Abe’s New Word Order
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Abe’s New Word Order
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Re: Abe’s New Word Order
#2Not completely on topic, but I found the images and their captions to be quite humorous.
Re: Abe’s New Word Order
#3Isn't this essentially telling other languages how they're supposed to work?
Re: Abe’s New Word Order
#4Isn't this essentially telling other languages how they're supposed to work?
I don't really think so - I think it's more about asserting that the name ordering does hold meaningful and legitimate significance for people who are native Japanese.
For comparison, consider the loan word in English, "Sushi". No one in English would consider calling it by the name "Raw Fish and Rice" because the term "Sushi" implies a specific cultural context and carries the connection to Japan, Japanese culture and history etc. Trying to take the word "Sushi" away from the concept of "Sushi" would be almost rude, as it is de-valuing the social context that it is connected with.
By comparison, at the moment, East Asian people typically re-order their names to fit Western norms in Western contexts, which by the the opposite token implies that the name ordering isn't that important, and doesn't carry any significance to the person who wears the name. Deciding to use the traditional ordering isn't about telling other languages how they're supposed to work, it's about asking other people to acknowledge your cultural context as legitimate and equal to their own.
The decision to do this now may well, in this case, be steeped in nationalist sentiment as the article implies.
Re: Abe’s New Word Order
#5Isn't this essentially telling other languages how they're supposed to work?
Well it's liker the German government saying that they will always write München even in English; that doesn't say anything about how English speakers (or German private citizens speaking English) might choose to refer to Munich. In Malaysia "Datuk" is used as a combined honorific with a name when speaking otherwise completely idiomatic English rather than being translated into "Sir So-and-so"
It's not really different from the Maharashtran givernment deciding to write Bombay as "Mumbai" in English (which is how my grandfather pronounced it even when speaking English).
Unaddressed in the essay is how the construct SURNAME given_name (e.g. BREL Jaques) is quite common in countries like France -- not used in social conversation but in all official contexts including work and school. And let's not forget "Bond, James Bond."
The "communitarian/individualist" split and even more so its onomastic implication is overrated IMHO as you can see from my French example above.
Re: Abe’s New Word Order
#6Isn't this essentially telling other languages how they're supposed to work?
Well it's liker the German government saying that they will always write München even in English; that doesn't say anything about how English speakers (or German private citizens speaking English) might choose to refer to Munich. In Malaysia "Datuk" is used as a combined honorific with a name when speaking otherwise completely idiomatic English rather than being translated into "Sir So-and-so" It's not really differe…
Frankly I don't care one way or another regarding the ordering, but as a method to unambiguously specify which name is which, regardless of order, I'm all for it.
Re: Abe’s New Word Order
#7Isn't this essentially telling other languages how they're supposed to work?
I don't really think so - I think it's more about asserting that the name ordering does hold meaningful and legitimate significance for people who are native Japanese. For comparison, consider the loan word in English, "Sushi". No one in English would consider calling it by the name "Raw Fish and Rice" because the term "Sushi" implies a specific cultural context and carries the connection to Japan, Japanese culture a…
But the optimistic view is that the name order normalization is motivated primarily by the desire to minimize confusion among speakers of the language in question (in this case, English). Using the Western name order for Japanese names in English could simply be a straightforward way to translate names without requiring a lot of additional explanation to English speakers. That’s the same reason we almost always transliterate the Japanese names in English, and I don’t see much argument to stop doing that.
To me it seems like a better idea is to promulgate the convention of uppercasing the English family name in contexts where different name orders are likely to appear. I believe I have seen that convention on TV broadcasts of the Olympics, and it seems like a good idea.
Re: Abe’s New Word Order
#8Isn't this essentially telling other languages how they're supposed to work?
No, it's when Japan writes in English, not when we do.
Re: Abe’s New Word Order
#9As "a tall white foreigner with a big nose" it's a pretty random tossup between someone introducing themselves in family name first order or family name last order, even when speaking Japanese. This occasionally leads to the awkward situation of not knowing how to refer to someone right after meeting them.
I use "GivenName FamilyName" when speaking English and "FamilyName GivenName" when speaking Japanese. I assumed this was the default. Of course, then I discovered Korean names and Chinese names generally didn't follow this rule in English.
Re: Abe’s New Word Order
#10Isn't this essentially telling other languages how they're supposed to work?
It isn't. Spoken English uses the expressions "first name" and "last name", but in official documentation, everyone pretty much asks for your family name/surname and given name. Those aren't determined by order.