Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Need advice from people who use non-ascii all day long

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 東京, east capital.  Kyoto is 京都, capital city.  Kyo
is the same, to is different.

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