Jisho.org Forum

Jisho uses the files from WWWJDIC (EDICT, etc), and the common word marking in that mostly reflects a list of words taken from an analysis of newspaper articles. So take the "common words" marker with a grain of salt. That やる doesn't appear in a word ranking based on newspapers would not be at all surprising.

At any rate the common words list is not down to the owner of this site. I find EDICT good for breadth but not so good for these sort of words (very common verbs with multiple meanings like やる or かける); for those you may want to try using sites like Yahoo or Goo dictionaries (http://dic.search.yahoo.co.jp http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/ ) which have several different J-J, J-E, E-J dictionary files.

I couldn't agree with your suggestion since やる isn't quite the same as する and the "to give" + auxiliary verb (してやる) uses are also quite common. At any rate it is the job of the person using the dictionary to work out if it is "to do" "to give", etc, in the context they have.

Actually in the version at WWWJDIC やる does have a (P) marker, so obviously it must have been changed at some point; I don't know why it doesn't appear on jisho.org but it might be an issue with the version of the file being used.

jisho.org links to this page which should be read:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdicinf.html#dicfil_tag
Your question is covered in the FAQ:
[Q] Some of the words marked (P) are actually not very common, and also there are some common words not marked. Why is this?

[A] The allocation of those (P) markers is based on a number of sources, and inevitably has some problems. (For more information about the markers, see the Word Priority Marking section in the JMdict/EDICT documentation.) If you see any that are dubious, or see entries that you think deserve a marker, please use the amendment form to suggest a change.

@jenlit, thanks for giving this detailed answer!

The current Jisho is running a slightly older version of the data file than what is on WWWJDIC, so there will be a few discrenpancies like this. My goal is to have daily updates in the future, so the site is as up to date as possible.

OK, so if you go to wwwjdic,
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html
and enter やる　then you get a very reasonable response: first entry says exactly what it should: やる 《遣る》 (v5r,vt) (1) (uk) (col) to do; etc etc, and it has a (P) tag at the end, which I gather is the "common word" tag.
This entry looks a lot like the third definition that comes up in the jisho.org search, except jisho's version lacks the "common word" classification.

Can I assume that after the next update jisho.org will have this definition of やる　as a "common word"?

@aruberuto, yes, Jisho will pick up the changes from the WWWJDIC site.

Since this topic is already about yaru, I'll just ask here.
What is the meaning of constructions like -TE YARU. (Sorry for romaji, I know how annoying that is.)

I mean, when you put a verb in -TE form and add 'yaru' to the end. I hear it in film and esp. in anime a lot, and my understanding seems to be that it's implying intention (but more like "I'm gonna", instead of the more literal meaning of 'tsumori').

I know it's a little strange example, but the only example that comes to mind is the phrase "Koroshiteyaru"

Thanks for the help :D

Attached to the te-form it either means:
1. to do something for someone (for someone of a lower status: e.g. you might hear this form used from a older sibling to a younger one, or similar).
宿題を見てやる
= to look over someone's homework for them.

2. expressing intention/the will of the speaker, as you say. It has quite a strong feeling: "I'm gonna" is probably a good translation in many cases. You will hear this in media quite a lot but I'd be careful about using it (I should hope you wouldn't have any reason to say 殺してやる anyway!).

Kim wrote:
> Jisho will pick up the changes from the WWWJDIC site.

When should I check back to see if the update has happened?

Kim wrote:
> Jisho will pick up the changes from the WWWJDIC site.

It hasn't happened yet. When is the next update?

Ah, sorry, the update is a manual process. It causes slight downtime for the search, but I'll see if I can run it this Sunday.

I have now imported the latest EDICT, Kanjidic2 and Tanaka example sentences.

Unfortunately the common tag for the 遣る entry does not seem to be part of the EDICT file, so that discrepancy between Jisho and WWWJDIC still exists.

Thank you for updating.
Could you explain how EDICT can differ from WWWJDIC? I thought they were just different ways to present the same database.
And who do I write to to get EDICT updated?

@aruberuto, I can't find any text explaining exactly what is being left out of EDICT, but the WWWJDIC site has this note:

"the EDICT file, which contains a reduced amount of information".

And I have a vague memory of sometime long ago reading somewhere (did I mention vague) that contributed changes to JMdict are immediately available, whereas only "approved" changes are included in EDICT. Can't find where I read that though.

This problem will go away when Jisho.org switches over the JMdict file. I have a working version of that upgrade, but I'm not quite happy with it yet, so it will take a little more time before I release it.