Talk:Nippo Jisho

Article (and book) title

I'm puzzled by the title of the article. That Dictionary is capitalized suggests it's the title of the book, rather than a description of it. But has it appeared in English translation? I doubt it. Indeed, it's almost unimaginable. If that's so, the English title is newly invented; why choose this for the article title?

In "Vocabvlario da Lingoa de Iapam" within the article, the old v-form graph of the grapheme "u" seems to have been taken as the grapheme "v". I tentatively suggest "Vocabulario da Lingoa de Iapam" as the title of the book and of the article about it. (Tentatively, because offhand I don't know about the "I"/"J" distinction in Portuguese of that time, or indeed about diacritics, etc.) -- Hoary 11:07, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC)

Changing the article title to put the "d" in lowercase sounds reasonable. Fg2 13:24, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

There is no English translation. The book has a Japanese title, "Nippo jisho" (日葡辞書）which simply means "Japanese-Portuguese Dictionary," and a Portuguese title, "VOCABVLARIO DA LINGOA DE IAPAM com adeclaração em Portugues, feito por ALGUNS PADRES, E IR.mãos companhia DE IESV" (the use of CAPS mimics the use of caps on the original printed versions) which means, "Vocabulary of the language of Japan with definitions in Portuguese, done by certain fathers and brothers of the of the Company of Jesus. Jb05-rsh 22:43, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I suggest this article be moved to a site named "Nippo jisho" which is shorter, and a more common name for the book used by people who are studying Japanese. Searches for "Japanese-Portuguese Dictionary of 1603" or for "VOCABVLARIO DA LINGOA DE IAPAM" should be directed to "Nippo jisho" Jb05-rsh 22:47, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's very hard to see why an English name like this should be redirected to a Japanese name. Are you going to redirect everything to a Japanese name? For example do you want to rename "English language" to "Eigo" because that is the name used in Japan? English Wikipedia is an English language encyclopedia, and the dictionary was originally published under a Portuguese title, so using the Japanese title is difficult to justify. Certainly the above point about "Dictionary" is valid, it should say "dictionary". --DannyWilde 23:24, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Let me change the tact of my argument; copies of the book that exist in libraries in the United States, inlcuding the Library of Congress, name the book "Nippo jisho". If anyone wants to find the book it is necessary to know the title by which it is listed in libraries. How about references to the book which contain a link to the article mention BOTH titles? Afterall, it has two titles, and the Japanese is the title used for listings in library catalogs, and the Portuguese is the title of the printed object. Would you agree to that? Jb05-rsh 23:35, 12 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Spelling

We should use the original spelling. I guess the book has xi instead of shi and the like.