Hey all!

So I was wondering if anyone knew what （株） means

after a company name, is it like the little tm?

oh

huh

that makes sense

Like Inc.

I guess

yeah, that makes more sense then tm

えっ

Yeah, that's crazy

I wonder how common that is to do for 4 character set words

I need to start working on my "reading fatigue", so I'm going to start to try to read blogs I guess, which is where I found that

Yeah, pretty much

All you can see is squiggles

Oh, that link is actually pretty interesting

I don't think it's necessary to have a Unicode slot for kg, etc.

It'll look much better typeset as two letters (unless the one symbol does exactly that)

yeah, just because it's not necessary doesn't mean someone hasn't taken the time to do it! hah

Do you know of a decent font that has all Japanese radicals?

They have Unicode slots.

Yes, I bet he knows.

He's always checking the review queues.

I might do that actually.

(That's such a strange expression.)

I just found that site today

did you see the reddit thread?

nice

that's good, because I only speak american

Gah, I can't help myself, I don't know if it's more helpful practice to try and read the whole thing at once, or read it sentence by sentence

Hah

Does this run out?

You did all 1500 in Japanese correctly?

All the Japanese ones are just katakana...

I know plaster because of the New Zealand show "tribes"

or "the tribe"

That's it

I know, that got frusterating

Ok! Have to kick myself in the butt this month and do intense reading practice

Yeah, every day is the way to do it

I've been slacking this month, but even so I've managed to do at least something every day

except one day I missed, in the past 2 months

Now I just need to up the difficulty on myself

I'm reading my first manga.

ブッダ. I like it very much.

?

Yes, thank you.

I thought it was congratulations on not reading manga until now.

Any recommendations for manga?

I like good stories.

I don't really care for sci-fi.

Oh, I read Conan before. I'm not too keen on it.

It's a cheap story. I read a lot of books like that as a teenager.

Oh, well. I'll keep looking.

Have you seen ブッダ?

I like Dragonball, too.

I tried reading 西遊記, but it's harder to read ;)

Dragonball contains a lot of extra stuff, though, that makes it a bit boring at times. Long fight scenes etc.

I love the big story, going into Dragonball Z

The depiction of the afterlife

I wish it were a bit shorter.

I guess women read it differently than men =)

Definitely Northern, yeah.

I lived in Gunma for a while, where it's だんべ, so it can't be too far =)

I read bits and pieces of One Piece as well. It was fun, but it's a bit scary that there are already 73 volumes out (as of next week), with no end in sight.

I also tried to read むしし, but it seems to be a collection of short stories, with no story line that goes beyond 20 pages.

I guess ブッダ isn't my very first manga, then. But the first I want to keep reading =)

I actually thought that was my comment at first ;)

Do you speak Spanish?

Got a reply: japanese.stackexchange.com/a/11417/1628

Do you live in the South?

Good job?

That doesn't sound convincing enough.

Good job!

@snailplane 花園明朝 is free as well.

Oh no!

Oh no!

Server issues: I only said "Oh, no!" once actually, not counting this one.

Hi all. I noticed my name come up a bit so decided to stop by.

Hello, thank you for your comment.

@Earthliŋ I hope that you were able to get what you needed from it.

I'm a member of the Unicode Consortium, though rather inactive for the last few years.

I did. I have been looking for fonts that were relatively complete with respect to all sorts of Unicode features for Japanese (like radicals).

That site had pages similar to that for each Unicode font range.

had -> has.

I'm still to find a Japanese font, which has a nice Latin alphabet, though.

alanwood.net/unicode/fontsbyrange.html

Agreed. But it is not ideal to use a single font for multiple scripts. Rather, specific fonts actually designed for your script and usage.

Japanese fonts are more concerned about 全角 versions of latin script. For most western cultures, this is hardly acceptable.

Many documents I have seen, though, don't line up properly, even with 全角 Latin letters.

SIL has some really good Latin fonts with numerous diacritics.

scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/…

I like Gentium (for its IPA), but I can't figure out what Japanese font would go well with it.

For Japanese fonts, I typically use the ones available in Windows. Though the constant problem for me is rare kanji characters that are not supported. So I sometimes switch to more dedicated fonts in those cases. Then save in PDF when I need to send to a colleague as they often don't have these special fonts.

Hence, I prioritize supported character / glyphs over elegance when it comes to Japanese.

I see. Doulos I haven't seen before.

Windows doesn't automatically fallback to another font when it can't find the glyph?

@DariusJahandarie Some applications do a better job at it than others.

Ah.

Do you use Adobe software (e.g. InDesign) for typesetting?

@Dono We were talking about how quite a few users (like yourself) haven't been answering questions any more.

Somewhere you mentioned that you have your own private corpus of Classical Japanese.

No, I don't use InDesign.

Hmm, I have mixed feelings about the direction that this site has been going lately. I want to talk about linguistic matters, ideally historical linguistics. But it seems that others expect this to be a "beginners Japanese learner" site.

Also, I have rather displeased with the answers lately. Rather than explaining the rules, often it comes down to "I am a native speaker and we don't say that" and that seems to count as an answer. I suppose I'm not the one asking the question so if others are satisfied with that, then so be it, I guess.

Well, it is a beginners Japanese learner's site as long as we have only beginners Japanese learner's questions...

And I guess that beginners Japanese learners are very much satisfied with a native's opinion.

I have no problem with beginners. Everyone needs to start somewhere. While I was answering questions, I tried to answer such questions in a way so as to push them in a direction from which they could grow or learn how to answer such questions in the future with relevant resources.

I guess that "satisfied" is also relative to how many different answers one gets.

One example which really discouraged me was here: japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/11519/… . Somehow this is "very misleading", and yet it is the only answer citing a common reference that any learner, especially beginners, could benefit from.

Well, you're not alone standing discouraged =)

(I actually own the book, after you mentioned it in one of your answers.)

@snailplane Thanks. I'm sure that I'm not alone, but after being bitten a few too many times I'm a little hesitant in providing further answers.

That's a shame.

Whatever =)

I stopped by a used book store yesterday and found a good book: 『室町時代言語の絵研究』 by 湯澤吉郎. Only 200 yen, too. It covers the major grammatical categories with examples from major texts of the period. Similar in style to the famous 奈良朝文法史 and 平安朝文法史 books by 山田孝雄.

Oops. That should be 『室町時代言語の研究』.

@Dono Not 200 yen on amazon, though.

Oh, 8,400 yen there. I got a good deal :) Though it is used, but quite readable.

I really wish I could read Japanese better. Right now I'm very limited in the material I have for learning about classical Japanese because I can't read well.

@Dono May I ask you how you maintain your corpus of Classical Japanese?

@DariusJahandarie Force yourself to read it. Look up the words & kanji that you don't know. It'll take time, but you will be able to read it eventually.

@Earthliŋ Rather than classical, it is focused on Old Japanese, my primary interest.

OK, of Old Japanese, then.

(Old Japanese being 奈良時代?)

It's an SQL Server database. Various tables defined words with citations etc. Also texts for full-text searching.

Yes. Though there is a lack of texts, so some early Heian stuff is sometimes included for supplimental information.

@Dono Did you enter the readings yourself?

For the most part. The major difficulty was in how to store / indicates 甲乙 details.

That sounds like it was (is?) a lot of work.

I update when I find new citations or mistakes etc.

A lot of work spread out over years, so it's not too bad. I'm still updating it now.

That's not an answer one knows off the top of one's head, but I couldn't figure out how one would go about searching for it either...

It's a pity that comparative historical linguistics has not been able to show a genetic relationship with another language. Only being able to go back to the 8th century, and sometimes a bit further with internal evidence, is quite limiting in etymological studies.

This is unlike the state of western languages and PIE.

Which is extremely well researched and documented.

Do you believe in a link with Turkish?

Turkish has a very similar grammar, but essentially no related vocabulary.

Korean too has a very similar grammar, and even some words seem to be related. But the evidence indicates that these are mostly foreign loan words.

I strongly recommend reading "Koreo-Japnica: A Re-evaluation of a Common Genetic Origin" by Alexander Vovin.

It is a real eye opener.

I don't know any Korean.

Yet =)

@Dono Nor am I a linguist. Is this only for linguists?

@Earthliŋ Having a background in linguistics, historical Japanese and Korean would help. But if you are interested in these fields and are willing to put in some effort, I think it is quite readable.

Here's a link: amazon.com/dp/0824832787

Thanks, I will add it to my reading list, somewhere near the bottom.

What do you have in mind when you say "background in historical Japanese"?

@Earthliŋ I mean have a general idea of how sounds have changed over the centuries. You don't necessarily need to be able to read passages in classical Japanese. Relevant words will include English glosses.

I'm getting the feeling that I should just go read everything Vovin has ever published.

@Earthliŋ If you are concerned, then read "A History of the Japanese Language" by Bjarke Frellesvig. This will give you a very solid foundation of the topics from which to grow from.

@Dono That goes on the list near the top. Thank you.

Here's a link: amazon.com/dp/1107404096

It seems like many books about Japanese linguistics are in English. Is that indeed the norm, or am I just ignorant of Japanese linguistics in Japanese?

Japan primarily focuses on 国語学 and 国文学 (language arts?) rather than 言語学 (linguistics). There is a large body of Japanese resources, but few are rigorous in linguistic concepts. At least that is my opinion.

I guess linguistics, as a science, is not a Japanese science.

I have to go. Thank you for all your comments/suggestions, @Dono, and hope to see you around.

It's always painful to me to see new users get frustrated by how this site tends to operate..

absolutely. I don't refer specifically to the current answer in question, more in general, but this one certainly is part of it. trying my best to encourage more thoughtful answers but i imagine some people might get immediately defensive if they have poor response initially.

Of course I'm not saying that the negative response is necessarily a bad thing. Poor answers should get the response that they merit!

right, I think it's probably more important to leave feedback with downvotes if a person is new to the site

i very rarely downvote

Philosophically at least for the same reason as you

Right, on ELL it would be easier for us to identify patently wrong answers

so I can understand being more prone to downvoting there

One hypothesis I have is that an answer is much more likely to get a higher number of upvotes if it's perceived to be better than the accepted answer

Slightly unrelated.

yeah there's an element of overkill

someone making their first post doesn't need a -12 score with no comments for improvement

i have noticed that as well

Since that realization I try to keep questions open for a few days at least, even if I get good answers!

Hello guys! That's an interesting conversation you've got here, as a new user and Japanese learner myself I really feel that down-votes are necessary, they can be harsh at times but motivation aside, not knowing is one thing but believing what you know to be correct when it's not is alarming, making you the first one to benefit from a down-voting and for the same reason you don't want to be responsible for the asker seriously considering your answer.

Wow, sudden influx of new users