HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: ucbked@athena (Earl H. Kinmonth)
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
Subject: Re: kanji of the day ?48
Date: 9 Oct 1992 22:33:23 GMT
Organization: Centre for Japanese Studies, Univ. of Sheffield
NNTP-Posting-Host: athena.berkeley.edu

i imagine that what i am going to say next will start a flame
war, but so be it.

as someone who uses japanese for scholarship (one book, half a
dozen articles) and who teaches japanese (as of next monday, four
hours of newspaper japanese for undergraduates, two hours of text
readings for undergraduates, plus n-hours per/week of graduate
reading courses), and as someone who has been doing this for
nearly 15 years, i think i may have more than an impressionistic
basis for saying what i am going to say....

anyone who gets off on individual kanji will NOT learn to READ
japanese well, perhaps not even learn to read it all.

words have meaning only in context, and context is not just
grammatical context, but historical, social, etc. context.  one
learns to read by reading.  banal but true.  you could memorize
n-number of entries from the OED, and share your joy of
memorization with thousands of others by electronic means, but
you will not be one-tenth as literate as somone who has actually
worked through a couple of texts, possibly knowing very few
individual words out of context, but knowing many words in
context.  the same goes for japanese.

the time spent typing in ascii characters to produce crude
renderings of kanji would pay more dividends if devoted to
reading....

it would also save me (and i suspect others too polite to say
so), the time it takes to kill every "kanji of the day" that adds
to the electronic junk mail in /usr/spool/mail/*....

if you want to read japanese, read it!  and, do not spend your
time telling other people about your efforts!
-- 
earl h. kinmonth, centre for japanese studies, university of sheffield,
sheffield, england s10 2tn  jp1ek@sunc.sheffield.ac.uk
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
From: alumni106@camins.camosun.bc.ca (Max Sterling)
Subject: Re: Answer to Nihongo dictionary: suggestions .
Organization: Camosun College
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 09:39:13 GMT

In article <SANTOS.92Oct6204130@melon.mickey.ai.kyutech.ac.jp>, santos@mickey.ai.kyutech.ac.jp (Rafael &) writes:
> 
> Hi everybody !
> 
> Some people were asking for some good English->Japanese dictionaries,
> and I have a suggestion:
> 
> Kenkyusha's FURIGANA English-Japanese dictionary.
> ISBN 4-7674-1172-6, some 1000 pages, entries in English with translations
> in Japanese (Kanji) with furigana (small hiragana and katakana over the 
> corresponding Kanji). 
> 
> It is *very* useful, and only 2000 yens (cover price).

I've got a copy of this too, but there are a few problems I've come 
across. First of all, they seem to miss a few obvious terms. eg. they 
have "remain" (ie. stay), but they DON'T have "remains" (ie. corpse). 
Also, despite the fact that they have LOTS of translations for 
practically everything, even for vulgar and not so common terms, they 
DON'T tell you how to use them in context. Presumably this was done to 
cut down on the size of the dictionary, but since I'm not exactly fluent 
in Japanese, this makes the dictionary pretty much useless for me. 
However, if there's someone out there that's more experienced in the 
language than me (not too tough) that's thinking of purchasing it, then 
by all means, go for it! You can look for other dictionaries until 
you're blue in the face, but I doubt you'll be able to find a better 
one. Mata ne.

                                                       -=]> Max <[=-

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Kup- "This reminds me of the time when my   +-> Kup- "You ever SEEN a Regulan|
|      my platoon was stranded on Regulan IV;|         Metal Monger, lad?"    |
|      there we were, only SEVEN HUNDRED of  |   Hot Rod- "Uh, no,..."        |
|      US, against THREE WHOLE REGULAN METAL |   Kup- "TRUST me! We were      |
|      Mongers!"                             |         outnumbered!           |
|Hot Rod- "Seven HUNDRED of YOU? Against     +--------------------------------+
|          THREE of THEM? Aw, come on, Kup!"-+ alumni106@camins.camosun.bc.ca |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
From: 0004807775@MCIMAIL.COM (Tim Whitmore)
Subject: Hello
Reply-To: NIHONGO@mitvma.mit.edu
Organization: The Internet
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 03:07:00 GMT

Hello,

This letter is for any and all who correspond on this conference.  I am
from mcimail.  I am interested in establishing a dialog with the users
on this conference and I am interested in obtaining the current files and
articles of interest to this conference.  My name is Tim Whitmore and my
e-mail address is 4807775@mcimail.com on internet.  Please respond with news
or info about how I can conference
with you people.

-tw
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
From: cmr@world.std.com (Charles M Richmond)
Subject: Re: Hepburn & kunrei romanization
Organization: Integrated International Systems Corp. One Longfellow Place, Suite 3309, Boston, Ma.
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 11:19:07 GMT

Mark Crispin <mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU> writes:

>If you have an easier time at interpreting Japanese in Hepburn than in
>kunrei-shiki, or if you have an easier time at interpreting Japanese in
>kunrei-shiki than in Hepburn, then your study of Japanese has not progressed
>very far.

>You should be equally capable in both systems, as well as being able to handle
>the occasional curve ball (e.g. `jya') that native Japanese will throw your
>way in actual real-life use (as opposed to ivory-tower academia).

>...(lots deleted)...  If you are going to use Japanese in any practical way,
>you have to be able to handle whatever gets tossed at you.  The kunrei-shiki
>bigot, like his cousin the Hepburn bigot, is in form an unpleasant surprise
>when faced with the reality in Japan.


For whatever it is worth, while I am certainly in the early stages of not
being intimate with all forms of romanization. I did perform a quick test
on my Wordtank 7200 (great device) and found that "sya" and "sha" both
give the same kana/kanji (JIS 3C52 $B$7$c(J  $B<R(J ). On the
otherhand while it supported the input of "joujou" ($B$8$g$&(J  $B>e>e(J) it did not suport the input of "joojoo" and it did not have the capability
of inputing "jo^jo^".  All of which , I take as supporting Mark's comments.

In another vein, while playing around writing this ... I found that the Word
Tank lists $B>e>e(J  that EDICT lists $B>e!9(J for the same meaning
and pronunciation.  Note that Takahashi's Pocket Romanized J-E agrees with
EDICT and that Shogakukan Progressive J-E (not romanized) agrees with the
Wordtank. So my question is: If the $B!9(J is a shorthand for repeating
a kanji , is it acceptable in formal writing and is it common/proper to use
it when the kanji to be repeated has so few strokes?


Charlie

-- 
*****************************************************************************
*  Charles Richmond 	Integrated International Systems Corporation        *
*  cmr@world.std.com	(Temporary) cmr@koneko.shr.dec.com		    *
*  Specializing in UNIX, X, Image Processing, and Communications.           *
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
From: jwb@capek.rdt.monash.edu.au (Jim Breen)
Subject: What happened to Kanji no 51???
Organization: Monash University, Melb., Australia.
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 03:17:21 GMT


Did I miss it? Has there been No 51 of the Kanji-of-the-day?

Can someone repost/mail me a copy?

-- 
Jim Breen                           JIS:$B%8%`!!%V%j!<%s(J
Department of Robotics & Digital Technology. Monash University. 
PO Box 197 Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia (ph) +61 3 573 2552 
(fax) +61 3 573 2345  AARNet/Internet:jwb@capek.rdt.monash.edu.au  
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
From: htomita@MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU (Hideo Tomita)
Subject: Q: On Koji-n on CD-ROM for Mac
Reply-To: NIHONGO@mitvma.mit.edu
Organization: The Internet
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 14:03:41 GMT

Hi, I wonder if anyone has information about Mac version of Koji-en on CD-ROM.
I understand it is produced by Dai Nippon Insatsu, but do not know how and
where I can get it. Any information such as price, the address to be reached
will be appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

Hideo Tomita
Kenyon College/OSU
HTomita@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
From: DTWIANOW@SUNRISE.SYR.EDU (Dan)
Subject: Re: Nihonjin In American Films
Reply-To: NIHONGO@mitvma.mit.edu
Organization: The Internet
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 18:33:00 GMT

John-  The version of Gung Ho you can see in Japan has had the Japanese
American actors' horrendous Japanese dubbed over by native actors.  You
should see (hear) the original!!!

Dan
From: santos@mickey.ai.kyutech.ac.jp (Rafael &)
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
Subject: Re: medium Kanji font for X?
Date: 7 Oct 92 10:08:29 GMT
Distribution: sci
Organization: KIT Iizuka, AI Dept, JAPAN.

In article <HUTTAR.92Oct6135254@ief.itg.ti.com> huttar@ief.itg.ti.com (Lars Huttar) writes:

>Hi...
>I'm running Nemacs 3.3.2 with Wnn in X.
>It works great for reading and entering Japanese.
>Right now I'm using a 14x14 kanji font, which means I must use a 7x14
>roman font.  This is a little small on my screen.  I know there's a 24-pixel
>kanji font, but that's larger than I want; not enough will fit on the screen.
>
>So does anyone know of a kanji font (for X) between 14 and 24 pixels, say maybe
>18 or 20?
>Thanks very much...


Here it goes...

Under X, you can use the command "xlsfonts" to check which fonts you
can use in your machine. Some of the fonts are named rk?? or romk??,
are fonts which can be used. romk18 will be OK for you, I think.

The command "xfd -fn fontame" shows the font "fontname" in the display,
so you can check if the size is OK. In my weird machine, sometimes I
got a font in the list of "xlsfonts" which cannot be used for display.

Hope it helped.


Rafael.
Xref: sparky sci.lang.japan:4447 soc.culture.japan:8995
From: robcruic@intacc.uucp (Robert Cruickshank)
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan,soc.culture.japan
Subject: Re: Jack and Betty Story (Was: Re: kanji of the day ?52)
Date: 14 Oct 92 04:39:40 GMT
Organization: Inter/Access' Matrix BBS


This no doubt explains the package of sugar I have which reads "Jack and
Betty Club-we love food - since1982"
----
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Rob Cruickshank               robcruic@intacc.uucp
                          Inter/Access Artists' Centre 
                                 Toronto
------------------------------------------------------------------
From: ucbked@athena (Earl H. Kinmonth)
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
Subject: wp51j
Date: 15 Oct 1992 17:21:04 GMT
Organization: Centre for Japanese Studies, Univ. of Sheffield
Distribution: world
Reply-To: jp1ek@sunc.shef.ac.uk
NNTP-Posting-Host: athena.berkeley.edu

a colleague of mine has discovered that wp51j (word perfect 5.1
for dosv) will print kanji on standard HP laser jets (no kanji
fonts) if you use the appropriate HP driver from a standard
English version of word perfect!  printing is slow but otherwise
acceptable.
-- 
earl h. kinmonth, centre for japanese studies, university of sheffield,
sheffield, england s10 2tn  jp1ek@sunc.sheffield.ac.uk
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
From: mvdvalk@cs.utwente.nl (Martijn van der Valk)
Subject: Re: `silliness' of historical radicals
Organization: University of Twente, Dept. of Computer Science
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 10:20:13 GMT

Dear netters,

jfriedl+@CS.CMU.EDU (Jeffrey Friedl) writes:

>I absolutely understand that to one who learned a particular way of things,
>a new (for better or worse) system to do the same thing would indeed cause
>hassles, if not resentment.  Of course, that doesn't mean that the old way
>wasn't silly.....  just not what you're used to.

A good book to learn the traditional Chinese characters is Father Wieger's book.
It's got every character you're ever likely to come across and Father Wieger's
attitude towards the 'logic' of radicals is quite clear from the very first
page (a lot of illogic is due to ignorant Da4 Shi1 (Grand Recorders) who
couldn't remember the correct way of writing. Kong3zi (Confucius) used to
complain about the scribes of his times: instead of leaving out characters they
didn't know, they replaced those with erronous characters they did know. What's
more, when brushes came into use, the way of writing characters changed
enormously, often mutilating characters, making their origin quite unclear.

I recommend this book to everyone, 'cause it's fun to read and teaches you
a lot about characters. I'll look up the publisher etc. when asked.

Martijn van der Valk                |          e-mail: mvdvalk@cs.utwente.nl
Faculty of Computer Science / SPA   |                      phone: +53-893795
University of Twente, P.O. Box 217  | BROADCAST BRA
7500 AE Enschede, The Nederlands    | Pegasus; Esprit BRA 6865

--
Martijn van der Valk                |          e-mail: mvdvalk@cs.utwente.nl
Faculty of Computer Science / SPA   |                      phone: +53-893795
University of Twente, P.O. Box 217  | BROADCAST BRA
7500 AE Enschede, The Nederlands    | Pegasus; Esprit BRA 6865
From: djohnson@cs.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson)
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
Subject: Re: Answer to Nihongo dictionary: suggestions .
Date: 8 Oct 92 22:35:12 GMT
Organization: =CSE Dept., U.C. San Diego

>Takahashi's Pocket Romanized Japanese-English Dictionary

Any that aren't romanized?
-- 
Darin Johnson
djohnson@ucsd.edu  --  How come my mind went off for lunch before I did?
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
From: tozaki@math.keio.ac.jp (Hidekazu TOZAKI)
Subject: Re: Q: On Koji-n on CD-ROM for Mac
Organization: Faculty of Sci. and Tech., Keio Univ., Yokohama, Japan.
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 20:24:39 GMT

In article <9210141406.AA19494@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> htomita@MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU (Hideo Tomita) writes:
 >> Hi, I wonder if anyone has information about Mac version of Koji-en on CD-ROM.
 >> I understand it is produced by Dai Nippon Insatsu, but do not know how and
 >> where I can get it. Any information such as price, the address to be reached
 >> will be appreciated.
 >> 
 >> Thank you in advance.

  We hear *new* CD-ROM version of Kojien (4th Edition) will be
published in 10-Dec-92 from Iwanami Shoten. I'll post a detail, if I
could.
--
Hidekazu TOZAKI
Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University, Yokohama, Japan.
E-mail: tozaki@nak.math.keio.ac.jp
Lines: 45
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 92 11:21:38 MDT
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
Subject: Re: Hepburn & kunrei romanization
Organization: Brigham Young University, Provo UT USA
From: luke@newt.ee.byu.edu (David Luke)

In article <MS-C.719137838.1103527590.mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU> Mark Crispin <mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU> writes:
>If you have an easier time at interpreting Japanese in Hepburn than in
>kunrei-shiki, or if you have an easier time at interpreting Japanese in
>kunrei-shiki than in Hepburn, then your study of Japanese has not progressed
>very far.

I disagree.  The ability to handle different Romaji systems is essentially
uncorrelated with Japanese ability.  Millions of Japanese do just fine
without being able to recognize their own names in Romaji.  There may be
situations where it is important, but they are few and far between.  I had
never seen or attempted to decipher anything but Hepburn until I started
reading s.l.j., and it didn't hinder me at all.  I still have a hard time
with kunrei-shiki and (shudder) Jordan.  If I saw "Huzituu" written anywhere
but in a s.l.j. or s.c.j. post, I wouldn't recognize it as Japanese, let
alone that it's equivalent to "Fujitsu".  But again, who cares?  It's
infinately more important and useful be able to read the kanji.

>You should be equally capable in both systems, as well as being able to handle
>the occasional curve ball (e.g. `jya') that native Japanese will throw your
>way in actual real-life use (as opposed to ivory-tower academia).

The above argument aside, this is true.  It is important to realize that 
there are different romanization schemes out there, and be able to map
real-world stuff to what you know.  Again, though, this ability is trivial,
since romanized material in the real world is extremely scarce.  If you
can handle lots of romaji and no real orthograhy, you're extremely limited,
but total lack of romaji capability is essentially not a handicap at all.

>My preference is for Hepburn, macrons (secondarily
>vowel-doubling following kana), and ha/he/wo for particles.  Your mileage may
>vary.

Me too, except with wa/e/o particles (optionaly 'wo' if it could be ambiguous).

>If you are going to use Japanese in any practical way,
>you have to be able to handle whatever gets tossed at you.  The kunrei-shiki
>bigot, like his cousin the Hepburn bigot, is in form an unpleasant surprise
>when faced with the reality in Japan.

Yeah, it's all in kanji and kana.  :)
-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  David Luke                      "There's nothing worse than a brilliant     |
|  luke@wombat.ee.byu.edu           image of a fuzzy concept."                 |
|                                                               -- Ansel Adams |
From: philb@cats.ucsc.edu (Philip Brown)
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
Subject: learning kanji
Date: 16 Oct 1992 11:17:23 GMT
Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: si.ucsc.edu



I am slooowly teaching mysef kanji from a book. but I would like a better
method of drilling myself than just turning to a "random" page.
I have X11R5 on a sun4. is there some free program I could use to help me
learn?

Philip Brown

-- 
  --------------------------------------------------
"How do I love sea? Let me count the waves.." |philb@cats.ucsc.edu
P.Anthony, "The Colo(u)r of her panties"      |philb@soda.berkeley.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
From: halstead@crl.dec.com (Bert Halstead)
Subject: Re: Answer to Nihongo dictionary: suggestions .
Organization: DEC Cambridge Research Lab
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 16:10:41 GMT

In article <39194@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>, djohnson@cs.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson) writes:
> >Takahashi's Pocket Romanized Japanese-English Dictionary
> 
> Any that aren't romanized?

I have "Kenkyusha's New Collegiate Japanese-English Dictionary," third
edition, (Kenkyusha, 1983, ISBN4-7674-2056-3).  My wife picked it up
for me, without either one of us being much of an expert about such
dictionaries, when we were in Tokyo 6 years ago (at that time it cost
2200 yen), but even though its acquisition was somewhat haphazard, I
find it very useful.

The main entries are given in kana (with the kanji versions
immediately following) sorted according to the standard AIUEO order.
The phrases and example sentences (of which there are a generous
number) are in Japanese, including kanji, but with my current
knowledge of reading (kana + about 300 kanji) I already find them
pretty useful.  The version I have packs over 1350 pages into a
1.5-inch-thick softcover book with a clear plastic jacket, so it's
pretty easy to take along when I travel, though it is a bit large to
fit into a pocket!				-Bert Halstead
From: tvp@gibdo.engr.washington.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
Subject: Re: Hepburn & kunrei romanization
Date: 15 Oct 92 00:50:13 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Oct15.005013.29050
Organization: clearer than blir

In article <ghawkins.719076423@unix1.tcd.ie> ghawkins@unix1.tcd.ie (George C. Hawkins) writes:
>jwb@capek.rdt.monash.edu.au (Jim Breen) writes:
>
>>     Many Japanese scientists use Kunrei romanization (Tamaru Takuroo's 
>>Nippon-siki physics text was widely used for many years), but translators, 
>>particularly in the humanities, seem to prefer Hepburn.
>
>I'm presumably missing something here? Why would people use romaji
>in anything other than introductory lectures (and even there ...)
>to the Japanese language for people who use English characters.
>Why should somebody publish physics texts in romaji, how are they
>readable? Why should a translator move a piece of text from Chinese
>plus kana to romaji. As I said I presume I'm missing something, if
>it's obvious sorry for my stupidity.

The point you're missing is that as a translator there are proper
names that you run into occasionally that must be transliterated.
This can include the bibliography listings of Japanese language
references, or quasi-governmental agencies without official English
translations.

So the point being made is that during translation, especially
technical translation, one is recommended to transliterate such
Japanese words using kunrei as it has been adopted by the ISO. In
other words, what's the translation for the native Japanese word
'sushi'? Why, it's sushi of course. It's the same. But if you're
following ISO you should use 'susi'. The problem is that in any
translation the words that most likely require transliteration are the
ones that English speakers are already familiar with via Hepburn and
therefore will look funny if not written in Hepburn. I prefer kunrei
personally but no one I've met outside of those who know Japanese
would ever recognize 'susi' as 'sushi'.  So if it's my job as a
translator to make sure the reader "gets the message" guess which one
I'm stuck with using?  And so it goes.

>I wasn't aware that romaji was
>of actual use to anybody except for people who wanted to use a few
>Japanese words (e.g. place names) in English texts.

Well, there you go. Even a translator is faced with this. That was the
point.

-- Tad Perry   Internet:    tvp@gibdo.engr.washington.edu
               CompuServe:  70402,3020
From: djohnson@cs.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson)
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
Subject: Re: Hepburn & kunrei romanization
Date: 14 Oct 92 18:13:19 GMT
Organization: =CSE Dept., U.C. San Diego

>I kind of 
>figured that that was the whole point of the romanization in the first 
>place.

Well, maybe that was Hepburn's goal, to provide romanization for
English speakers.  The Kunrei system appear more general, a romanization
that can be used by English speakers, non English speakers, Japanese
stuck on American typewriters, etc.

Certainly a Japanese text designed for English speakers should stick
closer to Hepburn, but this is not to say that this is the best system
for all purposes.  (In fact, most of the beginning Japanese texts I
browsed through, while finding one suitable for me, all stated they
used a *modified* Hepburn system - the better ones discontinued romaji
after a chapter or two)  If you know kana, neither system is going to
confuse you (too much).
-- 
Darin Johnson
djohnson@ucsd.edu
    "Only Nixon could go to China"  -- Vulcan proverb
Newsgroups: sci.lang.japan
From: masseyj@NOVAVAX.NOVA.EDU (James Massey)
Subject: Re: kanji of the day ?52
Reply-To: NIHONGO@mitvma.mit.edu
Organization: The Internet
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 23:37:07 GMT

nezumi wa oishii desu ka???????

Don't tell me that Japanese in the 1930's were rat-eaters, unless they
called them something like "mountain-carp" (the way boar was "mountain-
whale")...

Of course, my father (who has never forgiven me for teaching Japanese
culture) fought on Guam in WWII,and HE associated Japanese and nesumi...

Jim Massey
Nova University