User talk:Bendono/November-December 2007

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Contents

Long O

Is there an easy way to add that line over the "o", like you just did to Hokkaido on the Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine page? Yaki-gaijin 08:03, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

It is called a macron, and yes, there is. On every edit screen, there is a box full of useful diacritics. You will find ō and others there. Just click on it and it will appear where ever your cursor is. There are a number of alternatives, but this should be the easiest and most simple. Regards. Bendono 08:15, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Ben ;) Yaki-gaijin 10:07, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Another way is documented at Help:Macrons if you want to do it from the keyboard. Neier 11:58, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Japanese cuisine

Thanks for posting the policy on the summary as I can now take a look at it and familiarize myself with it as well.--Chef Christopher Allen Tanner, CCC 07:35, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

I was both refreshed and left with a somewhat guilty feeling by your generous intervention in my recent suspension. I have neglected the Japanese pages, despite promises to work on them. My problem is I know for many potential articles a lot of the primary sources, less so, secondary sources, and have thus always felt the need to bridle up at the natural temptation to write what would be necessarily elided as OR violations. Thus I drifted away. The experience on Wiki has mainly served a research interest in the epistemology of knowledge, and while throwing myself into it with Nestorian brio in the past several months, I have always been one step back, withholding myself, examining how consensus is manifactured, and isolated voices, minority opinions or difficult facts suppressed in this brave new world of a digital void of instant omnisapience. That is why that particular area intrigued me, because it is on the cusp of these issues of the political and sometimes existential consequences for how ideas, viewpoints and ideas are represented publicly. So I take kindly to your suggestion to leave off, and withdraw for a period of reflection, so that I can endeavour now to draw up a balance sheet and extract some synthesis of understanding of what this new world of representation implies, in so many of its facets, for the future. Heartfelt thanks, then Bendono. Could I prevail on you for one last favour? Several people have expressed disconcertion at the length of that user page of mine, and now that I am withdrawing for the while, it could be archived. You offered help in this regard, and I wonder if you could manage sometime from tomorrow, to do just that. I hope I may be able to pay back the favour by returning sometime in the future to do some comprehensive articles on figures whose work I love, not least of which Murayama Shichiro. Best wishes Nishidani 16:22, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad things turned out OK in the end. I archived your page as requested. Enjoy your vacation. Hopefully you'll come back soon to continue being a valuable and productive editor. Regards. Bendono (talk) 00:23, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you

I appreciate your comments over here. It's good to get some level-headed people in there to discuss the whole WP:NOR and its relation to images. Thanks. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 02:19, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Translating Latin/English

I thought of you when I read an op-ed piece in the New York Times on Monday. [1] Two paragraphs seemed especially fine:

But also, learning to translate Latin into English and vice versa is a tremendous way to train the mind. I think of translating concise, precise Latin into more expansive, discursive English as like opening up a concertina; you are allowed to inject all sorts of original thought and interpretation.
As much as opening the concertina enlarges your imagination, squeezing it shut — translating English into Latin — sharpens your prose. Because Latin is a dead language, not in a constant state of flux as living languages are, there’s no wriggle room in translating. If you haven’t understood exactly what a particular word means or how a grammatical rule works, you are likely to be, not off, but just plain wrong. There’s nothing like this challenge to teach you how to navigate the reefs and whirlpools of English prose.
Etiam, translationes ex lingua Latina in Anglicam, et vice versa, modi mirabiles mentis docendae sunt. Translationem ex lingua Latina breve accurataque in Anglicam expandentem vagamque similem concertinae aperiendae esse reor; maximam cogitationem et interpretationem in translationem infundere licet.

What particularly caught my attention was the application of familiar mathematic concepts in the context of translation --- ≥ ≠ ≤.

Other elements of this opinion piece were perceived as mildly controversial, but these two paragraphs in English (one paragraph in Latin) inspired no comment from other NYT readers. --Ooperhoofd (talk) 16:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


Speedy deletion of Kokki

A tag has been placed on Kokki, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A2 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be a foreign language article that was copied and pasted from another Wikimedia project, or was transwikied out to another project. Please see Wikipedia:Translation to learn about requests for, and coordination of, translations from foreign-language Wikipedias into English.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the article (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the article's talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. ElderGods (talk) 04:35, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry :)

Sorry about that, but it got deleted :( Too late anyways :) My apologies :) --ElderGods (talk) 04:39, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Broken redirect

Hi. You recently created the redirect Sumera Mikoto no Fumi, which redirects to ... Sumera Mikoto no Fumi. Unfortunately, I can't figure out what title you were trying to redirect to, so it would be appreciated if you could fix this redirect. --Russ (talk) 15:43, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Fixed. Bendono (talk) 21:54, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Old Japanese

Why /h/? /h/ is a modern phoneme. Read the "Phonetics" section in that article. /w/ also developed much later (but not as late as the modern /h/). /p/ is from the time before the Old Japanese. And /f/ from that period between the two (including this period). Under the entry「奈良時代の国語」in 国語・国文法辞典, it says:

➌ハ行音の子音はｆ（更に古くはｐであったらしい）であった。
➌the consonant for the ハ-column was "f"（furthermore, was likely from the older "p"）.

CJLippert (talk) 02:57, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

The phoneme /h/ has not changed. Please notice that it is /h/, not [h]. It's just a name to represent an abstract concept, not a concrete phonetic sound. It is the phonetic realization that has changed diachronically. Non-intervocalic: /h/: *[p] > [ɸ] > [h], intervocalic: *[p] > [ɸ] > [w]. Bendono (talk) 03:05, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Spelling

I understand that you are from the US and are living in Japan. Perhaps you are not totally familiar with British or British Commonwealth spelling conventions.

However, I would like to call to your attention the Wikipedia convention (which I can't find at the moment) that the spelling of an article should follow the spelling adopted by the original author of the article. That means that an article that originally used British spelling should continue to do so, and editors should not try to alter the article to follow American spelling in the light of their own spelling preferences.

Thank you.

Bathrobe (talk) 00:50, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I've checked the original article, and it appears that the original stub was American spelling. I'll go through and change the article to American spelling. Still, I would appreciate it if you didn't refer to spelling differences as "typos".

Bathrobe (talk) 00:57, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Understood. I am familiar with the guideline that you are referring to. Not that I particularly prefer US spelling, but the browser highlighted them as misspelled, so I "fixed" them. Feel free to leave the existing spelling if you want; either way, the issue is not important to me. I originally edited the page to remove the unnecessary redirect and pipe for Ogyū. Bendono (talk) 01:01, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
I also changed the spelling to Ogyū at other places on the page.
Bathrobe (talk) 01:42, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Emperor Ninmyō

In this article's text, I noticed today that every reference to the emperor had been changed to "Nimmyō" (-mm-); and there was a pipe + "Nimmyo" in each of the categories. I changed all to "Ninmyō" because the title of the article is indisputably Emperor Ninmyō. All references to this emperor in the context of Emperor Junna and Emperor Montoku were also "Nimmyō" which I changed to "Nimnyō." In a very few days, I expect everything will be changed back -- not reverted, but modified as if the edit were minor.

Changes having to do with this Ninmyō/Nimmyō spelling controversy seem to be happening with some frequency; but I don't think this can be called vandalism. I do suspect that whoever is making these changes has a good faith intent; but I'd appreciate it if you could confirm that at least my actions here seem plausibly helpful, constructive etc.

I notice that other Wikipedias use both romanizations. This could represent a considered consensus -- maybe not. For today, I'm not interested in resolving anyone else's problem (or non-problem); but I do want to try to avoid making anything more complicated than it needs to be:

  • Ninmyō -- Spanish, English
  • Ninmjó -- Czech
  • Nimmyō -- German, French, Italian, Portuguese

I also notice that List of Emperors of Japan identified the 54th sovereign as Emperor Nimmyo, which redirects to Emperor Ninmyō. I have "harmonized" these pages, but I'm not sure whether this hasn't simply exacerbated this seeming tempest-in-a-teacup.

Perhaps the best thing to do is to ignore this, leaving it to others to resolve in due course? Or it might be that I'm doing exactly the right thing? Can you offer a word of wisdom here? --Ooperhoofd (talk) 05:38, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Hello Ooperhoofd. When followed by {b, m, p}, /n/ is realized as [m] for phonological reasons. Thus, the issue is really transliteration (kana -> Latin script) vs. transcription (sound -> Latin script). Hepburn does in fact opt for the "m" version in these cases. However, in modified Hepburn, there is a tendency to just use "n". There is a small note about it here: Wikipedia:MOS-JA#Body_text. However, there is no consensus either way. If the issue is important to you, you may raise it on the talk page there and try to find a consensus. Personally, as long as a page is consistent, I am flexible with either spelling. Regards, Bendono (talk) 07:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Aha -- yes. Transliteration ≠ transcription -- an elegant observation which a priori clarifies a number of questions I was only just beginning to reach towards. Thanks. --Ooperhoofd (talk) 10:53, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Empress Jingū

I view my comments here as a window of opportunity for something good to happen. That window has closed. --Ooperhoofd (talk) 02:21, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Empress Jingū

In the context created by your late-December entanglement in something to do with the legendary Empress Jingū of Japan, perhaps you may be interested in something posted on the National Archives of Japan website. As it happens, a likeness of the empress graced Meiji period 10-yen notes from 1883 through 1899, and an easy opportunity to see this for yourself is only a click away.

Archive description: A banknote sample attached to a letter of inquiry submitted by Ministry of Finance to Grand Council of State in March, 1883, on issuance of a new 10 Yen Bill designed by Edoardo Chiossone, an Italian employed by the ministry. The face of the banknote depicts Empress Jingu. Circulation of this banknote started on Sept. 9, 1883, and ended on Dec. 31, 1899. "Kobun Fuzoku no Zu" (Pictures and charts affiliated with Kobun Roku ) containing this illustration were designated as National Important Cultural Properties of Japan in 1998 together with "Kobunroku".(Compiled Records of the Grand Council of State)

Thank you for your part in helping me to become a better contributor to Wikipedia's improvement. --Ooperhoofd (talk) 21:02, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Tourism in Tokyo

An article that you have been involved in editing, Tourism in Tokyo, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tourism in Tokyo. Thank you. BJBot (talk) 20:15, 29 December 2007 (UTC)