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The story
Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs will begin building a “Manga Corpus” next fiscal year — a database cataloging the wide range of expressions found in manga dialogue, from guttural yells like “a゙” to greetings like “n-cha” and battle cries like “Total Concentration.” Working with a contractor chosen through open bidding, the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics plans to spend four years digitizing 50 years’ worth of material, covering the top 20 best-selling manga titles published each year from 1976 to 2025. It’s reportedly the first time the government has built a corpus based on manga. On 5channel, reactions were mixed: many users nostalgically traded favorite lines and sound effects from old manga, while others questioned whether the project was necessary or worth the tax money.
Tue, Sep 8, 5:00 AM
The Agency for Cultural Affairs is launching a “Manga Corpus” project to database the language used in manga dialogue. It will gather a wide variety of expressions — things like “a゙” and “n-cha” — to serve as basic data for research into how the Japanese language is changing. This marks the first time the government has built a corpus based on manga. The agency aims to digitize 50 years’ worth of material over the next four years, starting next fiscal year.
As a project commissioned by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics will develop the corpus together with a contractor selected through open bidding. It will cover the top 20 best-selling manga titles published each year from 1976 to 2025. The first year will focus on digitizing works from 2016 to 2025.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
misery comes in that exact order, apparently.
I kind of feel like it showed up in Maison Ikkoku or something. Emphasis on "feel like" — don't quote me.
A゙!? *vein-pop* *vein-pop*!
like ending sentences with "dao,"
and otaku adding "-uji" when saying someone's name —
wonder if that's getting included too.
But shunga (Edo-era erotic art) — modern people understand that just fine.
And using an unfamiliar buzzword like "corpus" is tacky too — same try-hard vibe as saying "alumni."
isn't that just fine?
I get that it has some value, but I feel like universities should be the ones doing this.
How naive do you have to be to think a university would just cough up that budget out of its own pocket?
Are you clueless about how the real world works?
https://dic.nicovideo.jp/
With 2channel at least the timestamps make it clear-cut.
Sabara
B.G
K.G
Hapu hapu hapu
Nanoraa~ (classic manga catchphrases, e.g. Iyami's "Gwashi!" and "Sabara" from Osomatsu-kun)
Zawa… zawa… (the "zawa… zawa…" murmur is the iconic tension sound effect from Kaiji)
Background and Talking Points
A corpus is a database that compiles large volumes of text to analyze how language changes over time, and the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics has previously built written-language corpora based on newspapers and novels. This new “Manga Corpus” extends that approach to manga dialogue, with plans to digitize the top 20 best-selling titles from each year between 1976 and 2025 — 50 years’ worth of material — over a four-year period. In the thread, plenty of comments nostalgically debated whether sound effects like “a゙” and “e゙” actually appear in real manga, while the unfamiliar term “corpus” itself seemed to draw more skepticism about tax spending than discussion of the project’s actual substance. Worth noting: this is the first time the government has built a corpus based on manga, and unlike a glossary-style site such as Niconico Pedia, the project’s purpose is to produce foundational data for academic research into the Japanese language.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (Geinou/Sports News Plus) thread “Cultural Affairs Agency to Database Manga’s “A゙,” “N-cha,” “Total Concentration”… Building a “Corpus” of Basic Data on Japanese Language Change.”
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