~Hakurei Shrine~ > Touhou Addict Recovery Center
momizi or momiji?
LHCling:
--- Quote from: lgb on May 30, 2009, 10:32:02 PM ---but what the hell is a "misromanization", I thought there were a million ways to romanize something
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Hold on there's an ant on my screen.
True, but there lies the problem.
Going back to the example of Mokou; I read it as Fujiwara. Others, differently (see: previous page). Even though the romanizations are correct in terms of pronunciation (accurate), the problem is really, the sheer amount of possible romanizations (ranging from 1+). This causes confusion between people, as people would be referring to the same item (e.g. a person), but using a different name. To the point where we all accept the multitude of names and accept them all, that is.
When I used the term "mis-romanization", it was subjective (e.g. I think that is incorrect, and this is correct; while somebody else thinks the opposite; and in the reality of things, both are correct).
I really can't explain any further than that, so... >_>
Hieda no Aya:
The disclaimer to all this, and the really distressing thing here, is that I don't actually know Japanese. I just really like linguistics. Oh, christ, I can't believe how into this I'm getting.
--- Quote from: lgb ---momizi sounds better because it doesn't sound japanese
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Why's it better for a Japanese name to not sound Japanese?
--- Quote from: Slowpoke ---And I suspect Kurodani should be Kurotani.
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Well, that's not a romanization issue at least, as the hiragana spelling given for her name uses "da". Reading kanji names is confusing and not entirely within my grasp, but from what I can gather, there may well be a "tani" in there. However, it's common in Japanese for a consonant sound to gain voicing (or rather for the kana to gain a dakuten) when you attach something to the front of it. That is, there's a "kami" in "origami" and a "sushi" in "nigirizushi". Thus, "Kurodani" is probably fine. On the other hand, reading kanji names is even confusing for a lot of Japanese people, and there are cases where the voicing doesn't apply, so it is possible for something like that to be a mistake...
And, after all:
--- Quote from: lgb ---but what the hell is a "misromanization", I thought there were a million ways to romanize something
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Maybe not a million, but certainly more than one. We haven't even gotten into vowels here -- I don't know how we ended up with "Yuugi" alongside "Yuka".
--- Quote from: Drake ---except the 'fu' in both words are pronounced differently.
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Ahhhh, but there's an obscure and ancient rule by which a high vowel can ignore a tendency to lower, or vice versa, in the case of diminutizing a name: when you're just fooling around, you can do whatever the hell you want.
Drake:
so in other words you're using a rule to explain that you don't need the rules
Hieda no Aya:
In other words, I was largely making fun of myself. ;) Anything worth doing is worth doing with a sense of humor, hey? In fact, so're the things that aren't worth doing.
N-Forza:
The way I see it, is that if you're going to romanize something, it should be done with the intention of letting non-Japanese speakers see the name and be able to pronounce it reasonably close to how it should be said. Otherwise, just leave it in Japanese. For another example, if you had no idea how to speak Japanese, what would be a better way to say 東方, "toho" or "touhou"?
Of course, saying that here really won't affect anything, and I still have no idea what ZUN was thinking when he made Cirno's name.