"Bart Mathias" <mathias@hawaii.edu> wrote in message 
news:hk11f.1914$B31.1758@trnddc03...
> necoandjeff wrote:
>> Ben Bullock wrote:
>>
>>>[...]
>>>>Paul Blay wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Is "ton" a Japanese _word_ though?  My vote would be for 'no'.
>>>>[...]
>>>I'm sorry but I'm not enough of a linguist to know how to say that;
>>>perhaps Bart Mathias can help us. Certainly "ton" is a
>>>"something-like-a-word-which-doesn't-appear-on-its-own" in Japanese
>>>used to mean "pork". In the context of an article on "gyudon", I'd
>>>suggest "word" is close enough.
>>
>> My yardstick in a situation like this would be, if it is likely that 
>> someone
>> may walk away from the article and expect to be able to use "ton" when 
>> they
>> want to say "pork" (or think only of "pork" when they hear the word 
>> "buta"),
>> you have done them a disservice. If you can be accurate by adding a few
>> extra words or phrases, why not do so? I don't think you need to be a
>> linguist to explain that buta is a word that means pig or pork and ton is 
>> an
>> element of many compound words that also means pig or pork, and that both
>> are written with the same kanji.
>
> Exactly.  Calling "ton" a word that means "pig" rather than "taxi" is
> akin to saying "hypo" is a word meaning "under" or "ette" is a word
> meaning "small."  I'm not positive "ton" is always a prefix, but at any
> rate, it would seem to be a word-forming element.

I'm sorry but this discussion is not useful. One of the problems on 
Wikipedia is people adding "mini Japanese lessons", complete with Chinese 
characters, that are of  absolutely no use to 99.9% of readers, to the 
articles. "Ton and buta are both words meaning pig and pork" in the context 
of that article is easily good enough. The context is to explain why one 
shop sells "ton don" and one shop sells "buta don". If you think it is 
helpful to explain that in terms of "kanji readings", first think of the 
reader who has no or little idea what a kanji is - maybe 99% of potential 
readers - then consider the reader who has little or no idea what a kanji 
reading is - maybe 99.9% of potential readers - then consider carefully why 
you are adding the mini Japanese lesson. Better to keep things simple, and 
leave all the junk about kanji readings for people who are interested in it, 
on a page about "kanji readings" or something. The person here who is doing 
people a disservice is the language nerd who insists on filling articles 
about cooking, or "Who wants to be a Millionaire?", for another example, 
with linguistic details.