Aliasing aburaage and aburage

May I alias aburaage and aburage? Google indicates that both spellings are fairly common.

I don't think we need an alias involving aburage. It doesn't follow our romanization guidelines and it's not even in the tag database.

Maybe it's a "fairly common" spelling on other corners of the internet. But if you wanna go that route, so is "shōjo", which we would never use.

While we're here, how about a aburaage -> tofu implication, or are there some subtleties I'm missing?

Hillside_Moose said:
While we're here, how about a aburaage -> tofu implication, or are there some subtleties I'm missing?

+1

Hillside_Moose said:
While we're here, how about a aburaage -> tofu implication, or are there some subtleties I'm missing?

They seem pretty visually distinct to me. Aburaage is a tan, mostly flat square- or rectangle-shaped thing, whereas tofu is a off-white cube-shaped thing.

They appear a bit different that's why we have 2 tags for them, but the first is a type of the latter. If I'm looking for tofu, I certainly want fried tofu to be included.

Don't care about the direction but a fried_tofu alias seems far more appropriate.

rantuyetmai said:
If I'm looking for tofu, I certainly want fried tofu to be included.

I don't, because they don't look the same. Visual distinctiveness is the reason we didn't make a corn_dog->hot_dog implication in forum #54364, and this seems like a similar situation to me.

I was going to say that people who are not familiar with Japanese terms will just see aburaage as tofu and tag it as such, but it seem like you just clean the tag up. For me, tofu is the umbrella.

theadonicus said: I don't think we need an alias involving aburage. It doesn't follow our romanization guidelines and it's not even in the tag database.

Wiki says "Abura Age (油揚げ) is a Japanese food product made from soybeans. Its abbreviated name is Aburage (あぶらげ)." and this seems to be born out by searching some online dictionaries and rikaichan.

あぶらあげ, あぶらげ [油揚げ, 油揚] (n) fried tofu

It seems they're both legitimate. Aliased to aburaage, though as you said we don't use aburage here yet.

rantuyetmai said: If I'm looking for tofu, I certainly want fried tofu to be included.

glasnost said: I don't, because they don't look the same.
And this is why tagging will never satisfy everyone.

Visual distinctiveness is the reason we didn't make a corn_dog->hot_dog implication in forum #54364, and this seems like a similar situation to me.

Well, technically I didn't do it because I know nothing about corn dogs (so I deferred to the popular opinion) and because I got sidetracked with the hot dog bun vs no bun debate.

In this case, I'd usually defer to popular sentiment. Except it's basically one on one right now and I have no real opinion.

If fried tofu were to tofu what french fries are to potatoes, I'd argue for keeping them separate, but this isn't the case. Whereas a potato has a definite shape, tofu does not. Just like cheese, it can be a rectangular block/slice, round or whatever form you like. Even if sliced, every slice is just as much tofu as the whole thing, which is not the case for a potato.

Fried tofu is like a fried potato (whole). The color changes (white -> yellow/gold brown), but other than that, it's still tofu. The basic shape remains the same.

Ho hum. Having to search tofu -aburaage just doesn't sit well with me for whatever reason, but I will probably survive with minimal psychological damage if an implication is made.