Talk:kudzu

The spelling "kudzu" is due to kana orthography? I highly doubt it, as for one thing I can't see how it would have been written that way in older orthography, and for another, 葛 kuzu is pronounced [kudzu] in Standard Japanese anyway. — This comment was unsigned.

At the time this term was borrowed into English, "ズ" was transliterated "dzu". "ズ" is now transliterated "zu". Thus, the spelling in Japanese hasn't changed, but dictionaries and other works at that time (about 1890–1905) transliterated that Japanese spelling "kudzu" (whereas they now transliterated it "kuzu", but "kudzu" remains fossilized in its old spelling). - -sche (discuss) 07:06, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

That makes sense. However, the explanation links to the kana (i.e. Japanese) orthography. I think it should be changed to romanization or transliteration practice instead of orthography, and in any case the link should be removed or changed.

I agree that the way the etymology is worded is confusing. It seems like it's saying it's based off an old kana spelling such as くづ /kudu/, before the 四つ仮名, ズ and　ヅ were merged in most instances. But くづ is the old spelling for 屑 "trash", not 葛, which has always been くず. I suggest changing it "The spelling kudzu (instead of kuzu) is due historical transliteration methods of Japanese into English." Although it might be worth looking into to see if the English spelling is actually a mistake influenced by くづ. –Jmolina116 (talk) 13:33, 23 September 2014 (UTC)