Ryukyuan Japanese was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 15 November 2020 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Japanese dialects. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here. |
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I think all of the Japanese words should be given in kanji/kana alongside the roomaji. In addition to helping resolve ambiguities inherit with Hepburn romanization (ねえ vs ねー, おう vs おお), it makes it easier on students of the language reading this article. Epich 23:39, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
I agree 100%, I'll start adding the kana/kanji. ILuvEire (talk) 22:35, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
I added the few last revisions, and I would like to bring attention to the "chari" word for bike. I know it was used in Shiga Prefecture, but I don't know to what extent it is used in Kansai, though I think it is pretty general Kansai speak. I think. Alan 20:15, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
It seems that the attempt to understand Japanese dialects invites comparisons to familiar dialects and regionalisms in the English language. I believe that such analogies are invariably flawed, inaccurate, misleading, unsupported by any scholarly research, and perpetuate regional biases and stereotypes of one culture into another culture. Further, they invariably seem to be biased toward regionalisms of the US. If it's documented that Southern US English has been rendered into Japanese using Tohoku-ben it's fine to state the existence of this situation. The current version of the Kansai-ben section does a good job of characterizing this situation. But I don't think we should not be making comments like "Tohoku-ben is roughly analagous to Southern US English". It's fine for rhetorical discussions at the bar on Saturday night, but in an encyclopedic article I will remove such statements as I see them. Of course if someone can show published research that supports these assertions, I'll defer to that. The Hokkaido Crow 01:05, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
With regards to the "Common Phrases Unique To..." section, I believe that many of those words are no longer unique to the Kansai dialect. For example, although attributed originally to the Kansai dialects, "aho" is widely used these days. Also, "yaru" is also used as "give" in hyoujungo, as a variant of "ageru" used in particular when the speaker considers the "receiever" to be of lower status. However, I will leave this is a comment for now. As with most of the Japan related entries, this section still needs a lot of work! Lenny-au
"konyanyachiwa" is never spoken in Kansai. It is only used in a Japanese manga "Tensai Bakabon". Joh Shoh 17:42, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
It's used in Cardcaptor Sakura too. See: http://www.ccsvscc.com/glossary.html
Also, is "konnana" (goodbye) instead of "konbanwa" genuine Osaka-ben? WhisperToMe 23:00, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The best-known dialect is Tokyo-ben and not Kansai-ben (although, strictly, Kansai-ben's eastern counterpart would be Kanto-ben, and Tokyo-ben's western counterpart would be Osaka-ben (and what's commonly perceived as Osaka-ben is really Kawachi-ben, and real Osaka-ben is on the brink of extinction)).--Outis 13:27, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I would like to see someone clean up the Kansai-ben section. It is clear that Osaka-ben and Kansai-ben have been used interchangably in this article, but I don't know enough about those languages to make the correction. The Hokkaido Crow 9 July 2005 03:31 (UTC)
How about adding a section on top for general dialectal slang, stuff that's fairly generic? -ai and -oi tend to become -ee (as in shiranai becomes shiranee), ja nai can become ya nai, that kind of stuff. I'd do it myself but I don't know very much. Bigpeteb
Well, I decided to be bold and added this. It's not much, but it's a start. Hopefully other people can clean it up some, expand it, and maybe integrate it more into the article. Bigpeteb 15:07, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
I put the hyphen back in o-ban desu in the Hokkaido dialect section. The hyphen separating honorifics from words helps to make the meaning clear, and is standard practice in romanization. Otherwise in this instance it could be confused with oban which was a type of currency in the Edo era. — Ts'éiyoosh 18:54, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I just made some changes to the discussion in the "Dialects or languages?" section. First, I changed "others" to be "other people" so that linguists are not lumped into the category of people who believe Okinawan is Japanese. The perception that Okinawan is a separate langauge among linguists is nearly universal outside of Japan, and certainly the majority view inside of Japan. It would be difficult even in Japan to find a linguist today who claims otherwise, though many such claims were made in the past. Second, I mentioned Ainu as a language which is felt to be non-Japanese by nearly everyone in Japan, linguist or not. It seems like a good contrast to make.
NPOV aside, the claim that Okinawan is Japanese is pretty heavily contradicted by linguistic data and analysis. I suppose it should be left to indicate to the reader that there is some debate, but the people doing the arguing against Okinawan as a separate language have significant political motives which are difficult to capture in this article and are really beside the point in this subject. Perhaps I (or someone else) will add in some commentary about the political aspects of Japanese dialects and the Okinawan language argument. — Ts'éiyoosh 02:36, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I've removed comments on the Ainu language because Ainu is not a dialect of Japanese or any other language, and it's in no danger of being mistaken as such. Also, Ainu has virtually no connection to Okinawa. Therefore, I believe Ainu has no place in an article on dialects of the Japanese language. The Hokkaido Crow 9 July 2005 03:27 (UTC)
The article has a header Japanese dialects#Umpaku. It's between Chugoku and Shikoku in the listing. I can't recall hearing this term before. Does anyone know what it means? Fg2 07:21, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
I added a cleanup tag here. The organization of this article is all over the place. Some sections have bullets with geographic locations, with no mention as to why those locations are there, while some have examples of the dialects. Others have links to specific dialect pages.
I would suggest picking one format and staying with it. Kcumming 19:05, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
The article leaves a lot of question open. There is next to nothing to be found about dialect use in present-day Japan. Most western countries have been experiencing various level of dialect loss for at least the last 50 years. In some countries (eg France, England), old-fashioned rural dialects have practically ceased to exist at all. Is dialect use still widespread in Japan? Are children growing up speaking dialect, standard Japanese or both, as a rule? Are dialects converging towards regional norms or standards? Is there a social dialect continuum from basilectal to acrolectal varieties? I do not know any of the answers, but I am sure there must be Wikepedians who do.Unoffensive text or character 13:41, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Crow. You say that "almost all of this article is about dialect use in present-day Japan". But the article does not explicitely state (with one or two exceptions) that the dialects are still in general use. I thinks what you just wrote as an answer to my questions should be included in the article. Unoffensive text or character 09:49, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
A Bibliography of Japanese Dialects (1950) PDF, full text Fg2 03:16, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Iyo-ben is spoken in Ehime prefecture and is similar to Hiroshima-ben and other dialects in its use of けん (gen) for から (kara) ("because") and おる (oru) (and derivatives) for いる (iru). Some unique features of Iyo-ben include the use of が (ga) to replace the inquisitive か (ka), わい (wai) as a sentence-final particle similar to よ (to), and more limited regional variations such as 〜てや (deya)
There are two contradictions between kana and romaji in this. けん (gen) the kana read "ken" and よ (to), the kana is "yo". I know enough to know that for the second one, "yo" is correct (and I'm changing it now), but what about the first and third? Are the kana correct there, too, with incorrect romaji, or are the kana missing a dakuten? Nik42 23:17, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Never mind, I just noticed that there was a link to Iyo dialect, and based on what's on that page, the kana were indeed the correct ones, as I'd suspected Nik42 23:20, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Can anyone please take a look at the article Kesen language?
It looks a little weird to me. I explained my concerns at the talk page there.
Thanks in advance. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 21:44, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
I realize the Japanese term for dialects is 〇〇-ben, but shouldn't we make the links "〇〇 dialect"? All of the pages listed in Category:Dialects of Japan use that naming order. Does someone want to help with the updating? Douggers (talk) 04:29, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Regarding the Gyokuon-hōsō, a number of sources report that it was given in the dialect spoken at the Imperial court, and was extremely difficult for commoners to understand. Can someone add a section to this article discussion the dialect of the Imperial court that I can link to from Surrender of Japan? Raul654 (talk) 23:53, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
"The Hiroshima dialect is regarded as a very manly sounding dialect. That is to say, tough and hard." I think this should be taken out, it's just an opinion, unless there is some study claiming that Hiroshimaben is a manly sounding dialect. ILuvEire (talk) 00:59, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
Yes chuck it out, there're lots of colorful phrases in this article though. Guess it is to be expected when dealing with Kansai. Southsailor (talk) 07:52, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Is it just me or is there no key to the Pitch Accent Map file? Just a list of colors with no corresponding information? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.156.104.178 (talk) 19:17, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
(moved to Talk:Tsushima dialect#Limited Korean influence. — kwami (talk) 00:50, 4 May 2012 (UTC))
I was wondering if it wouldn't be better to merge this section within the other parts. I feel that a lot of the information would go better under their main headings which are currently quite bare (for example, displace the 'Classification > Kyushu' part under the 'Kyushu dialects' heading). That, and we should consider splitting these ridiculously long lists of sub-dialects and sub-sub-dialects into new pages. This way we can reserve this page for a broader overview of the main dialectal branches and possibly talk more about the distribution of certain features (adjective endings, copula, verb endings, particles, etc.) affecting how classification is made (e.g. pitch accent map opposes traditional divisions in Kyushu). — Io Katai ᵀᵃˡᵏ 19:52, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
There is no such thing as "Standard Japanese" which is regulated or prescribed by a public office or organization. Therefore, "and while it was based initially on the Tokyo dialect, the language of Japan's capital has since gone in its own direction to become one of Japan's many dialects." doesn't make sense. What's this "Standard Japanese" supposed to mean? What is commonly called "標準語" or "共通語" is nothing but a popular Tokyo dialect which is commonly called 山の手言葉 and which, in turn, commonly means a Tokyo dialect which is spoken in western region of Tokyo.--220.108.212.251 (talk) 16:48, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: not moved to the proposed title at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 11:26, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
Japanese dialects → Varieties of Japanese – Most Wikipedia articles on linguistic variation use the title "varieties of"... For example, Varieties of Chinese, Varieties of French, Varieties of Arabic, etc... For the sake of consistency, "Varieties of Japanese" would be the better title. I think that the main reason so many other Wikipedia articles use "varieties" is because the word "dialect" is considered derogatory by certain people. That's just another reason to consider the page move that I am proposing. Hko2333 (talk) 06:40, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
@Ineffablebookkeeper: Thanks for adding the ((lang|ja-Latn))
tags to so much text in this article! However, I think you were too enthusiastic. Most of the names of places and people are English names that were borrowed from Japanese. Tagging them as Japanese is incorrect. For example, "Kyushu" is an English name, and has an entry as an English word in Wiktionary. "Haruhiko Kindaichi" is that person's English-language name; you can tell because the given name is put first, whereas that person's name in Japanese would always have the family name first, and would be romanized Kindaichi Haruhiko.
I think using romanized Japanese names like Kyūshū makes this article harder to read than using the plain English name Kyushu. Using romanized Japanese names but unitalicized (e.g. Kyūshū) is an even more unusual choice. If it was important to use the Japanese word, then of course it should be italicized, since otherwise we wouldn't be able to tell the difference between English "Kansai" and Japanese "Kansai"; by the same token, if the difference wasn't important, then we should just use the English names because this is English-language Wikipedia.
Here's an analogy: If this were an article about French dialects, I would expect the article to use "Paris" (which text-to-speech software would pronounce "pair-iss"), and not ((lang|fr|Paris))
(which TTS would pronounce "pah-ree"). And I would expect the article to use "Charles de Gaulle" (which TTS would pronounces "char-ulz") and not ((lang|fr|Charles de Gaulle))
(which TTS would pronounce "sharl" with a silent S).
It may seem pedantic, but this issue affects Japanese, too. In English, "Okinawa" has the stress on the third syllable, which is emphasized and pronounced with a higher pitch ("oh-kee-NAH-wah"). In Japanese, "Okinawa" (沖縄) has a heiban pitch accent and is pronounced with a "low-high-high-high" pattern (which to English ears would sound kind of like "oh-KEE-NAH-WAH" and would sound distinctly foreign and/or robotic, unlike any pattern of pitches normally used in English).
Basically, I would advocate for the following changes:
((lang))
or italics), it should also be used as the plain English name here.((lang|ja-Latn|italic=no))
should be reviewed. As I said, if it isn't in italics, then you're saying it's important to pronounce it as Japanese but not giving sighted people the clue that tells them to do so. Either it does need to be pronounced as Japanese, in which case italicize it, or it should be pronounced as English, in which case get rid of the ((lang))
entirely.((lang|ja-Latn))
should most likely be moved to ((nihongo))
or ((nihongo3))
, and should probably have kana/kanji added. It's important to remember that unlike a language like Serbian that can be interchangeably written in the Cyrillic or Latin alphabets, the only 'proper' way to write Japanese is in its native system. With rare exceptions, romanization of Japanese is merely an aid for those not fluent in written Japanese, and not a substitute for native Japanese text. ((nihongo))
or ((nihongo3))
are the most common way to format these on Wikipedia, and provide future-proofing such as when we can hopefully tag all this text correctly as ja-Latn-alalc97
by simply changing those two templates instead of revisiting every single usage of ((lang|ja-Latn))
.--Bigpeteb (talk) 22:35, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
((transl))
template is actually the better choice, so I've been going through a lot of my old edits and redoing my language tags there, as well. Thank you for going into so much detail! It's genuinely appreciated; digging through policy and template usage can be a little puzzling at times. I appreciate your hard work, and I'll be using it to go over my watchlist :) --Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) 23:58, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
((transl))
is perhaps okay if the only thing present is transliterated text. I think it's kind of deficient, though. For example, despite what their examples show, it doesn't tag the text differently even when you specify a transliteration scheme. (It puts it in the title
, but not in the lang
tag.) The only schemes it recognizes for Japanese are "unspecified" and "ISO 3602" (which I had to look up: it's either Kunrei-shiki or Nihon-shiki, and I'm unclear as to exactly which).((nihongo))
, because I'm not sure a suitable tag for that has been invented yet. However, ((nihongo))
could be fixed so that it marks the text to tell TTS systems which parts are redundant, whereas ((transl))
cannot because it has no knowledge of what text came before or after it.)((nihongo))
and ((nihongo3))
because they're an all-in-one solution for Japanese. They can have just native Japanese text, or just romanized text, or both, all with optional English. They're quite easy to use. If you need a link, just link the appropriate part of the text: ((nihongo|[[Japan]]|日本|nippon))
yields "Japan (日本, nippon)". If you need italics or bold (such as an article title or book title), it can actually go inside or outside: '''((nihongo|Japan|日本|nippon))'''
and ((nihongo|'''Japan'''|日本|nippon))
both yield "Japan (日本, nippon)". The main thing I see people get wrong is changing the order of arguments so it displays what they want (but tagged incorrectly), when the correct solution would have been to use ((nihongo3))
. --Bigpeteb (talk) 01:57, 10 February 2021 (UTC)<i>
tag for emphasis and to mark foreign words. But what if you're trying to mark a foreign word within some emphasized text? What if you're blind, and your screenreader tries to describe the table out loud? It has no way of knowing that the table doesn't actually contain tabular data.''
and ''
for italics and boldface.) Hence why we use HTML and CSS together. HTML indicates the semantics, while CSS creates the presentation. So for instance, we might use the <em>
tag to indicate emphasis, and a foreign
class to indicate foreign words, and now we can tell it that text that's both emphasized and foreign should be underlined, or non-italicized, or whatever. Similarly, we can mark up text to indicate its language, which helps screenreaders (so they know whether to pronounce Paris as "pare-iss" or "pah-ree"), search engines, translation software, etc. And, of course, to make that job easier for wiki editors, we use templates.lang="ja"
and the "nippon" is marked with lang="ja-Latn"
(at least as it's implemented today; that might change in the future). That's why it's important to use ((nihongo3))
instead of switching the arguments around. ((nihongo|''nippon''|日本||Japan))
may look right visually ("nippon (日本, Japan)") but it will be lacking the lang="ja-Latn"
tag, while ((nihongo3|Japan|日本|nippon))
has the correct markup ("nippon (日本, Japan)").((transl))
is that it doesn't provide enough information. With modern HTML and CSS, you can do things like say "When this document is printed on paper, after a hyperlink show the URL that it links to", which is helpful since you obviously can't click a piece of paper. Analagously, there might be a way to indicate "When a screenreader is speaking this page, skip this text", which would be useful so that "nippon (日本)" isn't spoken as "nippon nippon". But ((transl))
isn't useful for that at all (unless they add a new parameter); only a template like ((nihongo))
that's responsible for displaying both the foreign language and its transliteration would be able to mark that text appropriately.((transl))
for tagging transliterated text? I've already gone through a few of the articles on my watchlist and replaced the instances of ((lang|ja-Latn| with ((transl|ja|, but now I'm somewhat second-guessing myself.((nihongo|english|japanese|roman))
if you want the English to come first or ((nihongo3|english|japanese|roman))
if you want the romanization to come first. You can leave some parameters blank, but that template requires the Japanese text and/or the romanization; only the English translation is optional.((nihongo))
or ((nihongo3))
the first time such a term is used if you want an English translation/gloss in parentheses (er, brackets). Or, you could translate/gloss it in text, in which case use ((transl))
. For example, you might write "Kimono are tied shut with an ((nihongo3|sash|obi))." or you could write "Kimono are tied shut with an ((transl|ja|obi)), a wide sash that comes in a variety of styles." Every time after that, when you use just the romanized term without a translation, just use ((transl))
. --Bigpeteb (talk) 17:49, 15 February 2021 (UTC)The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 13:16, 23 January 2023 (UTC)