Language desk
< June 6	<< May \| June \| Jul >>	June 8 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

June 7

Decode Japanese

How to decode Japanese text, especially not written in Chinese like ファミレス・レストラン(ホールスタッフ) キッチンスタッフ(ファミレス・レストラン) or ビアガーデン, フードコート, スタイリスト, ガソリンスタンド, パーキングスタッフ. I can't understand Japanese without contain Chinese. Hmht45tgree3d (talk) 08:34, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know Japanese (as opposed to some linguistic facts about Japanese), but I see レストラン resutoran twice, as well as パーキング pākingu, and also ファミレス famiresu (explained on the Japanese abbreviated and contracted words article), which is one of the tetramoraic abbreviations discussed in the "June 5th" section above... AnonMoos (talk) 09:20, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, if you're a speaker and reader of Chinese, but don't know Japanese, then I'm not sure how you can really "understand" Japanese written text at all -- you could often get the gist of the subject-matter that's being talked about, but the inflectional endings and short function words are written in hiragana... AnonMoos (talk) 09:32, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Viewed in toto, I'd guess that it's from a "personnel wanted" ad. What do you mean by "decode"? (Convert into romanized form? Convert into guessed English etymons/cognates?) -- Hoary (talk) 10:21, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I mean if a sometext of 基本的にカウンター越しの接客。お客様, I can decode out only Chinese part of 基本的越接客客様 or "basic beyond reception customer", but Japanese part that I can't understand such as にカウンター — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hmht45tgree3d (talk • contribs) 10:43, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the answer to your question is quite simple: if you want to be able to decode Japanese, you should learn the Japanese language. Like with every other language on earth. Why would you expect that to be different here? Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:47, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hmht45tgree3d -- if you can at least tell apart hiragana and katakana, then you can tell that に is a grammatical form, while カウンター is a probable loan word (kauntā, I guess "counter). If you're just scanning the kanji, then you may not really understand as much of Japanese sentences as you think you do (see my comment of "09:32, 7 June 2019" above)... AnonMoos (talk) 11:42, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What your saying "Kanji" mean? 看基？刊記？看濟？ (Hmht45tgree3d (talk) 06:05, 9 June 2019 (UTC))[reply]

I'm saying that if you read a Japanese phrase such as "基本的にカウンター越しの接客" as "基本的XXXXXX越XX接客", trying to understand the non-"X" characters from their Chinese meanings, then this method will lead to limited comprehension... AnonMoos (talk) 06:45, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank a lot, when I read Japanese with Chinese, like "基本的にカウンター越しの接客", I can guess something meaning by Chinese what contained in. but I completely can't understand pure Japanese such as うしたブレーりとしてイティブ, アメれるはワシントン, no different than колько гоминьдановских бла or ल्ली मष्ट्रहिला रूप मी काम रापत्या अरि or นดีเปรรีย ชันเขสตร้อน หรือเกเพียงพายุหมุน เฮอริเคนเป็, while I can only read as meaningless strokes.Hmht45tgree3d (talk) 14:16, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, if a Korean phrase containing Chinese as 基本的상황에서거리는越같이接客, I can partial understand Korean in same way, but the reality not. Hmht45tgree3d (talk) 14:16, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Can I use translater or google translate to "decode" the Japanese text?Hmht45tgree3d (talk) 12:47, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

By "decode", you seem to mean "understand". Well, feed the text to Google Translate (or similar) and see if you understand what it produces. -- Hoary (talk) 22:20, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Perception of Swiss Standard German

Hello. How do other native speakers of German (particularly those from the north) perceive the Swiss accent in German? Is it perhaps subject to mockery, especially with their [ər] for the low schwa [ɐ] and Italian-style geminates (as in immer)? I'm asking this because I'm trying to figure out what's the point of including SSG (and Austrian SG as well) in Help:IPA/Standard German.

See also this related discussion if you're interested. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 08:40, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I don't see any direct relation between the question you are wondering about and the question you asked, yet I'll try to answer. Many German natives (Austrians included) do find Swiss pronunciation somehow "funny", for different reasons. I don't think that geminates are particularly relevant in this regard, while, for instance, the complete absence of [a] (except for diphthongs) is indeed somewhat particular – even in Bavarian dialects that also show rounding of [a] it's still conserved in various cases. Also the second phenomenon you quoted ([ər] instead of [ɐ] or [ə̯ɐ]) is prominently observed. However, maybe the most distinct trait of Swiss German is prosodic and consists in a certain additional pressure added to the stressed syllables. Here, maybe, geminates might contribute, but the phenomenon affects also long vowels.

As for the other question, I do think that SSG and ASG should be included, as German is a polycentric language and there do appear specific traits in phonetics (and morphosyntax, lexicon etc.) of Swiss and Austrian German. Galtzaile (talk) 15:38, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Galtzaile: I've reworded the last sentence, thanks.

The problem with including ASG is that sources disagree on its defining features. Also, many of the phenomena listed in the JIPA article on ASG also appear in colloquial Standard German of Germany and are already covered by the broad transcription used on Help:IPA/Standard German - all that's required is not reading the IPA in a literal manner. It's worth to read the discussion I've linked to.

I think that the goal of WP, as far as German pronunciation is concerned, is to provide a neutral pronunciation that'd be acceptable everywhere in the German-speaking world. And most features of SSG are, again, already covered by our broad transcription. The situation with Standard German in Switzerland seems to be similar to the situation in Luxembourg, yet we don't deal with Luxembourgish SG in our transcriptions (it'd be basically like Northern SG with regional Western German SG features). Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 16:44, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, now I see and I agree, to say, I'd have agreed already if I had read the discussion before. I mainly focussed on the question about subjective perception and misunderstood the aim of the SG IPA guide. In all cases where a neutral pronunciation is required there's no doubt. Besides, as "standard" pronunciation varies substantially depending on the region (also in Austria: East/West, for instance, I believe that Western Austrians don't pronounce nasal vowels when speaking SG, and Switzerland), it would be difficult to find a fully excepted ASG, anyway, I think. (But I'm not into German philology, so I only expound my perception.) Galtzaile (talk) 17:42, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]