Soljashy said: I have a rather controversial question, but I'm dying to know. What about Touhou's chen (橙)? Is this romanized using Pinyin?
This is why I sort of hate this idea.
Posted under General
chainedwind said: Touhou wiki says the pronunciation is based on ancient Chinese or something and is already correct as far as romanising that old pronunciation. So what's the problem?
I thought your other comment was recommending Cheng, but I guess it was the opposite. Which is good because I really don't feel like changing that one.
Honestly, before we touched Chen we'd have to look at Cirno first. And because that's been exempt from cleanup since forever, I'd really rather not go there. As much as I hate the "but that's what the internet uses" argument, touching most popular Touhou characters with firmly established romanisations, of all things, is just asking for trouble.
葉月 said:
Honestly, before we touched Chen we'd have to look at Cirno first. And because that's been exempt from cleanup since forever, I'd really rather not go there. As much as I hate the "but that's what the internet uses" argument, touching most popular Touhou characters with firmly established romanisations, of all things, is just asking for trouble.
I don't completely disagree with you, but the thing with Cirno's name is that it's written in katakana, which means it might just as easily be a made up name and not a "Japanese name" as such.
I really think that some things can be left just as they are. I routinely see Chinese artists butcher the Japanese language, so I'm not at all surprised that there are many instances of Japanese getting Chinese (usually names) wrong. After all, look at what both countries do to English.
We also have some proper names in English that originate from other languages or got warped by non-native English speakers, resulting in different spellings for a lot of the same names (e.g., Shawn, Shaun, Sean).
When Chinese spelling globally went from the Wade-Giles format to Pinyin, some names were still retained as they were because of familiarity. It would probably be prudent to do so for some names in pseudo-Chinese too, IMO, if they are already too well-known and would cause confusion if changed.
I'd say this should go for "Cirno" as well, but that's just my personal opinion. I admit the first time I saw it, I was kind of weirded out by the spelling though.
Soljashy said: I don't completely disagree with you, but the thing with Cirno's name is that it's written in katakana, which means it might just as easily be a made up name and not a "Japanese name" as such.
Yeah, I think Cirno is fine. I'm not aware of "Chiruno" being a normal Japanese name so I always assumed Cirno was an intentionally made up name.