Japanese as a general rule doesn't distinguish between singular and plural,
and English tends to keep the original language's plurals. It's one piece
of sushi, two pieces of sushi etc.; one samurai, two samurai, etc.
I'd probably pick eta because it's historical and short. We can pretend
people are Greek letters if some future person gets offended.
I do agree there should be some way to "recenter" the karma spread. I don't
have a good suggestion at the moment as to how to accomplish this.
天火狐
On 13 September 2017 at 15:58, Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>
>
> Thanks! If you were picking one, which would you pick? (And what's the
> singular
> version of that, does it match "is a Samurai" as both singular and plural)
>
> On Wed, 13 Sep 2017, Josh T wrote:
> > The Japanese term for a (western) serf is *noudo*, literally meaning
> farm servant. If you want something from the historical Japanese caste
> system, since they took after Confucian ideas, peasant was was actually
> > the highest commoner class (above craftsmen and merchants); the outcasts
> of the Japanese feudal system were the *eta* (historical name, somewhat
> derogatory today, means "full of defilement"), *hinin*
> > ("non-humans"), or the modern politically correct term in English,
> *burakumin* ("hamlet people", referring to how they were exiled from towns
> and cities to have their own hamlets). Hopefully that helped.
> > 天火狐
> >
> > On 13 September 2017 at 15:38, Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Wed, 13 Sep 2017, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> > > - Any player with a karma of -5 or less is a (Japanese
> term for serf?).
> >
> > Just as an addendum, if 天火狐 or anyone with better knowledge of
> Japanese
> > feudal/cultural terms than me wants to suggest flavor improvements
> (in English
> > alphabet please), I'd gratefully add them. Maybe we should call
> the whole
> > thing a tea ceremony...
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
