Japanese, that small kana was mostly used with hiragana and ー was mostly used with katakana.
I was actually thinking of asking whether there were ...
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Rosetta Stone uses は instead of わ
Just started learning Japanese again. My college offers no class on this so I am learning on my own. I have been using Rosetta Stone on and off again for a while now.
One thing I have noticed is that ...
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Orthography at the turn of the previous century
A couple of days ago I purchased an old book published in 1908.
It uses a strange orthography I haven't encountered before. Everything that is not in kanji is written in katakana, including particles,...
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How do you punctuate phone numbers in Japanese?
Given the phone number in English:
(012) 345-6789
how do you write this in Japanese? Is it:
（０１２）３４５－６７８９
or:
０１２・３４５・６７８９
or somewhere in between? My personal research suggests the ...
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Is 芸姑 a real word?
Do IMEs offer gibberish non-words when they make suggestions?
I know that there's many words that have the same pronunciation, and therefore users of IMEs have to choose the correct one. I think 感じ (...
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Why would one use 当て字?
I came across 当て字 in my N1 vocabulary list, and while I think I understand what it is from the definition "kanji used as a phonetic symbol, rather than for its meaning", I'm not sure what the point of ...
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Haphazard usage of katakana and hiragana for particles and okurigana
I'm looking at this picture of the 日米和親条約 (Kanagawa convention) from the late Edo period and it seems rather strange:
It looks like the non-kanji parts are rather haphazardly written in katakana and ...
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Why is "Yamata no Orochi" written in katakana?
In the game Okami, the demon Yamata no Orochi is written here, and also in a separate game here as ヤマタノオロチ, not やまたのおろち. Even the particle の is in katakana. I'm curious as to why this is. I know that ...
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口ロ Those are supposed to be different characters. How can you tell? [duplicate]
The first is supposed to be the kanji for mouth, "くち" and the sencond is supposed to be katakana. When I typed them in google translate, the sizes were different so I could differentiate them that way,...
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Ordering a drink, conversational Japanese
Disclaimer: This relates to prose, I would never consider being intentionally rude in real life.
I'm currently writing a short-story, and in it there's a scene in a Japanese restaurant. It calls for ...
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Under what circumstances does Japanese read from right to left?
In The Global Soul: Pico Iyer, (disclaimer: the depiction of Japan may be offensive) Iyer says:
Rather perversely I live in Japan, which, as you know, is the most
alien science fiction place on ...
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What is the current usage of Siddham (梵字)? [closed]
I was taught that Siddham is used in modern cultural context of Japan as a system of writing the Buddhis texts and (or) mantras.
What is the exact context of its usage? Is it applicable at all?
My ...
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What is the origin of ゟ (より)?
ゟ is a digraph that is read より. Where does it originate from?
Is it a ligature, like & <- et, or German ß <- ſs -> ss? (Wikipedia claims this, citing no source.) Also, if it is a ...
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Why the き and さ in the 送り仮名 of 大きい and 小さい?
I've always been puzzled over why 大きい isn't 大い and 小さい is not 小い. Is there some etymological reason? (I'm suspecting historical conjugations that changed the き and さ too, just like why 食べる has the べ ...
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Encountered な with ten-ten
I am currently reading a manga for studying Japanese and encountered something strange. A girl exclaims「な゛?!」
The situation is that she has just had water squirted up her nose, so I am guessing it's ...
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What is the difference between the wave dash 〜 and long vowel marker ー when marking long vowels?
I know that the wave dash 〜 can be used in place of the long vowel marker ー sometimes, but I'm not exactly sure what the differences are.
Is there any difference in pronunciation? I read once that ...
user1478
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Is there a standard for where to put spaces in kana-only Japanese?
I've noticed that when Japanese is written mostly or entirely in kana,
it's often written with spaces. For example, a lot of old video games had spaces. I've also seen this in children's books:
Is ...
user1478
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「はは」(母) and ハ行転呼
It occurred to me the other day that if ハ行転呼 had affected all applicable environments without exception, 母 /haha/ (or I guess properly it was /ɸaɸa/, right?)should have become /hawa/.
The Japanese ...
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The forward slash (English vs Japanese)
In English it's common to list multiple items as item/item/item, with the / representing or.
What about in Japanese? Do I keep the forward slash, or maybe 「・」 so it would be アイテム・アイテム・アイテム?
Context:...
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Working with parentheses (English vs Japanese)
In English I could write, "Birds (various kinds)". In Japanese could I translate the version using parentheses as something like 鳥類（各種）, or should the language/parentheses be used differently?
I'm ...
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What qualities characterise girlish Japanese handwriting?
In English, handwriting is generally seen as girl is the mini. caps are almost as large as the maxi. caps, the edges are rounded out, and if the dots are replaced with little cirles reminiscent of the ...
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When writing vertically, where do small kana go?
When writing horizontally, small kana go right next to the syllable they modify as in ちょっと.
Also, when using katakana, long vowels are indicated by an horizontal dash, as in メール.
When writing ...
JNat♦
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Usage of Traditional style characters vs Simplified Chinese characters adopted in Kanji
As I started peeking into Japanese, I see lots of characters in hiragana and kanji where the latter uses Chinese characters that are similar to traditional Chinese ones (I'm familiar with hanzi).
For ...
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Legibility of handakuten and dakuten in small font sizes
I occasionally come across text with a small font size where I can tell that there's either an handakuten ゚ or a dakuten ゙ in a kana character, but I need to zoom in to tell which one it is.
Does ...
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Why is ローマ字 spelt without an ン?
Why is ローマ字 spelt without an ン?
As far as I can tell, it's not because you can't have an ん sound before a じ sound, because 漢字 has an ん sound before 字.
Did early Europeans' term for Roman letters not ...
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Why do Japanese people read Classical Japanese with a set of weird sound shifts?
I'm learning a bit of Classical Japanese recently, and of course the spelling of words is pretty different, due to sound changes over the centuries. For example, きょう was spelled けふ. That I can ...
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Are there rules for when 'e' becomes 'a' in compound words?
For example:
て＋つな＝たづな（手綱）
め＋ふた＝まぶた（瞼・目蓋）
かね＋つち＝かなづち（金槌）
The only thing I can see for sure is that the second word becomes voiced, but that's more of an after-the-fact thing than a rule that dictates ...
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Horizontal writing in the middle of vertical writing
My character dictionary is written in vertical style. In this dictionary, columns of text are sometimes divided into two smaller columns, which are read right-then-left. I've read that this is ...
user1478
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Difference between うーん and ううん
What is the difference between うーん and ううん?
In a comment on Pronunciation of ううん, paullb said that he usually sees the negative interjection ううん written as うーん. This confused me, because I thought ...
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What is the difference in usage between a plural using (a) the kanji repetition character 々, (b) a plural using -たち, and (c) the singular?
I know that there are some noun that are made plural by the kanji repetition character, such as 人々 and 国々. My question is, how does this differ from using the non-plural form of the noun? And how does ...
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Writing キリン vs 麒麟 (Giraffe vs Qilin)
The word きりん appears to mean either a giraffe, or the Qilin.
I've noticed that it is written 麒麟{きりん} when it means Qilin, and キリン when it means giraffe. Is it a mistake to write 麒麟 if I mean giraffe?...
user1478
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Distinguishing 沙 from 砂
I looked up both 沙 and 砂 in my 学研{がっけん} 漢和辞典{かんわじてん} today. It appears that they share the same list of readings (サ、シャ、すな、いさご). I also see that some words can be written with either kanji. Here are ...
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How do I write an foreign name that ends with consonant? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Any rules for a suffix on english words?
Since Japanese doesn't have consonant endings (except for 'n', of course)
How do I end the name I'm trying to transcribe? Names like ...
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Which writing system (hiragana, katakana, or kanji) should we use when writing out someone's name?
I know how to read hiragana and katakana, but know nothing else. A lot of people I know want me to write their names in Japanese. Is it right to write them in any system, or are there specific rules?
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Is the "wa-particle" in katakana ワ or ハ？
Is the "wa-particle" in katakana ワ or ハ？
(Just a quick question - I think I have seen both used, but if ワ is correct then I have just seen the results of a computer o/p automatically using ハ)
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What is the appropriate size of hiragana in proportion to kanji?
I remember being told that hiragana should be the same size as kanji when writing them by hand. However, there are times when I see handwritten kana that are much smaller than the kanji. Does this ...
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Is one transcription of "Andrew" more standard than another?
I recently looked at the disambiguation page for Andrew on the Japanese Wikipedia, and found that there were several "アンドルー"s, and several "アンドリュー"s.
I couldn't discern any trend that one form ...
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Did any writing systems exist before kanji was imported?
Did any writing systems, or even failed attempts at them, exist for Japanese before kanji was imported from China?
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Why can some words be written with or without okurigana? How do the uses differ?
What is the difference for word compounds that can exist with 送り仮名 and without and still retain the same pronunciation?
As an example:
巻き貝 と 巻貝
取り引き と 取引
If I'm correct, both of these are ...
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What is the appropriate usage of example names?
Sometimes it is the case that fake or example names will be used in place of actual names for purposes of explaining something.
For example:
田中さんの主張には、その点において疑問があります。
I have a question about ...
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不被下候: When was it common, and what were the rules?
In a shrine graffito written in 1559, two carpenters complain:
其時座主ハ大キナコスデオチヤリテ一度モ焼酎ヲ不被下候
'At that time, the high priest (stingy bugger!) gave us not even a drop of shochu to drink.'
The form ...
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What determines whether a word gets a kanji compound or katakana?
I read electronics/computing articles, and I find an incredible amount of terms are written either in kanji (almost similar to Chinese) or katakana. There are times when it's confusing as to know why. ...
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What does the nakaguro (・) between these two words mean?
The first sentence on the Mac OS X article on the Japanese version of Wikipedia reads:
Mac OS X（マック オーエス テン）は、アップルが[開発]{かいはつ}・[販売]{はんばい}する、Macintoshコンピュータ[用]{よう}の[現行]{げんこう}オペレーティングシステム (OS) である。
...
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Why is the affixal 子 treated specially when abbreviating people’s names?
Often, names are abbreviated using the initial letter in romanization, or some random letter, like "A". However, when the name has an affixal 子, that part is often left, like "A子". I have not seen any ...
user458
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Why do TV subtitles use spaces (instead of commas)?
It looks like Japanese text don't use spaces between words, not even in informal messages (yes perhaps in textbooks, but I digress). This page claims that a sentence with spaces inbetween just looks ...
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What are the rules determining the use of the dash in katakana?
As explained in this question, a dash character is used in katakana as an extension of a sound.
First, what exactly is this character called? A "nobasu mark"?
Anyway, I saw this sign in Shibuya the ...
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Use of kana iteration marks (ゝ, ゞ, ヽ, ヾ)
Kana iteration marks are are rarely used today, and hence there is not much online information on it besides this Wikipedia article, which leaves me with a couple questions.
Is there any kana that ...
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What is the proper term for the use of archaic kanji?
I noticed that in various works of Japanese art, the artists sign their work with a seal whose contents range from fairly regular kanji to very abstract variations of kanji. I have also seen it used ...
user51