Category talk:Japanese

We can use this one, seeing as we don't have categories for Japanese writings, food, cars, trains, planes or what have you. We don't use differentiate between those, so this does no harm. Everyone will understand it is about Japanese individuals. People really are not that stupid. Nesty ^{Contact me!} 11:54, December 18, 2013 (UTC)

It's not a matter of stupidity, it's a matter of whether it's correct or not. We have Category:Englishmen, so for consistency's sake, are we going to change that to Category:English? (Answer: Unlikely.) If we have "Englishmen" we should have "Japanese persons" (since "Japanesemen" is even worse.) --Jasca Ducato (talk | contributions) 11:58, December 18, 2013 (UTC)

Englishmen is the term used to refer to English individuals. As in "What are you?" "I'm an Englishman". A Japanese would not say "I'm a Japanese person." He would just say "I'm (a) Japanese." Also, I'll be traveling home for the next few hours, so not really answering very quickly, if at all, until I'm home. Nesty ^{Contact me!} 12:01, December 18, 2013 (UTC)

Understood, I'm at work currently. As an Englishmen, I can assure you that is not what would be said; "I'm English" is as far it it would go, but that doesn't change the fact that the correct term is "Englishmen" (actually, it's "English person"). A Japanese person would say "I'm Japanese", I grant you, however that has no bearing on the fact that the term is Japanese persons/people. --Jasca Ducato (talk | contributions) 12:15, December 18, 2013 (UTC)

I think we should keep this...we do have a category for Category:Chinese, not Chinese peoples, so how is this any different?--Fragment ^-Animus- 12:42, December 18, 2013 (UTC)

Saying "we have x so we should keep y" is not a valid reason. The fact is it's incorrect, and quite obviously, if this change had not been contested then I would have also corrected Category:Chinese shortly thereafter. --Jasca Ducato (talk | contributions) 15:01, December 18, 2013 (UTC)

Except that it is not incorrect. Japanese is grammatically and semantically used in the correct way. And whereas it is true that the word can be used to describe things as well as people does not change that. German, for instance, differentiates between the two by having German (things) and Germans (people). Japanese does  not do that. And seeing as we do not have "German (insert object)" as a category, and won't have "Japanese (insert object)" as a category either, having just Japanese will not confuse people.

Furthermore: "Japanese people" sounds rather clumsy, and would not be used by English, Japanese, or (most) other nationalities, meaning it is semantically not very good, albeit not completely incorrect. We don't use "German people" because "Germans" already indicates it is about people, and the fact that "Japanese" does not bear the marker indicating it is about individuals does not mean that it is incorrect or inaccurate. It's just a language-specific deviation. Nesty ^{Contact me!} 17:36, December 18, 2013 (UTC)

The use of "Japanese" is correct when referring to a singular individual, but a category is used to list multiple examples that fit that particular definition. In that case, Japanese should be made plural, so unless you want to go with Japaneses, then "Japanese persons" is probably our best bet. Also, our categories are all listed in the plural, so this must, for consistency, follow suit.

To answer your second point, I haven't created a category called "Japanese people", I created one called "Japanese persons", so the fact that your quoted example sounds clumsy is irrelevant. (As it stands, I happen to agree with you that "Japanese people" is a bad name for the category.) --Jasca Ducato (talk | contributions) 10:14, December 19, 2013 (UTC)