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Romanization of Japanese refers to the Romanization of Japanese words, which are written in ideographic characters borrowed from Chinese ( Kanji ) and Syllabic scripts ( Kana ). Japanese may be romanized for street signs for foreigners, transcription of names, and in dictionaries and textbooks for learners of the language. There are a number of different romanization systems. The three main ones are Hepburn Romanization , Kunrei-shiki (ISO 3602), and Nihon-shiki (ISO 3602 Strict). Variants of Hepburn are the most widely used. All Japanese who have attended elementary school since the World War II have been taught to read and write romanized Japanese, called ("Roman letters") in Japanese. Romanization is also the most common way to input Japanese words into word processors and computers. Therefore, other than a small segment of the older population, most Japanese are able to read and write using rōmaji, although apart from textbooks for learners of Japanese it is rare to find complete sentences written in it. HISTORY The earliest Japanese romanization system was based on the (romanized as ''Esopo no fabvlas''). The latter continued to be printed and read after the suppression of Christianity (Chibbett, 1977). Following the expulsion of Christians from Japan in the early 1600s, ''rōmaji'' fell out of use, and were only used sporadically in foreign texts until the mid-1800s, when Japan opened up again. The systems used today all developed in the latter half of the 19th Century . The first system to be developed was the Hepburn system, developed for the author's dictionary of Japanese words and intended for foreigners to use. In the Meiji Era , some Japanese scholars advocated abolishing the Japanese writing system entirely and using ''rōmaji'' in its stead. The ''Nihon shiki'' romanization was an outgrowth of this movement. Several Japanese texts were published entirely in ''rōmaji'' during this period, but it failed to catch on, perhaps because of the large number of Homophone s in Japanese, which are pronounced similarly but written in different characters. Later, in the early 20th Century , some scholars devised Syllabary systems with characters derived from Latin; these were even less popular, because they were not based on any historical use of the Latin alphabet. MODERN SYSTEMS Hepburn See Also: Hepburn romanization The Revised Hepburn system of romanization uses a macron to indicate some Long Vowel s, and an apostrophe to note the separation of easily confused phonemes. For example, the name じゅんいちろう, written with the kana characters ''ju''-''n''-''i''-''chi''-''ro''-''u'', and romanized as ''Jun'ichirō'' in Revised Hepburn. This system is widely used in Japan and among foreign students and academics. Hepburn romanization generally follows English phonology with Romance vowels, and is an intuitive method of showing Anglophone s the pronunciation of a word in Japanese. It was standardized in the USA as ''American National Standard System for the Romanization of Japanese (Modified Hepburn)'', but this status was abolished on October 6 , 1994 . Hepburn is the most common romanization system in use today, especially in the English-speaking world. The Hepburn system has been criticized because its distortion of the Japanese phonology can make it harder to teach Japanese to non-natives. Nihon-shiki See Also: Nihon-shiki Nihon-shiki is probably the least used of the three main systems. It was originally invented as a method for the Japanese to write their own language. It follows Japanese phonology and the syllabary order very strictly and is hence the only major system of romanization that allows lossless mapping to and from kana. It has also been standardized as ISO 3602 strict form. Kunrei-shiki See Also: Kunrei-shiki Kunrei-shiki is a slightly modified version of Nihon-shiki which eliminates differences between the kana syllabary and modern pronunciation. For example, when the words ''kana'' かな and ''tsukai'' つかい are combined, the result is written in kana as かなづかい with a '' Dakuten '' (voicing sign) ゛on the つ (tsu) kana to indicate that the tsu つ is now voiced. The づ kana is pronounced in the same way as a different kana, す (su), with ''dakuten'', ず. Kunrei-shiki and Hepburn ignore the difference in kana and represent the sound in the same way, as ''kanazukai'', using the same letters "zu" as are used to romanize ず. Nihon-shiki retains the difference, and romanizes the word as ''kanadukai'', differentiating the づ and ず kana, which is romanized as ''zu'', even though they are pronounced identically. Similarly for the pair じ and ぢ, which are both ''zi'' in Kunrei-shiki and both ''ji'' in Hepburn romanization, but are ''zi'' and ''di'' respectively in Nihon-shiki. See the table below for full details. Kunrei-shiki has been standardized by the Japanese Government and ISO (ISO 3602). Kunrei-shiki is taught to Japanese elementary school students in their fourth year. Other variants It is possible to elaborate these romanizations to enable non-native speakers to pronounce Japanese words more correctly. Typical additions include Tone marks to note the Japanese Pitch Accent and diacritic marks to distinguish phonological changes, such as the assimilation of the moraic nasal /n/ (see Japanese Phonology ). JSL See Also: JSL JSL is a romanization system based on Japanese Phonology , designed using the lingustic principles used by linguists in designing writing systems for languages that do not have any. It is a purely Phonemic system, using exactly one symbol for each phoneme, and marking pitch accent using Diacritic s. It was created for Eleanor Harz Jorden 's system of Japanese language teaching. Its principle is that such a system enables students to better internalize the phonology of Japanese. Since it does not have any of the advantages for non-native speakers that the other romaji systems have, and the Japanese already have a writing system for their language, JSL is not widely used outside the educational environment. NON-STANDARD ROMANIZATION In addition to the standardized systems above, there are many variations in romanization, used either for simplification, in error or confusion between different systems, or for deliberate stylistic reasons. Further, the form of romanized Japanese used for computer input, so-called '' Wāpuro Rōmaji '', combines features of all of the systems. While there may be arguments in favour of some of these variant romanizations in specific contexts, their use, especially if mixed, leads to confusion when romanized Japanese words are indexed. The following variant romanizations are common:
Long vowels . The most common variant romanization is to omit the macrons or circumflexes used to indicate a long vowel. This is extremely common in the romanized version of Japanese words used in English. For example the capital city of Japan, correctly written Tōkyō in romanized Japanese, is universally written as Tokyo. In Japan, since romanized Japanese is seen mostly as a convenience for foreigners to be able to read signs easily, macrons and circumflexes are usually omitted for simplification. Many Typewriter s, Word Processor s, and computerized systems cannot easily deal with the macron used in Hepburn romanization. Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki use a Circumflex accent (thus, Tôkyô). This may allow for easier input, since all of â, î, û, ê, and ô are in the ISO-8859-1 character set, and may be easily input on a variety of systems. The following methods of representing long vowels also commonly occur:
Archaic variants In older texts, other variant romanizations which are now no longer used are sometimes seen. Some of them have survived to the present day, although none of them is still actively used. Examples include:
Romanization of Japanese names Names can be subject to even more variation, with spellings depending on the individual's preference. For example, the Manga artist Yasuhiro Nightow 's family name would be more conventionally written in Hepburn romanization as ''Naitō''. Other variations seen in names include the substitution of K with C, as in the name of television celebrity Ricaco or the Snack Food Jagarico , or the removal of unvoiced vowels, as in the name of film director ''Macoto Tezka'' (the son of manga artist Osamu Tezuka ). Note the removal of the ''u'' vowel. EXAMPLE WORDS WRITTEN IN EACH ROMANIZATION SYSTEM CHART OF ROMANIZATIONS This chart shows the significant differences between the major romanization systems. ALPHABET LETTER NAMES IN JAPANESE The list below shows how to spell latin character words or acronyms in Japanese. For example NHK is spelled ''enuetchikē''.
KANA WITHOUT ROMANIZED FORMS There is no generally accepted form of romanization for some forms of kana. In particular there is no form of romanization for full-sized kana combined with smaller versions of the vowel kana, 'ぁ', 'ぃ', 'ぅ', 'ぇ' and 'ぉ', the smaller versions of the ''y'' kana, 'ゃ', 'ゅ', and 'ょ', and the Sokuon or small ''tsu'' kana 'っ'. Although these are usually regarded as merely phonetic marks or Diacritic s, they do appear on their own, for example at the end of sentences or in some names. There is also no commonly accepted way of romanizing common combinations such as 'トゥ' of katakana ''to'' and small ''u'', used to represent sounds as in the English word 'too'. Some people write this pair as ''tu'', but this is likely to be confused with the ''tu'' Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki romanizations of the kana ツ, romanized as ''tsu'' in Hepburn romanization. On a computer or word processor, these smaller kana may be produced in various ways. For example, an 'x' or an 'l' preceding the romanization of the full-sized kana produces a small version on some systems, thus ''xtu'' gives 'っ' on a Microsoft computer. However this is not standardized, and these forms are restricted to use in Input Systems ; they are not used to represent the smaller kana in romanized Japanese. REFERENCES #1 |
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