Capitalization in 阿弥陀佛

[Gharial]

The ABC dictionary has it as ēmítuófó, the Han-Ying Cidian has it as Ēmítuófó, and MDBG has it as ĒmítuóFó. Which "should" it be?

Me, I quite like the MDBG choice, even if its F "mid-Pinyin stream" may look a bit non-standard.

[jbradfor]

Personally, I like Ēmítuó Fó (as two words). Since it is a proper noun, it should be capitalized.

I think MDBG has it as one word as, from what I can tell, the underlying dictionary (CCDICT) has each pinyin syllable separate and with tone numbers, and when displaying it the web site puts it all into one word (without spaces) and converts the tone numbers to marks. Which usually works, but fails in some situations.....

[Gharial]

Somebody tell the guys at MDBG to start adding spaces to the surface/resulting displayed Pinyin strings! But seriously, thanks for the reply, Jbradfor (JBradfor? J Bradfor, even?;)). I guess MDBG can be excused for not adding/bothering to (manually) add the space, as the capital F implies it, but one does begin to wonder how considered in comparison the ABC's Pinyin actually is. [i mean, somebody would've probably had to manually capitalize and thus have considered the F versus f in the MDBG string, and the E versus e in the Han-Ying string, but the all-smallcase of the ABC string suggests it wasn't considered at all, or at least not considered much of an issue (because...?). That being said, all three dictionaries capitalize the F in Fójiào, say, so doubtless their capitalization is generally more similar than not!].

[c_redman]

Somebody tell the guys at MDBG to start adding spaces to the surface/resulting displayed Pinyin strings!

Which MDBG lookup is the single word from? The online lookup for the word does have Ē​mí​tuó​ Fó​. It's true that there is no pinyin spacing in the underlying database, so any proper name would have the same issue.

[Gharial]

I looked it up using Pinyin with tone numbers added and no spacing, but the resulting page is the same as the one you've posted, c_redman. I guess I didn't quite register at the time that the Fo is probably actually on a different line rather than simply wrapping around, but (as you guys have said) one still has to enter the Pinyin string as e1mi2tuo2fo2 and not e1mi2tuo2 fo2 (i.e. the break will produce "No results found searching for 'e1mi2tuo2 fo2'. Tips: Don't use spaces to separate Pinyin syllables: Beijing, ni3men5" (but you guys knew that! - Just sayin' it for the benefit/convenience of the general reader)). I guess the best thing when searching online dictionaries is to copy and paste in the hanzi (and that's obviously what people have to do, if and when they don't know or aren't sure of the exact pronunciation of characters, which with Chinese is quite often! Not that that really concerns us here, 'cos we're talking - or I was at at least [to myself LOL ] - about known pronunciation and how best to render it it printed/paper dictionaries).

[WestTexas]

(deleted)

[Kenny同志]

capitalization of pinyin? I've never heard of this.

Why don't you just use characters?

[xiaocai]

You may want to have a read of this.

So based on the rules, there are at least two ways to capitalise it depending whether you write it as one word or two words:

Ēmítuófó or

Ēmítuó Fó.

But it may be used as a 普通名词 sometimes in Chinese such as in 阿弥陀佛，善哉善哉. So maybe you don't really need to capitalise it here, maybe.

[Gharial]

I'm pretty sure that stuff in the pinyinfo link is more or less the same as what's been translated and very usefully included as an appendix in the original ABC C-E, and now the ABC ECCE (and also the ABC C-E Comprehensive, I guess). Strange then that the original ABC C-E didn't capitalize the entry if (according to at least your reading of the guidelines/rules given, Xiaocai) it perhaps should've been. I'll need to check if the entry's in the ABC ECCE, and if so, if it differs i.e. has been capitalized, but IIRC it isn't (i.e. has been deleted to make space for doubtless much more relevant stuff) and thus can't have been LOL. It'd be interesting to know if the Comprehensive edition changed it.

[Hofmann]

HalleluJah? Hallelu Jah?