User talk:Fish bowl/p/ja

If we're going to separate Modern Japanese and Classical Japanese, I think:

• The Classical Japanese label can be put to the right of the headword, not to the left, which is also how {{tlb}} is used.
• Why not put Modern Japanese under ==Japanese== and Classical Japanese under ==Classical Japanese== (which is the approach used by the Japanese Wiktionary)? Placing them under different Etymology sections of the same language looks … messy and makes maintenance harder.
• あおる and あふる are but different spellings, not different words, so there is no need of {{ja-spellings}} or {{ja-pron}} in Etymology 1 as these templates describe words. (Maybe {{ja-see}} can be adapted/adopted for variant kana spellings as well.)

--Dine2016 (talk) 09:02, 6 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Dine2016:

• In the interest of consistency, it really should be to the right, but I fear that it would be too subtle, so I've placed it to the left for now.
• I like the idea of a unified header that lets us share definitions and quotes. However, thinking about it, if we were to have one header, but split etymologies by historical stage, would we need to split the etymologies of words like nouns?
  • i.e. つき#Japanese < つき#Classical Japanese ~ つき#Japanese#Etymology 1 (modern) < つき#Japanese#Etymology 2 (classical)
    • (I don't think I would like this.)
  • あおる#Japanese < あふる#Japanese < あふる#Classical Japanese?
• Indeed, including {{ja-pron}} was an oversight. Perhaps {{ja-spellings}} is indeed applicable, though;
  • if we separate ==Japanese== and ==Classical Japanese==, and we include entries like わらふ#Japanese "historical kana spelling of わらう" (as I have done with あふる), how should わらふ#Japanese link to 笑ふ?

—Suzukaze-c◇◇ 08:43, 11 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Suzukaze-c: Sorry, didn't see the ping… Perhaps removing a signature and adding another one doesn't count?

• Sorry for not making thing clear. I think the approach of (1) a unified header and (2) not splitting etymologies by historical stage would be best. But if we were to split etymologies by historical stage, we may as well split the language headers as well. By doing so, we will be able to get rid of the “Classical Japanese” label, and help those looking for Classical Japanese find it in one place rather than scattered among Modern Japanese.

• If so, I think entries can be formatted like this:

あおる#Japanese: A main entry, whose etymology section links to あふる#Classical Japanese	あふる#Japanese: A soft redirect to あおる#Japanese
あおる#Classical Japanese: A soft redirect to あふる#Classical Japanese	あふる#Classical Japanese: A main entry

• But once again I prefer the unified Japanese approach.

• I prefer a simple {{ja-see}} under Etymology 1, actually. If you add a {{ja-spellings}} there, you'll find yourself ending up repeating the same set of spellings as those on あおる#Japanese.
  • This is a difficult problem. What about splitting the “Kanji” row of {{ja-see}} into “Modern kanji spellings” and “Obsolete kanji spellings”, and put 笑ふ under the latter?

--Dine2016 (talk) 12:02, 11 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Dine2016:

• Remind me, what would あふる and あおる look like with the unified approach? orz
• I'm having a hard time visualizing your proposed changes to {{ja-see}} orz

—Suzukaze-c◇◇ 05:24, 17 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

• With あおる containing all the information of the word and あふる being a soft redirect? According to kokugo dictionaries, the difference between あおる and あふる is merely one of kana orthography - that is, the same kind of difference between わらう and わらふ - though I, too, am surprised at this fact.
• Sorry, it should be a proposed change to {{ja-spellings}} 😂. To be honest I'm not sure what should be the best approach to list all the kanji spellings that have appeared over time. If we list 笑ふ because it appeared in older books, should we include 笑フ too? What about 笑らふ? --Dine2016 (talk) 06:53, 17 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

• I don't think there is need of any “<” at all. In English we don't cite words in the format “fight < fighten < feohtan”, either. If you want to refer to a word regardless of time, {{ja-l|*戦う}} is enough. If the stage is known, {{ja-l|戦う|たたかう}} or {{ltj-l|戦ふ|たたかふ}} would be better. (If we need to display kyūjitai for Classical Japanese, we can build an automatic shin-to-kyū conversion module so that {{ltj-l|戦ふ|たたかふ}} yields 戦ふ／戰ふ (たたかふ, tatakafu) :)
• I don't think : is a problem. {{jpx-l|いろは|wp=y}} is probably better. --Dine2016 (talk) 08:29, 17 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Dine2016:

• Maybe, but we don't have "unified English" either. Automating everything is definitely part of the plan: |h=1|kyu=1|sp=1 → historical hiragana, kyuujitai, {{ja-spellings}}.

• Also, this is all just ideas for what it might look like if one ever wanted to put an unnecessary amount of stuff in one line. I can't remember why I thought of adding < / > at the moment, TBH.

• Perhaps. I would definitely prefer : but I'm being cautious right now.

—Suzukaze-c◇◇ 06:15, 23 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

Um, I'm not sure if unified Japanese is a good idea. Actually, the current Japanese entry format is so messy that I gave up Japanese entirely. I've had numerous ideas on how to improve the Japanese entry layout but don't know how to put them into practice. The fact that editors don't feel the urge need to improve the layout is disappointing. But I think we can take the following steps first:

• Eliminate the different font sizes (137% in POS lines and 110% in running text) and adopt a single font size (such as 110%) for all Japanese text except quotes. Only quotes ({{ja-usex}}) should have larger font sizes and ruby. In other places ruby should be eliminated and words should be cited in the inline format (110% font size) to reduce vertical space (and thereby encourage the addition of more synonyms, antonyms, etc.)
• Always cite Japanese words in the new format “kanji (kana, romaji)” or “kana (kanji, romaji)”, never “kanji (romaji)” or worse, “kanji” or “kana” without accompanying romaji (unless you're citing spellings, of course).
• Eliminate sortkeys. A word usually has a kanji spelling and a kana spelling, and whichever spelling you choose as the main entry, {{ja-see}} will copy it to the other spellings. This means that all the spellings of a given word will be categorized. Therefore, there should be no problem if we categorize the kana under kana and kanji under kanji (【た】たたかう　【戦】戦う). There is nothing to lose, and you magically get two ways to look up words (by kana or by the beginning kanji). Moreover, editors are liberated from the constant fear of incidentally introducing inconsistencies by forgetting to add |sort= when using a template like {{lb|ja|...}}.
• Establish a standard of which spelling to lemmatize at. Avoid the practice of “lemmatize at the most common spelling” because of the unpredicability.
• Reduce unnecessary parameters. For example, {{ja-pron}} should obviously not have |yomi= (that's a matter of spelling and belongs to {{ja-kanjitab}}). The headword templates should not have |kyu= and |hhira=, and perhaps the kana and romaji and conjugation type if we opt for unified Japanese. If we do not opt for unified Japanese (in which case Classical Japanese should be treated separately, under ==Classical Japanese==), I prefer a format like “よむ • (yomu) godan tr (infinitive よみ, past よんだ)”: the infinitive is the base of the masu form, the first verb form taught in 日本語教育文法, and the past form illustrates the 音便 sound change, the most difficult thing beginners find.
• Improve the wikicode so that it's easily typeable. For example, {{ja-conj|type=1}} is better than {{ja-go-mu|よ}} when maintaining よむ. We can also code templates such as {{ja-pron}} to accept the shorter format |acc=1,ref=DJR, and generate references in the form “” linking to Wiktionary:About Japanese/references#Routinely consulted dictionaries, rather than generating a ref, because the latter would trigger 係り結び.

--Dine2016 (talk) 13:47, 23 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

I like your ideas (´；ω；｀) I think that part of the problem is that our current setup is "alright" and Good Enough™, and other editors don't feel an urgent need to change. I wasn't around when Chinese was unified here, but perhaps it was something similar. Let's polish ideas together and present a plan we can work with, one part at a time. —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 22:34, 23 March 2019 (UTC)Reply