Talk:Reiwa era: Difference between revisions

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

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• Reiwa era.png

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 04:36, 1 April 2019 (UTC) 「独創的な研究」に対する反対意見を考慮して、私は現時点では名前とその暗い起源についてより多くは言いません。Vesuvius Dogg (talk) 10:24, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Congratulations!

Congratulations for the new era name. Nice pick from a nice peace of short preface of Plum related poems. Bear in mind that some of the English media misinterpreted the word 令 as "order" while it means "auspicious", "good" or "nice".----Sunzhai (talk) 15:25, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Opinions about the different meanings of "令"?

I wonder about the relevance of Monash University Research Fellow Jim Breen wrote that major dictionaries translate 令 mainly as "law, order, command", without the "auspicious" sense. I mean, if "major dictionaries" refers to Kangorin and the like, it's objectively false; likely Breen (whom I might as well ping) was referring to bilingual kanji dictionaries for English-speaking learners of Japanese (his dataset actually supports this conclusion), which means he is not wrong, but the opinion should be classified as such, if it is included at all.

Also, he cites Wikipedia for definitions of "Manyōshū" and "Kanbun"; I actually have been in the process, over the last 18 months or so, of making English Wikipedia a much better resource than it currently is regarding all aspects of the Man'yōshū, but I'm not quite "there" yet, and it's quite misleading to call it the "oldest collection of Japanese poetry", and "The poem in question is Kanbun style" is total nonsense in context (to be fair, that's not Breen himself but rather Bret Mayer -- both men are eminently qualified to discuss this point, and I'm confident that the errors were just careless slips rather than indicators of a sincere misunderstanding of what kind of poetry is included in the Man'yōshū and of the fact that "the poem" is actually a headnote and not an actual poem, but these do bring the usability/citability of the article in question into question).

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:48, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

@NMaia: Sorry; didn't notice until just now that you added the text in question. This page has seen a lot of activity, and I wasn't sure it was worth the effort of figuring out who, in the clump of edits by various people I was examining all at once, added the text I was discussing. I noticed that it was you basically by accident. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:25, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I looked into newest edition of 新字源 by Kadokawa. It defines the character 令, along with the usual senses, simply as よい, synonymous with 霊 (also defined as よい). 令 as よい contains a reference to the 同訓意義 index (霊 does not and is absent from it). In this index, 令（れい） under よい is defined thus: 物事のつやがあるように美しい, and a quotation from the Analects of Confucius is given: 巧言令色、鮮矣仁. In the Man'yoshu example, 令 is generally either kundoku'd to よい or the whole 令月 thing is left untranslated as れいげつ. Susumu Nakanishi, the scholar credited with the proposal of 令和, himself translates 令月 as (hazy memory on the kana) 好（よ）い月, actually replacing 令 with 好 for the translation. I've decided to approximate that with English "fair" in the context of 令月 = fair month. Draco argenteus (talk) 09:27, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Adding: the same dictionary does not define 令月 (れいげつ) as a lucky or auspicious month or anything of the sort, and only says よい月, along with the sense of 2nd month of the lunar calendar. Draco argenteus (talk) 09:34, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

@Draco argenteus: I wouldn't be surprised if sources were already showing up to point out that the plum blossoms in Fukuoka nowadays (with global warming) bloom in mid-February to mid-March, so it could well just be interpreted as "2nd month of the lunar calendar". :P

On a more serious note, yeah, most dictionaries do seem to give "good" as a meaning. This is why I think we need to either not cite Breen, or characterize the citation inline as appropriate.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:52, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't think Breen needs to be cited, especially now that "auspicious" itself is gone. I've found this noteworthy as well: as can be seen from the current article on Return to the Field, Liu Wu-chi in 1990 translates the Chinese 令月 as "a fine month" and 初春 as "young spring". I had actually not read the translation when I added mine. Draco argenteus (talk) 10:00, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

The official translation of the Government of Japan is "In this auspicious month of early spring, the weather is fine and the wind gentle. The plum blossoms open like powder before a mirror while the orchids give off the sweet scent of a sachet.” ―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 10:24, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Well, In Classical Chinese, 令 means auspicious. The Japanese government is right. According to Kangxi Dictionary(The official Classical Chinese dictionary compiled during Qing dynasty), 令，善也。（令 means good,　令、善なり). Modern Chinese also has some words that use 令 to express positive qualities of something. The text from which the era name was taken is obviously using this character in the sense of "good" "nice" or "auspicious".[1]----Sunzhai (talk) 11:49, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm not a native speaker, but as I have understood it, native speakers do not feel that English "auspicious" can generally be equated to English "good". So when you say 善 = good (新字源 gives 善 under "類" too) and therefore auspicious, that basically doesn't work. Draco argenteus (talk) 12:05, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Oh well it is not me who is using the word auspicious. In Classical Chinese it means something positive, it can be translated as "good", but when we are talking about a month, it can also be translated to "auspicious". That basically works. Here we are actually looking at two completely different words. One is the verb 令 which means to order. Another is the adjective 令. They are not the same word but has the same shape. It happens very often in among Chinese characters. For example: 的 can be used as the mark of an adjective in both Chinese and Japanese, but it also means "Target".----Sunzhai (talk) 12:15, 2 April 2019 (UTC)