Just wondering Which one is the prefered spelling.
How about you take a look at this forum’s name?
I know but at other places it is spelt differently (GC spells it bishojo) and was wondering which is the prefered spelling.
This depends if you want to use the exact romaji or just round it off to the closest thing that an American who doesn’t study Japanese can understand. Since I’m sure that didn’t make much sense, I’ll try to explain it in a little more detail. In Kanji it appears this way: "√º¬è¬≠¬è- The variation in spelling comes from the middle kanji “shou” which means “small.” The reason you see "√º¬è¬≠¬è- written as “bishoujo” sometimes and “bishojo” other times is because an English speaker might get confused by that “u” in “shou.” This “u” is there because it represents an extension of the “o” sound. That is why sometimes you will see the word written as “bishojo” with a line over the first “o.” The line over the first “o” is equal to writing “ou.” Bascially, it’s just a long “o” sound. But if you don’t understand how hiragana is read, you may think that it acutally makes a “U” sound like we’d say in English, and then you wouldn’t pronounce the word correctly. That is why many times it is spelled “bishojo.” You should never see the spelling “bishojou” because ¬è- is pronounced “jo.” It’s a short “o” in this word. So, there isn’t any confusion. If you wanted to type "√º¬è¬≠¬è- into a Japanese word processor, you would need to use the spelling “bishoujo” because that they way it is spelled using the Japanese sound system. So why would Peach Princess use “bishoujo” and G-collections use “bishojo?” I think the anwser for that is pretty simple. Peter Payne in a big fan of these games and Japanese culture in general. Peach Princess is geared more toward hardcore fans. You can really see this when they leave words like “Onii-chan” as “onii-chan” in their translations. Doing such a thing isn’t actually a full translation into English, but it’s perfered among hardcore fans because the full English translation would seem somewhat akward. I’m sure that if Peach Princess translated “Come See Me Tonight 2” they would have kept the word “miko” instead of using “shrine maiden.” So all in all, I use the words “bishoujo” and “bishounen” instead of “bishojo” and “bishonen.” It’s a more authentic roman spelling of the word.
Thanks for the info
Eh…romanji isn’t actually a real written language, correct? So you can’t really say that one way is more “right” than another, per say. It’s just a transliteration of Japanese sounds into the English writing system, which isn’t really an exact science anyway (otherwise we could read a word with perfect pronunciation and intonation without ever having heard Japanese spoken before). I think either way of spelling “bishojo” is right, though I’ve personally never seen “bishoujou” and the word just looks strange to me.
[This message has been edited by Dark_Shiki (edited 10-26-2004).]
No, romaji is a romanization of Japanese charaters and there are two formal systems of romaji. This comes into play mostly in IME systems. Since there are no real “Japanese Keyboards” per se, you have to type in romaji and then convert it to Japanese in order to type up Japanese text…so long and short sounds ARE NOT a trivial matter.
Case in point:
Shoujo(­-j = girl
Shojoiˆ-j = virgin
I forget the names, but the main difference between the two systems is that one is more systematic while the other is closer to the phoenetic sounds. For example,
ta chi tsu te to = system 1
ta ti tu te to = system 2
Notice the difference in the 'chi and ‘tsu’.
The ¬Ç¬ø is pronounced ‘chi’ even though it’s in the ‘t’ line of characters, so ‘chi’ is more phoenetically correct, while ‘ti’ conforms to the system.
Most IMEs allow for either system to be used, so the resulting Japanese character is the same in either case.
So yes, multiple romaji spellings of Japanese words can exist, but screwing up the long and short sounds is incorrect.
So that’s why all those crazy Japanese learn English, eh…because you can’t even type in Japanese without a basic understanding of the Western alphabet?
Bishoujou seems wrong to me too but I definitly saw it somewhere so I added in case it was right.
quote:
Originally posted by Dark_Shiki:
So that's why all those crazy Japanese learn English, eh...because you can't even type in Japanese without a basic understanding of the Western alphabet?
Here is a perfect example of Americentrism. If you would get out of the rock you're living under, you would know that kana keyboards which allow direct input have existed for a long time.
I spell it bisyouzyo btw.
[This message has been edited by gaogao (edited 10-26-2004).]
Ex-S Woo is exactly right. There are different systems for making the sounds and those systems are set in stone. “bishojo” and “bishoujou” are both going to give incorrect long and short sounds. I know what Ex-S Woo is saying about “Chi” and “Ti.” There is no “ti” sound in Japanese but using roman letters it seems to flow better. “ta ti tu te to” vs “ta chi tsu te to.” When speaking you always need to use “chi” and not “ti.” No original words use the “ti” sound. Only certain katakana words use it and there is a special way to write “ti” in katakana. But that’s not important for the word “bishoujo.” Really, the reason GC spells it as “bishojo” is because they don’t want westerners to pronounce the word incorrectly. But really, it should have an accent mark over the “o.” If no accent mark is there and no “u” is used, it really is spelled incorrectly. Thanks for helping me with that one, Ex-S Woo. I see that I’m not the only one types in Japanese around here.
[This message has been edited by bishounen_blue (edited 10-26-2004).]
quote:
Originally posted by gaogao:
Here is a perfect example of Americentrism. If you would get out of the rock you're living under, you would know that kana keyboards which allow direct input have existed for a long time.
Thanks for informing me of my grievous fault, oh thee who is obviously much wiser than I... [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/rolleyes.gif[/img]
lol. I don’t think there’s any reason to get so worked up about this. I think the original question was valid and I’m sure there are people out there now wondering the same thing about all kinds of words, but don’t have the courage to ask anyone. It really is difficult to explain to someone who doesn’t study Japanese. Just know that the spellings aren’t random and there actually is a reason behind all of it.
quote:He's only given you the tip of the iceberg. When you want to enter kanji, you have to input romaji and accept the default mapping or hit the space bar and choose from multiple choice menus. There's more to it than you might think. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/wink.gif[/img]
Originally posted by Dark_Shiki:
Thanks for informing me of my grievous fault, oh thee who is obviously much wiser than I... [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/rolleyes.gif[/img]
Besides have you guys seena a kana keyboard before. Those things don’t look like fun to use, it’s much simpler to use the regular keyboard.
So that’s why all those crazy Japanese learn English, eh…because you can’t even type in Japanese without a basic understanding of the Western alphabet?
To put a more practical spin to it…yep. It’s more to be able to use IME and read the more “fashionable words” used currently.
The average college educated Japanese will have a hard time really holding any conversation in English aside from the typical “This is a pen” BS…so aside from computer use and piecing together various katakana words and what a store called “The Pet” sells…English is pretty much useless.
Kagami’s kana display as gibberish on my screen, so I might be missing something…but aren’t there thousands of different kana? How could there be a key for every single one? If it requires a specific sequence, how can anyone remember it off the top of their head for every kana they know?
Most probably you don’t have the fonts installed. In the case you are using Windows 2000 or Windows XP, it is just a matter of adding and applying the correct fonts. In Windows 2000, they are under Start - Settings - Control Panel - Regional Options - Languages Settings for the Settings and add the appropriate languages.
As for kanas, there are only 46 (x2 for hiragana and katakana, which has a 1:1 relation). Most probably you are referring to kanji, which is a completely different story. Just google for these words (hiragana, katakana and kanji).
hehehe. No, that’s not how it works but before I started studying Japanese I thought the same thing so I know where you’re coming from. Actually, there are not thousands of kana. In practical use, there are only 46 kana. Kana are syllables. There are thousands of kanji. Kana show how to say the kanji. If you write “ku” in hiragana, it doesn’t mean anything for sure, as there are many different kanji with the sound “ku.” You type in kana either via direct imput or through the roman letters to kana method. Hitting the space bar turns the kana into kanji and then you hit enter to go to the next word. It works well since there are no spaces between words, only sentences. Since that’s the only time you use the space bar for a space, hitting it one time does a double space. If you’re using XP (which I guess most of you are not) then Japanese font is already on your PC and if you want to PM me I can tell you exactly how to use it. It’s easy.
Sorry, I meant kanji. I actually did install the Japanese language support features. I changed the encoding like Kagami said, and that made the Japanese letters display correctly.