Re: Thoughts on ruby

> I don't think the argument is very subjective. As the originals are only 
> on paper, it's indeed not obvious what the essential structure is. But 
> it's easy to take either side of ruby markup away. I think most people, 
> when they see ruby on both sides, don't think that one side is applied 
> to anything more than the base text.

I still think that it is subjective.  When Japanese borrowed the
character 東 and 南 from China, Japanese borrowed their pronounciations
とう and なん as well.  Later, Japanese found that 東南 actually means 
たつみ in the original Japanese language.   

JLReq says something similar.

>There are cases where two kinds of ruby are attached, one to either 
>side of the base characters, one for readings and the other for
>meanings (see [Fig.117]).

Thus, attaching たつみ to the combination of 東南 and とう なん is 
not an unreasonable thing to do.

Cheers,
Makoto

Received on Tuesday, 28 September 2010 04:24:38 UTC