User talk:Eirikr/Appendix:Japanese verbs

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Just wondering: are you planning to finish this project? I've been recently finding Japanese grammar very interesting, but the conjugations are quite a problem for me, because if nothing else the names don't explain their use, even if I remember the morphology of the form I need. I don't really have an all-in-one conjugation guide for beginners at the moment, though, so if you feel like taking this on, that would be awesome. Doumo! —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 05:42, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • To be honest, I'd forgotten about this. Hearing that there's potential demand for it, and that it might even be useful, both reminds me of this project and motivates me to look back into it.  :)
What kind of information would be useful? You note, "the conjugations are quite a problem for me, because if nothing else the names don't explain their use" -- by "names", I assume you're indicating things like 未然形 (mizenkei)? (FWIW, the current EN label for that of "imperfective" is flat-out wrong -- the imperfective aspect is the same as the dictionary or plain form, whereas the mizenkei is more like "hasn't happened yet".) If so, I'm guessing that better English nomenclature might help. Or would you prefer more Japanese nomenclature, with fuller English explanations / descriptions?
Do you find historical changes useful? We should probably have tables and other info for classical Japanese as well anyway, but I'm unsure if folks would find it interesting and/or helpful to have that on the same page, showing (for instance) how verb conjugations have changed, such as the process where that medial -k- drops out from kaku to kaki-, but kaite.
There's also quite a bit of info on the corresponding JA WP articles that we don't have anywhere here: all the different conjugation patterns, starting at ja:w:四段活用 with more in the table at the upper right; or the various conjugation stems, starting at ja:w:未然形. I don't know if those pages look at all interesting? I could knock up draft translations of them here, and use that to create EN WT pages, or at least sections in the Appendix.
Please feel free to edit the [[User:Eirikr/Appendix:Japanese_verbs]] page and add in markup and commentary right on the page to indicate what you like, don't like, want to see expanded, etc.
Cheers! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:37, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There is indeed demand; thank you! Yes, nomenclature is a big one. Probably with rubied example sentences to explain basic usage of each. Personally, the historical stuff can be interesting, but my needs (not necessarily representative of other readers' needs!) focus on the modern conjugation as a unit, at various levels of formality. The stuff from Wikipedia looks most promising! Also, things that aren't technically conjugation but involve stuff being thrown onto the end of a verb might be helpful, although I suppose most of those are generally considered particles and covered thus very completely in their own entries. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 04:00, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, historical changes would be very useful. Thanks! Wyang (talk) 04:19, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Cool, thank you both. I'll focus on this for the time being, time allowing.  ;) ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 05:15, 25 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I realized that I didn't really know how to start this given the confusing state of the existing page, so I've taken a step back and have begun gathering info from the relevant JA WP articles, mostly:
My thought is to give this a treatment from a Japanese grammar perspective -- i.e. the grammar of Japanese, as described in Japanese materials, only translated into English and reworked where necessary to be intelligible to the English-speaking learner of Japanese. Probably unsurprisingly, Japanese-language materials about Japanese grammar tend to provide much fuller descriptions than anything I've really run across in English, at least, that isn't dry as a desert and intended purely for the linguist.
Anyway, just touching base really to say that this is still on my radar.  :) ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:47, 20 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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