Japanese Language Stack Exchange
Japanese Language Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [terminology]

専門用語. Specialized words and phrases which cover specific concepts, fields, or phenomena.

126 questions
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Adjectives functioning both as イ- and ナ-adjective

This question has made me think about the class of adjectives, which can function both as イ- and as ナ-adjective, e.g. 大きい 大きな 小さい 小さな 真っ白い 真っ白な (etc.) 細かい 細かな 暖かい 暖かな 四角い 四角な (etc.) 柔らかい 柔らかな In my (non-)answer to the question, I…
Earthliŋ
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Is there an easily accessible list of terms in the Japanese grammar written both in Japanese and English?

I am a native Japanese speaker with a casual interest in languages. I sometimes have trouble explaining the Japanese grammar in English because I do not know the established English translation of some technical terms in the Japanese grammar such…
Tsuyoshi Ito
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Is [mathematical] 'analysis' in Japanese the same word as 'fine cuisine' in Japanese?

According to the Fields medal winner Cédric Villani, in the Japanese language the word 'analysis' is (I quote) "the same word" as the word for 'fine cuisine'. Such can be seen in a video of a recorded lecture of him entitled "The Extraordinary…
O0123
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What's the difference between Ichidan/Godan and Ru/U verbs classification?

I've come across two different ways (at least, apparently for me) to classify verbs. Please note that this question is fundamentally different from Verb classifications by japanese learners. The first classification is to divide verbs into Godan and…
Alenanno
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Are kanji characters made up of radicals only or could they contain strokes that are not radicals?

Inspired by this question of rounded or circular strokes in kanji, I got an idea to prove that there is no circular strokes in kanji by examining all kanji radicals, which is a lot less that examining all kanji characters. But that would work only…
Lukman
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Pronunciation of 閾値 : いきち or しきいち?

Last week I saw the word 閾値 and when looking it up in Gjiten I see two pronunciations, both marked as "popular": 閾値 (いきち) (n) threshold (amount, dose, etc.); (P); 閾値 (しきいち) (n) threshold (amount, dose, etc.); (P); Which one should I use? In the…
Nicolas Raoul
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In what way is the negative form of a verb an adjective?

I was reading the wikipedia page on "predicate," where it mentioned that in Japanese, the negative form of a verb is an adjective. I thought that this was too expansive a statement to be true, but what does the writer mean? Does the writer mean…
yadokari
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Is there a particular name for the rows and columns of the hiragana/katakana charts?

When i see Hiragana/Katakana Charts i see them always take a form similar to this i see a logical pattern here (except for ん but it's a one off). i am wondering is there a particular name for the rows and columns of the hiragana/katakana charts?…
Memor-X
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Japanese dictionary for mathematics/computer science jargon

I study mathematics and computer science, and I'm starting to learn japanese. Could you suggest me dictionaries/sites/etc where I could learn terminology on these subjects?
Vicfred
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What do we call things that are neither kana nor kanji?

I was wondering Is there a Japanese name (or term) for written stuff that are neither kana nor kanji? By that, I mean stuff like: ゠ (ダブルハイフン, for indicating the dash in foreign words) ・ (ぽつ, for separating foreign words, to make it more readable) 〆…
Pacerier
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How is 名 pronounced in computer terms?

For usernames, etc., you usually see like ユーザ名 or something similar. Or like on my Skype, it says Skype名. How is the 名 pronounced in these situations? I've never been able to conclusively find this anywhere. My instinct tells me it's な because…
istrasci
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What do you call brothers or sisters of the same age?

From what I can see people are forced to use the term of a younger or older brother/sister oneesan, oniisan, etc. But what do you call a brother or sister if they're the same age as you?
Tek
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Are numbers part of romaji? (i.e. 1, 2, 3 vs 一二三)

Romaji is when you use the Roman alphabet to write out Japanese. I.e. you use "abc" instead of "あいうえお". Taking that one step further, what do you call it when you use "123" instead of "一二三"? My first thought was to call it "Roman numerals", but…
silvermaple
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What to call the phenomenon where a rectangle is shown because a font is missing a glyph

Is there a name to describe the situation where a particular character is shown on a computer screen in a particular font, but this font does not have a glyph for this particular character? Usually, the result looks like this: □ A kind of empty…
Nicolas Raoul
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Grammatically, is a 体言止めの文 a "Japanese sentence"?

In Japanese, a 文【ぶん】 is basically anything which is delimited by periods (マル) or question/exclamation marks. For example, let's say there is a paragraph like this in the middle of the main text of a novel. 夕暮れの川岸を一人で歩く俺。太陽の光を浴びて輝く水面。頬を撫でる風。 Here,…
naruto
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