Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 November 6

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November 6

Select your correct radiotelephony alphabet of su and we kana

this is post moved from Tea House This is rerun of this post

す/ス

1. 寿司のス
2. すずめのス

ゑ/ヱ

1. ゑびすのヱ
2. かぎのあるヱ

Everyone pressing reply to answer 2001:44C8:4510:2F12:A428:487C:964:3868 (talk) 02:26, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

#2 for both, per law. I don't know where you got the first ones. Sushi for su would be a particularly poor choice, as /si/ and /su/ are merged in some parts of Tohoku and Shimane so it could plausibly sound like "獅子のシ". Nardog (talk) 02:48, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Is this like a Japanese spelling alphabet? ゑ/ヱ is basically obsolete in modern Japanese, so I have a hard time finding a situation where specifying it would be meaningful. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 06:11, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Suppose you want to say over the phone in Japanese, "ゑ/ヱ is basically obsolete in modern Japanese". The person at the other end replies, "申し訳ありませんが、最初の部分を綴っていただけますか?" How would you oblige in this situation?  --Lambiam 12:02, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

The description かぎのあるヱ ("we" with a hook) only works for the katakana character.  --Lambiam 12:32, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

It is kind of odd that ヰ gets an actual word that used to be spelled with that kana (井戸(ゐど)のヰ), while ヱ doesn't. ヲ sort of follows ヰ in using historical kana orthography, though it should really be 尾張(をはり) instead of 尾張(をわり) if one wanted to replicate historical kana orthography. But I guess they didn't want it to be mispronounced. Double sharp (talk) 15:26, 8 November 2023 (UTC)