Of course I know that almost all speakers using English as mother
language do not use all capital letters for their family names as above
you mentioned. Also I agree about your way, using just nick name.
However, Akinori [3], a developer of FreeBSD Project, use all capital
letters for family name. Why do Akinori do so?
Actually, it seems to be a fairly common convention used by many
Japanese (Matz excluded, of course) and Chinese (you included
apparently), as it isn’t always clear, especially to gaijin folks,
which part of their name is the surname and which part is the given
name. The fact that Japanese and Chinese generally write their
surnames before their given names in their normal convention, and
occasionally reverse it to follow the Western convention of given name
first, adds to this confusion. Most of the Japanese people I’ve met
seem to follow this convention on the English side of their business
cards.
At Fri, 10 Nov 2006 02:09:54 +0900,
Byung-Hee HWANG wrote:
so in public. Just call me Matz.
Of course I know that almost all speakers using English as mother
language do not use all capital letters for their family names as above
you mentioned. Also I agree about your way, using just nick name.
However, Akinori [3], a developer of FreeBSD Project, use all capital
letters for family name. Why do Akinori do so?
It is just a local convention and I spell my name so just because I
like it. It gives non-Japanese speaking readers a soft hint that
MUSHA could be my family name, and helps me being called more in a
friendlier form “Akinori” rather than excessively formal “MUSHA-san”
with a deep stiff bow in English speaking places.
Although passports and other formal documents may have restrictions,
one should be allowed to spell one’s name as one wants, so long as it
is used consistently and serves as social identification.
Please do not confuse me with details, just tell me:
How many “matzes” are there, up to now I counted…
… well 42 of course
Robert
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.
|“Yukihiro M.” to “Yukihiro MATSUMOTO” if his family name is
|“Matsumoto”.
FYI, My family name is Matsumoto. I don’t see family-name-capital
convention much in the English speaking countries, I hesitated to do
so in public. Just call me Matz.
It isn’t usual, but is useful in reference material where the reader may
be in some doubt about the order. The hero of “Kozure Okami” is called
both “Itto Ogami” and “Ogami Itto” in English.
It isn’t usual, but is useful in reference material where the
reader may be in some doubt about the order. The hero of “Kozure
Okami” is called both “Itto Ogami” and “Ogami Itto” in English.
For reference one should use kanji with furigana and only add latin
transcription if absolutely necessary. On web pages one can use Ruby
(not the programming language to add furigana.
Problem with transcription is that depending on the target language
it can sometimes be almost impossible to recoginize one language’s
approximation if one is used to another language one’s. While the
problem is only limited for Japanese it can be annoying for other
languages like Chinese and slavic ones (‘Standard’ means an
international standard transcription):
The last of these is an extremely annoying problem. Given you want
information on ÄŒebyÄev polynomials chances are good that you only
find a minor part of the material available because myriards of
different spellings are used
How many “matzes” are there, up to now I counted…
… well 42 of course
The current thread contains 42 matzes, 23 Matzes, 16 Matsumotos, 15
matzohs, 8 Mott’ses, 4 IOs and a fatal.
Devin
?
Amazing what a witty answer one can get for one’s stupid question, Great
Fun
Devin
Cheers
Robert
–
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.
In message “Re: [OT] the name of Matz”
on Wed, 8 Nov 2006 15:10:43 +0900, Devin M. [email protected] writes:
|> Just call me Matz.
|Question: When spoken, should it be ‘a’ as in “hats” or ‘a’ as in “blah”
|(or, oh, say, “Matsumoto”)?
Ah, I was asked same question at the last RubyConf. The official
answer is “I don’t care” (note: Japanese has only 5 vowels). English
speakers seem to use the former.
If anybody is curious, I think the closest sound you find in English to
the Japanese “a” sound is the standard (RP) British “u” as in “cut”.
Among the “standard” American sounds (if there are such things),
“a” in “father” is closer (to my native-Japanese ear) than “a” in
“hat”. The American “u” in “cut” is too narrow. I’m not talking
about how “Matz” should be pronounced, by the way.
On 11/10/06, Byung-Hee HWANG [email protected] wrote:
Actually, it seems to be a fairly common convention used by many
Japanese (Matz excluded, of course) and Chinese (you included
apparently),
I would personally expect Byung-Hee to be from Korea, given the email
address provided.
|(or, oh, say, “Matsumoto”)?
about how “Matz” should be pronounced, by the way.
Regards,
Ryo
It might be fun though if you could give a pointer to the “correct”
pronunciation of Matz’s name, like e.g. the Wavefiles available from the
Merriam-Webster’s website (www.m-w.com) which I found most useful (as a
non
native English Speaker).
Cheers
Robert
–
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.
It might be fun though if you could give a pointer to the “correct”
pronunciation of Matz’s name, like e.g. the Wavefiles available
from the
Merriam-Webster’s website (www.m-w.com) which I found most useful
(as a non
native English Speaker).
He introduced himself in the podcast found here: http://
That URL has been posted in this ML some days ago.
It might be fun though if you could give a pointer to the “correct”
pronunciation of Matz’s name, like e.g. the Wavefiles available from the
Merriam-Webster’s website (www.m-w.com) which I found most useful (as a non
native English Speaker).
Cheers
Robert
You can hear the pronunciation here but it did not have proper names.
Just words.
You can hear Matsu and moto separately.
Search for Matsu e$B>>e(B and find meaning = a pine tree, then click on
the
2nd reading e$B$^$De(B.
Search for moto e$BK!!e(Band find meaning = a book,etc., then click on
the
2nd reading e$B$b$He(B.
Very simple.
ma (as in mama)
tsu (as in tsunami)
mo (as in mold)
to (as in token)
Try to say it with no stress or intonation in English. each of the
four syllables should be even in length.
Meaning exists but family names are just family names like Anderson
or Smith.
Matsumoto is a pretty common name in Japan. And the name of a famous
castle and nice quiet town in Nagano prefecture
It might be fun though if you could give a pointer to the “correct”
pronunciation of Matz’s name, like e.g. the Wavefiles available from the
Merriam-Webster’s website (www.m-w.com) which I found most useful (as a non
native English Speaker).
I was posting this about the pronunciation of “Ruby” not “Matz”.
No idea how these lines came together.
R.
Cheers
Robert
You can hear the pronunciation here but it did not have proper names.
Just words.
Well that is a nice coincidence but I am surprised that this can be
found on m-w.com ?
If anybody is curious, I think the closest sound you find in English to
the Japanese “a” sound is the standard (RP) British “u” as in “cut”.
Interestingly, this is the same ‘a’ used when transliterating Hindi -
I’ve often thought it curious/interesting that “a” got mapped to a
sound which it never represents in English.
–
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw
Huh?
This was your post in this thread. I didn’t make it up
I did not think to check m-w.com. Didn’t think it would be there.
But I did not see an option to hear ‘moto’ at m-w.com.
gh (as in enough)
o (as in women)
ti (as in emotion)
=> fish
One thing that Japanese has over English is VERY regular
pronunciation, there are a smallish number of syllables, and a 1-1
correspondence between each character from either hiragana or katakana
with the syllable it represents.
GBS would not have been able to make his point if he were Japanese
instead of English.
Finally, it is said that the order of vowels in the Japanese alphabet
system is derived from that of Sanskrit.
Correction: the ordering of vowels is derived from the ancient Brahmi
script[2]. Interestingly, it seems there are also parallels in the
ordering of consonants (ka … ta … ya ra … va).
One thing that Japanese has over English is VERY regular
pronunciation, there are a smallish number of syllables, and a 1-1
correspondence between each character from either hiragana or katakana
with the syllable it represents.
Such is also the case with the syllabic languages of India and
linguistically related parts of South East Asia. There is an exact one
to one mapping between syllables and sounds – it sounds how it appears
and it’s written how it sounds. Thus, there is no “hooked on phonics”
training from a young age. Furthermore, we do not have spelling bees in
our native languages because everyone would win!
IMHO, the primary benefit of such languages is not having to remember
how particular words are pronounced. Thus you have all this extra human
memory space (which would otherwise contain mappings from particular
words to sounds) that you can instead fill with vocabulary or poetry or
whatever.
Finally, it is said that the order of vowels in the Japanese alphabet
system is derived from that of Sanskrit. For instance, listed below are
the vowels from the South Indian Telugu language (the same vowels are
found in nearly all other Indian languages in exactly the same order).
The starred (*) vowels are found in Japanese (a i u e o).
start
a (c[u]t) *
aa (say [aa]h)
i ([i]t) *
ii (f[ee]t)
u (fl[u]) *
uu (f[oo]d)
e (s[ay]) *
ee (th[ey]!!)
ai (l[ie])
o (g[o]) *
oo (cr[ow])
au (c[ow])
=================== # below are not really vowels, in the English sense
am (r[um])
ah (b[]uff)
to add furigana.
