Talk:湯桶読み

@Eirikr "multiword terms" is a debatable concept when it comes to Japanese. In Western languages, you have spaces so you can make claims about word counts, and even so, they vary among languages. "Today" used to be spelled "to day". There are an awful lot of English terms that may be spelled with spaces or not, as one word or multiple words. "Rorschach test" in English is "Rorschachtest" in German. Spaces are sparsely used in Japanese, so what criteria are based your claims on? Also, "no sources" is a gigantic claim and you better have a solid comprehensive corpus of all sources there exist to back it up. I do hope you, as an admin, will try your best to remain subjective and neutral and not to project your own mere viewpoint and conjecture (or "deduction" or whatever) as you have done very often. ばかFumiko￥^talk 12:01, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

The Japanese language has a concept of "word", despite the lack of whitespace in running text. There are even many words to describe different kinds of "word". There may be disagreement on whether a given string constitutes one word or more, but there is no disagreement on the existence of single and discrete "words" in Japanese.

Monolingual Japanese sources specifically describe 湯桶読み and 重箱読み as applying only to single words:

• 単語 (tango, “single word, discrete word”) -- Daijisen for 湯桶読み, Daijisen for 重箱読み, Britannica International for 湯桶読み, Britannica International for 重箱読み
• 複合語 (fukugōgo, “compound word”) -- Mypedia for 湯桶読み, Mypedia for 重箱読み
• 熟語 (jukugo, “commpound word (more specifically a kanji compound)”) -- Sekai Dai Hyakka Jiten for 重箱読み
• 一語 (ichigo, “one word”) -- Shogakukan's Kokugo Dai Jiten
• more restrictedly, limited explicitly to just 漢字二字 (kanji ni-ji, “two kanji characters”) -- Daijirin for 湯桶読み, Daijirin for 重箱読み, Encyclopedia Nipponica for 湯桶読み, Encyclopedia Nipponica for 重箱読み, Shin Meikai Kokugo Jiten

No description anywhere that I can find describes these reading patterns as applying to more than one word. If anyone can find such a description in a respectable source, I am happy to have "no sources" changed to "almost no sources".

Please do not remove content from entries without discussion; at a bare minimum, add an edit summary. If you have questions, I will work to answer them.

I do hope you, as someone who doesn't read Japanese, will try your best to remain subjective and neutral and not to project your own mere viewpoint and conjecture, in disagreement with cited sources. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:57, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

RFV discussion: November 2017

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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湯桶読み & 重箱読み

湯桶読み lists three-kanji compounds, not just two like the definition claims. It's not an ideal source, so please provide with better ones. ばかFumiko￥^talk 13:00, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

• Daijirin specifically defines these reading patterns as applying to two-character compounds (「漢字二字でできている熟語」 → "compounds formed of two characters"). C.f. Daijirin entry for 湯桶読み, Daijirin entry for 重箱読み. However, Shogakukan adds a note that these labels can be used more broadly for any single compound term (for 重箱読み: 「また、広く、一語の漢字熟語を音訓まぜて読むことにもいう。」 → "Also, broadly, used to describe readings of single-term kanji compounds read with a mixture of on-kun.").

Notably, the example terms with three kanji listed in the JA WP articles for ja:w:湯桶読み and ja:w:重箱読み all appear to be instances of an existing two-kanji compound read with on or kun and either prefixed or suffixed with another term with the opposite reading pattern. Some cases are what I would consider a multi-word term, like 等幅フォント (tōhaba fonto, “fixed-width font”) or 手榴弾 (te ryūdan, “hand grenade”), and as multi-word terms, these would not be either 湯桶読み (yutōyomi) or 重箱読み (jūbakoyomi).

(The 等幅 (tōhaba, “fixed-width”) portion of 等幅フォント (tōhaba fonto, “fixed-width font”) is itself read with the 重箱読み (jūbakoyomi) pattern, but the entire term 等幅フォント (tōhaba fonto, “fixed-width font”) cannot be considered as either 湯桶読み (yutōyomi) or 重箱読み (jūbakoyomi) -- especially so given the inclusion of borrowed katakana term フォント (fonto, “font”), which by very definition cannot be either on or kun).

However, some of the example terms include rendaku, indicating that these three-kanji compounds could be considered as integral words and not multi-word terms, such as 冬景色 (fuyu-geshiki, “winter view, winter scene”) or 雪化粧 (yuki-geshō, “snow covering; to be covered in snow”), and as such, the reading patterns for these could be considered as 湯桶読み (yutōyomi) or 重箱読み (jūbakoyomi).

I will rework the 湯桶読み and 重箱読み entries to clarify the definitions and to add usage notes. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:39, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

• First, most sources you frequently cite also make faulty claims, such as a Portuguese term as *Olanda, so I would take them with a huge grain of salt, and if I spoke Japanese, I would seek something, well, more linguistic than some dictionaries that might favor prescriptiveness over descriptiveness, or be outdated and therefore not reflect the true current status of the language (which they do seem like they do and are). Second, the way you divide words into smaller parts seems arbitrary; I've read a romanization guideline that would do very differently based on kanji count, but then with various exceptions. It doesn't help that Japanese doesn't use spaces to separate words, so it's very tricky to determine whether a morpheme is free or bound, whether it should be separated from other parts with spaces or not. I've been following a way that more or less resembles that guideline I've read (based on kanji count), factoring word-medially only processes such as rendaku or renjo. ばかFumiko￥^talk 19:23, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

You asked for better sources than Wikipedia. I provided several widely published monolingual Japanese dictionaries: Shogakukan's Kokugo Dai Jiten, Daijirin, Daijisen, and Shinmeikai.

As you note, these sources sometimes include mistakes. Importantly, mistakes such as the derivation of Japanese オランダ (Oranda, “Holland”) arise from misunderstandings of non-Japanese languages. These sources are quite solid when it comes to describing the Japanese language itself.

By your own self-description, you don't read Japanese. I'm not sure how you'd be qualified to judge the quality of monolingual Japanese resources.

Regarding romanization and word chunking, you're correct that rendaku and renjō are both important factors to consider. However, in the absence of these, I'm not sure how kanji count would factor into things, unless one is combining a simple count of kanji with an awareness of the underlying vocabulary. Probably most kanji-spelled integral terms are two characters in length. However, some are three characters long (天婦羅 (tenpura, “tempura”)), and some are only one character long (目 (me, “eye”)). In 手榴弾 (te ryūdan, “hand grenade”), for instance, it helps to know that 手 (te, “hand”) is an independent term, and 榴弾 (ryūdan, “explosive round, explosive shell”) is an independent term, but that *手榴 (*teryū, literally “hand + pomegranate”) is not a term. With this knowledge, we can tell that this is a compound of 手 (te) and 榴弾 (ryūdan). This compound exhibits no sandhi (rendaku or renjō), the two portions have different reading types, the two portions are also used as independent terms, and the semantics are also clear as the two concepts put together as “hand” + “explosive shell / grenade”. Given all of these factors, it makes sense to render this in romaji with the space as two separate terms.

If you have a link to that romanization guideline, I'd be interested in reading it. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 01:35, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Eirikr (except for the romaji part, I think, but I'm not sure how romaji is relevant to this RFV discussion). —suzukaze (t・c) 01:53, 23 November 2017 (UTC)