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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

In "Long Vowels"

In that section, for different ways of romanizing a long o, (i.e. oh, ou, o with a circumflex), should oo be added? I don't know much about the theory behind this stuff and whatnot, but I know that I've seen it written that way plenty. --Ravenwolf Zero (talk) 04:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I recall this too. I think you mean a macron though (ō) which is a straight line over the vowel, rather than a circumflex which is like a ^ over it. 'Oo' is traditiolly for 'ooh' sounds like 'moon' though, so could it cause trouble when you need to represent that sound in Japanese, or is that sound absent in the language? I don't know. Tyciol (talk) 18:20, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

And oo can be confused with oo. Like とおざかる (toozakaru). It is oo - but not a long o. 2 os. But I've seen it romanized that way plenty. It's just inaccurate in some cases. 90.180.30.210 (talk) 19:46, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Bottom-line is, all Romanization systems available still suck. 189.62.50.167 (talk) 03:55, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

ISO 639

Is there an ISO639 code for Romaji? (I've searched using Google and cannot find one; using the usual ISO code for Japanese, in HTML's "lang" attribute, causes browsers to try to download a Japanese font set.) If so, it should be mentioned in the article; and to mark-up Romaji words on Wikipeida.. BCCWebTeam (talk) 13:03, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Your question is like asking "is there an ISO639 code for the alphabet?", and the answer is the same — no, there isn't, because romaji is not a language. Jpatokal (talk) 14:47, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
There isn't, but the lang attribute can specify the alphabet, i.e. "ja-Latn". See http://www.w3.org/International/articles/language-tags/Overview.en.php.
There are ISO standards for romanisations as well. Nothing strange about the question. See Kunrei-shiki romanization. Hanyu Pinyin is not a language and not the main script but it is ISO-7098:1991. I don't have an answer to BCCWebTeam's question. Possibly, Hepburn Romaji didn't receive ISO standard but other romanisations did. See the section about Hepburn in Modern systems of the article. --Atitarev (talk) 09:04, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
I guess you misunderstood the OP's question. ISO 639 defines two- or three-letter codes for languages, e.g. en for English, ja for Japanese, and so on. They are indipendent of scripts, though: Serbian is sr regardless of whether it's written in Latin or Cyrillic alphabet. IETF language tags, which are used in the HTML lang attribute, are based on ISO 639, but they can optionally include (among other things) a ISO 15924 code for the script, e.g. sr-Latn for Serbian written in Latin and sr-Cyrl for Serbian written in Cyrillic. So I was suggesting to use ja-Latn for rōmaji. (I don't know whether any subtag to specify which romanization is used exists, though.) --A r m y 1 9 8 7 ! !  09:25, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I must have, thanks. --Atitarev (talk) 10:28, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Syllabary

"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." What does this mean? Something like the Cherokee syllabary? --Error (talk) 21:51, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Passport Hepburn

So, this is a little more complicated than I thought. "OH"-style long vowels are colloquially called "passport Hepburn" (see Google). However, according to the present rules, you can opt to use any of O, OU, OH, or OO in passports (長音表記とは、氏名に「オオ」、または「オウ」と伸ばす音を含む場合であり、「O」または 「OH」、「OU」、「OO」などの選択が可能です), but this requires a special "not-Hepburn" application form (非ヘボン式ローマ字氏名表記等申出書) [1].

I'm still trying to work out when the rules changed though. This, which is not an official site though, seems to imply that the change was in 2005; presumably before that only the word-final "OH" was allowed? It also seems that people of foreign descent can choose to use any rendering they like, but can Japanese also do the same...? Jpatokal (talk) 05:23, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi, sorry to keep removing the references for "Passport Hepburn", but the one provided simply verified the existence of a romanization engine called "Passport", and did not verify the existence of anything called "passport Hepburn". The Google link provided simply links to pages derived from this Wiki article, so I'm afraid it offers nothing new. A Google search in Japanese doesn't seem to turn up anything either.
The reason why I have such severe doubts about anyone calling this "oh" usage "Passport Hepburn" is because, although Japanese natives have been using "oh" on signs and meishi etc for decades, until very recently (2000?, 2005?), the use of "oh" to signify a long "o" was prohibited in Japanese passports. It just wouldn't make sense for this long-standing practice to suddenly be referred to as "Passport Hepburn". --DAJF (talk) 11:28, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
I too would be hesitant to refer to "passport Hepburn" ... 260 hits, even if all legitimate, seem hardly enough to support the argument that the phrase has entered colloquial use. I am curious too about whether this is supposed to be an English or Japanese phrase ... for what it's worth, the Japanese version of this page indicates that OH-style long vowels would be better referred to as 外務省ヘボン式 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs Hepburn). Personally, I associate the "OH" not with passports but with baseball uniforms! Regardless of what you call it the content is the same ... let's leave off this debatable phrase. CES (talk) 03:57, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

The English word 'romaji' as opposed to the romaji of rōmaji!

The English word romaji does exist:

Oxford English dictionary:


romaji |ˈrōməjē| noun

a system of Romanized spelling used to transliterate Japanese.

ORIGIN early 20th cent.: from Japanese, from rōma ‘Roman’ + ji ‘letter(s).’


We should remove the macron from the English word(s). Macgroover (talk) 10:08, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Do you have a link? ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:24, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Here's Merriam-Webster
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Romaji
Also
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/romaji
Oxford doesn't have online but check in Dictionary on a Mac if you have access Macgroover (talk) 07:49, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

A link was removed as spam but it's been on this page for at least 4 or 5 years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Romanization_of_Japanese&oldid=50019572

My removed edit was a simple fix of the link URL. The old link was going to the wrong page and getting redirected to the latest URL, so I updated that. Given that this link has been here for many years, I also moved it up in the order as previously someone must have moved it under a similar link. So I've reverted the update I made. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.122.63.6 (talk) 08:41, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:LINKFARM. I've nuked all except the semi-scholarly resources. Jpatokal (talk) 11:18, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Thus nuking all the useful resources for students of Japanese. Gosh, thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.122.63.6 (talk) 15:14, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Dubious

The article says:

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".

As far as I'm aware, and as explained at e.g. Hiragana, there are fully accepted romanisations for combinations with "y" kana (namely "kya", "kyu", "kyo" etc.) and for the "small tsu" (namely doubling the next consonant). 86.185.78.46 (talk) 21:45, 17 May 2010 (UTC).

Yes, but there are no fully accepted romanizations for those characters in other usages, where they do appear occasionally. Jpatokal (talk) 23:07, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
That isn't what the text says though. It says "there is no form of romanization for full-sized kana combined with smaller versions ..." If it's supposed to mean what you describe then it needs rewriting. I wonder if there might be several separate issues here, that the current text has got muddled up:
  1. Large kana plus small "ya", "yu", "yo", which have standard romanisations.
  2. Small "tsu" modifying following kana, which has standard romanisation.
  3. Small vowel following large kana, which may in some cases (?) not have standard romanisation.
  4. Small kana in "other uses" (like what?), which may not have any means of romanisation at all (as distinct from standard versions of same character)?
86.185.78.46 (talk) 03:17, 18 May 2010 (UTC).
Hmm. Looking at this again, I realise that the meaning is ambiguous. I read it as referring to these three things:
  • full-sized kana combined with smaller versions of the vowel kana, "ぁ", "ぃ", "ぅ", "ぇ" and "ぉ"
  • full-sized kana combined with the smaller versions of the y kana, "ゃ", "ゅ", and "ょ"
  • full-sized kana combined with the sokuon or small tsu kana "っ".
But I suppose it might be referring to these three:
  • 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" by themselves
  • the sokuon or small tsu kana "っ" by itself
What do you think? 86.186.35.195 (talk) 12:57, 18 May 2010 (UTC).

Capitalisation

Could someone provide a source on capitalisation rules, if they exist? Tōkyō or tōkyō? Does it depend on usage? --Anatoli (talk) 00:59, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Japanese script makes no distinction between lower-case and upper-case (capitals). Thus, there are no rules for doing this in rōmaji - other than the rules based on the practice of some other language (e.g. English). Here is a link to the Library of Congress guide to romanization of Japanese - including capitals https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/japanese.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.231.28.66 (talk) 01:44, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

History

I have made a minor amendment here to bring it into line with what is in the main article on Hepburn romanization. See the discussion page of that article (archive #2) for the background. Hepburn did not invent it; in fact he was a bit reluctant to use it, but went with the flow. JimBreen (talk) 04:13, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

THIS PAGE FAILS AT GRAMMER

It does! "almost all Japanese are able to read and write Japanese using rōmaji."? Should have Japanese PEOPLE.

I do not have enough time to fix all these errors, so I appreciate if someone else did it. LucarioAuraSphere (talk) 11:55, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

"Japanese" can mean "Japanese people". (Please feel free to check this for yourself in a good, recent English dictionary.) -- Hoary (talk) 12:00, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Alphabet letter names in Japanese

I'm not sure about the section of this name in the article. It says, "The list below shows how to spell Latin character words or acronyms in Japanese. For example, NHK is spelled enu-eichi-kei, (エヌエイチケイ). The following pronunciations are based on English letter names; otherwise, for example, A would likely be called ā (アー) in Japanese." So, lemme get this straight: this is just how to "spell" the English pronunciation of the letters of the English alphabet using Japanese phonemes written in Latin characters (OK, and Japanese characters, too)? Is this really necessary? - dcljr (talk) 05:06, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Yep, this seems to be just how to write phonetically using katakana, but 'A' is never written phonetically as 'アー' since this long 'ah' sound bears no similarity to how the name of the letter 'A' is pronounced, "ey". In katakana, A is described as ”エー” or less commonly "エイー”. 86.19.94.234 (talk) 11:56, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Significant differences chart

I find the "significant differences" chart below the full one in the section Differences among romanizations to be extremely redundant, and therefore more confusing than helpful. Any new information in that chart can just be merged into the full one. The differences are already very noticeable in the full version of the table and do not require restating in a second one. - dcljr (talk) 05:21, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Fact versus history

In the Hepburn section,the mention of Anglophones confuses fact with history: given the phonemes, the romaji is most useful to speakers of international Italian - it is not a matter of Anglophones in FACT. It is particularly usefull to Poles and Czechs given their not using Cyrillic - but more useful to one than the ther given the phonology.

Could we distinguish language facts from tranliterations history here (diachrony from synchrony, if you will?) Are we saying not so useful to Francophones - given that they have phoneme tu but Japanese does not ?? G. Robert Shiplett 14:21, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

No, we're simply stating the obvious: Hepburn was American, his dictionary was in English, and his romanization is geared for English speakers. It just happens that the vowels of Japanese are more in line with Italian than English, but this is a property of the language, not the romanization system. Jpatokal (talk) 00:36, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Merge Needed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C4%81puro_r%C5%8Dmaji — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.62.200.176 (talk) 17:53, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Punctuation marks romanization

I think it could use a punctuation marks romanization chart. Like, how do they romanize the quotation marks「」? It's pretty straight forward in the case of other punctuation marks since they're the same everywhere, but quotation marks come in a lot of types in different languages, do they use a certain type for romaji? --ANDROBETA 19:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Revised Hepburn - "Jun'ichirō" Example

Hi,

Something seems wrong about the highlighted part of the following sentence:

"For example, the name じゅんいちろう, is written with the kana characters ju-n-i-chi-ro-u, and romanized as Jun'ichirō in Revised Hepburn. Without the apostrophe, it would not be possible to distinguish this correct reading from the incorrect ju-ni-chi-ro-u."

I understand what the sentence is trying to say, but, technically speaking, ju , n , i ,chi , ro , and u  are not kana characters; They are romanizations of the kana characters じゅ, ん, い, ち, ろ, う. It seems impossible to me for anyone to mistake the name じゅんいちろう for ju-ni-chi-ro-u  if you're going from kana to romaji.

I think the highlighted section of the above sentence should be rewritten as follows:

"For example, the name じゅんいちろう, is written with the kana characters ju-n-i-chi-ro-u, and romanized as Jun'ichirō in Revised Hepburn and pronounced ju-n-i-chi-ro-u. Without the apostrophe, it would not be possible to distinguish this correct reading from the incorrect ju-ni-chi-ro-u."

What do others think? Thanks in advance. - Marchjuly (talk) 07:03, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

anti romanization sentiment

http://web.archive.org/web/20130109061422/http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/wjapref.htm

http://www.tofugu.com/2011/09/19/the-kana-they-are-a-changin/

Rajmaan (talk) 08:57, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Station sign

The caption below the recently added photo of a station sign is not really accurate at all. Here it is:

  • JNR-style board of Toyooka Station. Between the two adjacent stations, “GEMBUDŌ” follows the Hepburn romanization system, but “KOKUHU” follows the Nihon-shiki/Kunrei-shiki romanization system.

In practice, romanisation within Japan is a totally ad hoc business, and it is not likely that anyone set out to write different names in different systems; they just guessed as best as they could, and this is the result. It is true that 'hu' for ふ is not Hepburn, and also I think that 'm' for ん is only used in (some versions of) Hepburn and also that kunreishiki uses a circumflex rather than a macron, but otherwise everything on this sign could be either system. Here is a possible replacement, but I invite comments before changing it:

  • Old sign from the JNR era at Toyooka Station shows inconsistent romanization. Although in principle Hepburn is used, Kokuhu is the kunrei-shiki form (should be Kokufu).

Imaginatorium (talk) 13:54, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

In this vertical Japanese text Latin letters are given a quarter-turn to the right. Is that usual?

In these 東京家族 closing credits Latin letters (romaji?) are given a quarter-turn to the right. Is this a standard way to write Latin letters within a vertical text? Or is it just an isolated quirk? Contact Basemetal here 20:34, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

It's normal. Obviously it's rather difficult to read, so texts which have a significant amount of Roman-letter writing (such as English textbooks or scientific/mathematical books) prefer the horizontal method instead. See Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts#Japanese and Traditional Chinese, which says "Inserted text in the Roman alphabet is usually written horizontally, or turned sideways when it appears in vertical text, with the base of the characters on the left" and "... it is also common to see English words printed sideways in vertical writing texts." --Bigpeteb (talk) 21:22, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Romanization in Didacus Colladus' works

Which Romanization did Didacus Colladus (Span. Diego Collado) use in his works of 1632 (like Dictionarium sive thesauri linguae Japonicae compendium (in modern spelling), a Latin-Spanish-Japanese dictionary)? It includes ca, chi, qi, je, vo, xi, gi, va, zu, tçu, and has vowels with a "v" or "u" over it and vowels with "-", "`" or "^" over it. Some of those vowels with extra signs could be for short/long vowels. IMHO it's interesting/relevant as Colladus wrote in Latin and not in Portugese like in those works from 1603, 1604, 1620.
Also: Didn't the Portugese transcribe "ー" and double Japanese signs (like "いい")?

づ - ず Pronunciation

In the article it is written that,

The づ kana is pronounced in the same way as a different kana, す (su), with dakuten, ず.

...Nihon-shiki retains the difference, and romanizes the word as kanadukai, differentiating the づ kana from the ず kana, which is romanized as zu, even though they are pronounced identically.

But these are pronounced differently. ( At least within the Tokyo area ). This description within the article should be revised. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aethersong (talk • contribs) 14:28, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Fixed. I added a bit of text and a link to Yotsugana, which has a chart showing where ず and づ are pronounced identically or not. Although in most dialects, including Tokyo, they are pronounced the same; dialects that differentiate them are rare. --Bigpeteb (talk) 18:52, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Pron of V and W

The article has the pronunciation for V given as Vi. This might be how it is taught (source?) but I think most Japanese have trouble saying it this way and usually call it Bui or maybe Vui.

Likewise, I'm not sure if W is taught as daburyu, but most Japanese seem to call it daburu.

BTW- Would it be useful to add a section to the article on how Japanese use some Romaji as shorthand, particularly with unique meanings in a Japanese context? e.g. W used to mean "double/x2" or H to mean sex? I know this is given elsewhere in Wikipedia, but it seems appropriate here. DrHacky (talk) 06:23, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

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