Talk:Japanese/Contributor's Guide/Archive 1

(oops, posted on the wrong page...)

Untitled
I'm not sure of this wikibook's objective. I'd've thought a basic introduction to the Japanese language was the point but it seemed to have gone off to JLPT preparation material. And since this has become the case, then probably this wikibook will become 4 books to accommodate each JLPT level, is this right?

I need to buy a Japanese book for JLPT 4kyū and see how the lessons are organized. At the moment, I think the material written for this wikibook is complicated. There is no straightforward lessons, just lists of words. There should be lessons designed to build upon the previous ones, such as:

"hajimemashite. (namae) desu. dōzo yoroshiku." "kochira wa tanaka-san desu" "ano hito wa dare desu ka?" "kore/sore/are wa nan desu ka?" etc The other wikibooks on languages have such lessons and they provide a good foundation for gradual sustained learning. I think we should have such methods as well. &mdash; Mkn 02:03, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * I agree with all of your points. Also, if you just want to learn how to speak Japanese or understand spoken Japanese, this wikibook forces you to learn the alphabets first. This is very annoying if speech is all you are interested in. - Sik0fewl 18:26, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * You have probably noticed that in the new version, the Introduction lessons (5 weeks) are all done with romanization. If you would like this to be continued into the Basic lessons, please make it known at our discussion group. I think by the time we get to intermediate or advanced, there's no excuse to still need romanization. Aaronsama 20:32, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Hepburn system macrons
There is a weakness with using the macron form of the hepburn system. When you have long 'O's, there is no way to make the distinction between oo and ou. For example, a new learner would think that the long o sounds in tooi ryokou were the same, when they are not.


 * I agree this is a weakness of the hepburn system, and I would not mind if we never used macron letters. But our romaji (hepburn) was chosen for pronunciation accuracy, not written accuracy. For that, we have the kana right next to the romaji. I believe that we should emphasize from the beginning that the romaji is a guide to pronunciation only. So, we might as well stick to the Hepburn standard.


 * We discussed the romanization issue at length and most of the contributors were dead set against using ō and ū. The main arguments against them were incosistency with kana and difficulty of inputting characters. Since then, I have had a sysop make the input template available at the bottom of the edit page which contains a Java program that lets you insert them by clicking.
 * I am one of the few that is still for the macrons, mainly because they are the de facto standard in most publications, and seem to be prevalent on Wikipedia and Wiktionary. However, I am going with the consensus and using oo, ou, and uu for the time being. If you would like to see it changed, please bring it up again on the discussion group. Aaronsama 20:29, 14 December 2005 (UTC)


 * In the same vein, I'd like to suggest that we put dropped sounds in parenthisis. Example: des(u), hajimemash(i)te. Why? This gives a guide to pronunciation, which our aim here.


 * I think this might become too hard to read. How about including a section on dropping u and i between voiceless consonants or at the end of the word following a voiceless consonant? It could have practice problems and show how desu becomes des-, hajimemashite becomes hajimemash-te, and could also mention under what circumstances desU is appropriate. Aaronsama 20:29, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm also against putting dropped sounds in parentheses in regular lessons.
 * you will be perfectly understandable even if you do pronounce the dropped sounds
 * the sounds are not always dropped
 * the pronunciation of Japanese is not difficult enough to warrant burdening the student with hard-to-read conventions
 * the student is going to have to learn to deal with the dropped sounds in kana anyway
 * we should encourage the students to trust their ears and to do their best to imitate native speakers (with occasional explanation, not parentheses everywhere)
 * Now, if someone wants to add some pronunication exercises to teach the students about dropped sounds and have some examples, then that'd be great.
 * ToothingLummox 05:38, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Also, could we discuss ways of indicating accent? Either directly indicate which mora have high or low accents or just indicate the accent drop (with appropriate discussion)? Perhaps we display direct mora tone with an accent drop sign to get the learner used to Japanese tones, and later just show the accent drop?


 * The neat looking way to indicate accent in most publications is not possible with unicode. I also am personally against teaching accent in a beginner course because:
 * Data on pitch accents are inconsistent and not readily available.
 * It varies greatly from region to region.
 * It's easily and naturally learned by imitation.
 * It's entirely unnecessary to make yourself understood by natives. In my years in Japan, very little confusion has ever resulted from saying things with the wrong pitch accent. Has anyone else had a different experience?
 * Unicode doesn't allow it to be notated as it is usually published (e.g. with little right-angle brackets that go above letters).
 * At this stage, the learner has enough on his/her mind to have to worry about something so insignificant.
 * Perhaps it could be taught in the intermediate or advanced course. By that time, unicode may have caught up with us, and the Wiktionary may include the data we need. Aaronsama 20:29, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree with Aaron, and for all the same reasons. I would add that sometimes pitch accents change depending on the surrounding words and what the speaker is trying to emphasize. Pitch accent is not something I would want beginning students stressing over. Tell the students it exists and have them imitate native speakers. It's just not worth the trouble to try to represent pitch accent in regular lessons. Let's put our energy into sound files instead.
 * ToothingLummox 05:38, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Other romanization issues
Things that have not been settled in this guide:

Word Separation
How should words be separated, particularly compound words and suffixes? e.g.: benkyou-suru, benkyousuru, or benkyou suru for 勉強する; hikan-teki, hikanteki, or hikan teki for 悲観的; kita-kyuushuu, kitakyuushuu, or kita kyuushuu for 北九州; and eigakantoku, eiga-kantoku, or eiga kantoku for 映画監督; kenchou sho zaichi, ken-chou-sho-zai-chi, kenchoushozaichi, kenchou shouzaichi, etc. for 県庁所在地.
 * "suru" should be separated from its preceding word by a space, e.g. "benkyou suru", to avoid things like benkyoushimasen, benkyousaseraretakunakatta.
 * suffixes like "teki" and "chi" should be combined with the preceding word, e.g. "kyakkanteki", like English "objective" (not "object-ive").
 * positional prefixes should be separated from the following word by a hyphen, e.g. "minami-America", "shimo-ichidan", unless the direction is actually part of the name (like kitakyuushuu). Note that the Japanese do not say kita-dakota or minami-dakota, but noosudakota and sausudakota. Same principle applies.
 * phrases consisting of two or more compounds, each of which can stand alone, should be separated by a space (e.g. "eiga kantoku", "genshi bakudan".
 * obviously there will be a lot of gray areas we have to decide on a case-by-case basis, but I think we can come up with enough "rules of thumb" to ensure an acceptable level of consistency. Aaronsama 21:04, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Romanizing Particles
How should 助詞 be handled? e.g.: 私のです is watashi no desu or watashi-no desu or watashi-no-desu. What about things like ですか (desu ka, desu-ka, or desuka), ..だよ (da yo, da-yo, or dayo)? How should は, へ, and を be handled? If they are to be written phonetically, as in wa and o, should we still write the u in desu, or should we adopt des or desu, as some books do?
 * Treat each particle as a separate word (pen de, tomodachi ga, sou ka mo ne). I don't want to get into confusing particles with cases. Spell them as they are pronounced (e.g. wa, e, o), we don't need students saying "gakkou HEY iku". Keep it simple. Aaronsama 21:04, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Furigana
How should furigana be handled? Do we differentiate onyomi versus kunyomi (in katakana versus hiragana)?
 * Always use hiragana over kanji (both onyomi and kunyomi). The only time we should use katakana as furigana is in the case of an ateji for a foreign word like coffee or conquistador. In the kanji dictionary, we should indicate on-yomi in katakana, but not as furigana. Aaronsama 21:04, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Odd Kana Combinations
How should a final small-tsu be handled? e.g., 「あっ. 」
 * あっ. can be transliterated a'. The apostrophe often indicates a glottal stop in transliterations of other languages, which sounds similar to what the small tsu does here.
 * When you talk about comic book Japanese, you get all sorts of weird kana combinations. I'd say just to handle them on a case by case basis, following as closely as possible the way it's pronounced. Aaronsama 21:04, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Coordination with other Wikimedia projects
Last, but not least, can anything be done to coordinate these policies with the Wiktionary. It seems like it would be valuable to make the two references follow the same guidelines, given that we link so much to the Wiktionary.
 * I don't want to open another can of worms about using macrons in our Wikibook. Wiktionary and Wikipedia tend to use macrons. Our Wikibook has chosen not to. I think it's okay to keep those separate and have an explanation in the pronunciation section of lesson 1. Aaronsama 21:04, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Romanization or kana?
In the module here (Contributor's Guide) the following "rule" is written:

Romanization (roomaji) should only be used in introductory lessons to assist with the learning of the kana, and in the reference guides. The kana should be used in all subsequent lessons.

So, question: is it a RULE to write everything in kana and NOT in roomaji (apart from the introductory lessons)???

And, if that is indeed the case, I would like to start a discussion: there are a lot of people who want to learn Japanese only to be able to speak it, not to be able to read/write it. By learning the language with romanized Japanese, the language can be learned in a much greater speed than when one would learn it by kana or even worse, with kanji. Lots of studybooks in Japanese are romanized as well for that reason. I know several people that speak Japanese fluently, but can't read/write it because they didn't choose to learn it.

Therefore, I plead for the use of both kanji/kana AND roomaji throughout all the lessons, not just the introductory lessons. People can then choose for themselves, whether or not they want to learn to read/write Japanese as well or just want to be able to speak it...

Regards, --Shinjitsu 07:54, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, I think there is worth in a general guideline to ensure consistency. This book, however, doesn't seemt to get much more than a few occasional spurts of activity and needs all the help they can get. I'd say that when you disagree with the policy, please feel free to add content in whatever manner you feel like &mdash; but don't change other contributors' content without discussion and a link to the previous version on the talk page so that it's easy to revert.
 * As for my own view of which is better, I'd choose to write all Japanese in Japanese script. The kana is easy enough to learn that it can be done in days and starting right away will help out in the long run. I think most studybooks are written in romaji, not because it's better, but because they sell better. We're not in the business of selling books, but creating material that will teach the language. Granted, we could write everything in different scripts, but I don't think it's useful as it causes terrible clutter (I also find the superscripting attempt at furigana/ruby annoying). I guess we could write everyting in span-elements with specific classes, the visibility of which could be set on or off by JavaScript, but I doubt it's worth the hassle.
 * There are indeed people who learn to speak functional Japanese without reading or writing &mdash; as a foreign language, that is; Japanese children, of course learn to write later on. Not reading is, however, a big handicap which is why you will find few Japanese children who never learn to read. Reading and writing are very useful for anyone interested in a fully functional language. Learning these at the same time as speaking will certainly save you time and effort in the long run.
 * I would even say that using Japanese scripts, including kanji, will definately help many. There is after all a very good reason why Japanese isn't written completely in the kana syllabries or some alphabetical system like romaji or hangul. With the large number of homophones in Japanese, the meaning of compounds can only be distinguished when written. Adults have lost the ability to pick up large amounts of vocabulary and are well served by structure and mnemonic tools.
 * An example is the word peninsula, or hantō. Written in kanji, it's 半島 (はんとう &mdash; half-island) which, for those who know the common compound words, is elementary to memorise. --Swift (talk) 03:51, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Return of the macron
I'm being extremely bold and removing the mention of the "aa" style long vowel trascription. The discussion group where the consensus was reached on is now dead. There is little use in teaching students that "oo" should be pronounced as a long "o", they will move on to kana anyway. --Swift (talk) 01:27, 8 July 2008 (UTC)