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This is a continuation of the people question, but also applies to other tags in general

Does it makes sense to have multiple tags for each dialect

Should tags like "Osaka-ben" be changed to something like "Osaka-Dialect" or should we make them more atomic and do two tags to a question like "Dialect" and "Osaka"?

my main concern is that new-comers to japanese aren't going to know that Osaka-ben means Osaka dialect.

My recommendation would be to have two tags "Osaka" and "Dialect" to gives us the most flexibility. Though i worry that people will see the "Osaka" tag and start adding all kinds of cities.

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  • Or maybe: eg, 'dialect-osaka' for specific dialects, and 'dialect' for general dialect questions
    – M H
    Nov 9, 2020 at 9:59

3 Answers 3

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I think this situation is best dealt with by tag synonyms. Let people tag them whichever way feels natural to them for a while, then choose the most popular one as the main tag and any equivalent ones as synonyms of them.

This would apply to each dialect where such a situation arises. Yesterday I tagged one question as dialects and yamagata-ben for instance.

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  • Totally agree. "something-ben" becomes pretty natural to say when discussing with other learners, as opposed to "something dialect". Let the tag synonym handle it.
    – makdad
    Jun 2, 2011 at 23:36
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Having encountered this type of problem elsewhere, it looks like adding tag wikis would also go far in disambiguating meanings - either before or after they are communally established.

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Similar to hippietrail's answer, I think we should also use synonyms. But instead of picking the most popular tag, use the -ben version as the main tag and the -dialect version as a synonym. That way it sounds more natural for most people, and new people might even learn what -ben means.

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  • I also prefer the -ben versions but didn't anticipate what the rest of the community might prefer.
    – hippietrail
    Jun 13, 2011 at 0:40

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