On Sun, Dec 06, 2009 at 10:58:59AM +0900, daid kahl wrote:
> I'm curious about your handling of Japanese, just because I'm living
> outside Tokyo these days. My grasp on Japanese is basically rubbish,
> but I can at least claim to know a thing or two.
Our handling is simple -- we don't yet. I don't know how to handle
things like that, or the previous example of Copenhagen in different
languages. Look at Naples -- that's not what Italins call it. Venice
is really bad -- no idea how English got it so mangled. Speaking of
Japanese, their word for Mexico (last time I checked) was taken from
the English MEKS-ih-ko and comes out as may-kee-shoo-ko rather than
the more more natural may-hee-ko if they had taken it straight from
Spanish.
As long a things stay in Unicode in the native language, we will do
alright. It's covering accepted mistakes (I can't think of a better
term) that is the problem -- thus my worries I'd have to include all
the accented and unaccented versions.
I learned enough Japanese to travel and hold bare bones questions.
As for romanization of Japanese, how do you even know which system to
use? Just as Peking is now Beijing, I have seen Tokyo with bars over
the Os and of course without. That is the same problem as Rome and
Roma.
As for ToKyo being two syllables ... I think it depends on how one
defines syllables. Ak a Japanese to pronounce three (san) slowly, and
it wil be two syllables, sa-n, "saw uhn". Ask for three hundred which
comes out as "sambyaku" because the "n" syllable changes sound when it
sounds better, and they will make quite a few syllables out of it,
such as (I am guessing now) saw-umm-bee-yaw-koo. To write Tokyo in
the proper furigana is probably something like toh-o-kee-yoh-o.
> Kyoto is the same case as Tokyo (incidentally, the Chinese
> characters for those two cities are the same and just reversed in
> order!).
Nope -- Tokyo is ??????, east capital. Kyoto is ??????, capital city. Kyo
is the same, to is different.
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