Re: [edict-jmdict] Aligning kana between headwords and readings

[Jim Breen <Jim.Breen@**********************>]

[=?UTF-8?B?77yz772S772J772O77y0772V772B772S?= (Re: [edict-jmdict] Aligning kana between headwords and readings) writes:]
>Jim Breen wrote:
>> >For EDICT, and continuing into JMdict, I have tried to maintain a
>> >fairly strict 1-to-1 mapping of kana between the kanji part of an entry
>> >and the kana/reading part. In particular, I have always made the
>> >katakana portion match. Thus for ローマ字, the reading is 
>> >ローマじ; not
>> >ろーまじ.
>> 
>> I don't see any merit in having the reading match script, 

Well, most Japanese lexicographers and teachers of Japanese would disagree.

>> and I would advocate having
>> them all be normalized to hiragana. 

For what reason?

>> They dont sound any different, so its
>> just useless
>> extra information that could just as well be inferred from the headword.

The purpose of a dictionay is, in part, to record and explain the words
and phrases in a language, preferably in the way they are written in that
language. In Japanese 外来語 are written in katakana, and I can'y see any
use in fighting that. Writing 外来語 in dictionaries in hiragana is
hardly disposing of "useless extra information".

>> Taking it a step further, is there any point in having the reading use the
>> same vowel extensions?

As those silly Japanese do with 外来語?

>> Why support both ろーまじ、ろうまじ、and ろおまじ as three 
>> separate entries, 

I don't. You won't find either ろうまじ or ろおまじ in JMdict.

>> when they
>> all sound exactly the same. Personally, I would normalize the reading field
>> and search strings
>> so that when searching for any word by how it sounds, all homophones would
>> match regardless
>> of their particular orthography.

There is a case for such normalization in the searching software. This has 
been on my to-do list for quite a while. But there is no way I am going to 
populate the dictionary with misleppings.

Cheers

Jim

-- 
Jim Breen                                http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology,               Tel: +61 3 9905 9554
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia                  Fax: +61 3 9905 5146
(Monash Provider No. 00008C)                ジム・ブリーン@モナシュ大学