Talk:Yamato

regarding 山

@Eirikr 山跡 (Man’yōshū)is a completely different word. Yeah, they mean the same thing, but the etymologies aren't the same. I'm not going to revert your revert, but geez, my edit was actually regarding "the right entry" & was "correct". regarding: From Japanese 大和 (Yamato). one must describe IT & not some other word which one prescribes as being the topic of the page. Further, accurate information regarding etymologies of all these words can be found here: https://heritageofjapan.wordpress.com/yayoi-era-yields-up-rice/the-advent-of-agriculture-and-the-rice-revolution/who-was-queen-himiko/etymology-of-wa-yamatai-and-nippon/ Lostubes (talk) 07:20, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

• @Lostubes I'm afraid you seem to be confused about ancient Japanese. The spellings were quite variant, much more so even than Chaucerian English. Yamato had several spellings, including 山跡, 倭, 山常, and even 日本. The etymologies of the yamato readings are, indeed, the same: these different spellings are just that, different spellings of the same word. Your comment above is incorrect: regarding the yamato reading, these are all the same word, with the same etymology.

Your linked source is also incorrect. In the first non-excerpt paragraph, the author states that Japanese wa comes from the Chinese reading wō of the 倭 character. But as you can see right there in the Chinese term's 倭 entry, the reconstructed Middle Chinese and Old Chinese readings are decidedly not wō -- wō is the modern Mandarin reading, and is not the source of the Japanese wa reading.

The author's statement that Wa ... is the oldest recorded name of Japan is also misleading, as this was the Chinese name for Japan. The oldest representation we have for what the Japanese called themselves was transcribed phonetically into Chinese variously as 邪馬臺, 耶馬臺, 野馬臺, etc., as your linked article touches upon, but then the writer makes the mistake of using the modern Mandarin readings in a clumsy attempt at indicating what the ancient Japanese name might have been. Chinese phonetics have changed a lot in the 1,700+ years since the compilation of the w:Records of the Three Kingdoms where these spellings first appear.

The article's description of how Chinese characters were composed is a bizarre digression. This has nothing to do with the Japanese word yamato.

... but then, a fuller reading reveals that, not only is this article as a whole poorly written and poorly organized, it's also mostly cribbed whole-cloth from Wikipedia. So there is no one "author" to this page at all, beyond a blogger with sloppy copy-pasting and a poor understanding of plagiarism and attribution. The dodgy provenance of this website requires that we ignore it as an unreliable source.

 

For my own work, I refer to Japanese sources primarily. If you're interested, have a look at the Japanese page ja:w:大和 for starters, particularly the etymology section and the spelling changes section. There is also good information in the Daijirin dictionary, mostly available online via the Weblio dictionary aggregator website. See the 大和 entry there, for instance, which states the following:

平安遷都以前は歴代の皇居のあった地方。もと「倭」と書いたが，元明天皇の時，「倭」に通じる「和」の字に「大」の字を付けた「大和」を用いることが定められた。

This suggests that it was during the reign of w:Empress Genmei, 660-721, that the spelling shifted from 倭 to 和 and thence to 大和.

 

All that aside, if you are interested in Japanese etymologies and hope to contribute to Wiktionary, I strongly suggest that you find yourself some better references. I also strongly suggest that you read up more on the historical development of Japanese, particularly Japanese writing and how it pertains to Japanese phonology. Two good places to start are w:Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai and w:Man'yōgana.

And lastly, for Japanese, I strongly advise that you disabuse yourself of the confusion between spelling and reading. As you learn more about Japanese etymology, you will discover that the spellings are, in many cases, almost incidental. The verb tsuku can be written in umpteen different ways: they are still tsuku, and all derive from a single semantic root. Japanese dictionaries may even list related spellings all under one phonetic (i.e. kana) headword. It's as if all of the different shades of meaning in the English word get were spelled differently. They would all have different graphical representations, and be used in different contexts, but they would all still ultimately be pronounced as get, and would all be different permutations of get. So it is with Japanese. Especially so when dealing with the ancient language, when spellings were much less standardized.

Cheers, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 08:47, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

@Eirikr The only non-wikimedia page you linked doesn't present etymology information as the predominant subject of the article in question sank on the 7th of April in 1945! Also, you seem to think dictionary entries constitute etymologies, & they don't. I think you said something along the lines of "TLDNR", but surely you jest. Etymologies are & should be more encyclopedic entries.but whatever you say cap'n! My sources are bad, because you cite wiki & Noooooobooody knows the history of the word Yamato... It's one of the great mysteries of our generation, & the latest tomb raider game... spoooookyLostubes (talk) 11:57, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

• I think we're done here. I've tried to be civil in the face of your belittlement and general glib rudeness. It becomes increasingly apparent that you don't have the underlying knowledge required to contribute meaningfully here. I will fix any errors you make to entries that I feel I have the knowledge to work on (a sense of self-policing that it seems you lack), and I will block you if I feel the damage is too extensive.

Good luck. Please grow up. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 15:25, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

I second. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:19, 23 March 2015 (UTC)