Template talk:Nihongo3

Some change requests
Could we switch the romaji and english fields to and  respectively? The current order confuses me. Also, can we make romaji be italic automatically? I can't think of a reason why that would hurt anything. If someone wanted the words displayed in front to be non italic, they would just use nihongo wouldn't they? --Eruhildo (talk) 17:48, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * They should be italic, yes; all non-English material should be in italics, per WP:MOS. No opinion on the field switch, other than any such change would require a serious bot/AWB editing spree to fix all extant usage, so unless someone volunteers to do that, it seems like an unlikely change. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 08:42, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I fixed the italics, here and in nihongo2, but nihongo is protected, so I filed an editprotected request. If anyone wants to revert this, you'll need to revert both edited templates, and challenge the editprotected at Template talk:Nihongo. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 08:53, 18 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I was talking about italicizing rōmaji, not kanji. You never italicize kanji on Wikipedia per WP:ITALIC. I went ahead and fixed the template. Looking at Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Nihongo3, there seems to be only 43 pages that currently use this template. I'm willing to go through and switch fields and  for all of them as it would only take a few minutes. --Eruhildo (talk) 02:47, 19 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Works for me. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 21:00, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Nihongo3 does not work in table entries in a single line
I've been trying to use Nihongo3 in tables but it has difficulty processing a line entry such as in the first case here. The second entry I've had to break up into two lines.

Can someone fix up Nihongo3 so it works cleanly? AngusWOOF ( bark  • < sniff ) 21:40, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Parameter 1: with apostrophes ('), quotation marks ("), or without either?
Greetings!

When using, should the first parameter (e.g. English, or priest of nothingness) be surrounded by apostrophes ('), quotation marks ("), or without either? At the Template page, the former example is given with quotation marks ("English"), whereas the latter with apostrophes ('priest of nothingness'). Or why couldn't the syntax go without any, like in the example of AngusWOOF in the thread above (Labyrinth of Sparkle)?

IMHO, without any would seem the most tidy. Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 12:48, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
 * A gloss/translation into English should be in single quotes, per MOS:SINGLE. A label like "English:" or "literally:" would have no markup. A romaji string would get italics, and really should have  language coding.  The original kanji would get no markup (other than   language coding).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:47, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Help to understand the example with colon and semicolon ?
Could someone please clarify the meaning of the following example:

The first line starts with a colon, then there's a line break after which the second line starts with a semicolon. But what's a real life example of this? I can't really imagine an article where one part of the explanation is separated by a line break from the rest. I mean, what's the relation of "Mendicant priest of the Fuke sect of Zen Buddhism" to the template anyway? It doesn't seem to refer any of the parameters, but still it seems to be describing the "priest of nothingness" ... but after a line break.

Could someone please clarify the example given at the Template page? Thanks! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 12:59, 15 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Jayaguru-Shishya: (I hope you don't mind that I inserted a pipe (|) character in your text to fix a fostered content lint error. Fostered content means that some markup within a table is missing code saying where to put the content, so it displays outside the table. With the addition of the pipe character, the content displays properly.) You said that the first line starts with a colon and the second with a semicolon, but it's the other way around. The first line starts with a semicolon, which is wiki markup for "bold this line" and the second line starts with a colon, which is wiki markup for "indent this line (or paragraph)". So these two lines are the wiki markup for what's displayed in the next two lines: a two-line definition of a Japanese word. Those lines are re-displayed here:


 * {| class="wikitable"


 * 'priest of nothingness' (虚無僧)
 * 'priest of nothingness' (虚無僧)


 * Mendicant priest of the Fuke sect of Zen Buddhism.


 * }


 * The first line has a romanization, the Japanese characters, a literal translation, and the area of knowledge in which the word is used. The second line gives the meaning of the phrase, as opposed to the word-by-word translation. So the example shows how one might use to generate the display of a dictionary definition of a Japanese word that is comprised of three component words. I hope this makes sense. —Anomalocaris (talk) 07:17, 5 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Anomalocaris, thanks for the clarification on the wiki markup, and I still hope you have a little patience with my follow-up question! :-P Indeed, the colon and semi-colon got vice-versa, but neither of those were the main point. Sorry for the inconvenience.
 * Anyway, it still remains unclear how the example is supposed to work in a "real-article environment". In the given example, we have two lines. Forgetting extra2= for a moment, the first line has three parameters: 3) priest of nothingness (a literal translation), 2) 虚無僧 (the Japanese characters), and 1) komusō (romanization).
 * But where does the second line, (4) Mendicant priest of the Fuke sect of Zen Buddhism. (the meaning of the phrase) go? One won't make a line break all of a sudden in the article, and then add the last parameter on its very own line, right? With, we already have a good example constituting all of the aforementioned four elements, e.g.: Joyful donations (歓喜) (Shinnyo-en).
 * Summa summarum, one won't break the code with a line break, correct? Then, what is one ought to do? Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 19:01, 6 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Jayaguru-Shishya: The line break would not typically be used in ordinary paragraphs. But perhaps some article would have a glossary section with listings on multiple lines, as dictionaries such as Wiktionary does. Cheers! —Anomalocaris (talk) 19:20, 6 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Anomalocaris, exactly. I bet that 99.9% of the articles do not include such a line break; one line using a semi-colon for "bold this line", and the other line using a colon for "indent this line". If there really is no article using such markup, shouldn't we just edit and simplify the current template? Cheers! Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 21:12, 6 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Jayaguru-Shishya: As it says on the home page:
 * Welcome to Wikipedia,
 * the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
 * So, if you think you can improve on any page, go ahead! Just remember that Wikipedia is based on cooperation, and we have policies, guidelines and procedures for editing, style, and most important, dispute resolution. Cheers! —Anomalocaris (talk) 00:30, 7 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Maybe you could cast some light on the matter, could you? :-) Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 10:50, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I seemed to have missed the genesis of this debate. From what I can tell, the komusō example is meant to illustrate a glossary entry, giving the kanji, romaji, and literal gloss, followed by a more encyclopedic definition of what the word refers to.  And that's a correct use (for once!) of description list markup, though of course one wouldn't do this in mid-paragraph, but in a list of terms. That said, it's better in an actual glossary to use template-structured glossary markup, because MW's built-in   and   way of getting at  and  is very easily broken.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:53, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at WT:JAPAN
You are invited to join the discussion at WT:JAPAN. Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) 01:06, 28 May 2020 (UTC)