Talk:Snowroof

Snowroof? Goose-wooden?

While the individual characters in 雁木 correspond to "goose" and "wood," this does NOT mean that 雁木 means goose-wooden, whatever that is! 雁木 is certainly difficult to translate, but it appears to refer to the costume of laying boards of different lengths along a bridge, hence looking uneven, or in zigzag (or more precisely, in an inverted V shape), like a "flock of flying geese." The "Snowroof" translation is also wrong, and instead the most appropriate translation should be "Zigzag". The Japanese entry clearly describes the name as referring to the zigzagging (inverted-V) pattern in the flight of a flock geese. While 雁木 can certainly refer to the long extended eaves used in houses in Niigata to provide a passageway free from snow​, it is clear that the name of the formation refers in particular to the positioning of the golds and silvers, as in an inverted V or zigzag (two golds in the base and one silver in front). The Japanese entry emphasizes this by arguing that the "snowroof" English translation was due to a misunderstanding, referring to a different strategy, 雁木造 (gangi-dzukuri) which is the full name of the snow-sheltering eaves.

--Severian79 (talk) 03:48, 21 March 2022 (UTC)