掲示板 Forums - Feature discussion: word linking

Recently, I quietly released an extension of the usage notes for words where you can suggest (for approval) relationships between two words. For example, you could say

こっち is the casual form of こちら (polite)

or うごかす is the transitive form of うごく

or あつい is the opposite of さむい.

Although I plan to expand it to include other types of links, I'm focusing on improving the current system before expanding out, and I've run into a really interesting problem: the "opposite" category.

Originally, my idea was that opposites = antonyms. So light/heavy, dark/bright, agree/disagree, etc.

However, a good half of the links sent in for approval so far have been of this form (these are actual examples)

ひだり/みぎ (left and right)

ひげき/きげき (tragedy and comedy)

うてん/せいてん (rainy weather, sunny weather)

ゆうがた/あけがた (sunset and sunrise)

せんぱい/こうはい (those above and below you in school, work, etc.)

Now, while I can definitely see a value (although I cannot think of a good label for them), these don't feel like opposites to me. I'd love to know what everyone else thinks, though.

Yea - I have no problem adding them into the markup system, as long as they have an appropriate way of being marked. "counterpart"...may work, although there is no word I'm sold on yet.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki... << Wiktionary's page on types of semantic relationships. I think that list gets way more specific than what would be useful to apply to Renshuu's dictionary, but in particular I think having separate options for "Synonym", "Antonym", and "Coordinate term"/"Counterpart" would cover most of the bases for situations where it would be helpful to suggest semantically-related words. Though, including a category for common contrasts could open the word-linking feature up to a lot of vague suggestions that would work better as more specific Usage Notes; I don't think it would harm anything to group those with "Opposite"/"Antonym" instead, just to discourage that.

I'm a bit unclear on what constitutes casual/polite/formal, and if those labels are intended to be used for abbreviations/clippings and other corrupted forms. For example, つーか is a very casual form of というか, but it feels incorrect to label というか as polite or formal relative to it because it's still a plain construction. Or say, くだらん vs くだらない.

I had been wondering if in the future there will be a way to link different grammatical expressions of the same word stem? For example a verb with an adjective or a substantive? It would really help connect the dots for beginners.

Another thing that would be quite helpful would be to have the wordlinks visible also during quizzes (in the answers), not only if you look them up in the dictionary.

I don't know if you have plans for any of these in the future, just thought I would give my two cents as to what I as a complete beginner would find helpful.

What about 携帯(電話)? It bothered me that I didn't know what 携帯 abbreviates, so after figuring it out I wanted to link the two words. I don't know enough to say if that fits the politeness area. Maybe abbreviations should be a category?

That probably would fall under usage notes - the word links are meant to be a single link with a one word descriptor, otherwise the list of links would get extremely long for some words.

Eventually, yes, although I do not see a particularly high number of words/etc. in those mnemonics that would be good candidates for linking.

This is fixed, and will be made available whenever the next update goes live (I am still on vacation, so I'm saving up all the minor patches.)

Those are the same word IMO. The entries should probably be combined.

Similar issue with 悪戯/いたずら and いたずらをする. They are really the same word. Should they be linked?