Talk:正夢

Etymology references?

Dear @Eirikr, I see you posted etymologies for this term a good while ago now, but I was wondering what text you were going by when you noted all those dictionaries as sources for the etymology being a compound, because although it seems quite obvious that the term is just a transparent compound, I don't see it myself explicitly stated when I check those sources that the term is such; no mention is made altogether of the word's etymology, as is typical for Japanese dictionaries, so I am just curious from what text you derived the original citations. Kiril kovachev (talk) 21:19, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Hello @Kiril --

Good question. Let's look at an example of the dictionary layout. Here is the relevant page at Kotobank. This page shows us the Kokugo Dai Jiten and Daijisen entries. Both list the headword with the following format:

まさ‐ゆめ【正夢】

That hyphen between まさ and ゆめ indicates a break between components. For us as non-native speakers, we can look up both 正 (masa) and 夢 (yume) and see that these also have their own entries. That, plus the transparency of the definitions of both the individual constituent terms and the combined masayume, makes it clear that this is a compound term. A native speaker would recognize both まさ and ゆめ as words on their own, and between this cultural context and the notation conventions, I suspect that this is why dictionaries tend not to bother to state in so many words that this is a compound.

HTH! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:41, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

I see, I wondered what the meaning of those hyphens was. Is that to say then that headwords in those dictionaries split up like that indicates the word is a compound, or affix, etc.—in other words made of several components/morphemes? This will definitely be a good reference, anyway, for future editing, so thanks very much for your prompt and helpful response! @Eirikr Kiril kovachev (talk) 23:24, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

@Kiril, yes, that's my understanding -- that the hyphens (or sometimes spaces) in headword listings in many dictionaries indicate compound boundaries. We can see that same notation here in さくら‐にく【桜肉】 in the Kotobank version of the KDJ, or here in ふな‐びと【船人／舟人】 in the Weblio version of Daijisen, for instance.

Cheers! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 06:23, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

@Kiril, Weblio includes the usage notes from the Daijisen publication. See note #5 here, which explains the use of the hyphen to indicate the boundaries between parts of a compound. HTH! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 06:27, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Oh, perfect, thank you for this expansion, that's excellent to be able to confirm our suspicion was correct. Thanks again, @Eirikr! Kiril kovachev (talk) 12:51, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Happy to help! FWIW, my printed paper edition of the 新明解 uses whitespace between compound components, instead of hyphens. The online digitized version at Sakura Paris doesn't do that -- possibly a data conversion issue? Anyway, ご参考に。 (^^) ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:30, 28 June 2023 (UTC)