Somebody stop me!

[Edwin]

High-tech terms and others are KATAKANA not Hiragana. Huge difference. More generally, Katakana is used for "loan words" i.e. words taken from other languages. Sometimes the Katakana gets vigorously distorted on the way e.g. パソコン pasokon - personal (paso) computer (kon) - but it's still "borrowed" from another language. What may also trip up the unwary is that the Japanese seem pretty agnostic in their borrowing, helping themselves to words from English, French, German, Spanish, etc. etc.

Also, I don't see Hiragana "second-best" forms of things like place names ever being worth much since they don't work orally - tell somebody to go to "tokyo dot com" in Japanese without additional qualification and probably 99.99%+ of people would try 東京.com rather that とうきょう.com. Sure, they may have limited novelty value, but they're never going to hit the "big time" since the folks with cash will go for the real, Kanji versions.

The story is a bit different for words that regularly appear in Hiragana in daily life e.g. みかん, something that sadly is almost impossible to judge accurately from search engines etc. but easily gleaned if you're physically in Japan walking around with your eyes open.

[bramiozo]

When considering the (qualitative) relation between length and value you have to consider the psychology of the specific language in combination with the practical factor coming to a combined answer on how much effort is needed to type a specific word.

We see all these nice short asian terms being regged, well that's not just because we're lucky and early, it's mostly because there are so many characters to go around. That's important as well as the fact that characters in japanese/chinese are logically related. In latin you don't actively think about the specific characters, you only think actively about the words, 1 word is one or two asian characters.

Who said that 3/4 character asian names are already to long ?

[IDNCowboy]

Originally Posted by bramiozo

When considering the (qualitative) relation between length and value you have to consider the psychology of the specific language in combination with the practical factor coming to a combined answer on how much effort is needed to type a specific word.

We see all these nice short asian terms being regged, well that's not just because we're lucky and early, it's mostly because there are so many characters to go around. That's important as well as the fact that characters in japanese/chinese are logically related. In latin you don't actively think about the specific characters, you only think actively about the words, 1 word is one or two asian characters.

Who said that 3/4 character asian names are already to long ?

I hope so cause some of my domains are 4 chars

[rhys]

Originally Posted by Jeff

I hope so cause some of my domains are 4 chars

Don't worry. I bet many of your 4 characters are money in the bank.

I didn't start out intending for this serious a thread, but this has been a good conversation. It points out to my mind, how uniquely complex the japanese writing system is. This is, I believe, one of those actual points of differentiation between Japanese and other people, I alluded to in an earlier message.

The chinese words and kanji are very much like Latin to English and the native Japanese words and grammar are descended from a proto-Korean dialect much like English owes to its Germanic origin. Then you have tons of borrowing as Edwin points out from several languages. But unlike English which is all coded in an alphabet, Japanese ended up using 3 distinct systems of writing working in conjunction but actually 4 because romanji is pretty common as well. It's a grand and fun mess. I am amazed and impresed at how well, those who don't speak Japanese seem to cope with it.

[touchring]

Originally Posted by rhys

Don't worry. I bet many of your 4 characters are money in the bank.

I didn't start out intending for this serious a thread, but this has been a good conversation. It points out to my mind, how uniquely complex the japanese writing system is. This is, I believe, one of those actual points of differentiation between Japanese and other people, I alluded to in an earlier message.

The chinese words and kanji are very much like Latin to English and the native Japanese words and grammar are descended from a proto-Korean dialect much like English owes to its Germanic origin. Then you have tons of borrowing as Edwin points out from several languages. But unlike English which is all coded in an alphabet, Japanese ended up using 3 distinct systems of writing working in conjunction but actually 4 because romanji is pretty common as well. It's a grand and fun mess. I am amazed and impresed at how well, those who don't speak Japanese seem to cope with it.

That's the fun part of this game, learning new languages - although without formal instructions. There's one thing which i am always curious, that is how Kanji is 'spelt out'.

For instance, the 中国 and 米国 example, are they spelt out as 'Chugoku' and 'Amelika' respectively, although they share a common character - 国.

[Giant]

Very interesting discussion! Base on what I know, all your views are correct (from different angles).

[IDNCowboy]

Originally Posted by Dwrixon

Don't worry I don't speak any of the languages that I invest in.

Overture is of limited value in many languages at the moment. It is extremely useful in Japan, but only if you use the local Overture Tool.

Wordstats is a 100 times more useful in Russian. In Chinese, at the moment I am relying on a mixture of 3721.com and incidences of Google adwords on Google.cn. Each market is different, often you can only go by your intuition and the Google Scores.

You need to remember a Copper Bottomed investment is one that pays a couple of percentage points over the inflation rate. If you want the best returns it is necessary to higher levels of risk. It is a matter of reconciling your Greed with your Fear!

Dave, did you translate what 3721 gives you next to the arrow pointing up? It tells you the # of related searches or keywords... nothing about the # of searches or search subscriptions/month

like i saw a few terms with 1500+ and you still think the max is 1200. You should translate the sentence with babelfish

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by Jeff

Dave, did you translate what 3721 gives you next to the arrow pointing up? It tells you the # of related searches or keywords... nothing about the # of searches or search subscriptions/month

like i saw a few terms with 1500+ and you still think the max is 1200. You should translate the sentence with babelfish

Thanks Jeff,

Actually, it is quickly becoming irrelevant. I am in the renewals process now and what I am actually using most as a guide now is the the number of Google Adwords that appear on Google.cn. For most good keywords these now show up in significant numbers.

[IDNCowboy]

Originally Posted by Dwrixon

Thanks Jeff,

Actually, it is quickly becoming irrelevant. I am in the renewals process now and what I am actually using most as a guide now is the the number of Google Adwords that appear on Google.cn. For most good keywords these now show up in significant numbers.

Have you found a nice tool like goo's dictionary .jp for the chinese market?

[alex]

Originally Posted by touchring

That's the fun part of this game, learning new languages - although without formal instructions. There's one thing which i am always curious, that is how Kanji is 'spelt out'.

For instance, the 中国 and 米国 example, are they spelt out as 'Chugoku' and 'Amelika' respectively, although they share a common character - 国.

米国 is actually read as "Beikoku," though it does mean America and Japanese sometimes give the foreign reading under a Kanji that normally haa a different reading.

アメリカ is read as "Amerika," meaning the same as 米国, but written in the phoenetic script used for foreign words.

国 means "country." In some cases pronounced at "kuni," or "guni" depending on the preceeding character. In other cases it is pronounced "koku" or "goku" also depending on previous character.

米 means "rice." Pronounced "kome". Also pronounced "bei" when used as America or Amerian (something).

中 means "inside" or "middle." In the case of China, it works out to "Middle Country/Kingdom," which is the same meaning as China's word for itself ("Zhong Guo"). In Japanese, the character 中 can be pronounced as "naka," "uchi" or "chuu" depending on the case.

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by Jeff

Have you found a nice tool like goo's dictionary .jp for the chinese market?

I have always used this one. For me it is still the best, but then hell what do I know of Far Eastern Languages.

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php

[touchring]

I've used Baidu.com since the beginning, counting number of ads, checking if the keyword appears on the ads itself, and what the ads say, and checking the advertiser website.

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by touchring

I've used Baidu.com since the beginning, counting number of ads, checking if the keyword appears on the ads itself, and what the ads say, and checking the advertiser website.

Yes, I have used this, but not recently. It is often a trade off between quality of information and how tedious it is to collect that info. I think the emergence of significant Adwords on Google.cn really brings to a close the usefulness of Baidu, as far as I am concerned.

[touchring]

There's a big difference between the quality of search result between Baidu.com and Google.com.cn for Chinese words/terms.

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by touchring

There's a big difference between the quality of search result between Baidu.com and Google.com.cn for Chinese words/terms.

I don't doubt that! Although, I am sure Google will improve with time, as the pool of skilled indigenous Chinese Staff increases.

I am not interest is the search results per se, it really who is paying to Advertise which keywords is more my focus. Until recently, there were virtually no Google Adwords in Chinese, now they are coming in a flood. As far as I am concerned if the Adwords are there it is Buy/Hold, as opposed to Wait/Dump!

[Olney]

Wow I just read throught this whole thing & read plenty of innacuracies...

Ok I'll explain it like this
1. Japanese not living in Japan are not good to benchmark what's going on in Japan. This is exactly why I keep refering to Japanese living in Japan to all my statements. (Basically they are good with functioning & English)
2. No matter hiragana, katakana, or kanji Japanese are going to write what's correct. There's plenty of high valued words in all of them. We can't compare them. I can compare them based on the letter system It's only based on the correct term for the item... If the term isn't worth much then it doesn't matter what it is. If the term is valuable get the correct weay to write it, that's all.

As I said in another thread we can't start to really argue about what is better. This is going to be the first time that Japan will have a really fair playing ground. With regular dot coms there is no way of snatching a good dot com Japan was just too late on getting on the internet. Even with the dot co.jp you had to be a company & you just got 1. You picked a bad domain & you were stuck with it. I see this effect on the train everyday with the horrible dot co.jps

Then you get the dot jps This is the reason why they are popular. You can get what you want Japan had no choice. Anything you really wanted wasn't available on other extensions.

When it comes to IDNs Japan has a fresh choice of extensions....

[rhys]

Originally Posted by Olney

Wow I just read throught this whole thing & read plenty of innacuracies...

Ok I'll explain it like this
1. Japanese not living in Japan are not good to benchmark what's going on in Japan. This is exactly why I keep refering to Japanese living in Japan to all my statements. (Basically they are good with functioning & English)

Hey Olney, I think your message synced up with what I have been saying. Just want to clarify that on the first point quoted above: I am assuming you are referring to my acquaintance at Square Enix and his comment about Japanese not wanting to type-in. Actually, he lives in Japan and by that fact I suppose "qualified" to talk about what's going on. But like I said, I think his is a pretty lame argument. From my data, Google continues to grow like gangbusters in Japan and Yahoo is holding steady.

[touchring]

Originally Posted by Olney

As I said in another thread we can't start to really argue about what is better. This is going to be the first time that Japan will have a really fair playing ground. With regular dot coms there is no way of snatching a good dot com Japan was just too late on getting on the internet. Even with the dot co.jp you had to be a company & you just got 1. You picked a bad domain & you were stuck with it. I see this effect on the train everyday with the horrible dot co.jps

Then you get the dot jps This is the reason why they are popular. You can get what you want Japan had no choice. Anything you really wanted wasn't available on other extensions.

When it comes to IDNs Japan has a fresh choice of extensions....

Good point - it all boils down to the quality of the keyword with respect to one's business. The extension, .co.jp, .jp or .com is still secondary. People in Japan are open minded enough to accept different extensions.