Japanese Language

jkerian

3:14 AM

@silvermaple it can be moved... but

actually... since it's already closed, you have to 'reopen', then 'close'->'offtopic'->'move to meta'

silvermaple

I see I see

jkerian

I don't see how you can get something approaching an authoritative answer out of that question

silvermaple

Oh yeah, that's why I thought it would be good in meta

and also that way we can direct people to that discussion should that question pop up again

jkerian

eh... 'acceptable in meta because it has no rules' is a different thing from 'good in meta'

I actually think we do ourselves harm by moving closed, OT questions over to meta.... when someone starts typing in a new question, they don't see the popups

silvermaple

that's a good point

I was thinking like the resources question

We got a really good guide there to point people to now...i use it myself for reference too

jkerian

3:22 AM

Yeah... but that's a slightly different situation

silvermaple

true

jkerian

The resources thread is essentially a huge, community-moderated list

For fuzzy questions... you can make some -okayish- ones on meta... but they're not going to be as nice as that one is

silvermaple

Yeah, it's much more subjective

jkerian

We could probably do a pretty nice "IME tricks" meta-question... haven't figured out how to put it together though

silvermaple

Well anyway, very long weekend, but hopefully with it behind me I can focus on my studies and being a better community member now :D

catch you around :D

Anonymous

4:34 AM

@jkerian I think a lot of people learn how to use their input methods more or less by trying stuff until it works.

jkerian

There are some handy tricks people know, though

Anonymous

I never learned all the details of kinput2+canna back when I used it

Anonymous

It's only recently that I learned some basics

jkerian

I'm thinking of things like xe for ぇ

Anonymous

I always typed てぃ as texi

Anonymous

4:35 AM

but you can type thi, which is shorter

ssb

what's the best IME, anyway

i love google IME but i don't have experience with others

Anonymous

Some of them vary from input method to input method; on Anthy I can type wyi for ゐ

Anonymous

I think on OSX it's whi, but I'm too lazy to check.

ssb

on google just typing wi gives that

Anonymous

On some input methods, you get うぃ from wi

Anonymous

4:36 AM

Which makes sense, since うぃ is more common

ssb

i'm pretty sure on google you'll get that first but the next conversion option will be ゐ

Anonymous

I can type うぃ and convert it to ゐ with space, though

ssb

i'm on linux now and just trying with anthy apparently ゐ is the default for wi

Anonymous

Yeah, I just checked on my mac: ゐ is not a conversion option for うぃ on the OS X input method.

djahandarie

On mozc I get うぃ when I type it, and ゐ as the first conversion option.

Which seems reasonable to me.

Anonymous

4:38 AM

You have to type wyi to get ゐ on OSX.

Anonymous

There's also variance in how to type small letters; I think x works on everything, but on some you can also type l

ssb

i usually use l

Anonymous

So some people start out typing てぃ as teli, then you end up getting てり after switching OSs...

ssb

it's worked on every ime i've tried

interesting that there's such variability

djahandarie

I always use x.

Anonymous

4:39 AM

Again, OS X is the odd one out: l converts to ラ行 on OS X.

ssb

x is probably more reliable

djahandarie

Except for the normal things.

Anonymous

I use h when possible. てぃ thi

ssb

but L is right there on home row!

djahandarie

Like しゅ and such.

Anonymous

4:40 AM

I use the shortest available entry, so I type si and tu, not shi and tsu

ssb

it took me a long time to break the habit of writing tsu and shi

djahandarie

Only a crazy person would type sixyu for that! I use shi and shu personally.

ssb

for some reason i feel frustrated when i see japanese people write it syu

Anonymous

I also type lots of small っs not by xtu, but by typing kkkkkkkkkk<backspace>

Anonymous

っっっっっっっっ

ssb

4:41 AM

i'm so anglo-biased gosh

djahandarie

I use ttttt, but yeah.

Anonymous

syu is fine but I don't like the y key as much as the h key. It's all the way over there.

Anonymous

Well, I use whatever letter. Not k specifically

ssb

Also a lot of japanese people use h instead of f

Anonymous

Oh yeah, I type f.

ssb

4:42 AM

i still feel major 違和感 when i see someone write hukuoka

djahandarie

The hu representation for ふ is nice when trying to explain some derivations though.

Which is why si is sometimes nice instead of shi.

And tu instead of tsu.

Anonymous

Well, I was just talking about wa-puro entry, not Romanization I'd use for explaining something

djahandarie

Yeah, I know.

Anonymous

The choices you make for entry and analyzing words are unrelated, I think

ssb

i've never met anyone that actually usd the direct kana input method though

i wonder how many people actually do it that way

djahandarie

4:44 AM

I use it on my phone

ssb

i don't mean the kana tenkey style

i mean on a full wasd using the hiragana buttons instead of romaji

Anonymous

I think ento (who used to hang out in this chat) uses an alternative input method

Anonymous

Not kana input, though

djahandarie

When I was in Japan I saw a bunch of such keyboard in the stores so I imagine some people must use them

Anonymous

People use kana keyboards by typing romaji.

ssb

4:47 AM

all japanese keyboards have the alternative hiragana keys on them

Anonymous

The extra conversion keys come in handy, is all :-)

djahandarie

I mean, ones with just the hiragana.

I saw some cool rollable keyboards too. I kind of wanted to get one.

Haha, creepy. I just typed "rollable keyboard" into Google, didn't click on anything, then opened up Amazon and it gave me suggestions for foldable keyboards.

ssb

wow

Anonymous

The other thing I think is useful to know with an input method is that you can add stuff to the dictionary

Anonymous

Which might sound basic, but...

Anonymous

4:53 AM

Having tried a bunch of input methods, it's not always obvious that you can do that, let alone how to do it

ssb

the thing i like about google ime is that it keeps track of that automatically

Anonymous

Keeps track of meaning it syncs?

ssb

i mean if I type some made up word like ぷぷぷぱー

the next time i type ぷぷぷぷぱー will show up in the suggestions

Anonymous

Ha

ssb

i just wish it were cross platform

djahandarie

4:55 AM

Yeah. Annoying when you typo though.

ssb

somehow it seems to be smart enough that it doesn't show typos if you don't keep using them

Anonymous

I'm not sure if that's quite the same thing, though. How do you add conversions? Like (bad example) I made up the reading しかうま and assigned it to 廌 so I could type it

ssb

maybe some kind of lexical garbage collector

Anonymous

Since it looks like 鹿 and 馬

ssb

ah that is interesting, i haven't tried that

Anonymous

4:58 AM

I added a lot of 部首, parts of kanji and other glyphs to my input method's dictionary

Anonymous

And I think some kanji names

Anonymous

It might be more applicable to my situation than yours, since the default dictionary on Anthy is kind of cruddy.

Anonymous

It's got a lot of stuff in it, but it's missing things it shouldn't be

ssb

9:13 AM

Just got home and looked at google IME's dictionary. You can add the word, reading, category (seems to be parts of speech by default), and a comment

小太郎

11:49 AM

When writing a polite but not formal letter to somebody and you're talking about a close friend of your's, would you put a honorific after his name?

ssb

1:06 PM

@小太朗 i'd go with さん

jkerian

3:11 PM

huh... I was about to comment that I miss Derek's contributions to the site... then I noticed that he hasn't updated his blog-like thing since around the time he disappeared from here.

LucasTizma

3:29 PM

Hm. I've been going crazy trying to remember/figure out this single word reply to some action a person has indicated they are going to take that effectively means "please do," if I recall correctly. Maybe sort of like ぜひ, but I thought it started with a た sound?

@ssb Nice avatar. ;)

Flaw

@jkerian His blog like thing used to have a rather good article on ~のだ

I can no longer find that article.

It came back!

sakamotomaaya.com/291/information-deficits

But the date is different. It seems he reuploaded it. There was one that I read that was before 7th Sept 2012.

jkerian

3:50 PM

@Flaw I need to get him a copy of JSL :)

Flaw

What's JSL?

jkerian

That's very similar to Jordan's explanation.

@Flaw "Japanese the Spoken Language", a romaji-based textbook series from the 70s that everyone on the internet hates... and I think is the best introduction to Japanese that I've seen published

Flaw

Also, unrelatedly, this:

1

Q: How are Japanese words spelt in English?

I sometimes see native speakers of Japanese misspell English words derived from Japanese. For example, I've seen "Kyusyu" instead of "Kyushu", and "tunami" instead of "tsunami". (I've also seen "geisya" and "ninjya".) Apart from wasei-eigo words such as "salaryman", are English words that come ...

spelling

I see a ping pong game happening soon.

It doesn't feel like a Japanese question to me.

jkerian

hah

let me bonk the ELL mods on the head... one sec

Flaw

If it asks about how the Japanese would romanise it, then I suppose it would be a fringe case for our site.

But if it asks how would English render it, then it seems quite definitely to be an English question.

jkerian

3:53 PM

Admitedly... he asked on the wrong site... it should be ELU, not ELL

Flaw

I'm slightly confused because the question seems to have confusing perspectives.

The question asks for the appropriate English spelling, but the premise is from the perspective of native Japanese spelling it wrong from a English-based system of determining correct spelling.

The judgement system that governs "correctness/wrongness" was not properly established; it seems arbitrary and it is difficult to provide a answer.

@jkerian (Back to JSL) Why does the internet hate it?

@jkerian. Also, what happens when a question is migrated? If it receives votes here, then it gets migrated. Does the vote count reset?

jkerian

@Flaw It uses romaji... even worse... it uses a non-Hepburn romaji

@Flaw I've been asked by the community team NOT to re-migrate, as apparently it breaks things

Flaw

Votes and rep points get messed with?

jkerian

4:09 PM

Apparently the forwarding links between sites break

Hmm... how do you express "broken link" in Japanese?

Flaw

リンク切れ ?

Flaw

4:26 PM

Wow. JSL is going at about $100 at my bookstore

jkerian

yikes

Flaw

But it's out of stock

jkerian

Observe the review histogram at amazon: amazon.com/Japanese-The-Spoken-Language-Part/dp/0300038348

The explanations of grammatical points are MUCH deeper than anything I've seen anywhere else in a textbook.

Flaw

Ah, there's the complaint of "grammar before vocab"

Without grammar, the vocabulary will just sit around each other without the meaningful connections being known.

silvermaple

6:37 PM

afternoon all

I finally got a twitters, does anyone know a good twitterer to follow for Japanese?

jkerian

7:18 PM

@silvermaple I mostly follow go players... so I won't be too much help

silvermaple

haha

jkerian

合同表彰式 (ひろふみのブログ☆) 今日は（もう日付が変わりましたが）合同表彰式でした。大倉喜七郎賞、秀哉賞、棋道賞、昇段＆新入段の表彰がありました。私は六段の免状を頂きました。久しぶりに、この表彰式に出席することが… http://bit.ly/ZoBDYE

Tweeted by igonews on March 26, 2013 at 3:48 PM

silvermaple

i found a couple searching around

followed!

because why not?

Do you know if エスコート has the same meaning as "high class prostitute" in Japanese, in addition to the mundane "bring someone somewhere" meaning?

jkerian

Not sure... my dictionary searches aren't coming up with anything

silvermaple

I just found the regular meaning so i'm assuming that's all there is

jkerian

7:27 PM

I have got to quit following Atwood on twitter. Roughly half of his posts force me to remember that he CAN create an excellent product, even if he may be wrong about nearly everything else.

jkerian

7:39 PM

I might do this... if I could remember my twitter password

Anonymous

9:23 PM

My friend is reading a book that has the following sentence: すると、高畑は外国人のように両手を上げる仕草をした。

Anonymous

外国人のように・・・？

Anonymous

9:40 PM

@jkerian Go easy on WendyKidd, she's even newer to moderating than us :-)

Anonymous

Though it does seem weird that we keep getting migrations without being asked. (Well, for values of "keep getting" = "twice")

jkerian

@snailplane Yeah... I didn't actually bother. 1 isolated case does not make a pattern worth complaining about.

The other migration was from... was it linguistics?

Not remembering atm

Anonymous

I was referring to the migration from Martial Arts

jkerian

oh yeah... that one :)

Anonymous

I don't recall one from Linguistics

jkerian

9:43 PM

I must have just been browsing the linguistics one recently... Our total inmigration is only 4

So far we're 1/4 for leaving them open

Anonymous

What are the other two?

jkerian

japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/5542/… and japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/4831/…

Anonymous

Ah-ha, the first got re-asked at Linguistics after being closed twice, and the second was actually on-topic

Anonymous

I was thinking about editing out the second question from this question and leaving a comment that they can post it separately if they want: japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/11518/…

Anonymous

Right now I'm just leaving it the way it is.

Anonymous

9:50 PM

I don't really like having two answers squished into the space of one

jkerian

@snailplane Yeah... split it out... I sorta wish there was a mod-tool for that

Anonymous

What I read on MSO was that all we can do is either ask or edit

Anonymous

Okay, I edited it out.

Anonymous

I left a comment saying they can repost the second question

Anonymous

I get why people think two questions about text that appears in proximity are related, but that definition of related isn't useful here. There's no logical dependency between the two, so the answers to them are necessarily unrelated

Anonymous

9:55 PM

So it breaks the voting system and fails the "will future users always want to learn both of these things at the same time?" test

Anonymous

10:43 PM

Hopefully my latest question isn't off-topic. I don't think it is, but I wouldn't be too surprised if people disagreed

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