Talk:Chōonpu

Not vertical
Maybe it's just me but I get the distinct feeling that's not a "vertical" dash... 70.22.196.34 02:20, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Is this correct?
Shouldn't ほう (hou) actually be ほお (hoo)? If not, why not? This one seems to break the trend but there is no explanation given. Bilge [ TC] 16:25, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
 * No, long o is usually written ou in hiragana. In fact, へえ (hee) should probably be へい (hei) as well. --Ptcamn 16:32, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

We should list both spellings, but maybe put the more common one first. --C. Raleigh (talk) 04:25, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I added a note to attempt to clarify this. Basically, the spelling depends on the origin of the word: "home run" is ホームラン, but hōkō 方向, an onyomi reading, would be ほうこう and ホウコウ. Jpatokal (talk) 07:59, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Ptcamn is right, long o is usually ou while long e is usually ei. I've seen long o written as oo, but only in the words ooi (おおい) and ookii (おおきい) — or in roumaji, where you can use either/or. As for long e, the only time I've ever seen "ee" is in loanwords such as "erebeetaa" (elevator). "ee" looks fine for romaji, but I've never seen it in hiragana, and in katakana it would just be represented by the chouonpu anyway. The "へえ" on the hiragana part of the chart should most definitely be changed to "へい", and the long o should be shown as "ほう".NoriMori (talk) 02:11, 26 January 2009 (UTC) P.S. I just found out recently (I don't remember where) that お would only be used to extend an o sound if it's actually a long o, and not just an extended vowel sound. i.e. "ookii" and "ooi" would use お because it is extending the first お; on the other hand "sou" or "kyou" would use う because it's only extending the "o" part of the character. (Intuitively, one would think that the same would apply to "ええ" vs. "えい" — but I've never seen this, even in names like "Eiko"; even though that name begins with え, I've only ever seen it romanized as "ei" — never "ee". But since I've never seen the name written in hiragana by a Japanese person, I can't be certain.) NoriMori (talk) 20:02, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

おお is used in a few words such as こおり, ほのお and ほお. ええ is used in a few words such as ええ and ええと. Both おお and ええ exist, although neither is very common. The observations in NoriMori's latest comment are wrong: they don't apply to こおり/氷, ほのお/炎 or ほお/朴. In the past, a long ō was sometimes written as あう or あふ, cf. さうらふ (modern spelling そうろう). I would assume that the variations simply are things that weren't simplified when other spelling oddities were simplified. (212.247.11.156 (talk) 22:21, 9 January 2011 (UTC))
 * "In the past, a long ō was sometimes written as あう or あふ. " More precisely, those sounds used to be pronounced differently, typically when borrowed from Chinese, and over the passage at time changed sounds to be more euphonic (onbin). At the same time, while towards the beginning the hiragana used matched the sound and would change with it, at some point the kana spelling became fixed but the pronunciation continued to shift until finally spelling reform was undertaken to temporarily re-align spelling with the prestige accent. (Cf. to similar effects in English once dictionaries were established, especially the differing choices about "o" vs "ou" in American and British English.) The historical kana usage did, at one time, match the pronunciation (though even many Japanese speakers don't know this.) 今日 really was けふ. ou and oo used to be different sounds, but aren't any more. A fair number of long vowels came from the h-row (especially "fu") being dropped-- cf. with dialects in English and other languages that drop 'aitches.'

A number of the comments above are wrong, or are confusing the relation between roman letters and kana with the relation between hiragana and katakana. I removed the bogus claims from the table that へい in hira maps to ヘー kata, because it doesn't. If your name is 英子 (Eiko), and you are asked for the reading in hiragana you write えいこ, in katakana エイコ. Actually, the situation is much messier that this, because the ー (I'll call it 'nobashi-bou', since that is the commonest name) is only normally used in gairaigo, which means non-Han-Chinese loanwords (or something). So a Yamato word like kakigoori (crushed ice), which includes the repeated 'o' vowel, is overwhelmingly written as カキゴオリ, not カキゴーリ (100:1 at google). Imaginatorium (talk) 08:57, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I second the statement made by Imaginatorium. へい should not be listed in this table. The extended え sound is not extended with い at any point in Japanese. The usage of い after these characters is only used to generate the long a sound present in English words hay, sway, rate, etc. and Japanese words like 例「れい」, among others.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 賢進ジェンナ (talk • contribs) 17:21, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Most of the words that use

Not in Hiragana?
Why is the Chōon not used in Hiragana? --88.77.241.188 13:31, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I think that that needs a reference. It seems like bogus to me. Moocowsrule (talk) 22:36, 27 October 2008 (UTC)moocowsrule
 * It's not bogus. I can read hiragana, and with the help of a chart I can read katakana, too. The chouonpu is not used in hiragana. You can look at any book on learning to read kana, or take Japanese lessons, to corroborate this. I know this doesn't qualify as a "reference" -- I just wanted to clarify that the statement is true. NoriMori (talk) 02:16, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
 * We use chōonpu in hiragana. Mostly in onomatopoeia like this and nicknames like まーちゃん or たー坊. As for the article name, I think it should move to Chōonfugō. Because chōonpu has a meaning of longer notes like a quarter note and a whole note in music. Oda Mari (talk) 06:17, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Chōon and Chōonpu are different
Chōon literally means "long sound" and it refers to long vowels (chōboin) that are two moras long in Japanese. Chōonpu literally means "long sound symbol," and refers to the "ー" symbol. This article is about the symbol, so it should be renamed as such. —Tokek (talk) 04:48, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Vertical version
How does one get a vertical version of a chōonpu? I could not find a UTF code for it, so I assume the font should offer it. But how to access that? I assume that a 90 degrees clockwise rotation is not the way to go. Can someone elaborate on this, please? SvGeloven (talk) 11:47, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I have no idea what word processor you use, but if it's Microsoft Word, click the File tab, click "page setting" and choose "vertical writing", all chōonpu rotate automatically. You can see it by clicking "ViewPage". These pages may help you. and . Oda Mari (talk) 14:54, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

"R-coloured vowels" and "-er" (and similar) endings
It is true (see recent IP edit) that the "-er" ending is not the only case in which what in (some variety of) NAm English is an R-coloured vowel gets converted to an elongated 'a' sound. But as I understand it, this R-coloured" type of vowel is a particular characteristic of some pronunciations of English, and it is not clear that this influenced the conversion. The real characteristic is that it is a final unstressed schwa, with or without some sort of "r-ness"; for example, in my own current "neutral-south-English", it's just schwa, but in my native Gloucestershire it's that deep "arrrr" that I don't know the technical term for. But really, really, this is nothing in particular to do with the long vowel mark, it's just a characteristic of how the schwa vowel in English is converted to kana. Does it even belong on this page? OTOH, it could be noted that in drafting patent specifications there is a general preference for omitting the final chōonpu on words, because of the possibilities of confusion with numeral 一 or various dashes. Imaginatorium (talk) 08:01, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Is the article name right?
As a native Japanese speaker I never pronounce the word 長音符 as *Chōonpu*; it*s *Chōonfu* for me.

Although there is a word 音符 'a musical note' pronounced *onpu*, 長音符 actually constitutes of 長音 'a long soound/vowel' + 符 'a sign' (i.e. (chō + on) + fu) and has nothing to do with the musical term. I believe there is some rule similar to this which prevents the *fu* turning into *pu*.
 * Well, Daijirin has an entry for it, with the reading chōonpu, though I guess there are regional variations. But meanwhile, have you ever heard anyone use this word to refer to "ー"? The normal term is surely nobashi-bō, and on a strict reading of Daijirin this is the more accurate term, since 長音符 can refer to any means of indicating a long vowel, including a macron, circumflex, or the ':' of IPA. (My wife, who is a native speaker with plenty of practice at giving our name 「チャンドラー」 over the phone, confirms she has only ever said 「伸ばし棒」.) I think en:WP articles should have English titles where they exist, and therefore I think this article should be renamed "Japanese long vowel mark", or "Japanese long vowel symbol", or any other good suggestion. (This excludes the Unicode consortium's tortured attempts at near-English.) Imaginatorium (talk) 09:11, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

What's this
ンー = n̄

12:41, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Hiragana counterpart?
Does it use tilde for Choonpu Hiragana? 124.106.130.17 (talk) 12:42, 10 March 2018 (UTC)


 * No. (For most values of "it" at least) Imaginatorium (talk) 15:40, 10 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Stylistically, though especially in manga settings, I have seen a Wave Dash ⟨〜⟩ used as an emphatic variant to a Chōonpu to represent most typically a prolonged vowel of three or more morae in length (as though if it were two or three Chōonpu in succession). CJLippert (talk) 20:44, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Why no へえ?
In the Hiragana to Katakana correspondence table, why doesn't it say this?:

Although rare, ⟨Cee⟩ = ⟨Cē⟩ sequence does occur, most notably in ⟨おねえさん⟩. And in the case of ⟨へえ⟩ specifically, that can be either an emphatic interjection variation to ⟨ええ⟩ meaning "really?" or interjection variation to ⟨はい⟩ meaning "yes!" CJLippert (talk) 20:25, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

How do you write it?
What the title says.--85.229.235.77 (talk) 12:50, 4 October 2019 (UTC)


 * From the lead: "Its form is a horizontal or vertical line in the center of the text with the width of one kanji or kana character. It is written horizontally in horizontal text and vertically in vertical text." How does this not answer your question? Imaginatorium (talk) 15:01, 4 October 2019 (UTC)