Re: [Lingo] [tlug] [OT] What's up with online Japanese<->Japanese dictionaries?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Continuing on lingo.  This really has nada to do with *nix....

Jim Breen writes:
 > On 15 June 2010 03:02, s smith <sjs@example.com> wrote:

 > > So what I'm wondering is would the Japanese define 補佐官  as one word
 > > or two.
 > 
 > Two I think, whereas in English many of the XX官 equivalents are one
 > word. The good JEs such as GG5 have 補佐官, etc.

I'm not sure about that.  I don't have time to check more than the
"Sanseido's Daily Concise E-J J-E D" (the Japanese will easily get you
through the Nihon Keizai Shinbun), but it has a top-level entry for 技
官 (which is abbreviated from 技術官, I guess) and an entry for 事務官
embedded in the top-level entry for 事務 (it seems to be given a
connotation of "Department Secretary", cf. 事務次官).  No entry at all
for 補佐官, suggesting that it's such an obvious compound that
although it's syntactically one word (a noun), the dictionary doesn't
have space to give it an entry.

I suspect that in Japanese the concept "word" is actually rather
different from in English; that is the grammar is factored differently. 

Interestingly, there's no entry in the E-J part for "compound noun".
Given the regularity with which Japanese coin new compounds (often in
very abbreviated forms), I would guess that means they don't
distinguish between simple and compound nouns.

All of the above is pure speculation, but it beats doing work. :-)