Talk:Japanese dialects

Add Japanese script

I think all of the Japanese words should be given in kanji/kana alongside the roomaji. In addition to helping resolve ambiguities inherit with Hepburn romanization (ねえ vs ねー, おう vs おお), it makes it easier on students of the language reading this article. Epich 23:39, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree 100%, I'll start adding the kana/kanji. ILuvEire (talk) 22:35, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Chari

I added the few last revisions, and I would like to bring attention to the "chari" word for bike. I know it was used in Shiga Prefecture, but I don't know to what extent it is used in Kansai, though I think it is pretty general Kansai speak. I think. Alan 20:15, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it's just Kansai. I live in Ibaraki, on the edge of Kantō, and it's called chari here, too. While I'm not sure of the word's geographic origins, I've never heard of the "chariot" derivation. I have, though, heard that it comes from チャリンチャリン, the sound of the bell. I won't remove anything right now, and I'll start asking around if anyone's heard of a Kansai (or Shiga) origin. But regardless of its origins, I think this entry is probably more suited for general Japanese language slang. JFHJr (㊟) 04:13, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

It's a common word across Japan. We call it that in Tōhoku as well. Erk|Talk _{-- I like traffic lights --} 03:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Regarding analogies to dialects of other countries

It seems that the attempt to understand Japanese dialects invites comparisons to familiar dialects and regionalisms in the English language. I believe that such analogies are invariably flawed, inaccurate, misleading, unsupported by any scholarly research, and perpetuate regional biases and stereotypes of one culture into another culture. Further, they invariably seem to be biased toward regionalisms of the US. If it's documented that Southern US English has been rendered into Japanese using Tohoku-ben it's fine to state the existence of this situation. The current version of the Kansai-ben section does a good job of characterizing this situation. But I don't think we should not be making comments like "Tohoku-ben is roughly analagous to Southern US English". It's fine for rhetorical discussions at the bar on Saturday night, but in an encyclopedic article I will remove such statements as I see them. Of course if someone can show published research that supports these assertions, I'll defer to that. The Hokkaido Crow 01:05, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Kansai and Osaka comments

With regards to the "Common Phrases Unique To..." section, I believe that many of those words are no longer unique to the Kansai dialect. For example, although attributed originally to the Kansai dialects, "aho" is widely used these days. Also, "yaru" is also used as "give" in hyoujungo, as a variant of "ageru" used in particular when the speaker considers the "receiever" to be of lower status. However, I will leave this is a comment for now. As with most of the Japan related entries, this section still needs a lot of work! Lenny-au

"konyanyachiwa" is never spoken in Kansai. It is only used in a Japanese manga "Tensai Bakabon". Joh Shoh 17:42, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It's used in Cardcaptor Sakura too. See: http://www.ccsvscc.com/glossary.html

Also, is "konnana" (goodbye) instead of "konbanwa" genuine Osaka-ben? WhisperToMe 23:00, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The best-known dialect is Tokyo-ben and not Kansai-ben (although, strictly, Kansai-ben's eastern counterpart would be Kanto-ben, and Tokyo-ben's western counterpart would be Osaka-ben (and what's commonly perceived as Osaka-ben is really Kawachi-ben, and real Osaka-ben is on the brink of extinction)).--Outis 13:27, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I would like to see someone clean up the Kansai-ben section. It is clear that Osaka-ben and Kansai-ben have been used interchangably in this article, but I don't know enough about those languages to make the correction. The Hokkaido Crow 9 July 2005 03:31 (UTC)

Shall we categorize "generic" slang?

How about adding a section on top for general dialectal slang, stuff that's fairly generic? -ai and -oi tend to become -ee (as in shiranai becomes shiranee), ja nai can become ya nai, that kind of stuff. I'd do it myself but I don't know very much. Bigpeteb

Well, I decided to be bold and added this. It's not much, but it's a start. Hopefully other people can clean it up some, expand it, and maybe integrate it more into the article. Bigpeteb 15:07, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Hokkaido comments

I put the hyphen back in o-ban desu in the Hokkaido dialect section. The hyphen separating honorifics from words helps to make the meaning clear, and is standard practice in romanization. Otherwise in this instance it could be confused with oban which was a type of currency in the Edo era. — Ts'éiyoosh 18:54, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Okinawa comments

I just made some changes to the discussion in the "Dialects or languages?" section. First, I changed "others" to be "other people" so that linguists are not lumped into the category of people who believe Okinawan is Japanese. The perception that Okinawan is a separate langauge among linguists is nearly universal outside of Japan, and certainly the majority view inside of Japan. It would be difficult even in Japan to find a linguist today who claims otherwise, though many such claims were made in the past. Second, I mentioned Ainu as a language which is felt to be non-Japanese by nearly everyone in Japan, linguist or not. It seems like a good contrast to make.

NPOV aside, the claim that Okinawan is Japanese is pretty heavily contradicted by linguistic data and analysis. I suppose it should be left to indicate to the reader that there is some debate, but the people doing the arguing against Okinawan as a separate language have significant political motives which are difficult to capture in this article and are really beside the point in this subject. Perhaps I (or someone else) will add in some commentary about the political aspects of Japanese dialects and the Okinawan language argument. — Ts'éiyoosh 02:36, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've removed comments on the Ainu language because Ainu is not a dialect of Japanese or any other language, and it's in no danger of being mistaken as such. Also, Ainu has virtually no connection to Okinawa. Therefore, I believe Ainu has no place in an article on dialects of the Japanese language. The Hokkaido Crow 9 July 2005 03:27 (UTC)

What is "umpaku"?

The article has a header Japanese dialects#Umpaku. It's between Chugoku and Shikoku in the listing. I can't recall hearing this term before. Does anyone know what it means? Fg2 07:21, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Probably ja:雲伯方言, though I myself have never heard of it (worse, I don't know many of dialects on ja:方言...). - Marsian / talk 09:35, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, that must certainly be it. Fg2 20:54, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup

I added a cleanup tag here. The organization of this article is all over the place. Some sections have bullets with geographic locations, with no mention as to why those locations are there, while some have examples of the dialects. Others have links to specific dialect pages.

I would suggest picking one format and staying with it. Kcumming 19:05, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Dialect use

The article leaves a lot of question open. There is next to nothing to be found about dialect use in present-day Japan. Most western countries have been experiencing various level of dialect loss for at least the last 50 years. In some countries (eg France, England), old-fashioned rural dialects have practically ceased to exist at all. Is dialect use still widespread in Japan? Are children growing up speaking dialect, standard Japanese or both, as a rule? Are dialects converging towards regional norms or standards? Is there a social dialect continuum from basilectal to acrolectal varieties? I do not know any of the answers, but I am sure there must be Wikepedians who do.Unoffensive text or character 13:41, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Almost all of this article is about dialect use in present-day Japan. Rural dialects are very much alive, in fact the dialects that are documented as being in decline are certain urban aristocratic dialects in Tokyo and Osaka. Generally in school, a neutral dialect is used, and the regional dialect is reinforced outside of school. As to the change and flow, it's difficult to make any generalization except to say that language is in a constant state of change. The Crow 13:46, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Crow. You say that "almost all of this article is about dialect use in present-day Japan". But the article does not explicitely state (with one or two exceptions) that the dialects are still in general use. I thinks what you just wrote as an answer to my questions should be included in the article. Unoffensive text or character 09:49, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Potentially useful reference

A Bibliography of Japanese Dialects (1950) PDF, full text Fg2 03:16, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Iyo-ben contradictions

Iyo-ben is spoken in Ehime prefecture and is similar to Hiroshima-ben and other dialects in its use of けん (gen) for から (kara) ("because") and おる (oru) (and derivatives) for いる (iru). Some unique features of Iyo-ben include the use of が (ga) to replace the inquisitive か (ka), わい (wai) as a sentence-final particle similar to よ (to), and more limited regional variations such as 〜てや (deya)

There are two contradictions between kana and romaji in this. けん (gen) the kana read "ken" and よ (to), the kana is "yo". I know enough to know that for the second one, "yo" is correct (and I'm changing it now), but what about the first and third? Are the kana correct there, too, with incorrect romaji, or are the kana missing a dakuten? Nik42 23:17, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, I just noticed that there was a link to Iyo dialect, and based on what's on that page, the kana were indeed the correct ones, as I'd suspected Nik42 23:20, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Kesen language

Can anyone please take a look at the article Kesen language?

It looks a little weird to me. I explained my concerns at the talk page there.

Thanks in advance. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 21:44, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Some users suggested a merge, but some others think that it should be deleted. Since no-one is replying here i am proposing a deletion. Please correct me if i'm wrong. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 05:30, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

〇〇-ben

I realize the Japanese term for dialects is 〇〇-ben, but shouldn't we make the links "〇〇 dialect"? All of the pages listed in Category:Dialects of Japan use that naming order. Does someone want to help with the updating? Douggers (talk) 04:29, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

The articles themselves had inconsistent naming until I changed them all to "○○ dialect." Go ahead and change the links. -Amake (talk) 11:09, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Alright, I'll get to work on it the best I can. Douggers (talk) 00:22, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Imperial court

Regarding the Gyokuon-hōsō, a number of sources report that it was given in the dialect spoken at the Imperial court, and was extremely difficult for commoners to understand. Can someone add a section to this article discussion the dialect of the Imperial court that I can link to from Surrender of Japan? Raul654 (talk) 23:53, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

The manuscript of the speech was written in Classical Japanese language and Hirohito used the intonation of shinto prayer/chanting for ceremonies. Besides the condition of the AM broadcasting was very bad, with lots of noises and not as clear as today's. That is why the speech was difficult to understand. I don't think it could be called as a dialect. See Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 November 26#Hirohito's speech: 1945 and afterwards. Oda Mari (talk) 06:26, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Hiroshimaben 広島弁

"The Hiroshima dialect is regarded as a very manly sounding dialect. That is to say, tough and hard." I think this should be taken out, it's just an opinion, unless there is some study claiming that Hiroshimaben is a manly sounding dialect. ILuvEire (talk) 00:59, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes chuck it out, there're lots of colorful phrases in this article though. Guess it is to be expected when dealing with Kansai. Southsailor (talk) 07:52, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Pitch Accent Map

Is it just me or is there no key to the Pitch Accent Map file? Just a list of colors with no corresponding information? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.156.104.178 (talk) 19:17, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

File:Japanese pitch accent map-ja.png has the corresponding information in Japanese language. A translator is wanted...--Kyoww (talk) 02:27, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I couldn't find any English literature that really dealt with Japanese pitch accent classification, so I just translated everything directly. Care to revise? http://i.imgur.com/Z7uO9.png — Io Katai ᵀᵃˡᵏ 10:34, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I made the original accent map. I think it would be better to change Tokyo accent to Tokyo Type Accent, Kyoto-Osaka accent to Kyoto-Osaka Type Accent, Sanuki accent to Sanuki Type Accent, and Awashima accent to Awashima Type Accent because "式" means "type". "東京式アクセント" means various accents similar to Tokyo accent.

北部(hokubu) means northern part, so Oki, Hokubu should be changed to northen Oki.

I found a paper about Kagoshima accent in English. The name "Kyushu two-pattern accent" will be OK.

"曖昧アクセント" means ambiguous or unstable accent. "Uncertain" means accent of the area is not researched and unknown, doesn't it? (I'm a Japapese and I don't know English well).--Oeyama12:55, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Tsushima dialect

(moved to Talk:Tsushima dialect#Limited Korean influence. — kwami (talk) 00:50, 4 May 2012 (UTC))

Classification section

I was wondering if it wouldn't be better to merge this section within the other parts. I feel that a lot of the information would go better under their main headings which are currently quite bare (for example, displace the 'Classification > Kyushu' part under the 'Kyushu dialects' heading). That, and we should consider splitting these ridiculously long lists of sub-dialects and sub-sub-dialects into new pages. This way we can reserve this page for a broader overview of the main dialectal branches and possibly talk more about the distribution of certain features (adjective endings, copula, verb endings, particles, etc.) affecting how classification is made (e.g. pitch accent map opposes traditional divisions in Kyushu). — Io Katai ᵀᵃˡᵏ 19:52, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The way I usually handle this, is that as the articles are created, the details get moved over to them, leaving just an outline. But as long as we don't have an article on Tohoku dialect (or whichever), this is probably the best place for them.

I could see restricting this article to the Classification section (broad overview of features) plus your cladistic tree; each branch of the tree would link to an article, where we'd give all the details. — kwami (talk) 23:12, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

How's that? I just moved our material to separate articles, added a box, minimally reworded the lead, and reset the redirects. This is now closer to what we have for Korean and Chinese dialects. We can now address typology, isoglosses, etc. as we please without the distracting clutter of all the lists. — kwami (talk) 00:40, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

We need refs for the breakdown of the dialects, especially now that they're standing on their own. — kwami (talk) 01:41, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Wasn't expecting such a quick change, but it looks cleaner now and aligns well with the Japanese Wikipedia. As for the refs, well both Wikipedias seem to rely a fair bit off of this image map, which has some references at the bottom, but I don't have access to these works. A cheap way to circumvent the issue might be to just say that portions of the articles were adapted/translated from their Japanese counterparts (which is where I assume the lists originally came from anyways). — Io Katai ᵀᵃˡᵏ 17:18, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

This was s.t. I've been putting off doing for a while, and I had some time yesterday. Seemed odd that we should have articles on sub-sub-dialects and not on the principal divisions.

We can't use WP-ja as a ref, cuz they're no more reliable than we are, apart from having more people who can read the lit. — kwami (talk) 23:00, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Standard Japanese

There is no such thing as "Standard Japanese" which is regulated or prescribed by a public office or organization. Therefore, "and while it was based initially on the Tokyo dialect, the language of Japan's capital has since gone in its own direction to become one of Japan's many dialects." doesn't make sense. What's this "Standard Japanese" supposed to mean? What is commonly called "標準語" or "共通語" is nothing but a popular Tokyo dialect which is commonly called 山の手言葉 and which, in turn, commonly means a Tokyo dialect which is spoken in western region of Tokyo.--220.108.212.251 (talk) 16:48, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree and disagree. I agree that Wikipedia is all messed up with regard to the following topics: Tokyo Dialect, Standard Japanese, Yamanote Speech. Here is the situation according to me: There is a standard Japanese, and it is the language that is spoken by 90% of the people who live in the Tokyo area. Perhaps 10% (or less) of the people who live in Tokyo (mostly elderly now) were raised in the Shitamachi area, roughly around a line extending from Kanda to Asakusa and neighboring areas. Those people have a Shitamachi dialect. But 90% (or more) of the people who live in Tokyo speak standard Japanese as their native language. What is "standard Japanese"? It is the language that all the newscasters use. It is the standard language of most Japanese films and TV dramas. It is the language used by TV and radio news broadcasts across almost all of Japan's local regions. It is analogous in these ways to Standard American English, which began in roughly southern Iowa and is now the most common accent. Try going to Kagoshima and listening to the local TV or radio news broadcasts. They don't speak Kagoshima-ben; they use the language of Tokyo. There is such a thing as Standard Japanese, but there is no such thing as a "Tokyo Dialect". There is a Shitamachi dialect spoken by a very small percentage of Tokyo residents, but there is no Tokyo Dialect. I would also point out that Japanese Wikipedia is just as messed up on this point. Take a look at the Japanese article on "Tokyo Hogen". It is just as messed up as the English side. For example: (1) No one in Tokyo says "be" at the end; that is Tohoku. (2) "Tsuyu" is not a dialectal word, it is the standard Japanese word for the rainy season. (3) Saying "jan" instead of "janai" is not a Tokyo-specific usage. It is a standard colloquial contraction throughout Japan. --Westwind273 (talk) 20:02, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 19 February 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved to the proposed title at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 11:26, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

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Japanese dialects → Varieties of Japanese – Most Wikipedia articles on linguistic variation use the title "varieties of"... For example, Varieties of Chinese, Varieties of French, Varieties of Arabic, etc... For the sake of consistency, "Varieties of Japanese" would be the better title. I think that the main reason so many other Wikipedia articles use "varieties" is because the word "dialect" is considered derogatory by certain people. That's just another reason to consider the page move that I am proposing. Hko2333 (talk) 06:40, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose as failing all WP:CRITERIA but one. Primarily, the current title is CONCISE and NATURAL. The only argument that could be made is that its not CONSISTENT, but that is the least important of the CRITERIA. I'd much rather see other articles moved to "language dialects". -- Netoholic @ 09:01, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose. "Dialects" wins out, both on ngram and Google Trends. I took a look at the entry for Japanese in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2006), a standard library reference work, and "dialect" is the word they use. Colin Gerhard (talk) 09:46, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
• Articles that use "dialects" include Korean dialects, German dialects, Turkish dialects, Swedish dialects, Danish dialects, Norwegian dialects, Bengali dialects, Punjabi dialects, Portuguese dialects, and Yiddish dialects. – Thjarkur (talk) 10:19, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Overly eager language tagging

@Ineffablebookkeeper: Thanks for adding the {{lang|ja-Latn}} tags to so much text in this article! However, I think you were too enthusiastic. Most of the names of places and people are English names that were borrowed from Japanese. Tagging them as Japanese is incorrect. For example, "Kyushu" is an English name, and has an entry as an English word in Wiktionary. "Haruhiko Kindaichi" is that person's English-language name; you can tell because the given name is put first, whereas that person's name in Japanese would always have the family name first, and would be romanized Kindaichi Haruhiko.

I think using romanized Japanese names like Kyūshū makes this article harder to read than using the plain English name Kyushu. Using romanized Japanese names but unitalicized (e.g. Kyūshū) is an even more unusual choice. If it was important to use the Japanese word, then of course it should be italicized, since otherwise we wouldn't be able to tell the difference between English "Kansai" and Japanese "Kansai"; by the same token, if the difference wasn't important, then we should just use the English names because this is English-language Wikipedia.

Here's an analogy: If this were an article about French dialects, I would expect the article to use "Paris" (which text-to-speech software would pronounce "pair-iss"), and not {{lang|fr|Paris}} (which TTS would pronounce "pah-ree"). And I would expect the article to use "Charles de Gaulle" (which TTS would pronounces "char-ulz") and not {{lang|fr|Charles de Gaulle}} (which TTS would pronounce "sharl" with a silent S).

It may seem pedantic, but this issue affects Japanese, too. In English, "Okinawa" has the stress on the third syllable, which is emphasized and pronounced with a higher pitch ("oh-kee-NAH-wah"). In Japanese, "Okinawa" (沖縄) has a heiban pitch accent and is pronounced with a "low-high-high-high" pattern (which to English ears would sound kind of like "oh-KEE-NAH-WAH" and would sound distinctly foreign and/or robotic, unlike any pattern of pitches normally used in English).

Basically, I would advocate for the following changes:

• Names of people and places should be unadorned English without diacritics (e.g. "Kyushu", not "Kyūshū").
  • I see you changed "Hachijō Island" to "Hachijō-jima". I have an unrelated reservation about this, namely "What is the English name for this place?" Given what I found in English-language sites from Japanese authorities such as [1] and [2], I would argue the English name is either "Hachijo Island" or "Hachijojima Island". (The latter form seems redundant, but it's consistent with other islands where it helps prevent ambiguity, such as distinguishing the island of To-shima (利島, called "To-shima Island" in English) versus the village of Toshima-mura (利島村, "Toshima village", simply called "To-shima" in English).) Since WP seems to be using the somewhat unusual "Hachijō-jima" with a macron and dash, I don't mind calling it that, but just as it's presented as an English name in that article (without any {{lang}} or italics), it should also be used as the plain English name here.
• Any remaining text that's tagged {{lang|ja-Latn|italic=no}} should be reviewed. As I said, if it isn't in italics, then you're saying it's important to pronounce it as Japanese but not giving sighted people the clue that tells them to do so. Either it does need to be pronounced as Japanese, in which case italicize it, or it should be pronounced as English, in which case get rid of the {{lang}} entirely.
• Finally, any remaining text still tagged with {{lang|ja-Latn}} should most likely be moved to {{nihongo}} or {{nihongo3}}, and should probably have kana/kanji added. It's important to remember that unlike a language like Serbian that can be interchangeably written in the Cyrillic or Latin alphabets, the only 'proper' way to write Japanese is in its native system. With rare exceptions, romanization of Japanese is merely an aid for those not fluent in written Japanese, and not a substitute for native Japanese text. {{nihongo}} or {{nihongo3}} are the most common way to format these on Wikipedia, and provide future-proofing such as when we can hopefully tag all this text correctly as ja-Latn-alalc97 by simply changing those two templates instead of revisiting every single usage of {{lang|ja-Latn}}.

--Bigpeteb (talk) 22:35, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Hello - thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it. To be honest, I haven't reviewed my use of the nihongo template in a long time, and for wikilinks that feature both Japanese and English text, I've never entirely known what I'm supposed to do with them; in lieu of not entirely knowing how a screenreader would handle the text, I've generally erred on the side of caution.

I'll be sure to take this on board; I recently learnt that for transliterated text, the {{transl}} template is actually the better choice, so I've been going through a lot of my old edits and redoing my language tags there, as well. Thank you for going into so much detail! It's genuinely appreciated; digging through policy and template usage can be a little puzzling at times. I appreciate your hard work, and I'll be using it to go over my watchlist :) --Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) 23:58, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

{{transl}} is perhaps okay if the only thing present is transliterated text. I think it's kind of deficient, though. For example, despite what their examples show, it doesn't tag the text differently even when you specify a transliteration scheme. (It puts it in the title, but not in the lang tag.) The only schemes it recognizes for Japanese are "unspecified" and "ISO 3602" (which I had to look up: it's either Kunrei-shiki or Nihon-shiki, and I'm unclear as to exactly which).

More importantly, it would be completely the wrong template to use if there's text in the language's native script as well as a transliteration. Why? Because a TTS system would read the same text twice! It would see "日本 (Nippon)" and would speak "Nippon Nippon" because there's nothing telling it the transliteration is redundant. Even the example shown at the top of Template:Transl/doc fails this test. (That said, so does {{nihongo}}, because I'm not sure a suitable tag for that has been invented yet. However, {{nihongo}} could be fixed so that it marks the text to tell TTS systems which parts are redundant, whereas {{transl}} cannot because it has no knowledge of what text came before or after it.)

I much prefer {{nihongo}} and {{nihongo3}} because they're an all-in-one solution for Japanese. They can have just native Japanese text, or just romanized text, or both, all with optional English. They're quite easy to use. If you need a link, just link the appropriate part of the text: {{nihongo|[[Japan]]|日本|nippon}} yields "Japan (日本, nippon)". If you need italics or bold (such as an article title or book title), it can actually go inside or outside: '''{{nihongo|Japan|日本|nippon}}''' and {{nihongo|'''Japan'''|日本|nippon}} both yield "Japan (日本, nippon)". The main thing I see people get wrong is changing the order of arguments so it displays what they want (but tagged incorrectly), when the correct solution would have been to use {{nihongo3}}. --Bigpeteb (talk) 01:57, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Gosh. This stuff is complex! Here was I thinking it was a simple fix...I do try to use the nihongo templates if something shows a transliteration and the characters used, so I think I'm getting that right.

With the transl template - am I right in thinking you mean that for sighted people, the text isn't visually tagged as Japanese, and that it also doesn't allow you to choose a transliteration scheme? From what I can tell, Nihon-shiki is the older romanisation scheme, and isn't the same as Hepburn romanisation - in one source I found through a quick search, Nihon-shiki pronounces ち as "ti" and つ as "tu", when generally they're romanised as "chi" and "tsu". But then, apparently Kunrei-shiki is newer than Hepburn romanisation, and is actually preferable over it.--Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) 11:10, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

LOL You're right about that, it is annoyingly complex. It all comes about because of a distinction that the World Wide Web as a whole didn't get right for many years: separation of content and presentation. In old-school HTML, some elements were semantic (like paragraphs, lists, and tables) while other elements indicated presentation (like boldface, italics, or centering). Web pages used to use invisible tables to align lots of images together on the screen like a mosaic, and you would use the <i> tag for emphasis and to mark foreign words. But what if you're trying to mark a foreign word within some emphasized text? What if you're blind, and your screenreader tries to describe the table out loud? It has no way of knowing that the table doesn't actually contain tabular data.

In modern web design, we now separate those things. (Wikipedia only does a so-so job of this, due to its continued reliance on its ancient and questionable markup language, like the use of '' and '' for italics and boldface.) Hence why we use HTML and CSS together. HTML indicates the semantics, while CSS creates the presentation. So for instance, we might use the <em> tag to indicate emphasis, and a foreign class to indicate foreign words, and now we can tell it that text that's both emphasized and foreign should be underlined, or non-italicized, or whatever. Similarly, we can mark up text to indicate its language, which helps screenreaders (so they know whether to pronounce Paris as "pare-iss" or "pah-ree"), search engines, translation software, etc. And, of course, to make that job easier for wiki editors, we use templates.

You can see the results of what this does in most browsers by right-clicking something and choosing "Inspect element". That pulls up a pane that web developers use all the time, which shows the HTML and CSS structure of the page. There you can see that in text like "Japan (日本, nippon)", the 日本 is marked with lang="ja" and the "nippon" is marked with lang="ja-Latn" (at least as it's implemented today; that might change in the future). That's why it's important to use {{nihongo3}} instead of switching the arguments around. {{nihongo|''nippon''|日本||Japan}} may look right visually ("nippon (日本, Japan)") but it will be lacking the lang="ja-Latn" tag, while {{nihongo3|Japan|日本|nippon}} has the correct markup ("nippon (日本, Japan)").

My problem with {{transl}} is that it doesn't provide enough information. With modern HTML and CSS, you can do things like say "When this document is printed on paper, after a hyperlink show the URL that it links to", which is helpful since you obviously can't click a piece of paper. Analagously, there might be a way to indicate "When a screenreader is speaking this page, skip this text", which would be useful so that "nippon (日本)" isn't spoken as "nippon nippon". But {{transl}} isn't useful for that at all (unless they add a new parameter); only a template like {{nihongo}} that's responsible for displaying both the foreign language and its transliteration would be able to mark that text appropriately.

As for romanization, that's easier to answer. Firstly, it doesn't affect pronunciation at all! Whether you see つ or tu or tsu, it's always pronounced the same way: [tsɯ]. Secondly, Modified Hepburn has been the de facto standard in Japan for around 70 years. On Wikipedia per WP:ROMAJI, we always use Modified Hepburn unless there's a specific reason not to (such as common usage or of course when describing other romanizations). --Bigpeteb (talk) 19:24, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

So, I should use {{nihongo3}} for instances where I introduce the transliterated Japanese word, and I want its kanji and translation in brackets - I'm assuming that if I don't have either the kanji or the translation, I can essentially leave those parameters blank? By that I mean, something like {{nihongo3|god||kami}}, or {{nihongo3|god|神||}}. I work on a lot of the lower-traffic Japanese culture articles, and sometimes I can't find the right kanji for love nor money - nihongami, for example, is a nightmare I am currently avoiding, as there are a ridiculous number of traditional hairstyles I either don't have the kanji for or can't find a translation for. Some of them are obscure enough that they're only preserved in re-enactments, with the translation or meaning of their name having been lost some time around the Edo period.

Am I still okay to use {{transl}} for tagging transliterated text? I've already gone through a few of the articles on my watchlist and replaced the instances of {{lang|ja-Latn| with {{transl|ja|, but now I'm somewhat second-guessing myself.

There's a lot of instances where it is difficult or literally impossible to discuss the article topic without the use of transliterated words in the place of translations. I know we're supposed to keep foreign language terms to a necessary minimum, but on the article kimono, for example, it is literally impossible to have a discussion about or on kimono without the liberal use of a number of terms that would not translate nicely into English - you can try and translate a paragraph on the nature and relationship between irotomesode, obi, a person's kitsuke and the relationship between formality, age and obi musubi, but "colourful short-sleeve kimono, belts, a person's dressing, and the relationship between formality, age and belt knots" doesn't get near the nuance or accuracy of what's actually being discussed. It leads to further confusion when people assume the reverse, that all short-sleeved kimono can just be called tomesode, an assumption that walks over the fact that short-sleeved kimono are the standard, that short-sleeved kimono are instead individually categorised by other characteristics, and that only exceptions to the rule - such as furisode - are referred to as a distinctive type of kimono notable for their sleeve length.

I don't think I'm wrong to use {{transl}}, but if I am, it's going to cause a fair few problems for a number of articles. If it doesn't markup as lang="ja-Latn" properly in the page's HTML and CSS, that's another mind-fucking problem - but possibly a fault of the template itself that could be fixed(?). -- Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) 12:37, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Yes, what you describe sounds like what I would normally do. When you want to present Japanese text, its romanization, and its English translation all together, use {{nihongo|english|japanese|roman}} if you want the English to come first or {{nihongo3|english|japanese|roman}} if you want the romanization to come first. You can leave some parameters blank, but that template requires the Japanese text and/or the romanization; only the English translation is optional.

There's nothing wrong with using romanized Japanese terminology in an article, as long as it's relevant to the topic and the term is explained! Yes, we absolutely want to introduce Japanese terminology for kiminos in an article about kimonos. What we wouldn't want is random Japanese terminology about kimonos thrown into, say, an article about a fashion model where the terminology isn't explained and isn't superior to an English gloss.

So in that case, depending on how you write, I would use {{nihongo}} or {{nihongo3}} the first time such a term is used if you want an English translation/gloss in parentheses (er, brackets). Or, you could translate/gloss it in text, in which case use {{transl}}. For example, you might write "Kimono are tied shut with an {{nihongo3|sash|obi}}." or you could write "Kimono are tied shut with an {{transl|ja|obi}}, a wide sash that comes in a variety of styles." Every time after that, when you use just the romanized term without a translation, just use {{transl}}. --Bigpeteb (talk) 17:49, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

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