User:RJCraig

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Affiliations, etc. 牛 This user was born in the year of the Ox. en This user is a native speaker of English. ja-3 この利用者は流暢に日本語を話すことができます。 This user teaches at a university or other institution of higher education. This user is a member of WikiProject Ohio. This user is a participant of WikiProject Japan. This user runs Mac OS X. This user contributes using Mozilla Firefox. objc This user can program in Objective-C. php This user can program in PHP. This user enjoys using Celestia to look at the virtual skies. This user is a fan of Dune. M.D. This user watches House. CF This user is childfree Just chillin'.

[edit] Who am I?

An expat Ohioan living (for lack of better word) and working (teaching English grammar and composition and a bit of Linguistics) in southern Tohoku/northern Kanto, Japan.

I have never been one to suffer fools gladly. This trait seems to only grow stronger as I near the midpoint of my fifth decade on this planet...

[edit] Current Interests

Too many to list, really. But here are a few things:

[edit] Languages

• (Modern) Japanese, of course. Also
  • Old Japanese
  • Late Old Japanese
  • Early Middle Japanese
  • Middle Japanese
  • Late Middle Japanese
  • Early Modern Japanese
  • Classical Japanese language (/Literary Japanese)
• Arabic
• Navajo

[edit] Music

Shamisen

[edit] Other-Language Wikipedia Page Links

Japanese Wikipedia User Page

Wikimedia Commons User Page

Useful Wikpedia Code

[edit] External Links

(More to be added later)

Some links...

[edit] Work to be done...

• City pages for Mito, Ibaraki and Iwaki, Fukushima (Iwaki Notes); eventually also Kōriyama, Fukushima (ja:郡山市), Fukushima, Fukushima (ja:福島市) and Kitaibaraki, Ibaraki (ja:北茨城市).
• Fukushima region pages: Aizu, Nakadōri, Hamadōri.
• Ibaraki University (ja:茨城大学)
• The page on poet Ishikawa Takuboku (ja:石川啄木) could use some filling out. (There's no separate article for Rōmaji Nikki (Romaji Diary) for example!)
• List of Japanese language poets - lists need to be alphabetized, for one thing! (Add Ujō Noguchi (ja:野口雨情), Junzaburō Nishiwaki (ja:西脇順三郎))
• A "Western Imperialist" version of the Japanese grammar article.

• Names for prefectural regions?

Burning question: Why is National Route 6 (国道六号) called Roku-koku (六国) instead of Koku-Roku (国六)?!

No article on Kakari-musubi?

Translate

• Help Mononohazumi translate the still-Japanese parts of Nagoya-ben.

Rewrite?

• Determiner (class)#English determiners

Work Area/Personal Sandbox

[edit] Some useful links, etc.

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page
• Help pages
• Tutorial
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

• Manual of Style for Japan-related articles
  • Rules of thumb:
    • For a historical figure (a person born before the first year of Meiji (1868)), always use the traditional Japanese order of family name + given name. Names from Japanese mythology and folklore fall into this category.
    • For a modern figure (a person born from the first year of Meiji (1868) onward), always use the Western order of given name + family name for Western Alphabet, and Japanese Style family name+<space>+given name for Japanese Characters.
  • There is a template (Template:Nihongo) to help standardize the entries for Japanese terms. Usage example:
    {{Nihongo|New Meikai Japanese Dictionary|新明解国語辞典|Shin Meikai Kokugo Jiten}}
    gives: New Meikai Japanese Dictionary (新明解国語辞典, Shin Meikai Kokugo Jiten^?)

[edit] My POV on Names...

...can be summed up simply by the proverb 「郷にいれば郷に従え」"When in Rome...." It all depends on audience, who you're writing for. If your audience is composed of native English speakers who may not be familiar with the name-order rules of other languages, follow English convention. Using the normal Japanese order without exception, adopting weird typographical conventions that still have to be explained...I think these just cause more confusion.

I'm sorry if some people are offended by having the order of the parts of their name reversed, but it's not a position I can really understand. I drop my middle name and reverse my surname and given name in Japanese; I don't see what the big deal is. If your personal and cultural identity is that important—more important than communicating with others?—then why romanize at all? Why not just leave your name in your native orthography and require everyone else to learn it? Expecting them to be familiar with your language's conventions is just a less radical version of the same line of thinking, no? Anyway, you're free to write your name any ole way you please. Just don't ask me to change the rules of my language to conform to your whims.

The above are just my personal preferences. Naturally, I follow Wikipedia standards in all edits here.