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Old 04-01-2014, 04:06 PM   #251
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I'd like to play but I don't think I'm skilled enough yet. Maybe in about 6 months.

Here's something that's been bothering me. -_-

How do you write "of" in Katakana? Is it "ofu", "obu", or "ovu"?
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Old 04-01-2014, 04:34 PM   #252
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オブ. Example 1: ザ・ビギニング・オブ・タイムズ. (No idea what that album is so don't shoot the messenger if it's something nuts. ) Example 2: ザ・キング・オブ・ファイターズ.

Strictly speaking, オヴ is ovu while オブ is obu, but I find myself reading オブ as ovu occasionally and I think a fair percentage of native Japanese interchangeably read オブ as ovu and obu themselves.
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Old 04-07-2014, 12:48 PM   #253
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Did I write this correctly?

Eupatridae

Pronounced: Yoo-Pa-Tri-Dee

ユーパトリヂー
Yuupatorijii
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Old 04-07-2014, 01:04 PM   #254
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They can manage a dee sound. It would be written ユーパトリディ or ユーパトリディー, the terminal vowel length depending on subtleties of translation. (My inclination is towards the former in this particular instance.)

However, it is worth noting that with Greek names brought over into Japanese, some standard forms derive from how the name would have been pronounced in Greek while other standard forms derive from how Americans pronounce the names. For example, Arachne in Japanese is アラクネー or Arachné, not Arachnii the way most Americans say it. (I don't speak Greek but I imagine that the Japanese vowel sound is closer to the authentic reading than ours in this instance.) Other times, the Japanese really butcher a Greek name when bringing it over. For example, Euripedes somehow became エウリピデス "eh oo rii pii de su" (without moras; not even going to attempt that blind and my food is getting cold ), the yuu sound of Greek eu somehow lost.

You might want to look up on ja.wikipedia.org some more Greek names that use eu and ae for yourself. See what you find, and allow it to inform your decision of how to most authentically transliterate your made-up Greek name over into Japanese.
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Old 04-07-2014, 04:25 PM   #255
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It's actually a real Greek term:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eupatridae

I was trying to construct something like a "senior council" without using the Spartan Gerousia, because I didn't like how it sounded. This fits well in with the theme, too, because the Japanese equivalent - 華族 kazoku has almost the same literal definition, "of excellent birth".

Bragging time.

Several of the names in my story have characters taken from the Chinese Zodiac:

辰巻あ tatsumaki (Dragon)
巳波 minami (Snake)
子食 kotabe (子 has alternate kun-yomi as ne, for Rat)

I was looking for a term to give a Japanese-sounding last name to an obviously non-Japanese character. Related to serpents, I looked up the King/Queen of them (Typhon and Echidna). Turns out Echidna's home is a cave called Arima, couch of Typhoeus.

When I thought Arima, I recalled Arima Takuya from YU-NO. So I grabbed the kanji of his name which is 有馬. Broken down, it's actually aru + uma.

"has horses" kind of sounds made-up and arbitrary, even with the Greek reference added in. I didn't want to use it and put in another kanji that sounded like ma.

Then, while I was eating about an hour ago, I was all "wait a second, the horse is part of the Chinese Zodiac too, isn't it?" so I check the kanji and the kun-yomi reading...

有午

Oh yeah!
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Old 04-12-2014, 02:12 AM   #256
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I want to pronounce the Persian "tiger" in katakana.

Hover over the tiger to get the pronunciation in Persian:

http://mylanguages.org/multimedia/fa...io_animals.php

It's "baber", "babr" or something similar. The closest I came in Japanese is "babur", so I wanted to write it バーブル but the machine translations insist on バーバー, which is the pronunciation of the similar "barber".

While I can agree on the バー, how I pronounce barber has a "err" sound, while babr is "bur" like in "Wilbur". Even if I go with the baba sound, バーバ be better? I dunno how Japanese would take it, though, any insight?
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Old 04-12-2014, 02:25 AM   #257
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Doppleganger View Post
I want to pronounce the Persian "tiger" in katakana.

Hover over the tiger to get the pronunciation in Persian:

http://mylanguages.org/multimedia/fa...io_animals.php

It's "baber", "babr" or something similar. The closest I came in Japanese is "babur", so I wanted to write it バーブル but the machine translations insist on バーバー, which is the pronunciation of the similar "barber".

While I can agree on the バー, how I pronounce barber has a "err" sound, while babr is "bur" like in "Wilbur". Even if I go with the baba sound, バーバ be better? I dunno how Japanese would take it, though, any insight?
I feel tempted to say throw in a ッ after the ブ but something I've learnt is never trust machine translations. :/
They may be good for getting the gist of a sentence/word, but never for accurately translating or what not.

I'm thinking baaburu as you've said since it sounds similar to the name Barbara. But the name being with a u in place of the second a.
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Old 04-12-2014, 08:04 AM   #258
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What's the IPA on the Persian word?
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Old 04-12-2014, 11:32 AM   #259
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Quote:
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What's the IPA on the Persian word?
/'bæbɾ/
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Old 04-12-2014, 11:55 AM   #260
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Japanese lacks 'a' as in "apple," so you're going to be dissatisfied with the Japanese approximation regardless. I would hazard a guess for babr at バーブラ (which sounds like Japanese "Barbara" but cannot be helped). Normally terminal consonants in loan words get the ウ treatment, but terminal "br" sounds too much like "bruh" to be ignored imo: I think they'd hear it as bura, with ア approximating "uh".

You could always try looking for a PersoJapanese dictionary. I just did and found this hit on someone's essay about tigers:

Quote:
ببر babr [ 'bæbɾ ] [ ' バブル ] (現代)ペルシャ語
It looks like they don't think the vowel is Japanese long but short; and that they don't think the word should end in anything but standard ウ. *shrug* Given the essay's author is Japanese, I guess unless you find proof to the contrary you ought to go with their submission, バブル. And I guess you get to enjoy all of the Babel puns now. The Tower of Tigers ... the Tigeronians ... Tigeron 5 ...
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Old 04-12-2014, 12:24 PM   #261
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The Persian gents I was speaking with brought up some evidence for バーブル, seen here:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wikipedia
According to Stephen Frederic Dale, the name Babur is derived from the Persian word babr, meaning "tiger", a word that repeatedly appears in Firdawsī's Shāhnāma and had also been borrowed by the Turkic languages of Central Asia. This thesis is supported by the explanation that the Turko-Mongol name Timur underwent a similar evolution, from the Sanskrit word cimara ("iron") via a modified version *čimr to the final Turkicized version timür, with -ür replacing -r due to need to provide vocalic support between m and r. The choice of vowel would nominally be restricted to one of the four front vowels (e, i, ö, ü per the Ottoman vowel harmony rule), hence babr → babür, although the rule is routinely violated for words of Persian or Arabic derivation.

Contradicting these views, W.M. Thackston argues that the name cannot be taken from babr and instead must be derived from a word that has evolved out of the Indo-European word for beaver, pointing to the fact that the name is pronounced bāh-bor[10] in both Persian and Turkic, similar to the Russian word for beaver (бобр – bobr).
I'm probably going to have to make a judgment call on the elongated a, which is a bit surprising since it was the ブル I was questionable about translating. :O
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Old 04-12-2014, 01:46 PM   #262
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Katakana words, especially borrowings, are sort of flexible with vowel length (at least in these situations). JDICT has a habit of listing many words with varying vowel lengths.
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Old 04-16-2014, 12:04 PM   #263
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In The King of Braves GaoGaiGar, there's a phrase that's repeatedly referenced to called the "oath sworn through courage".

I think I've gotten it down as 勇気ある誓い, it can be heard here twice. The problem is I can't find anything that says "yuuki" as a verb...so I'm quite confused if they made verbified it, or if there's something I'm just missing.
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Old 04-16-2014, 01:21 PM   #264
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First, to answer your question about 勇気ある誓い: In order to help you to understand the grammar of what's going on here, I'll say that originally one might expect a が in between 勇気 and ある. You have a verb phrase (勇気がある "has courage" / "to have courage") modifying a noun (誓い "oath"). However, the が would not normally be expected in constructions of this type. It's a similar principle with dropped に in phrases like 華麗なる一族 or 静かなるドン. Without getting too deep into advanced territory, particularly sense it pushes my own fluency (or lack thereof) to its limits, I'll offer the following analogy:

勇気ある誓い : the courageous oath :: 勇気がある誓い : the oath that has courage

It's an imperfect analogy, but hopefully you can appreciate how the one sounds like a proper noun or title while the other sounds like an ordinary phrase/clause in a sentence. That isn't to say that the second one can't be a title too. I mean, you have book titles all the time like "The Cat that Went to the Beach" or "The Men Who Failed". But it's more common to have a title like "The Doomed Planet" than to have one like "The Planet That Was Doomed."

Long story short, 勇気 has not been verbed in the sample you provided; rather, it is part of a verb phrase/clause.

Second, to answer your question about rendering nouns as verbs: As a friend in high school once said, "Any noun can be verbed." It's true in English (to google, to key, to plug, to shop, to bag, to ladder, to whale, ...) and it's true in Japanese.

noun + する is a common way to formulate verbs in Japanese. More accurately, of the various families of verbs in Japanese, the noun + する family is perhaps the largest family of them all. You can't just willy nilly take any ol' noun you like and stick する on there ... but you technically sort of can do that, in the same sense that in English we also neologize nouns into verbs all the time. (Examples: "He papered me! @_@" in talking about being plastered with papers; "He pizzaed me!" in talking about having pizzas thrown at oneself; etc.)

Some common examples of noun+する include:
  • 勉強する "to study" (with 勉強 being studies, so lit. "to do the studies" or simply "to study")
  • 我慢する "to endure; to bear with it; to persevere" (with 我慢 being the noun "endurance; perseverance")
  • 遠慮する "to hold back; to refrain" (with 遠慮 being the noun "reserve; constraint; restraint; modesty")
You've probably heard people say 遠慮しないで enryo shinaide before. You've probably heard 我慢して! gaman shite or 我慢できない! gaman dekinai before. These are examples of a noun being formulated as a verb thanks to する. (Note: できる/出来る is the potential form of する. "To be able to do" vs. "to do.")

You should really look into getting that Japanese college text, man. ^^; You're at an institute of higher learning, right? They have got have a bookstore nearby where you can purchase a Japanese 101+102 textbook for like $70. Totally worth the investment for you at this point.
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Old 05-14-2014, 12:24 PM   #265
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Does "じゅもん" sound similar to "じゅうまん"?
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Old 05-14-2014, 01:12 PM   #266
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Doppleganger View Post
Does "じゅもん" sound similar to "じゅうまん"?
Does cookie sound similar to quickly? Kind of a similar question. You wouldn't confuse the two but sure they sound kind of similar, for obvious reasons. If you're asking if it's an A-grade pun or not, no, I don't think so. Kind of forced. But if you're asking do they sound similar, well sure, just like cookie and quickly sound similar without being confused for one another.

One big part of it is the tone. じゅもん has a low-to-high rising intonation whereas じゅうまん has a consistent mid-level tone throughout the word. So even if you were to magically make the long vowel shorter (i.e. if it were じゅもん vs. じゅまん), the difference in tone is getting in the way of your pun.
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Old 05-14-2014, 04:41 PM   #267
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My sentiments were similar. I saw in Brynhildr that even experienced writers are getting away with (in my view) eye-rolling puns, notably this (spoiler?):

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Referring to an object, the "harnessed":

Harnessed // ハーネス // haanesuto // "her nest"


Is it more apparent if you give it context?

What I'm trying to go for:

English: Spell Bolt
Kanji: 呪文雷砲 / Jumon Raihou / Spell Thunder Cannon
Kana: じゅもんボルト / Jumon Boruto
Reference: 10まんボルト / Juuman Boruto / 100,000 Volts / Thunderbolt
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Old 05-14-2014, 05:08 PM   #268
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Any soul who's watched Pokémon in Japanese would get the pun you're going for in that context, yes. じゅもんボルト is enough to make me smile at the wordplay and think of the most common command Ash orders Pikachu to use.
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Old 06-11-2014, 03:45 PM   #269
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How different in pronunciation is

シンエイ (shinei) versus しね (shine)

They sound similar to me, and I was hoping to make a pun off of it, but I have a feeling shinei's intonation is going to be too different.

Also...I've noticed that on-yomi seems to be the gold standard for a lot of names and stuff. In a lot of manga it's almost exclusively on-yomi, and I'm growing a bit uncomfortable with that because it's easier to make words using on-yomi. Is this the same for everyone, or am I just being a newbie who can't make something cool using kun-yomi?

I mean take this, which sounds the best (most like a name)?

心の影 (kokoro no kage)
心影 (kokorokage)
心影 (shinei)
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Old 06-11-2014, 04:52 PM   #270
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しね question: しね sounds like it ends in an English "eh" as in bell, not an English "ay" as in hay. Technically the vowel sound is in between the two but for a hard English "ay" it would have to be しねい or しねえ. Most native English speakers will approximate Japanese え as "eh" in most instances and reserve "ay" for えい. Consider:
  • you would not pronounce the e in Kagerou Days as a hard "ay"
  • you would not pronounce the e in Kotomine as a hard "ay"
  • when someone says yare yare, you don't hear that as "yaray yaray"
Say you'd asked about しねい though instead of しね. Then I would offer this: しんえい will sound similar to but different from しねい in the same sense that man 'oover sounds similar to but different from maneuver or carp enter sounds similar to but different from carpenter. And I'm not intending to talk intonation or emphasis here either: I'm talking about where the natural breaks in the pronounced word occur between consonant and vowel. In しんえい, you have "sheen ay" whereas in しねい you have "shee nay". They sound very similar. But they're still enunciated differently (at least technically, and perceptibly at low speech speeds).

I think you can make a しんえい / しね pun work. It's just that it's going to be two levels removed instead of the usual one you find in puns. You're morphing both the middle pronunciation of the word ever so slightly as well as morphing the length for which the terminal vowel is held. I guess it'd be similar to making a pun in English involving the words carpentry and carp entrée. The former undergoes the same two kinds of changes to become the latter as would しんえい to しね: you've got the relocation of where the break occurs between consonant and vowel (going from car pen to carp en) and you've got the one-degree vowel shift (from English hard "ee" in tree to English hard "ay" in trée). So like, "Might I recommend the carp entrée for the builder?" would be a joke that might go over most people's heads because of the two degrees of removal, pun-wise, from "carpentry" ... but I think some people would catch it and that most anyone, after having it explained to them, would understand the pun and not be able to forget it. *shrug* I dunno.

Onyomi remark: I think you may have misspoken. Why would you be complaining about the relative frequency of onyomi in names if you find onyomi the easier of the two systems to use when neologizing?

But putting that on hold for a second, some clarification: when you say "names," do you mean personal names or do you mean names given to attacks, weapons, etc? Because amongst personal names, I would have to disagree with your observation: I feel like kunyomi is by far the more common. For every family name like Satou or Honda that is created from onyomi, there are ten family names like Miyamoto or Suzuki that are created from kunyomi. Given names are a more mixed bag but I certainly wouldn't be confident in claiming that onyomi given names are most common. For every Taiga or Ryuuji you can find me, I'll find you a Chiaki, a Kotori, a Manabu, and a Makoto.

If instead you meant strictly names for things like weapons, attacks, and so on, then I guess I'd have to say that I don't know and that my personal impression is that it's a fairly mixed bag. Kunyomi names for swords and attacks have a very "native Japanese article" feel to them, not surprisingly, so like ... if a name like White Fang (白牙) were to show up attached to a samurai sword with the name "Shirakiba" or "Shirokiba", I would be more predisposed to imagining it belonged to a Japanese battleship, Japanese sword of legend, and so on than I would if the name were instead "Byakuga" or "Hakuge" or some other permutation of the onyomi for the characters. That isn't to say that the onyomi name would make it less likely to be Japanese. Just that the kunyomi would make it that much more likely to be Japanese.

Of the three word choices you offer, I feel like kokorokage sounds most natural for a sword's name, followed by shin'ei, followed by kokoro no kage. But I'd flip around my first two if it were to be a name of a martial arts move. Maybe. I dunno. I like both of them. The only one I don't like is the kokoro no kage one which, to me, sounds too much like a phrase and not enough like a proper noun. (And we've already explored how even in this perception I may be incorrect; there are weapon names or attack names you can find which preserve the の's and other particles.)

The best thing you can do is compare to primary literature and see what Japanese writers tend to do. I think you'll find that the field is split. Some examples that come to mind from Hunter x Hunter include Killua's Kaminari (kunyomi) and Gon's Jajanken (onyomi). From Rurouni Kenshin we have examples like Ryuuteisen and Kuzuryuusen (both onyomi), Souryuusen Ikazuchi (mixed), and Amakakeru Ryuu no Hirameki (mostly kunyomi and with a の preserved in the name as well). Part of probably depends on the author's own preferences, part of it probably depends on the time period in which the story is set, and part of it probably depends on what exactly is being named. The closer an example from some primary resource matches your own situation, the better.
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Old 06-11-2014, 05:36 PM   #271
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
I think you can make a しんえい / しね pun work. It's just that it's going to be two levels removed instead of the usual one you find in puns. You're morphing both the middle pronunciation of the word ever so slightly as well as morphing the length for which the terminal vowel is held. I guess it'd be similar to making a pun in English involving the words carpentry and carp entrée. The former undergoes the same two kinds of changes to become the latter as would しんえい to しね: you've got the relocation of where the break occurs between consonant and vowel (going from car pen to carp en) and you've got the one-degree vowel shift (from English hard "ee" in tree to English hard "ay" in trée). So like, "Might I recommend the carp entrée for the builder?" would be a joke that might go over most people's heads because of the two degrees of removal, pun-wise, from "carpentry" ... but I think some people would catch it and that most anyone, after having it explained to them, would understand the pun and not be able to forget it. *shrug* I dunno.
Thanks for the insight. I was actually hesitant to write out しねい because as I read it it was shi-neh-ee rather than shi-nay, was I wrong in that assumption or is it actually read a shi-nay?

Interestingly, both シネ/しね and シネイ/しねい is actually a component of the word アサシネイト and I found it curious that a loanword would actually carry a little bit of the meaning in native Japanese.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
Onyomi remark: I think you may have misspoken. Why would you be complaining about the relative frequency of onyomi in names if you find onyomi the easier of the two systems to use when neologizing?
If it comes easier to me, the idea is that as a beginner it's reflective of a less firm command of the language. For example, if I were to write an essay using no more than 6th grade grammar and vocabulary, while I'm sure anyone could read it and understand it, from the word choice they'd get the impression an elementary schooler wrote it.

I mean, if you were to write a sentence in Spanish with the equivalent of "Yo tengo un gato en mis pantalones" (ignoring that this is almost memetic in how it permeates) that's the kind of weird sentence a Spanish elementary schooler wouldn't say, an advanced speaker wouldn't say, but a non-native English speaker would. I'm afraid my over-reliance on on-yomi construction would betray I lack thorough mastery of the language.

My VN is meant to come across as being written by a Japanese author borrowing from English in the world-building. There are some similarities to be expected between "Japanese author pretending to be an American writing Japanese" versus "American author pretending to be a Japanese writing English" but there are a ton more subtle differences that I need to be aware of/get under control. The on-yomi use, while I've seen it commonly flexed in many, many other general audience entertainment, is something that still puts me at a bit of unease.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
But putting that on hold for a second, some clarification: when you say "names," do you mean personal names or do you mean names given to attacks, weapons, etc? Because amongst personal names, I would have to disagree with your observation: I feel like kunyomi is by far the more common. For every family name like Satou or Honda that is created from onyomi, there are ten family names like Miyamoto or Suzuki that are created from kunyomi. Given names are a more mixed bag but I certainly wouldn't be confident in claiming that onyomi given names are most common. For every Taiga or Ryuuji you can find me, I'll find you a Chiaki, a Kotori, a Manabu, and a Makoto.

If instead you meant strictly names for things like weapons, attacks, and so on, then I guess I'd have to say that I don't know and that my personal impression is that it's a fairly mixed bag. Kunyomi names for swords and attacks have a very "native Japanese article" feel to them, not surprisingly, so like ... if a name like White Fang (白牙) were to show up attached to a samurai sword with the name "Shirakiba" or "Shirokiba", I would be more predisposed to imagining it belonged to a Japanese battleship, Japanese sword of legend, and so on than I would if the name were instead "Byakuga" or "Hakuge" or some other permutation of the onyomi for the characters. That isn't to say that the onyomi name would make it less likely to be Japanese. Just that the kunyomi would make it that much more likely to be Japanese.
Right, not real names (most of the names I have are written in kun-yomi) but terminology, nomenclature or concepts.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
Of the three word choices you offer, I feel like kokorokage sounds most natural for a sword's name, followed by shin'ei, followed by kokoro no kage. But I'd flip around my first two if it were to be a name of a martial arts move. Maybe. I dunno. I like both of them. The only one I don't like is the kokoro no kage one which, to me, sounds too much like a phrase and not enough like a proper noun. (And we've already explored how even in this perception I may be incorrect; there are weapon names or attack names you can find which preserve the の's and other particles.)
I also liked kokorokage but given the alliteration I wasn't completely sure it it was awkward to say. To me, it came off the tongue smoothly but I wanted to check.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
The best thing you can do is compare to primary literature and see what Japanese writers tend to do. I think you'll find that the field is split. Some examples that come to mind from Hunter x Hunter include Killua's Kaminari (kunyomi) and Gon's Jajanken (onyomi). From Rurouni Kenshin we have examples like Ryuuteisen and Kuzuryuusen (both onyomi), Souryuusen Ikazuchi (mixed), and Amakakeru Ryuu no Hirameki (mostly kunyomi and with a の preserved in the name as well). Part of probably depends on the author's own preferences, part of it probably depends on the time period in which the story is set, and part of it probably depends on what exactly is being named. The closer an example from some primary resource matches your own situation, the better.
General trend, as time goes on we're going to see more kun-yomi versus the distant past?
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Old 06-11-2014, 06:19 PM   #272
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I wouldn't say that there's a temporal trend to it. If anything, I feel like the most famous named weapons and horses in Japanese mythology or history tend to carry kunyomi names. Like ...
  • Amenonuhoko, the name of the legendary polearm used to create the islands of Japan, is read in pure kunyomi.
  • 草薙 Kusanagi, also known as 天叢雲剣 Ame no Murakumo no Tsurugi, is read in pure kunyomi.
  • the swords smithed by Masamune carry a variety of names, some of which are onyomi (like Honjo) and some of which are kunyomi (like Kotegiri).
  • Tonbokiri is read in kunyomi
I think you'll find weapons with all manner of names. But I certainly wouldn't say that the trend is for kunyomi to be more prevalent today than in the past. If anything, I imagine it'd be the opposite. But as I am too ignorant on this particular topic, I want to refrain from declaring anything. I can only offer you my own general impressions gleaned from my own exposure.
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Old 06-29-2014, 07:40 PM   #273
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The visual I want to capture is a scene like frozen time. Which of these has the most powerful imagery with that kind of stillness?

English: World Peace
Japanese:

世界に平穏 (sekai ni heion) - The World at Peace
時間停止の世界 (jikanteido no sekai) - The World of Stopped Time
世界が静止する日 (sekai ga seishi suru hi) - The Day the World Stood Still
世界が静止する刻 (sekai ga seishi suru koku) - When the World Stands Still
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Old 06-29-2014, 10:15 PM   #274
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I mean, 世界平和 (sekai heiwa) is the most literal translation, but if you want something more flowery, I'd probably go for something like 3. Titles with Dependent-Verb-Clause-Noun seem pretty common to me in a lot of dramatic settings, and your choice for 3 seems closest.

I'll say that 2 seems sorta weird and 1 is probably backwards, and I really don't know what 刻 is supposed to be. My dictionary says it's an archaic time measure and I can't say I've ever seen it.

Of course, non-native-speaker warning.
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Old 06-29-2014, 11:27 PM   #275
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I messed up with that kanji, it should read better as

世界が静止する時 (sekai ga seishi suru toki)
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