Talk:Iroha

Wi and We
&#12432; (w)i and &#12433; (w)e are in the same column of &#12431; wa and &#12434; (w)o in &#20116;&#21313;&#38899;.

Other Pangrams
There were once other pangrams used. The Iroha was only one of several. Unfortunately, I can't remember where I saw other examples.

Pronunciation
I removed the two alternative readings:


 * 1) つねならむ is pronounced tsune naran, not tsune naramu, because the rest of the Iroha follows the pronunciation style used nowadays for classical Japanese.  While indeed the auxiliary verb む was once pronounced mu, if we pronounce mu here, then the rest of the Iroha should also be pronounced as written (けふ as kefu etc.).
 * 2) 酔ひ in 酔ひもせず is ei not yoi.  The modern 酔う（よう） comes from the fact that the original yodan-type verb, ゑふ, is pronounced yō due to pronunciation rules (compare how けふ is pronounced kyō). The ren'youkei form, ゑひ, does not fall under the "e + u => yō" rule changing its pronunciation, so it is just plain ei.

Poem wars
The edits of the poem's translation yesterday were basically uncalled for. "My translation" of the poem counts as one's original work and doesn't belong on Wikipedia. Now another person has come along and re-edited the poem according to his or her own personal tastes. Please stop it. I am reverting back to the original version for the time being. --DannyWilde 00:43, September 2, 2005 (UTC)


 * I guess I'm down… I just really hate having "literally, blah" in parenthesis. Can we take out the "inevitably" and "no one could"? --Carl 05:45, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
 * The idea of parentheses and the insertion of the literal meaning was meant to indicate the construction of the original Japanese, considering that translations are imperfect, in keeping with the aim to provide as much information as possible. As for my original edit of the translation, it was intended to improve the adherence to the original Japanese text. --Denihilonihil 11:00, 5 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I think the guiding principles here should be first of all that this article's goal should be to explain what "iroha" is, and second, no original research. It's not really a good idea to put original translations of poems into Wikipedia unless nothing more standard exists. Also, re-editing them for artistic merit is a fairly bad idea - there is no end to that sort of discussion. --DannyWilde 14:24, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't think translation entirely counts as "original research" per se. The idea of the ban is to weed out things that cranks make up on their own and then put on Wikipedia for promotional reasons. (Wikipedia is for documentation of the known, not a place to advance the leading edge of knowledge, etc.) However, unless the person putting the translation on here is pushing a book of translations, that doesn't seem to be an issue in this case. If anything, it's better to have a Wikipedian's translation listed here, since other translations have copyright issues. Though a single translation of Iroha is probably fair use, a Wikipedian's original translation is known to be fully GDFL, thus free from any potential complications. (By the way, just where did our current translation come from anyway?) Maybe the best solution might be to just put a painfully literal translation up here and a link to a site that can host other translations. If I can be forgiven the indulgence:. Let a thousand flowers bloom! Then fade. Then cross over…, &c., &c. --Carl 02:45, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry I don't know what the best method is, but I was concerned about a poem war breaking out. Anyway I've added your link to the page anyway. Hope this is useful. --DannyWilde 05:50, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Actually, I was thinking about this page earlier today, for some reason. Perhaps it would be more approporiate to link to a page in the WikiSource project. Does anyone else know more about that project? I just know that it's a sister to Wikipedia. --Carl 11:31, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Two years later the Translation wars continue. Actually I am kind of guilty of it myself. I noticed that the translations up to this point hadn't been cited anywhere, so there was not much in the way of credentials of the translator or translation. So I found a translation by a prominent Japanese scholar, Professor Abe, and put that in place of other unverified translations. I figured the guy has a Ph.D., so it accounts for something. :D --Ph0kin 04:57, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Away from the discussion above, I would like to point out the strangeness of poetry translation which is based on the change made in 2009. The current translation of the poem looks so strange for me Japanese. Especially, "花が散る" actually means "flowers fall" in this context with no doubt, while the expression of "flowers scatter" in the current version gives a bright impression which is contradictory against the poem's underlying theme of 'impermanence'. Also, the part of "And we shall not have superficial dreams Nor be deluded." spoils the poem thoroughly. Why "we" are being used? Furthermore, the selection of words of "superficial" and "delude" shatter the relationship between "夢" and "酔".--Prosopagnosias (talk) 06:09, 1 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I have not noticed the translation by Ryuichi Abe. If the word selection of "scatter" is based on this script, "away" should not be removed. I do not still agree at the usage of "we". Poetry itself is essentially personal. However, Abe regard the poetry as a declaration of determination (or preach) of Buddhists, since he is a Buddhist and thinks the writer of the poet is Buddhist leader Kukai. (Actually, there are different opinions about the writer, as stated in the preface of the article.) This is why he uses "we" in his translational script.--Prosopagnosias (talk) 06:48, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Once again commenting on the translation question: it has stuck out to me for years now that the first line of the box oddly has two completely different English translations, "Even the blossoming flowers [Colors are fragrant, but they]". The parenthetical translation was added in a 2014 edit with no comment, but I can confirm it is an accurate translation of the modernized Japanese in the same line, "色は匂えど". The original translation was added in a 2009 edit by SebastianHelm, who did not provide any citation either and claims no knowledge of Japanese on the language competencies section of their user page today. It seems to have its roots even further back in the original 2004 translation ("As flowers are brilliant but...") which the contributing user identified as their own work. Does anybody know where this family of translations comes from? Perhaps an alternate interpretation of what the original man'yōgana is actually spelling? If no source can be produced I propose the line be edited to just the current parenthetical "Colors are fragrant, but they" 146.168.6.190 (talk) 04:45, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pinging me. It seems you're talking about this edit of mine. As I wrote in the summary, the translation was not mine, but from the article Hiragana. For your convenience, here's the version of the time. ◅ Sebastian 05:29, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

re-phrasing
Hi Adam, you've readded "perfect pangram". I'd cut this partly to avoid repetition, but also because it sounds weird to say "perfect pangram except not, because of -n". What would you say to just "pangram" (no perfection required!) in that para? Cheers, JackyR 01:15, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I missed the pangram mention at the top; I'll take it out below. The ん character is a relatively new addition to Japanese orthography, so the iroha still has a reasonable claim to being called a perfect pangram. adamrice 15:22, 24 December 2005 (UTC)


 * All sounds good :-) JackyR 15:34, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

strictly transliterated
No, strictly transliterated "ha" is still "ha" because it is *archaic* Japanese, not modern Japanese. Back then there was only one pronunciation of は which was something like "hwa". This later split into "ha" in the beginning of words and "wa" elsewhere. In 1946 everything except the particle was respelled わ (for example 川(かは)) 67.177.166.232 (talk) 17:27, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Strictly transliterated "ha" is "wa" when used as grammatical particles. I pretty much understand what is meant by this part of the article, but it is not very clear, as both hepburn and kunrei-shiki follow this transliteration standard.--Shadowdrak 06:35, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Numbering of guns
Whole three paragraphs about Japanese weaponry in the usage section presents a bit unbalanced coverage to me. Just as an opinion, I'd like that to be reduced to a single paragraph of 4-5 sentences. --ulidtko (talk) 02:27, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I concur, this is unbalanced. I suggest we give a further three weeks to see if anyone comes up with a reason for that, then we can do the editing.MT Editor (talk) 15:45, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

酔ひ as yoi in modern version
Shouldn't the modern version write yoi as 酔い? I know that 酔ひ would be the historical usage but the modern version should use the modern orthography. 2602:30A:2CDB:490:E137:EDD6:CBA5:BC23 (talk) 05:22, 4 July 2017 (UTC)