Japanese Language

did someone say javascript?

Anonymous

@Aerovistae meta.japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/1277/…

Anonymous

So I think there are differences between ＡとＢ and ＡとＢと and if you are going to teach them both then you should also talk about the differences

Anonymous

4:12 PM

I have to admit I like the sound of ＡとＢとの〜 :-)

I can't honestly say that code is very well commented

but it makes furigana work, that's what it does?

Anonymous

Mostly!

i take it you're a developer too?

Anonymous

Hehe. Me? Yeah, a li'l bit :-)

snailboat speaks with us through her own code to English transcoder

I actually find angled quotes easier to read that double quotes

Anonymous

4:22 PM

〈These guys?〉《How about double angled quotes?》

they came with my keyboard layout: »« ›‹

I mean for Latin text

Anonymous

« Oh, the French sort! »

Anonymous

Those are called guillemets.

Well, in French they're used like « this ». In German like »this«

Anonymous

Oh!

Anonymous

4:23 PM

That's why they're in your layout!

Right

Anonymous

Sorry, I learned even less German than French :-)

I use a German keyboard layout, although I never type German =)

Anonymous

»That's neat!«

mostly English, Japanese and Portuguese =)

Anonymous

4:24 PM

»It's like having little feathers on your sentences.«

oh, snailboat is female. and double brackets are called guillemets.

i have learned two things today.

and german reverses them. 3 things.

Anonymous

Oh, Unicode has less fancy sounding names for them

Anonymous

LEFT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK

hahaha

@Earthliŋ noooo... abuse of HTML semantics! haha

4:26 PM

Well, I wasn't off by too much when I called them angled brackets...

Anonymous

@3to5businessdays Ehh, the attempt at semantic classes is mostly a failure

@3to5businessdays On a page I designed, I used to switch fonts. Does that make me an outlaw?

Doesn't mean we need to errr... propagate the failure

Anonymous

Maybe an outstandard. Or a scoffstandard.

We try our best

4:27 PM

(within a single word)

Anonymous

@3to5businessdays Well, I don't think there's any reason to respect it.

I try not to do weird things with the common ones at least

Is the HTML for the code blocks <code>?

like using <code> for quoting English words

Anonymous

@Earthliŋ Yes

4:28 PM

question: one of my concerns with JL&U is that i might search for a question via romaji and not realize it's already been asked because it's in kanji/kana, which I don't know enough to search in yet

is there any way around this?

Anonymous

And the preformatted text blocks on SE use both <code> and <pre>

Anonymous

@Aerovistae No

like i wanted to ask difference in usage for dame/iie, but i couldn't find anything in romaji at least

Anonymous

But there are pre-existing discussions on meta

search with kanji

Anonymous

4:29 PM

You might be able to contribute

Anonymous

Most questions don't have romaji.

is it still okay to ask in romaji??

Anonymous

Dame is often written ダメ or 駄目 or sometimes だめ

Anonymous

Yes

why is it written in katakana?

it doesn't sound like a loanword

Anonymous

4:30 PM

There is a question for that :-)

ダメよ…ダメダメ

oh

Anonymous

Katakana is not specifically for loanwords

Anonymous

Katakana has at least half a dozen purposes you'll need to memorize

it's for so many things yeah

Anonymous

4:30 PM

Use for loanwords is just one

like food stuff

Anonymous

Names in biology of plants and animals and such (except for common ones)

@snailboat myth busted

i used to know this...i had forgotten

Anonymous

Use-mention distinction, if you want to talk about the particle を in Japanese you can call it ヲ so people don't get confused

4:31 PM

i don't know any particles :)

i only know neko

Anonymous

Like italics in English, where I talk about where

just learning my kana now.

Anonymous

By putting it in italics so you know I'm not actually using the word

right

but italics is used for emphasis too...

Anonymous

4:31 PM

Yes, true

but it looks terrible

Good to know it's called "Use-mention distinction" though;

trade term

Anonymous

Yep! Italics are the standard way of indicating the use-mention distinction in linguistics

I was going to ask what's that thing called

Yeah, I imagine there's no use case for emphasis in linguistics

Anonymous

4:33 PM

People use bold for emphasizing in linguistics, or underline (which we cannot do here because Jeff Atwood hates us)

There's probably some unicode combining character for that... hee

Anonymous

Hah

no ?

oh

Anonymous

And it probably renders off to one side in certain browsers… :-)

i tried using underscores and it just went to italics

was expecting underline

Anonymous

4:34 PM

Yeah, I bet you were :-)

Anonymous

No underline for you!

Anonymous

You can use strikethrough in chat, though, with a triple dash: ~~strikethrough~~

Anonymous

---strikethrough---　←　~~strikethrough~~

yeah, that's allowed, of course

but not underline

makes sense

Anonymous

　　　　　　　↖ No it doesn't :-(

4:35 PM

Jeff Atwood hates us?

Anonymous

He doesn't really, but he made an arbitrary decision not to allow underlines (because he dislikes them?) and no one's ever unmade the decision since

̲w

hm...

Anonymous

It's true that you could use U+0332

how...

Anonymous

4:36 PM

But keep in mind that not all browsers render combining characters correctly at this point

Internet powers that be doesn't seem to favor underlining in general

Except for U

*URL

meta.stackexchange.com/questions/117016/…

best argument is that underlined --> clickable, on the web

Anonymous

u̲n̲d̲e̲r̲l̲i̲n̲e̲

Anonymous

That's not really an argument, though

why do you say that?

?

4:39 PM

sorry guys I'm trying to write underlines characters

lol

Anonymous

Different conventions have different uses in different contexts.

Anonymous

Jeff Atwood made some decisions for all of Stack Exchange when he was working on Stack Overflow

Anonymous

And they don't all make sense for every site

Anonymous

He broke tables and underline because he doesn't like them

Anonymous

4:40 PM

And we've been fighting the lack of tables on Japanese.SE where ad hoc tables simply fail because of that arbitrary decision

Tables are useful

Anonymous

Here, links are blue. Being able to underline some text in a quote would allow you to reproduce that quote accurately, something we can't do right now

Anonymous

And that text would be black and wouldn't respond to mouseover

Anonymous

There would be no problem.

I'd like something like
A & B & C \\
a & b & c

4:41 PM

̲y

Anonymous

It's annoying quoting a reference grammar which talks about the "underlined portion" and not actually being able to underline it in the examples you're quoting

modify the quote

With a decent monospace in the input text field that'd be marvellous

angle-bracketed portion

Anonymous

The "people might think it's a link" argument is after-the-fact justification

Anonymous

4:42 PM

A rationalization rather than the reason it was done

well, colours are better for links, I think

Anonymous

@3to5businessdays Yes, it's just annoying, especially when bold and italics are used for different purposes

and colours look pretty, too!

Anonymous

I like colors!

so... other than quoting text which specifies "underlined portion"

oh wait, you did mention emphasis

though that can be bolded

Anonymous

4:48 PM

Underline isn't my first choice for emphasis

Anonymous

I wouldn't use underline all the time if I had the choice

Anonymous

It's only frustrating when it's the right thing to do and you can't

Anonymous

@3to5businessdays There's no real reason to worry about semantic classes in HTML

Anonymous

You could argue that in principle, the semantic classes communicate important information for browsers for the disabled, like screen readers

Anonymous

But screen readers don't make use of that information

Anonymous

4:51 PM

So you're not actually helping anyone by making the distinction

H̲̣̣̣̥α̩̩̩̩̥ά̲̣̥:Dн̣̣̣̝̤̥̇̇̇̈̊α̣̣̥α̍̍̊α̇̇̇̊=Ḍ̥H̲̣̣̣̥̩̩̩̥ά̲̣̥α̩̩̩̥̇̇̇ά̲̣̥α̇̇̇=)) н̣̣̣̝̤̥̇̇̇̈̊α̣̣̥α̍̍̊α̇̇̇̊=D

Anonymous

You're just rearranging deck chairs …

Anonymous

Well done!

I pasted some stuff on the URL bar on chrome, and this appeared

weird

Anonymous

@3to5businessdays sͮ́ͩͤͬͤ̉̍̈́ͧ̔ͥ́͆̌̈́͘͘͝҉̡̯̙̼̯̤̩͓̻̱ͅn̡̺̞̩͓̲͓̺̹̞̠̝̭̹̼̥̲ͮ̑́̉̈̅͑ͬ͒͗̿̅ͫ͂̚̚͢͞ả͛̽̌ͪ̎͂ͩ̽̅͊‌̸̨̞͖͙͈̺̗̭̦̝̦͕̙̰͖̚͢i̵̷̱̬̭̳̮̬̲͇̺̟̤̪̺̣̺̮͉͙̐̃̾͆͑̆ͫ̽ͫͤ͆̋̆͑ͪ̔̎̚͡l̵̷̐ͧ̓͑̌̋͑̑̏̒̽̓ͬ̊҉͍̖̫͎̀‌̲̟̥̭̠͇̬̹̜͚͕͙s̶̢̠̼̼̜̼͉̹̘̜̻̣͍͙͍̮̲̍̍̒ͦ̚

4:56 PM

how?

semantics - bold vs strong

Anonymous

Yes, there is no reason to use strong

or  vs 

Anonymous

You can if you like, though :-)

I heard that it could be important when internationalization is involved

different languages might have different way of emphasizing

or even people might like to style their emphasized text differently

say with an underline

as opposed to italics

Anonymous

There's no reason you can't style 

4:59 PM

or maybe you are using for multiple things

Anonymous

Besides,  is considered semantic by HTML5

Oh?

Anonymous

Not presentational

Anonymous

Yeah.

Anonymous

dev.w3.org/html5/spec-author-view/…

5:00 PM

Was comparing vs though

Anonymous

Same.

Anonymous

dev.w3.org/html5/spec-author-view/…

Anonymous

They aren't necessarily bold or italic.

> Authors are encouraged to consider whether other elements might be more applicable than the i element, for instance the em element for marking up stress emphasis, or the dfn element to mark up the defining instance of a term.

Anonymous

Though they once were

Anonymous

5:01 PM

@3to5businessdays Yeah, they do make a distinction

Anonymous

It's just not an important one

> The b element should be used as a last resort when no other element is more appropriate. In particular, headings should use the h1 to h6 elements, stress emphasis should use the em element, importance should be denoted with the strong element, and text marked or highlighted should use the mark element.

Anonymous

Haha.

So yeah

I mean sometimes people use large font size + b to replicate a heading

* the appearance of a heading

that is semantics too

Anonymous

Well, I'm not saying people should use  for everything and the kitchen sink

Anonymous

5:04 PM

Just that I don't feel the difference between  and , or between  and  is terribly important

or table for layout

Anonymous

HTML is kind of a giant sadness pile to begin with . . .

so messy

I mean HTML

not tables haha

Anonymous

Hehe!

clusterfuck, even

Anonymous

5:05 PM

I used tables for layout! In like, the 90s

Anonymous

I need caffeine!@#

Rockstar!

Anonymous

To the teamobile! Which is not mobile at all and is in fact my kitchen

I like Japanese quotes

I mean the quoting symbol

んが

よけようきだら

5:12 PM

I have absolutely no idea what you said there;

This needs explanations!

んが is something a sleepy person says

sort of "blurp"

よけようきだら is effectively same as おはようございます but less common variant. :]

naru-hodor

but actually there's one more variant - およりやろーか

Anonymous

@Rilakkuma It has four Google hits, one of which is you talking, and the rest of which are the same tweet

@snailboat yeah, that is mr 阿久津 twitter I guess

he is one of those rare speakers of Hachijo language

and even more exotic since he has internet - others not so much.

Anonymous

5:19 PM

So instead of saying "less common variant", you could say "expression in a different language"

this was sort of irony, because there are long discussions if Hachijo is a language or still a dialect.

Anonymous

Mmm, caffeine

Anonymous

Well, linguists consider it a language

because if a dialect then must be "just less common variant" :D

which sounds like a nonsense...

Anonymous

Well, if you say "less common variant" it makes it sound like it might be standard Japanese

5:20 PM

not at all :/

whoa 4 hits

only the 2 of you spoke it in Google-verse

wow, うきみそーちー got more than 3000

Anonymous

Although they only actually return 123 results: google.com/…

still much wider than よけ- "variant"

There's a variant: うきみそーち

5:25 PM

I think there are at least 10 stable dialects of Ryukyuan language so they should have good amount of variants.

It says here

> ただ実際の生活では、使ってる事をあまり見かけません。

yes, this is interesting

then I wonder how do they say おはよう

うきてぃー ?

Btw, independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/…

which sounds pretty much like some hardcore Aichi 起きろ！

what's with these neo-nazi groups

5:29 PM

I thought recently they are less active than, say, 4 years ago.

then it was very common to find ones on Shibuya crossing screaming about how America and China are the reasons of kittens dying.

Now can't remind when I saw them last time there.

and never saw them in Shin-Okubo in Tokyo where it is hard to hear Japanese on the street at times

btw I used to live next to a North Korean school in Kanagawa. As surprising as it sounds, but there are several such schools around the country and apparently they are sponsored by the government (Japanese, not Kim's).

I think I saw some North Korean university in a Vice video or something

Girl wearing long robe and speaking North Korean

* university in Japan

on Vice JP

bigstory.ap.org/article/e03870de78234c679e809b8aeba7e1d7/…

volcano eruption

Anonymous

Oh, yeah, I read about that :-(

While people were hiking!

6:44 PM

@Aerovistae I've added some more comments to the Furigana engine at gist.github.com/cyphr/6536814, hopefully it's a bit easier to understand now

Anonymous

Yay!

Anonymous

Thank you for all the work on the furigana script, cypher! :-)

Anonymous

For what it's worth, I think it's a short enough script that it's fairly easy to read without extensive commenting

Anonymous

It's formatted nicely and the functions are named readably and so forth

Anonymous

Although I might be biased since I already know what it does :-)

6:47 PM

uh thanks...it's a bit of a delicate flower, but it seems to keep chugging along somehow :)

Anonymous

Hehe!

Anonymous

I guess I've just seen a lot of really awful, giant code

6:59 PM

@3to5businessdays in fact there's unusual volcanic activity now in Japan

now 11 volcanos are active. Normally only about 6-7

furigana code looks good, especially considering this is JavaScript!

7:29 PM

@Earthliŋ Currently the Furigana script doesn't make the input text field use a Japanese monospace font - IMHO the readability of the English text suffers, so I've only added it to the <pre> and <code> tags as I think the disadvantages outweigh the advantages (pic: postimg.org/image/gzyvug1d5)

I'm not entirely sure why either, but even though the font should be monospace it doesn't seem to be aligned on my Ubuntu PC/IPAGothic font in the text area (even though it displays OK in the <code>/<pre> area)

So the problem is only with the input field?

it seems that way (on my PC at least)

I see, I'll have to try it

I'm using the same font on the same system... Japanese font defaults are a nightmare, though

Yeah, note though that <pre>/<code> tags are currently not displayed in a Japanese monospace font in the Furigana engine that's currently live on the site, only the updated version

is there any reason not to use web fonts?

7:37 PM

they'd be pretty large if Japanese

size, i guess

@snailboat I have seen ない and ほしい referred to as 補助動詞 before, though given that there do exist the terms 補助形容詞 and 補助用言, I guess that's just sloppiness.

Anonymous

@DariusJahandarie I don't know what theory of grammar would classify ない as a 補助動詞

Anonymous

It doesn't appear to make sense

Yes, that was me just giving an incorrect example.

s/ない/にくい/

Anonymous

7:47 PM

Although 補助形容詞 seems like a neat enough term :-)

Anonymous

Interestingly, Martin says that 〜てほしい comes from 関西弁 and was unknown in Edo Japanese 190 years ago

Anonymous

Although that's obviously history

@snailboat Are 副詞 considered 連用修飾語? (I would assume so, but just trying to make sure I understand the term.)

It's weird that "I think that X is not a Y" and "I don't think X is a Y" are fairly interchangeable in English, while in Japanese "XはYじゃないと思う" and "XはYだと思わない" do not seem as interchangeable to me.

Anonymous

books.google.com/…

Anonymous

Negative scope is tricky…

7:56 PM

I have reading issues, books like that are kind of difficult for me.

Anonymous

> また、「熱く語る」という文脈では、「熱い」という形が「熱く」に変わっていますが、品詞はやはり形容詞で、その形で連用修飾の役割を果たしています。連用修飾の機能を本‌来とする語は副詞なので、「副詞的用法」ともいわれます。

Thanks.

One day I will not be illiterate.

Anonymous

> 副詞を例にとると、次の（７）あの「たいてい」は、副詞本来の働きである連用修飾をしていますが、（７）bは、「場合」を修飾するために、「の」を伴って連体修飾の成分に‌なっています。なお、（７）bの形は、（５）c（名詞の連体修飾）と同じです。

wait a minute how many professional JS developers are currently sitting in this chat?

raises hand

What does it mean to be a professional $x developer?

8:08 PM

Syntax Error: Unexpected token $x

what do you mean by $x?

Anonymous

Would you prefer "professional <fill-in-the-blank> developer"?

What does it mean to be a professional [insert programming language here] developer?

let me consider.

I transitively get paid to write JavaScript, but writing JavaScript is not in my job description and if someone asked me to describe what I do I would certainly not say "I'm a professional JavaScript developer".

defined: an individual who, as part of the standard duties of their work, writes JavaScript code at a proficient level. Or who is capable of doing so, even if they are not at this time.

Anonymous

8:11 PM

That's not true. You can be a professional developer without being proficient

i agree

Anonymous

I think it just means you get paid for it. :-)

so let's call this the definition for an "Experienced" JS developer

I also get paid to breath, because breathing is necessary to accomplish any of my tasks at work. Does that mean I'm a professional breather?

rather than a professional one.

which fits your counterargument.

you are an experienced breather.

....I'm guessing

Anonymous

8:12 PM

I'm an experienced breather, too!

I've been working on it lately.

Anonymous

I've been paid to write JS in the past, though no one is paying me to do it at the moment

Anonymous

And I've never actually gone out of my way to learn JS

Anonymous

It just sort of happened :-)

that seems to be the way of it with most people who know JS, I find

8:13 PM

I'm getting paid to write Go, and I went out of my way to not learn Go.

Anonymous

Hahaha.

yeah i hated the look of go, deliberately avoided it.

not my type.

Of course it's not your type, it's nowhere near polymorphic enough for that.

I like Objective-C :D

which is also somewhat rigid.

@snailboat how far can you get only knowing the kana?

As far as I've gotten, at least. I barely know any kanji.

I do still consider myself a beginner, so that's not very far.

8:19 PM

Yeah...it doesn't take more than a couple days to learn the kana

but it takes sooooooooo long to learn the kanji

I've been learning Japanese for years.

just havent focused on it?

on the kanjij i mean

Pretty much. I don't read very much, and have never just spent time studying kanji, so there's no reason I would have learned.

I did recently get 下町ロケット at the recommendation of a friend, and am very, very slowly reading through it, so maybe I'll eventually improve.

8:36 PM

i cannot read that yet

what does it say?

Shitamachi Rocket. It's the title of a book.

Anonymous

@Aerovistae A blind native speaker is still a fluent native speaker, even if they don't know any kana. But it's definitely a major disadvantage

Anonymous

8:53 PM

@DariusJahandarie Yay! The more you do, the easier it gets :-)

9:34 PM

I just posted some fiction to lang-8. The errors probably make it sound very dumb, but ah well, I wanted to write something.

Anonymous

Yay!

I even used an adversarial passive! Probably incorrectly, since I think it's extra-thematic! But oh well. I'll see if it gets marked incorrect or not.

Anonymous

10:10 PM

I have you as a friend on Lang-8!

Anonymous

I'm surprised it gives me the option to post corrections since I have the same language settings you do

Anonymous

Say, are there any input methods available that expose statistical analysis to the end-user? "Sure, you could pick this kanji, but it's highlighted somewhat reddish because it's only used 1/15th of the time"

Anonymous

I mean, obviously you can present more likely options in a given context, and input methods do that now