Friday, November 04, 2005

The (Very) Long Tail

It's a milestone: I am listed seventh on Google searching for "classical Japanese raru." I guess I am officially part of the very, very long tail. Well, even A-list blogger Joi Ito is slipping. Momus, who isn't a bad writer when he's not writing about Japan on other people's blogs, said "In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people." Maybe there are 15 people who are interested in raru, etc.?

6 comments:

IbaDaiRon said...

Surely you meant (a)raru?

:)

Congrats on the rankings; I come up eighth for "verbal spasms", but it was in results for another search site.

Oh well.

Matt said...

Number 1 for "kuwu", baby!

amida said...

ibadairon-- but of course you are assuming a yodan verb, the mizenkei conjugation of which would end in ~a-- damn, I think I'm getting the hang of this stuff!

IbaDaiRon said...

No, you're assuming that I'm assuming...yurk, that could get nasty quickly!

I was just using the parentheses as shorthand for "-raru ~ -araru". My (potentially dangerous?) assumption is that the classical ending exhibited the same allomorphy as the modern.

(Sorry, I just now noticed your reply!)

IbaDaiRon said...

D'oh. A cautionary tale against wee-hour blog-commenting rather than sleeping?

OK, how about (ra)ru ... maybe? (sigh)

amida said...

Post as late as you want--we're open all night.

The gory details, as evidenced by my Big Chart:
"Raru" takes a mizenkei conjugation, and mizenkei for yodan verbs is ~a. For a kamiichidan like "miru" (to look), it's just "mi"--cut off the last part. Kaminidan mizenkeis are from the ~i row, while shimonidans take a ~e. Sa- and rahens change into the ~a row. "Ku" is "ko," "su" is "se," and Matt's favorite verb, "keru," becomes "ke."

Thank Ebisu for Big Charts!