Talk:Goradora
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Romanization
Another katakana -> English question... When I see "Gorādora", I read it "Go-ray-do-ruh". Am I reading that wrong? The katakana should be pronounced "Go-rah-do-ra".--BraveMax 08:08, 3 July 2013 (EDT)
- It's the standard Hepburn romanization of the name.KrytenKoro 10:03, 3 July 2013 (EDT)
- This wiki has chosen proper phonetics and/or meaning-based alphabetization over Hepburn (modified or otherwise) romanization for names in many, many circumstances. Look at the Arms Micron names for good examples.--BraveMax 21:35, 3 July 2013 (EDT)
- Uhh? It's a guy whose name has no English meaning and doesn't have an official romanization yet. Hepburn is just the standard we use in those cases, like with Kōmoribreast, Rāge, and Pīpō. It's only temporary till we get a view of the toy's packaging, so there's no point in being fussy about it now. (That's not what "alliteration" means.) Mimi 22:03, 3 July 2013 (EDT)
- My gosh, you're right, it's not. How embarrassing! I'm gonna pretend my phone autocorrected that. Yeah - it's Swype's fault! And fair enough. I'll be fussy about it later. Though, if there's an official romanization I know that's that.--BraveMax 02:17, 4 July 2013 (EDT)
- With purely Japanese names, an "a" is always defaulted to an "ah" sound. An "ā" is just a slightly longer "ah". An "ay" sound would come from an "ei" spelling. --Sabrblade 02:45, 4 July 2013 (EDT)
- I speak Japanese. I know that. But this wiki, as it's been pointed out, is aimed at people who DON'T speak Japanese. As - I'm assuming - a Japanese speaker, you ought to be more than familiar with how difficult it is for a non-Japanese speaker to read and actually correctly pronounce alphabetized Japanese. For you and I, our brains might read that and go, "Wait a minute - that doesn't romanize like that! It must mean..." even if we aren't familiar with Hepburn (And let's not assume we are. I've never used it in any formalized setting before this wiki, and I've been studying Japanese now for nearly 15 years.). For someone with no background in Japanese, it's just a macron over a vowel. In English, when a macron is used over a vowel, it's a long form of that vowel. "Ei" instead of "uh" or "ah". At least, that's how I'm used to it being used outside of Hepburn. In my opinion, telling people they should learn to read Hepburn to understand the correct pronunciation is kind of like telling them to learn to read Japanese. After all - why learn the middle step when you can just learn the origin writing system? This is an argument I have a lot with native Japanese speakers who insist that there's a point to ローマ字. I know, though, that every student of Japanese seems to have passionate views about their pet method of romanization. It's clear that the wiki has taken a stand on Hepburn, so I'm not going to argue with anyone about the use of it for most things. For a NAME with no translation, though, it seems like we should go with either A) the official romanization or B) a spelling that is phonetically correct to the origin word and easily understood by a layman. There's a very good argument to be made in favor of official romanizations (and one to be made against: *cough*Conboi*/cough*) and, as Mimi said, we haven't even seen an official romanization for this yet. So, as she suggested, maybe we ought to just let this sit until we do?--BraveMax 10:33, 4 July 2013 (EDT)
- Based on the trend with the Go! toys thus far, we'll very likely get rid of the macron once the official spelling is revealed by the toy's packaging. So, yeah, let us wait for the toy to come. --Sabrblade 19:21, 4 July 2013 (EDT)
- I think once again, "the wiki has taken a stand" has been confused with "Interrobang decided to do this and we didn't really have the energy to fight it". Personally, I am NOT a fan of the macrons and whatnot, because really... we just don't use the damn things for the most part. I don't see what's wrong with "Goryu" or "Goradora". --M Sipher 21:49, 4 July 2013 (EDT)
- I'm with you, Sipher. But I haven't exactly been around here long enough to be challenging the Wiki's defacto policies on stuff. Like I said - everyone has their preferred romanization method...--BraveMax 22:03, 4 July 2013 (EDT)
- I don't know any English speaker who both knows what macrons are and uses them to indicate "long" English vowels. They're only used by other languages to indicate actual long vowels and in transcriptions, like of Latin and Japanese. I also really don't see the issue in sticking with a widely accepted system of transliteration used by other sources like Wikipedia or IMDB. Most laypeople can't pronounce Japanese correctly in the first place (they'll inevitably pronounce Gaidora as "Gay-dora") so I don't know why we're stressing over that. Mimi 03:15, 5 July 2013 (EDT)
- I speak Japanese. I know that. But this wiki, as it's been pointed out, is aimed at people who DON'T speak Japanese. As - I'm assuming - a Japanese speaker, you ought to be more than familiar with how difficult it is for a non-Japanese speaker to read and actually correctly pronounce alphabetized Japanese. For you and I, our brains might read that and go, "Wait a minute - that doesn't romanize like that! It must mean..." even if we aren't familiar with Hepburn (And let's not assume we are. I've never used it in any formalized setting before this wiki, and I've been studying Japanese now for nearly 15 years.). For someone with no background in Japanese, it's just a macron over a vowel. In English, when a macron is used over a vowel, it's a long form of that vowel. "Ei" instead of "uh" or "ah". At least, that's how I'm used to it being used outside of Hepburn. In my opinion, telling people they should learn to read Hepburn to understand the correct pronunciation is kind of like telling them to learn to read Japanese. After all - why learn the middle step when you can just learn the origin writing system? This is an argument I have a lot with native Japanese speakers who insist that there's a point to ローマ字. I know, though, that every student of Japanese seems to have passionate views about their pet method of romanization. It's clear that the wiki has taken a stand on Hepburn, so I'm not going to argue with anyone about the use of it for most things. For a NAME with no translation, though, it seems like we should go with either A) the official romanization or B) a spelling that is phonetically correct to the origin word and easily understood by a layman. There's a very good argument to be made in favor of official romanizations (and one to be made against: *cough*Conboi*/cough*) and, as Mimi said, we haven't even seen an official romanization for this yet. So, as she suggested, maybe we ought to just let this sit until we do?--BraveMax 10:33, 4 July 2013 (EDT)
- With purely Japanese names, an "a" is always defaulted to an "ah" sound. An "ā" is just a slightly longer "ah". An "ay" sound would come from an "ei" spelling. --Sabrblade 02:45, 4 July 2013 (EDT)
- My gosh, you're right, it's not. How embarrassing! I'm gonna pretend my phone autocorrected that. Yeah - it's Swype's fault! And fair enough. I'll be fussy about it later. Though, if there's an official romanization I know that's that.--BraveMax 02:17, 4 July 2013 (EDT)
- Uhh? It's a guy whose name has no English meaning and doesn't have an official romanization yet. Hepburn is just the standard we use in those cases, like with Kōmoribreast, Rāge, and Pīpō. It's only temporary till we get a view of the toy's packaging, so there's no point in being fussy about it now. (That's not what "alliteration" means.) Mimi 22:03, 3 July 2013 (EDT)
- This wiki has chosen proper phonetics and/or meaning-based alphabetization over Hepburn (modified or otherwise) romanization for names in many, many circumstances. Look at the Arms Micron names for good examples.--BraveMax 21:35, 3 July 2013 (EDT)
- as far as I know, everyone whose posted so far except m sipher is fluent in japanese.
- the hepburn romanization scheme is specifically designed to be the premier scheme for communicating pronunciation to non-native readers. I personally don't think its going to be productive to derive a new romanization system just for this wiki and have any hope that it won't just confuse readers. If people really have a problem with the macrons, there's always wapuro (goraadora), which focuses less on pronunciation than communicating the kana correctly.KrytenKoro 22:17, 4 July 2013 (EDT)
- I do, however, have a decade-plus of experience with kana-to-English with intent to present names to people who don't read Japanese, as directed by someone who IS fluent and a professional translator. And while macrons work for pronunciation guides (I have no beef there), they are almost never used outside of that context, even in Japan, and especially not proper names. Waiting for Japanese packaging to not use a macron when using the English alphabet is kind of pointless because they're NOT GOING TO. --M Sipher 22:42, 4 July 2013 (EDT)
- Oh, sorry, I could have worded that better. All I meant was that for everyone else, I knew for a fact they were fluent, with you, I didn't. Hopefully I didn't cause any offense.
- That being said, if the community dislikes macrons then using Wapuro Romanization instead of Hepburn would be the best bet.KrytenKoro 10:12, 5 July 2013 (EDT)
Can't we just wait for the darn toy to come out so we can get a definite official spelling instead of splitting hairs over a spelling that is just a stand in until the official spelling surfaces in August? --Sabrblade 23:42, 4 July 2013 (EDT)
- The fact that it causes this much contention in just about every place where it's discussed would seem to be a good reason to come up with some kind of clear policy and REASONING that addresses these concerns so that we don't have to debate it every time it comes up. But, as I said earlier, for this one I'm pretty sure that the official romanization will bear out my intent. So I'm perfectly happy to wait until August ;)--BraveMax 02:30, 5 July 2013 (EDT)
Intra-Predacon homages
Would it be unreasonable to assume that the Goradora components other than Dorara are named and colored after the Four Oni? Mimi 08:57, 22 July 2013 (EDT)
- I suppose Dorara would be an homage to Dragotron, then?KrytenKoro 10:20, 22 July 2013 (EDT)
- I would think so. Also, given he's Dorara, I'm surprised the middle one isn't colored like Predaking - surely he's at least named after him? -LV 10:21, 22 July 2013 (EDT)
- Based on what evidence? (Aside from passing name similarity)--BraveMax 20:10, 21 August 2013 (EDT)
