Talk:Yamato-kotoba

Redirect to Wago?

@Nardog: Just curious why you changed your mind about making this a redirect, I was about to do the same thing. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 14:41, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

@ReconditeRodent: Because I realized Hijiri88 had first moved Yamato kotoba to Wago and then created this article a little less than a year ago. See also User talk:Pichpich/Archive-2018#Yamato-kotoba. Knowing this would be controversial, at least to Hijiri, I just figured I wasn't prepared to touch it for now.

But I agree with you. The present article is a quintessential WP:DICDEF. The Japanese Wikipedia article on the native Japanese vocabulary is at Yamato kotoba, to which wago is a redirect. Although that article acknowledges that the term used to refer to the poetry, if that's the case then we can just turn this into a redirect to Wago or vice versa and point to Waka (poetry) in a hatnote. Nardog (talk) 14:56, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

Ah, okay. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 15:04, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm a bit busy to turn both articles into the standalone works they clearly have the potential to be (yamato-kotoba is meant to be an article about literature, while wago is meant to be an article about linguistics; Japanese Wikipedia is a website roughly equivalent to English Wikipedia ten years ago -- hardly ever citing sources, completely untrustworthy, and probably wrong -- and so can't really be used to justify any editorial choices we make over here). I don't mind this page being turned back into a redirect in the meantime, but I also don't see any reason to establish a "consensus" that something I made a pretty reasonable argument for back when I didn't have time to implement it in the article and still think is worthwhile in the long run shouldn't happen in the long run just because I've been busy with other stuff. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:39, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

@Hijiri88: Do you have sources that indicate yamato-kotoba is a concept established enough to warrant an article (i.e. pass WP:GNG)? Also, even if so, isn't the term yamato-kotoba (or yamato kotoba) more often used synonymously with wago anyway (in Japanese or/and English)?

You make a good point about the Japanese Wikipedia being mostly garbage. So I turned to Daijirin, and it gives three definitions for 大和言葉: native Japanese vocabulary (i.e. wago); poetry composed in the Japanese language (i.e. waka); the subset of wago used for waka, particularly the words considered "elegant", also known as 雅語 gago or 雅言 gagen, contrasted with 俚言 rigen, vernacular language. Daijisen also gives pretty much the same definitions. I assume it is the third definition that you plan to write about in this article because articles about wago and waka already exist. But if so wouldn't gagen or gago be a better place to write about it? (I know general dictionaries aren't the most authoritative sources when it comes to these things and I know nothing about Japanese poetry or philology; I'm just curious.) Nardog (talk) 16:03, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure whenever discussing the vocabulary of waka Keene's History either refers to it English as "indigenous Japanese" (or something to that effect) or as "yamatokotoba", while I don't think I've ever seen wago outside of linguistic contexts. If we limit our sourcing to sources that actually use one word or the other rather than assuming that they are exact synonyms (neither source you cite actually explains why there are two distinct words) the articles that would result would almost certainly look quite different.

Anyway, how about you just leave me alone after I tell you to? If you, as you admit, "know nothing about Japanese poetry or philology", then you really have no right to demand I spend my editing time working specifically to satisfy your curiosity about an issue that you only seem to be curious about because it's something I might have made a minor blunder on a year ago, shortly after I undermined you the last time you tried to talk about Japanese linguistics. Call me out when I make a serious blunder that you know is a serious blunder (even if I'm 100% wrong about all of this, I don't think you'd be able to get anyone to agree with you that it was a serious blunder -- and if I had been 100% wrong about all of this then you should probably open an RM to move wago back to its original title rather than just saying this page should be a redirect), or leave me be to go write an article on every single Man'yōshū poet because someone else who doesn't know enough to do any of the work of helping told me that the list can't be an FL unless all the entries have their own articles.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:43, 23 May 2019 (UTC)