Ben Bullock wrote:

> I'm sorry but this discussion is not useful.

Then why did you initiate it? Would you only have been satisfied if everyone
had simply joined in saying, "Yeah, that guy's just silly. Sheesh."

> 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.

It seems to me that the act of explaining to someone what buta and ton mean
in English is, by definition, a mini Japanese lesson. Why not do it
accurately?

> "Ton and buta are both words meaning pig
> and pork" in the context of that article is easily good enough.

I see that you have already slipped in one of the two suggestions (referring
to both pig and pork) in the sentence above.

> 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.

Nobody here suggested that you need to make reference to the kanji. The
complaints were 1) limiting the English equivalent to just pork, and 2)
calling ton a word. Now that you have given us additional context, why not
just say "Ton and buta both mean pig or pork." Voila. Everybody's happy.

> 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.

Agreed. But being unnecessarily misleading is also a disservice to the 1% of
readers who walk away thinking they have learned something about Japanese,
in addition to cooking or food.

Jeff