Why is there no pronunciation-based sort for Japanese?

A&P of Sort Keys, part 11 (aka It's not like ideographic sorts were developed idiopathically)

Sorting It All Out — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:54:39 GMT

Previous posts in this series: Part 0: The empty string sorts the same in every language Part 1: The

Knock knock! Who's there? Kana! Kana Who?

Sorting It All Out — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 07:46:32 GMT

You Kana wonder how we order Japanese strings? :-)
Some time yesterday, one of the testers over on the...

re: Why is there no pronunciation-based sort for Japanese?

Michael Kaplan — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 04:15:00 GMT

I also found an interesting article about all of this, including more info on Kanji and the readings thereof, at http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Kanji

The Fourth Reading

Curt Sampson — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 03:47:00 GMT

Don't forget the fourth method of reading: "special" readings. These are basically arbitrary. For example, the characters for "one" and "day," 一日, can, and not infrequently is, read using on-readings for both characters: "ichi nichi." In this case it expresses the idea of a length of time one day long. However, when you're using it to express the idea of "first day" (e.g., the first day of the month), you pronounce it "tsuitachi." This bears no relation to the on or kun readings of either character. Moreover, it's a single word; you can't for example assign the "tsui" to 一 and the "tachi" to 日; the reading is valid only for the two characters in combination.

re: Why is there no pronunciation-based sort for Japanese?

Michael Kaplan — Tue, 28 Dec 2004 01:47:00 GMT

Chris -- I agree, by all means!

But a solution that put it in and let you override it is superior to one that forcess you to always type it, even though it may well be what you just typed in order to enter the string in the first place.

re: Why is there no pronunciation-based sort for Japanese?

Chris Pearce — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 18:37:00 GMT

One of the things you will need to be aware of if you are going to use the IME input as a reading for the kanji is that you're going to have times when that input is not correct.

Sometimes for place and people names, or other words that don't want to come up nicely with the IME, it's easier to type in alternative readings for a kanji and select it from the list.

Take for example '真乗院', a minor temple in Tokyo. It doesn't come up in the IME when you input 'しんじょういん(shinjouin)', but typing in the readings for individual kanji 'ma', 'noru' (delete the ru after you select the kanji) and 'in'. But now 'Manoin' would sort completely differently than 'Shinjouin.'

Little IME tricks like this could play havoc if you don't give people an opportunity to correct their kanji readings.

re: Why is there no pronunciation-based sort for Japanese?

Michael Kaplan — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 09:59:00 GMT

In both Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, the help for the Japanese IME include keystrokes that can be used to revert a converted string or character to a reading, which is what I think you are talking about.

I was thinking of an application that would do this behind the scenes so if you type in a name it would get the pronunciation and stick it in a "reading" field. No extr work required from the user!

re: Why is there no pronunciation-based sort for Japanese?

Norman Diamond — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 09:31:00 GMT

> In theory, this is something an application
> can do when a name

a name or anything else

> is typed when the IME mode is based on
> pronunciation; this is the one time that the
> pronunciation information is present without
> it being queried separately -- during the
> composition phase.

Agreed.

> As far as I know, this is not something that
> is done right now

I have read that in some cases it is possible to reconvert a Kanji string after mistakenly converting an undesired Kanji string with the same pronunciation. I've never been able to do that myself. As a guess, it might be something particular to Word 2002 and later plus IME 2002 and later, maybe or maybe not related to the "Natural" IME. But even when I had Word 2002 temporarily installed on a machine, I wasn't able to do recoversions myself. Also if I recall enough correctly of what I read, reconversion is no longer possible after the document is closed and reopened, because the pronunciation is not stored.

By the way some characters have more than 10 readings.