First, some insignificant and unstructured observations, thoughts: for organization and perspective. Important-er stuff later.Firstly, regarding priority, it should be said that westerners/non-Chinese speakers should
ostensibly enjoy priority when it comes to this decision. Romanization is for their benefit, because they're unable to read Chinese. But it really depends on how reliant Chinese speakers are on romanization, because I don't know. What settings do most of them use on osu? How do they navigate on the website? I really don't know, feel free to provide enlightenment on this subject.
Secondly, as an English speaker (being ethnically Chinese, I learned Chinese when younger, and have since forgotten it, but I still retain a basical grammatical and conceptual foundation of the language), it is much easier for me to remember romanized titles if different syllables are grouped together into words. Although Chinese and English are both polysyllabic, English is the only VISUALLY polysyllabic language, as we group syllables together into words and, most importantly, separate those words using spaces. Chinese, to my knowledge, generally does not. Having English as a first language has geared my brain towards taking into account spatial grouping when processing language, so I take each isolated group of letters as its own discrete entity and allocate it its own semantic (or, in the absence of fluency in Chinese, quasi-semantic) space and recognize it as such. If what I've said is a little obscurely phrased, then please just take it as testimony from an English speaker that Tushuguan is unequivocally easier to memorize than Tu Shu Guan, and I don't think my threadbare knowledge of Chinese contributes to that at all. Faced with a title such as "Gei Wo Yi Ge Li You Wang Ji" I would quickly become discouraged and not even try to memorize it, except maybe after numerous plays. I'd sooner type in the mapper's name and click through the options presented to me.
Wafu wrote:
2. As for the memory point, again, you are considering this point from the Chinese speaker perspective. That's not the target group. As above, it's about how Latin script works with words. As you probably know, when people who use Latin script read longer words, they generally don't read them, they just recognize it by the shape of the word. Because of that, they will also miss minor spelling errors, because they read the originally intended word by the shape. That suggests (which is a fact by the way) that they memorize text (that is seemingly a word) much easier than syllables. As an example, you probably have the shape of "Romanisation" memorized pretty well. That means if I'd misspell it to "Ronamisation", you would quite likely not notice that. Whereas if I did "Ro Na Mi Sa Ti On", you would more likely notice the error, because you would read it syllable by syllable.
Thirdly, to address the problems of grouping together romanized Chinese syllables into words. It is true that in grouping together syllables there is a lot of ambiguity, but much of that ambiguity should be able to be cleared
in context. For instance, taking this charming example provided to us:
Hollow Wings wrote:
"Gu Niang, Shui Jiao Yi Wan Duo Shao Qian?"
this sentence mainly has two meanings:
1. "Hey gril, how much it costs if i buy a bowl of your dumplings?" (姑娘,水饺一碗多少钱?)
2. "Hey gril, how much it costs if i sleep you one night?" (姑娘,睡觉一晚多少钱?)
Context should be able to very easily clear up such ambiguities. What is the song about? What is the rest of the song saying? Context will provide an almost effortless resolution to such conclusions, which I imagine would comprise the vast majority of such instances.
However, some of those ambiguities will be purposely rendered in the form of puns etc., such as here:
Fycho wrote:
For example, specific examples like "他谁都打不过", it's used intentionally to represent two meanings that are "Nobody can beat him" and "He can beat everybody", "Ta / Shui / Dou Da Bu Guo" and "Ta / Shui Dou Da Bu Guo".
These will most likely make up such a negligible percentage of these instances of ambiguity that to go through with the proposed changes and deal with these intentionally ambiguous titles as they come up would not be completely remiss -- but I personally believe that even these hypothetical cases, however rare, should be considered before pushing any changes. That is just my opinion, ultimately it's not up to me.
Fourthly, about "v" vs "u." To Chinese speakers of course "v" makes the most sense, as that is the input they use in their everyday lives, but to the western audience, "v" will make absolutely no sense. "u" and "yu" are both inadequate romanizations of "ü," because "yu" will be pronounced "yoo" by most westerners, but "v" will be next to useless for everybody except for Chinese players. "v" is more ambitious in that it serves to correctly represent a specific sound instead of simply approximating it, but for western osu players it is completely counterproductive.
Fifth, Japanese kanji and Chinese characters are not the same. With kanji this is a non-issue; each kanji does not have its own syllable. Sometimes a word consisting of two kanji will have a three-syllable pronunciation, and a kanji itself can have multiple pronunciations depending on the word that comprises it. Splitting up each character into a single capitalized word is not even possible, so there's no point in comparing them.
Lastly, Chinese is generally referred to as logographic rather then ideographic, as a character represents a morpheme rather than a more nebulous concept, and as ideogram usually refers specifically to a symbol that is independent of any corresponding sound--although of course no logographic writing system is without a phonetic component built into it. The terms themselves are rather fuzzy anyways, so to achieve anything of actual accuracy one has to resort to such ungainly terms as HW's "ideophonographical." However, to call Chinese logographic is not incorrect. In fact, most people, even linguists, do it.
To the crux of the issue.The real dichotomy here is between practicality and officiality/aesthetics. That is a highly subjective discussion and is conducive to many (as seen here) tetchy discussions. Grouping words together will almost certainly make it more convenient for non-Chinese speakers, there should really be no question about this. I personally don't even pay attention to the name of a Chinese map if it's over three or four characters long; the profusion of capitals and spacing, to my English-speaking mind, is simply inconvenient, and I would rather memorize the mapper's name, the artist's name, and the background instead. Japanese titles, meanwhile, are multisyllabic, and I would rather have a few multisyllabic words than six monosyllabic words. How closely we adhere to "ISO 7098" really should not be a question. We're a small international circle-clicking community, not an official international organization, so shouldn't we rather consider things from a functional, practical perspective?
Of course, such a change would have its downsides, and I suspect that the main, unvoiced (if I may be so presumptuous) gripe that so many Chinese speakers have with this proposal is largely aesthetic. The elegance of the Chinese language lies precisely in the symmetry and ambiguity that this proposal will do away with. In Chinese each character is given equal spatial heft, and to consolidate multiple words would rob them both of their spatial importance as well as the importance that a capitalized letter lends them. In short, when comparing "Wei Lai Shi" to "Weilaishi," Weilaishi to the sensibility of the Chinese speaker (and even to mine partly) seems ugly, wrong, amateurish, and not at all official. Similarly, the troubling part of the inconsistency of word-division romanization having no "stable standard" as HW put it--the troubling part is not that this inconsistency is
practically unfeasible, but that inconsistency is
aesthetically unappealing. It is not of "official" quality.
Believe me, when it comes to officiality people will often be perfectionist, especially when they have a say in the matter. Why are there so many rhythm game elitists that condescend on osu? Because other rhythm games, with their shinier interfaces and their licensed songs, are more "official." Why is rankability not centered around actual
merit, but only flawlessness; why are people so often concerned about whether a certain controversial map enters the ranked section, even if it doesn't affect them? Because the ranked section is the "official" section of the game, and people are perfectionist about it. These are not practical attitudes, but aesthetic ones, and so it is here too, I think. Why should the Chinese not be concerned with how their language is rendered to other people? I, too, would be bothered.
Of course, an aesthetic claim is not as defensible than a practical one, so other, more practical-sounding arguments are resorted to (perhaps subconsciously), but to me these arguments are ultimately immaterial.
Practically speaking, word-division is far more useful than syllabic division--the rare ambiguity can be cleared simply by referring to the musical/lyrical context, and the even rarer intentional ambiguity (puns, etc.) can be left simply as single-syllable words, as with the status quo. And yet, due to my aesthetic sensibilities, I prefer the status quo; that is my personal opinion. I can and have been making do with mapper/artist name and background to search out the maps I need.And of course I haven't even addressed the question in the case that Chinese players do actually rely heavily on romanized titles in osu. If they do, and it is easier for them to have a one-word-per-syllable romanization, then even less of a reason to change.
Lastly,and off-topic, I would like to say that it is very easy to judge others, and parse their words and find their flaws, but difficult to do the same to yourself. The habit is to be severe towards others but generous only towards yourself and others like you/close to you. This makes it not just possible, but very often for someone to, with one breath, send a rude message to someone and, in the next breath, accuse them of being condescending. Similarly, it makes it possible for someone to accuse someone of sending them a rude message and, in the very next paragraph, act in a supercilious and condescending manner, and throw passive jabs towards their life/background and incivility, and accuse them of barbarity.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/#PoweLifeNietzsche's metaphysical (mostly applicable psychologically) doctrine of the Will to Power is the idea that humans primary pursuit is towards that which will increase their power in relation to others. You can see this surface most often not in the large, sweeping motions of world politics, but in the minutia of everyday conversation and discourse between people who are, shall we say, less than friends (and sometimes even amongst friends as well.) Couple the Will to Power with this quote from Fyodor Dostoevsky: “Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others,” and you have 95% of society in two short ideas.
So people will resort to silly antics to inflate their sense of power in relation to others, to deft manipulations of truth and to strawmanning and to posturing/boasting. Someone posted a long essay? Let me post an even LONGER essay with even BIGGER words, otherwise they and others might think they are right and I am not (so people have accused Wafu, and maybe they'll accuse me of it too). Someone is using such self-assured language that a tiny part of me thinks he might be right? Let me post this incriminating screenshot of him, or tweet about it so people will agree with me and I will be more assured that I am in the right, and he in the wrong. Someone said I have no priority? Let me capitalize on his poor phrasing rather than consider his words generously and in context, and not even consider that he may simply have worded his thoughts more hostilely than he intended to. Someone is upsetting me with his word choice? Let
me throw in the words "arrogant," "fallacious," "non-sense," "barbarian," (just some words I have picked from posts on both sides) and whereas
they are in the wrong if they use it,
I am not.
This is also why many debates I've witnessed offshoot into various side unrelated directions, in an effort to prove the opposition wrong about anything at all. It's why people will carry on a debate for so, so long, and put so much effort into it, because to lose or even to not reply is to be lowered in power/status. It's why people will resort to strawmanning and ad-hominems, and why people will pick out the weakest arguments on the other side and take those apart while ignoring everything else. Really, if you go around for a week or a month with the idea of the will to power in the back of your mind, just observing (especially on the internet), many many things will become apparent to you.
Yes, it's so easy to look at another person's argument and see it in the worst light possible. Wafu said, "You, as Chinese have no priority in this matter, just because it's about Chinese"? Maybe he only means that he believes the purpose of romanization in osu is to help players not familiar with Chinese to navigate through Chinese song titles, and in light of this it is with extra consideration towards non-Chinese speakers that we should think about this metadata proposal. Even if you disagree, is that so unreasonable a proposition? Correctly interpreted, it certainly cannot be the "most hilarious thing i've saw this day."
And the exact opposite opinion, that "Chinese people have the exact highest priority in this matter, just because it's about Chinese," is not so unreasonable either. As I've said above, why should Chinese players not be concerned with how their language is rendered to other people, and on a website and game that they themselves frequent and have been part of for years? Why would they not be upset if someone else tries to push changes that they dislike, concerning a language that they have spoken for years? And that, too, makes sense.
Before anybody accuses me of being a hypocrite, yes, I am a hypocrite, just like anyone else I do these things often. And you can fun of me for this long post if you want. In the end, all I want to say is, not just here, but in mapping and modding and even in life, be generous not just to yourself but also to others, even if you don't like them.