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 thought I would check my 新明解 before posting this, and am surprised
to see it given as a *word*--marked as accented on the first mora
(non-words don't have accents).  But the only examples are two as a
prefix (tonkorera, tonkatsu) and one as a suffix (養豚, which I don't
feel like guessing the reading of).

Bart

Bart
> Jeff
>